Spy Sinker (23 page)

'Surely you are better equipped to answer that question,' said Fiona.

'I cannot answer on your behalf, but for me and many of my colleagues I suspect that dealing in failure provides an excuse for a lack of success. And like you perhaps, I enjoy the challenge of such fragile, complicated and deceptive disciplines. Can you ever be sure that you are right?' He paused. 'Right about anything at all?'

'Sometimes,' said Fiona. 'You still haven't told me about your methods.'

'Carl Jung once said, "Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." I think about that a lot. Methods? What can I tell you?' He looked at her with polite interest. The treatment of seriously disturbed patients has changed radically over the years. First and foremost there remains the old-fashioned analytical session in which patients are encouraged to delve into their own minds. As Freud discovered, it is a lengthy process. So along came the neuro-surgeons who drilled holes into the skull and destroyed brain cells and nerve fibres with surgical instruments.' He waited while the horror of that became clear to her. 'Then came a time when it seemed as if electric shocks through the brain could provide lasting improvement, and that seemed to be the panacea everyone had awaited. It wasn't the answer we had hoped for. But the chemists were waiting their turn, and patients were given massive doses of Dexedrine followed by Seconal and whatever new drug the West German chemical companies were anxious to sell. Now I suppose many specialists are beginning to think that amid his claptrap, Freud may have had a few worthwhile ideas after all. But analysis on the couch is a very long process: we'll never have enough analysts to fight mental illness in that laborious way.'

'And where do you stand?'

'In the matter of treatment? I am a senior consultant here but my staff are permitted considerable freedom to choose what is best for their patients. We have mostly depressives and schizophrenics, some of them catatonics demanding a lot of skill and close attention. However it is in the nature of our function, as a garbage can into which patients are discarded, that we treat a wide variety of illness. After many years of practice I have become reluctant to forbid any kind of treatment that a doctor, after a proper study of a patient, thinks will be beneficial.'

'You forbid nothing?'

'That is my stated position.'

'Including lobotomy?'

'A seriously disturbed patient who becomes violent can sometimes be returned to something approaching normal Life.' He got up. 'Let me show you the wards.'

The clinic was hushed but not entirely silent. Most of the patients were in bed, sleeping with that impassive calm that medicine provides. One small ward was in semi-darkness. It held six sleepers who had been sedated for a week. It was, explained Doktor Wieczorek, the preliminary part of the treatment for most new arrivals. Underlying the smell of disinfectant there were all the disagreeable odours that warm bodies provide when crowded together in a closed room. He went to the window and raised the blind a fraction so that they could see the sleeping patients. Outside, she saw that the snow was falling much more heavily, the trees were rimed with it and passing cars left black Lines in the road. Doktor Wieczorek adjusted the disarranged bedclothes. Sometimes, he joked, it took a week or two for their documentation to catch up with them.

The rooms were all lined with white tiles from floor to ceiling. There was something pitiless about the shiny hardness as it reflected the grey blankets. An ashen-faced patient stared at her but didn't register any emotion. Fiona had that guilty feeling of intrusion that afflicts all fit people in the presence of the sick. Wieczorek pulled down the blind and it was dark. As if in response to the darkness, one of the patients gave a muffled cry but then went quiet again.

Downstairs there was a large 'association room' where half a dozen patients were sitting in metal chairs with blankets over their knees. Two of them, both middle-aged men, were wearing woolly hats. There was no sign of books or newspapers and the patients were either asleep or staring into space. A TV set in the corner was showing a cartoon film, in which a hatchet-wielding mouse was chasing a cat, but the sound was switched off and no one was watching it.

'There is one patient you must meet,' said Doktor Wieczorek. 'Franz: he is our oldest inhabitant. When we got him, in 1978, his memory had completely gone but we are proud to have made a little progress.' He showed her into a bare room with a big square-shaped sink equipped for washing bed-pans. There was a man sitting there in a wheelchair. His body had run to fat as a consequence of his confinement. His complexion was yellowish and his lips were pressed tightly together as if he was trying not to yell. 'Come along, Franz. What about a cup of coffee?'

The man in the wheelchair said nothing, and made no move, except that he rolled his eyes as if trying to see the doctor's face without moving his head. 'I've brought a lady to see you, Franz. It's a long time since you had a visitor, isn't it?' To Fiona Doktor Wieczorek said, 'With patients of this sort the condition varies greatly from day to day.'

