Read The Girl in Berlin Online
Authors: Elizabeth Wilson
The Girl in Berlin (37 page)
‘The point is that’s how I met him a couple of times, when he came to the house and when I told him I did the Navy Russian course, he seemed to think I might be interested later on in that sort of … career, I suppose you could call it. He encouraged me to think about it. You knew him – and Guy Burgess – I expect you know something about it. D’you think that would be a good idea – is it the kind of thing one ought to go in for?’
‘MI5, you mean? Well, I do know something about it. I was in intelligence myself, in the war.’ Dr Blunt smiled kindly at him. He seemed to consider it. Then he replied serenely, ‘I don’t think so, on the whole, Charles, no, I don’t think that would be a good idea at all.’
It was to be nearly thirty years before Anthony Blunt was publicly exposed. He’d after all been a Soviet agent all along. ‘I met him once or twice,’ said Charles to his companion – they were seated in a café on the Venice Lido at the time. ‘I’m not at all surprised. I always thought he was probably a spy.’
thirty-nine
February 1956
M
CGOVERN HURRIED AWAY FROM
the Old Bailey at the end of a Monday afternoon and paused to buy an evening paper from the stand on the corner. The banner headline had caught his eye: BURGESS AND MACLEAN IN MOSCOW.
After five years the ‘missing diplomats’ had finally held a press conference in a hotel room in the Russian capital. They admitted being lifelong communists and Marxists, but: ‘We neither of us have ever been communist agents.’ They had left Britain once they realised that ‘attempts to put Marxist ideas into practice are doomed to failure, so long as Britain and America are not serious about upholding world peace. We have come to the USSR in the hope of promoting better understanding between the Soviet Union and the West.’
McGovern walked slowly along High Holborn towards Chancery Lane, trying to take it in. So they’d been in Moscow ever since their dramatic disappearance. Why reappear now? Why deny they were spies?
It vividly brought the past back. Those days in Berlin … Frieda Schröder … the rendezvous with Kingdom … McGovern needed to think, to digest it all. He dived into a dark little pub,
paid for his half pint, found a table, sat down and read the news more carefully.
He’d crouched over the body in the dusk, felt for the pulse that wasn’t there and a moment later, without conscious thought, had slipped his hand into an inner pocket and withdrawn from it the silver cigarette case. He’d never told anyone but Lily. Lily understood it wasn’t a vulgar theft. He didn’t use it; it lay, like a charm or a fetish in a dusty drawer, not a souvenir, but a reminder not to be taken in by appearances, to remember that even the handsomest, the richest and most brilliant might have a twisted mind or a dark heart.
Now he turned the pages of the paper, but instead of reading, he sat staring in front of him while the images unreeled compulsively and the memories flooded back.
Kingdom, he thought, would have appreciated the irony of Harris having lied about the Eberhardt autobiography, which had appeared in East Germany to great acclaim. McGovern had cursed Colin Harris for deceiving him about it. He’d been trying to organise a way of getting Harris out of the GDR, so the publication was a slap in the face. Soon, however, doubts began to be raised as to the authenticity of the book. It became another scandal in which the truth was veiled in a fog of uncertainties and rumour.
His glass was empty. He decided to return to Whitehall on foot. It was pleasanter than being crammed into a crowded bus and would, he thought, give him time to shake off the past. He was wrong.
He walked down Kingsway and along the Strand. Then, as he crossed Trafalgar Square he caught sight of a willowy woman walking slowly along the pavement. She was well dressed in a grey coat and skirt and stiletto heels. Her sideways, drifting walk was somehow familiar. He looked into her face. The long mouth, the winged eyebrows … surely it couldn’t be—
He hurried after her, stretched out and touched her arm.
She drew herself up. The faint frown was also familiar. He eased her aside from the sober British crowd, the flock of pedestrians headed home, with heads down, preoccupied, unsmiling, grey in this grey city.
‘Frieda. How extraordinary.’
She reluctantly allowed him to lead her to the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields.
‘How strange to meet you again, Herr Roberts.’ She spoke good English now.
He was gripped with curiosity. ‘You got here after all! How—?’ But what he most passionately wanted to know was the truth about
her
. Had she really been in it up to her neck? You couldn’t trust Kingdom, but she’d spoken so coldly the last time they’d met. ‘You must let me buy you a drink. You must tell me how you got here in the end. I know a bar near here—’
‘That is very kind, Herr Roberts, but I’m afraid I don’t have time.’
‘You must at least tell me what happened.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘I’m so sorry, I really don’t have time. It’s a long story. What would be the point, Herr Roberts? Ours was only an accidental meeting and – well, it’s so long ago. And after all, it’s not as if you kept your promise, is it. You had no part in bringing me here.’
Gently she disengaged herself, gracefully descended the steps and walked away across the north end of the square past the National Gallery. Her white-gloved hand shot up as she saw a taxi. It slowed by the kerb. She climbed in and a moment later the cab had slid away into the stream of traffic and was lost to sight.
McGovern stood rooted to the spot for a moment. Then he too went on his way.
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