London Match

'If Stinnes is a plant…'

'Ah, if Stinnes is a plant…' Dicky sank down in his Charles Eames chair and put his feet on the matching footstool. The night was dark outside and the windowpanes were like ebony reflecting a perfect image of the room. Only the antique desk light was on; it made a pool of light on the table where the report and transcript were placed side by side. Dicky almost disappeared into the gloom except when the light reflected from the brass buckle of his belt or shone on the gold medallion he wore suspended inside his open-neck shirt. 'But the idea that Stinnes is a plant is hard to sustain when he's just given us three well-placed KGB agents in a row.'

He looked at his watch before shouting 'Coffee' loudly enough for his secretary to hear in the adjoining room. When Dicky worked late, his secretary worked late too. He didn't trust the duty roster staff with making his coffee.

'Will he talk, this one you arrested in Berlin? He had a year with the Bonn Defence Ministry, I notice from the file.'

'I didn't arrest him; we left it to the Germans. Yes, he'll talk if they push him hard enough. They have the evidence and – thanks to Volkmann – they're holding the woman who came to collect it from the car.'

'And I'm sure you put all that in your report. Are you now the official secretary of the Werner Volkmann fan club? Or is this something you do for all your old school chums?'

'He's very good at what he does.'

'And so we all agree, but don't tell me that but for Volkmann, we wouldn't have picked up the woman. Staking out the car is standard procedure. Ye gods, Bernard, any probationary cop would do that as a matter of course.'

'A commendation would work wonders for him.'

'Well, he's not getting any bloody commendation from me. Just because he's your close friend, you think you can inveigle any kind of praise and privilege out of me for him.'

'It wouldn't cost anything, Dicky,' I said mildly.

'No, it wouldn't cost anything,' said Dicky sarcastically. 'Not until the next time he makes some monumental cock-up. Then someone asks me how come I commended him; then it would cost something. It would cost me a chewing out and maybe a promotion.'

'Yes, Dicky,' I said.

Promotion? Dicky was two years younger than me and he'd already been promoted several rungs beyond his competence. What promotion did he have his eye on now? He'd only just fought off Bret Rensselaer's attempt to take over the German desk. I'd thought he'd be satisfied to consolidate his good fortune.

'And what do you make of this Englishwoman?' He tapped the roughly typed transcript of her statement. 'Looks as if you got her talking.'

'I couldn't stop her,' I said.

'Like that, was it? I don't want to go all through it again tonight. Anything important?'

'Some inconsistencies that should be followed up.'

'For instance?'

'She was working in London, handling selected items for immediate shortwave radio transmission to Moscow.'

'Must have been bloody urgent,' said Dicky. So he'd noticed that already. Had he waited to see if I brought it up? 'And that means damned good. Right? I mean, not even handled through the Embassy radio, so it was a source they wanted to keep very very secret.'

'Fiona's material probably,' I said.

'I wondered if you'd twig that,' said Dicky. 'It was obviously the stuff your wife was betraying out of our day-to-day operational files.'

He liked to twist the knife in the wound. He held me personally responsible for what Fiona had done; he'd virtually said so on more than one occasion.

'But the material kept coming.'

Dicky frowned. 'What are you getting at?'

'It kept coming. First-grade material even after Fiona ran for it.'

'This woman's transmitted material wasn't all from the same source,' said Dicky. 'I remember what she said when you played your tape to me.'

He picked up the transcript and tried to find what he wanted in the muddle of humms and hahhs and 'indistinct passage' marks that are always a part of transcripts from such tape recordings. He put the sheets down again.

'Well anyway, I remember there were two assignment codes: jake and ironfoot. Is that what's worrying you?'

'We should follow it up!' I said. 'I don't like loose ends like that. The dates suggest that Fiona was ironfoot. Who the hell was jake?'

'The Fiona material is our worry. Whatever else Moscow got – and are still getting – is a matter for Five. You know that, Bernard. It's not our job to search high and low to find Russian spies.'

'I still think we should check this woman's statement against what Stinnes knows.'

'Stinnes is nothing to do with me, Bernard. I've just told you that.'

'Well, I think he should be. It's madness that we don't have access to him without going to Debriefing Centre for permission.'

'Let me tell you something, Bernard,' said Dicky, leaning well back in the soft leather seat and adopting the manner of an Oxford don explaining the law of gravity to a delivery boy. 'When London Debriefing Centre get through with Stinnes, heads will roll up here on the top floor. You know the monumental cock-ups that have dogged the work of this Department for the last few years. Now we'll have chapter and verse on every decision made up here while Stinnes was running things in Berlin. Every decision made by senior staff will be scrutinized with twenty-twenty hindsight. It could get messy; people with a history of bad decisions are going to be axed very smartly.'

Dicky smiled. He could afford to smile; Dicky had never made a decision in his life. Whenever something decisive was about to happen, Dicky went home with a headache.

'And you think that whoever's in charge of the Stinnes debriefing will be unpopular?'

'Running a witch-hunt is not likely to be a social asset,' said Dicky.

I thought 'witch-hunt' was an inaccurate description of the weeding out of incompetents, but there would be plenty who would favour Dicky's terminology.

'And that's not only my opinion,' he added. 'No one wants to take Stinnes. And I don't want you saying we should have responsibility for him.'

Dicky's secretary brought coffee.

'I was just coming, Mr Cruyer,' she said apologetically. She was a mousy little widow whose every sheet of typing was a patchwork of white correcting paint. At one time Dicky had had a shapely twenty-five-year-old divorcee as secretary, but his wife, Daphne, had made him get rid of her. At the time, Dicky had pretended that firing the secretary was his idea; he said it was because she didn't boil the water properly for his coffee. Tour wife phoned. She wanted to know what time to expect you for dinner.'

'And what did you say?' Dicky asked her.

The poor woman hesitated, worrying if she'd done the right thing. 'I said you were at a meeting and I would call her back.'

Tell my wife not to wait dinner for me. I'll get a bite to eat somewhere or other.'

'If you want to get away, Dicky,' I said, rising to my feet.

'Sit down, Bernard. We can't waste a decent cup of coffee. I'll be home soon enough. Daphne knows what this job is like; eighteen hours a day lately.' It was not a soft, melancholy reflection but a loud proclamation to the world, or at least to me and his secretary who departed to pass the news on to Daphne.

I nodded but I couldn't help wondering if Dicky was scheduling a visit to some other lady. Lately I'd noticed a gleam in his eye and a spring in his step and a most unusual willingness to stay late at the office.

Dicky got up from his easy chair and fussed over the antique butler's tray which his secretary had placed so carefully on his side table. He emptied the Spode cups of the hot water and half filled each warmed cup with black coffee. Dicky was extremely particular about his coffee. Twice a week he sent one of the drivers to collect a packet of freshly roasted beans from Mr Higgins in South Molton Street – chagga, no blends – and it had to be ground just before brewing.