'Hello, Franz,' said Fiona, uncertain of what was expected of her.

'Say, hello, Franz,' said Doktor Wieczorek, and added, 'He hears everything but perhaps today he doesn't want to talk to us.' He took the wheelchair and tipped it back to lift the front wheels clear over the step.

Wieczorek took Franz in his wheelchair along the corridor, continuing his small talk and seeming not to notice that Franz didn't answer. Fiona followed. When the chair was positioned in a small room with 'Treatment Room No. 2' on its door it was placed so that Fiona and the doctor could sit down and face the patient. Although he still hadn't moved his head Franz had become agitated at coming into the room. He was looking at a small grey enamel cabinet in the corner. Its dial was calibrated in volts and there was a mechanical timer and wires ending in what looked like headphones. Franz stared at the machine and then at Doktor Wieczorek and then back at the machine again.

'He doesn't like the electric shock treatment,' said the doctor. 'No one does.' He put out a hand and touched Franz in a reassuring gesture. 'It's all right, Franz. No treatment today, old friend. Coffee, just coffee.'

As if by prearrangement a woman in a blue overall came in carrying a tray with cups, saucers and a jug of coffee. The chinaware was thick and clumsy: the sort which didn't readily break if dropped. 'I'll change my mind, if I may?' said Fiona as the doctor began pouring the coffee.

'Good. Changing people's minds is our speciality here. Isn't that right, Franz?' Doktor Wieczorek chuckled.

Franz moved his eyes and stared at Fiona. It seemed as if he could hear and understand everything that was said. Looking into his face, she wondered if there was something faintly familiar about him, but then she dismissed the thought.

'Poor Franz Blum was a hard-working young third secretary working in the attaché's office in London. Then one day he had a complete breakdown. I suppose it was the strain of being without his family in a strange country for the first time. Some people find it very difficult to adapt. The Embassy shipped him back to Moscow as soon as it was realized that he was sick. Everything was tried and although there were times when he seemed to get better, in the long term he just got worse and worse. It's a sad case. In a way he provides us with a constant reminder of the limitations of our science.'

Fiona watched Blum as he reached for his coffee, extending two hands and picking it up with very great care.

'One confidential KGB report from London said that Franz was a spy for the British,' said Doktor Wieczorek. 'But apparently there is no hard evidence to support the allegation. There was never any question of him going on trial but we were told the background, in case it could help in diagnosis. There was an inquiry, but even your Stasi interrogators got nothing out of him.'

She kept calm, very calm, but she turned her eyes away from Franz. 'But you did?' Then this was the man she had reported to Martin Pryce-Hughes, the one she had betrayed and consigned to a living death. Was Doktor Wieczorek in on that whole story, or was it all just need-to-know?

'We have that sort of patient sometimes. Franz wasn't easy to deal with. It's a long time ago now but I remember it all so clearly. When he didn't respond to the pills and injections it became clear that electric shock would be the only way to help him. Not just the little sessions that are given to help depressed patients; we tried a new idea, really massive shocks.'

Franz spilled a dribble of coffee down his chin. Wieczorek took a handkerchief and wiped it. Then he gently removed Franz's woollen hat and indicated for Fiona the shaved patches where the electrodes were applied.

'Shock,' said Franz suddenly and loudly as the doctor fingered the bare skin.

'Good,' said Doktor Wieczorek proudly. 'Did you hear that? As clear as anything. Keep up the good work, Franz, and we'll soon be sending you home.' He replaced the knitted hat on the man's head but it remained askew, giving Franz Blum an inappropriately jaunty air. As if the demonstration was over, Doktor Wieczorek stood up and grabbed the wheelchair. He pushed it back into the corridor, where a nurse was waiting to take it from him. 'You didn't have your coffee,' Wieczorek said to Fiona as if suddenly remembering it.

'Is there much more of the clinic to see?' she asked.

'Nothing of consequence. Sit down and drink the coffee. I hope Franz didn't upset you.'

'Of course not,' said Fiona.

'He'll never go home, he'll never go anywhere,' said Doktor Wieczorek. 'He's institutionalized for life, I'm afraid. Poor Franz.'

'Yes, poor Franz,' said Fiona. 'But if the KGB report was true, he was an enemy of the State, wasn't he?'

'An enemy of the people,' Wieczorek corrected her sardonically. 'That's far worse.'

