He’d heard rumours that all was not going well with the Rensselaer marriage, but no matter how much a man might want to leave his wife it does not mean that he wants her to leave him. Dicky had the feeling that Bret Rensselaer wouldn’t forget who it was who had brought news of his wife’s desertion, and it would leave a residual antipathy that would taint their relationship for ever after. In this assumption Dicky was correct. He began to hope that the appointment of the German Stations Controller would not be entirely in Bret’s gift.
The door clicked shut. Bret began the pressups over again. He had inflicted that mortifying rule on himself: if he stopped during exercises he did them all over again.
When his exercises were done Bret opened the door that concealed a small sink. He washed his face and hands and as he did so he recalled in detail the conversation he’d had with his wife that morning. He told himself not to waste time pondering the rift between them: what was gone was gone, and good riddance. Bret Rensselaer had always claimed that he never wasted time upon recriminations or regrets, but he felt hurt and deeply resentful.
To get his mind on other matters he began to think about those days long ago when he’d wanted to get into Operations. He’d drafted out some ideas about undermining the East German economy but no one had taken him seriously. The Director-General’s reaction to the big pile of research he’d done was to give him the European Economics desk. That wasn’t really something to complain about; Bret had built the desk into a formidable empire. But the economic desk work had been processing intelligence. He always regretted that they hadn’t taken up the more important idea: the idea of promoting change in East Germany.
Bret’s idea had never been to get an effective agent into the top of the Moscow KGB. He would prefer having a really brilliant agent, with a long-term disruptive and informative role, in East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic. It would take a long time: it was not something that could be hurried in the way that so many SIS operations were.
The Department probably had dozens of sleepers who’d established themselves, in one capacity or another, as longtime loyal agents of the various communist regimes of East Europe. Now Bret had to find such a person, and it had to be the right one. But the long and meticulous process of selection had to be done with such discretion and finesse that no one would be aware of what he was doing. And when he found that man, he’d have the task of persuading him to risk his neck in a way that sleepers were not normally asked to do. A lot of sleepers assigned to deep cover just took the money and relied upon the good chance that they’d never be asked to do anything at all.
It would not be simple. Neither would it be happy. At the beginning there would be little or no cooperation, for the simple reason that no one around him could be told what he was doing. Afterwards there would be the clamour for recognition and rewards. The Department was very concerned about such things. It was natural these men, who laboured so secretly, should strive so vigorously and desperately for the admiration and respect of their peers when things went well. And if things did not go well there would be the savage recriminations that accompanied post-mortems.
Lastly there was the effect that an operation like this would have upon the man who went off to do the dirty work. They did not come back. Or if they did come back they were never fit to work again. Of the survivors Bret had seen, few returned able to do anything but sit with a rug over their knees, talk to the officially approved departmental shrink, and try vainly to put together ruptured nerves and shattered relationships.
It was easy to see why they couldn’t recover. You ask a man to leave all that he holds most dear, to spy in a strange country. Then, years later, you snatch him back again – God willing – to live out his remaining life in peace and contentment. But there is no peace and no contentment either. The poor devil can’t remember anyone he hasn’t betrayed or abandoned at some time or another. Such people are destroyed as surely as if they’d faced a firing squad.
On the other hand it was necessary to balance the destruction of one man – plus perhaps a few members of his family – with what could be achieved by such a coup. It was a matter of the greater good of the community at large. They were fighting against a system which killed hundreds of thousands in labour camps, which used torture as a normal part of its police interrogation, which put dissenters into mental asylums. It would be absurd to be squeamish when the stakes were so high.
Bret Rensselaer closed the door that hid his sink and went to the window and looked out. Despite the haze, you could see it all from here: the Gothic spike of the Palace of Westminster, the spire of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Nelson balancing gingerly on his column. There was a unity to it. Even the incongruous Post Office tower would perhaps look all right given a century or so of weathering. Bret pushed his face close to the glass in order to see Wren’s dome of St Paul’s. The Director-General’s room had a fine view northwards and Bret envied him that. One day perhaps he would occupy that room. Nikki had made jokes about that and he’d pretended to laugh at them but he’d not given up hopes that one day …
Then he remembered the notes he’d made about the whole project. A great idea struck him: now that he had more time, and a staff of economists and analysts, he’d have it all up-dated. Maps, bar charts, pie charts, graphs and easy to understand figures that, even the Director-General would understand could all be done on the computer. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Thank you, Nikki.
And that brought him back to his wife. Once again he told himself to be resolute. She had left him. It was all over. He told himself he’d seen it coming for ages but in fact he hadn’t seen it coming at all. He’d always taken it for granted that Nikki would put up with all the things of which she complained – just as he put up with her – in order to have a marriage. He would miss her, there was no getting away from that fact, but he vowed he wouldn’t go chasing after her.
It simply wasn’t fair: he’d never been unfaithful to her all the time they’d been married. He sighed. Now he would have to start all over again: dating, courting, persuading, cajoling, being the extra man at parties. He’d have to learn how to suffer rejection when he asked younger women out to dinner. Rejection had never been easy for him. It was all too awful to contemplate. Perhaps he’d get his secretary to dine with him one evening next week. She’d told him it was all off with her fiancé.
He sat down at his desk and picked up some papers but the words floated before his eyes as his mind went back to Nikki. What had started the breakdown of his marriage? What had gone wrong? What had Nikki called him: a ruthless bastard? She’d been so cool and lucid, that’s what had really shaken him. Thinking about it again he decided that Nikki’s cool and lucid manner had all been a sham. Ruthless bastard? He told himself that women were apt to say absurd things when they were incoherently angry. That helped.
East Germany. January 1978.
‘Bring me the mirror,’ said Max Busby. He hadn’t intended that his voice should come out as a croak. Bernard Samson went and got the mirror and placed it on the table so Max could see his arm without twisting inside out. ‘Now take the dressing off,’ said Max.
The sleeve of Max’s filthy old shirt had been torn back as far as the shoulder. Now Bernard unbound the arm, finally peeling back a pad that was caked with pus and dried blood. It was a shock. Bernard gave an involuntary hiss and Max saw the look of horror on his face. ‘Not too bad,’ said Bernard, trying to hide his real feelings.
‘I’ve seen worse,’ said Busby, looking at it and trying to sound unruffled. It was a big wound: deep and inflamed and oozing pus. Bernard had stitched it up with a sewing needle and fishing line from a survival kit but some of his stitches had torn through the soft flesh. The skin around it was mottled every colour of the rainbow and so tender that even to look at it made it hurt more. Bernard was pinching it together tight so it didn’t break right open again. The dressing – an old handkerchief – had got dirty. The side that had been against the wound was dark brown and completely saturated with blood. More blood had crusted in patches all down his arm. ‘It might have been