She looked at him: he was smiling. She knew then beyond any doubt that this was a charade, a charade acted out for her to guess the word. The word was 'treachery', and the pathetic zombie they had made of Franz Blum was an example of what would be done to her if she should betray her KGB masters. Is that why he'd quoted Carl Jung: 'Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you'?

'It's good coffee, isn't it?' said Doktor Wieczorek. 'I have a special source.'

'You're lucky,' said Fiona. Perhaps this terrifying warning was a procedure that all senior Stasi staff were subjected to. There was no way to be sure; that was how the country was run. Stick and carrot: award in the morning and warning in the afternoon. This topsyturvy clinic where the 'sane' were cured was just how she saw this 'workers' state' where the leaders lived in ostentatious grandeur in fenced compounds paced by armed guards.

'Yes, I am lucky,' said Doktor Wieczorek, savouring his coffee. 'You're lucky too: we all are.'

London. November 1983.

Bret Rensselaer was overplaying his hand. In trying to make Fiona Samson secure he'd even thrown suspicion on to Bernard Samson, suggesting that he might have been an accomplice to his wife's treachery. It was an effective device, for the Department was just as vulnerable to rumours, and whispered half-truths, as any other organized assembly of competitive humans. The trouble came because opinions were divided about Bernard Samson's integrity, and so a rumour started that another 'mole' was at work within the Department. An unhealthy atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion was developing.

The discovery of the murdered Julian MacKenzie in a Department safe house in Bosham gave further impetus to the gossip. Thanks to what Miranda Keller had told him, Bret knew that it was a case of mistaken identity: the KGB had been after Bernard Samson. But Bret took no action in the matter before getting Samson into the number 3 conference room and admonishing him in the presence of suitable witnesses. Samson shouted back, as Bret knew he would, and Bret ended up by telling everyone who would listen that Bernard Samson was 'beyond suspicion'.

But spinning the web of deceit that he deemed necessary for Fiona's safety was taking its toll of Bret Rensselaer. He was by nature an administrator: brutal sometimes, but sustained always by self-righteousness. Running the Economics Intelligence Section had been a task for which he was ideally fitted. But Sinker was different. His original plan to target the East German economy by draining away skilled workers and professional people was not as easy as it once seemed. Fiona had supplied him with regular information about the East German opposition and other reform groups but they could not unite. His overall problem was that keeping Sinker such a close secret meant telling ever more complex lies to his friends and colleagues. It was vital that none of them could see the whole plan. This was demanding in a way he did not relish. It was like playing tennis against himself: criss-crossing the centre line, leaping the net, wrong-footing himself and delivering ever more strenuous volleys that would be impossible to return.

And this double life left him very little time for relaxation or pleasure. Now, at lunchtime on Saturday, a time when he might have snatched a few hours relaxing with friends at the sort of weekend house-party he most enjoyed, he was sitting bickering with his wife about the divorce and her wretched alimony.

It was typical of Nicola that she should insist upon having lunch at Roma Locuta Est, a cramped Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge. Even the name affronted him: 'Rome has spoken' was a way of saying no complaints would be listened to, and that was exactly the way Pina ran her restaurant. Pina was a formidable Italian matron who welcomed the rich and famous while ruthlessly pruning from her clientele those of lesser appeal. It had become a meeting place for the noisy Belgravia jet-set, a group which Bret assiduously shunned. This being Saturday they were at their most insufferable: table-hopping and shouting loudly to each other, ordering their Anglicized food in execrable Italian. Bret's lunch was not made more enjoyable by discovering that just about everyone here seemed to be on first-name terms with his wife Nicola.

'You really believe it,' she was saying. 'Jesus Christ, Bret. You say you're poor; and you really believe it. If it wasn't so goddamned sneaky, it would make me laugh.' Nicola had obviously taken a lot of trouble with her clothes and make-up, but she was out of his past and he felt no attraction to her.

'You don't have to tell everyone in the room, darling,' said Bret softly. Knowing the sort of place it was, Bret had made appropriate sartorial concessions. He was wearing a suede jacket and tan-coloured silk roll-neck. His normal attire, a good suit, would have looked out of place here on a Saturday lunchtime.

'I don't care if all the world knows. I'll shout it from the house-tops.'

'We've been through all this, before we were married. You saw the lawyers. You signed the forms of agreement.'

'I didn't read what I was signing.' She drank some of her Campari and soda.

'Why the hell didn't you?'

'Because I was in love with you, that's why I didn't.'

'You thought separating would be like it was in old Hollywood movies. You thought I would go to stay in my club and you'd have the house, and the furniture and the paintings and the Bentley and every other damn thing.'

'I thought I might own half of my own home. I didn't know my home was owned by a corporation.'

'Not a corporation: it's owned by a trust.'

'I don't care if it's owned by The Boy Scouts of America: you let me think it was my home, and now I find it never was.'

'Please don't tell me that you gave me the best years of your life,' said Bret.

'I gave you everything.' She stirred her drink so that the ice rattled.

'You gave me hell.' He looked round the dining room, 'I can't think why that woman Pina allows dogs in here: it's unhygienic.' He lookout a handkerchief and blew his nose. 'And animal hair affects my sinus.'

'It doesn't affect your sinus,' said his wife. 'You get your sinus and then you look round for something to blame it on.'

Bret noticed that the demonstrative Pina was making her rounds. She liked to take her customers in a bear hug and scream endearments into their ear before discussing their food. 'Yes, you gave me hell,' said Bret.

'I told you the truth, and you found it hell.' With quick agitated movements Nicola opened her handbag to get her cigarettes. Under the handbag there was a copy of
Vogue
and a book called
Somebody Stole My Spy
. On the cover it said 'Better than Ludlum' in letters bigger than the author's name. Bret wondered whether she was really reading the book, or had brought it here as some kind of provocation. She liked to make jokes about his 'career as a spy'.

When Bret leaned forward and lit the cigarette for her, he noticed that she was trembling. He wondered why. He found it difficult to believe that he could cause anyone to become so distressed. 'Jesus!' said Nicola and blew smoke high into the air so that it made little clouds in the plastic vines that hung from the ceiling.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pina coming. Bret detested her and decided to flee to the toilet but he was too late. 'And you know my husband,' Nicola was already saying, her voice strangled as she was enveloped in Pina's beefy arms, and drowned by a babble of Italian chatter.

Bret stood up and edged sideways to keep the table between them and nodded deferentially. Pina looked at him, rolled her eyes and yelled in Italian. Bret smiled and gave a little bow to acknowledge what he thought was some flowery Roman compliment but it turned out to be Pina shouting for more menus.

When they'd ordered lunch, or more accurately when they had agreed to the meal that Pina decreed they should have, Nicola went back to talking about the settlement.

'Your lawyer is a bastard,' she said.

'Other people's lawyers are always bastards. That comes with the job.'

Nikki shifted her attack. They do what you tell them.'

'I don't tell them anything. There's nothing to tell. The law is explicit.'

'I'm going to California. I'm going to sue you.'

'That won't get you anywhere,' said Bret. 'I don't live in California and I don't own anything in California. You might as well go to Greenland.'

I'm going to take up residence there. They have communal property laws in California. My brother-in-law says I'd do better there.'

'I wish you'd start using your brains, Nikki. The money my father left me is in a trust. We're not really a part of the Rensselaer family. My grandmother married into it late in life: she changed her children's name to Rensselaer. We never inherited the Rensselaer millions. I just have an allowance from a small trust fund. I told you all that before we were married.'

She waggled a manicured finger at him. 'You're not going to get away with this, Bret. I'll break that damned trust fund if it's the last thing I do. I want what I'm entitled to.'

'Dammit, Nikki. You left me. You went off with Joppi.'

'Leave Joppi out of this,' she said.

'How can we leave him out of it? He's the third party.'

'He's not.'

'Nikki, dear. We both know he is.'

'Well, you prove it. You just try and prove it, that's all.'

'Don't drag it all through the courts, Nikki. All you'll do is make lawyers rich.'

'Who's having the
insalata frutti di mare?
yelled the waiter into their ears as he bent over the table.

'I am,' said Bret.

'You want the sole off the bone, madam?' the waiter asked Nicola.

'Yes, please,' she said.

Bret looked down at the mangled lettuce upon which sat four cold damp shrimps and some white rubber rings of inkfish, and he looked at Nicola's delicious filleted sole. 'Melted butter?' said the waiter, 'and a little Parmesan cheese?' Nikki always knew what to order: was it skill or was it luck? Or was it Pina?

Bret noticed that the bejewelled woman at the next table was feeding pieces of her veal escalope to a perfectly brushed and combed terrier at her feet. 'It's like a damned zoo in here,' he muttered, but his wife pretended not to hear him.

Nikki abandoned her sole fillets and put down her knife and fork. 'I gave you everything,' she said again, having thought about it carefully. 'I even came to live in this lousy country with you, didn't I? And what did I get for it?'

'What did you get? You lived high on the hog, and in one of the most beautiful homes in England.'

'It wasn't a home, Bret, it was just a beautiful house. But when did I ever see my husband? I'd go for days and days with no one to talk to but the servants.'

'You should be able to cope with being alone,' said Bret.

'Well, old buddy. Now you'll be able to find out what it means to be alone. Because I won't be there when you get home, and no other woman will put up with you. You'll soon discover that.'

'I'm not afraid of being alone,' said Bret smugly. He pushed the shrimp salad aside. His wife was always complaining of being alone and today he had an answer ready: 'Lots of people have been: Descartes, Kierkegaard, Locke, Newton, Nietzsche, Pascal, Spinoza and Wittgenstein were alone for most of their lives.'

She laughed. 'I saw that in the letters column of the
Daily Telegraph
. But those people are all geniuses. You're not a thinker… not a philosopher.'

'My work is important,' said Bret. He was put out. 'It's not like working for a biscuit factory. A government job is a government job.'

'Oh, sure, and we all know what governments do.'

'What do you mean by that?' said Bret, with an uncertainty that was almost comic.

'They make the rules for you, and break them themselves. They hike your taxes and give themselves a raise in pay. They take your money away and shower it on all kinds of lousy foreign governments. They send your kids to Vietnam and get them killed. They fly in choppers while you're stuck in a traffic jam. They let the banks and insurance companies shaft you in exchange for political campaign money.'

'Is that what you really think, Nikki?' Bret was shocked. She'd never said anything like that before. He wondered if she had been drinking all morning.

'You're damn right it's what I think. It's what everybody thinks who hasn't got a hand in the pork barrel.'

Alarm bells rang. 'I didn't know you were a liberal.' He wondered what the security vetting people had made of her. Thank goodness he was getting rid of her; but had any of this gone down on his file?

'I'm not a goddamned Democrat or a Liberal or a Red or anything else. It's just that smug guys like you doing your "important work for governments" make me puke.'

There's nothing to be gained from a slanging match,' said Bret. 'I know you must be disappointed about the house but that's outside my control.'

'Damn you, Bret. I must have somewhere to live!'

He guessed that Joppi was getting rid of her: suddenly he felt sorry for her but he didn't want her back. 'That apartment in Monte Carlo is empty. You could lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment.'

'Lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment,' she repeated sarcastically. 'How nominal can you get? Like a dollar a year, do you mean?'

'If it would end all this needless wrangling, a dollar a year would be just fine. Shall we agree on that?' He waved a hand to attract a waiter, but it was no use. The staff were all standing round a table in the corner smiling at a TV newsreader who was being photographed cuddling a smooth-coated chihuahua. 'Do you want coffee?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes to both questions: but I want furniture – good furniture – in the first, and cream and sugar in the second.'

'You've got a deal,' said Bret. He was relieved. Had Nikki resolutely pressed for the Thameside house it would have put him in a difficult position. He would have had to resign. There was no way that the Department would have tolerated him getting into a divorce action, and the risk of its attendant publicity. And yet if he resigned, where would that leave Fiona Samson? He was the only person who knew the whole story, and he felt personally responsible for her mission. There were many times when he worried about her.

Bret looked up to see his chauffeur Albert Bingham easing his way through the crowded dining room. 'What now?' said Bret. Nicola turned round to see what he was looking at.

'Good afternoon, Mrs Rensselaer,' said Albert politely. He reasoned that ex-wives sometimes resumed their authority as employers, and should not be slighted. I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir, but the hospital came through on the car phone.'

'What did they say?' Bret was already on his feet. Albert wouldn't interrupt the lunch unless it was something very important.

'Could you be early?'

'Could I be early?' repeated Bret. He found his credit card in his wallet.

'They said you would know what it was,' said Albert.

'I'll have to go,' said Bret to his wife. 'It's an old friend.' He flicked the plastic card with his fingernail so that it made a snapping noise. She remembered it as one of his many irritating habits.