Corridor mate: when a king can only move along an expected route, he can be trapped by closing the corridor.
Tuesday, October 15th
She was an elderly woman dressed in the black dress that was obligatory in a French Government office. She wheeled an aged art-nouveau trolley in front of her. On the trolley were two dozen cups and saucers, metal filters, some spoons, an earthenware pot with a lid, a gas bottle and a huge stainless steel drum inside which the clear blue gas-flame could be glimpsed. As she carefully removed the lid from the earthenware jar, a strong smell of dark roasted coffee climbed out. She measured the expensive grains into the filters and placing one of each of our cups poured scalding water on to it. She placed two wrapped sugars alongside each cup and wheeled the tinkling clanking juggernaut through the door.
‘I don’t know that she works for West German Intelligence but what else can you suggest?’ I asked him.
Grenade opened the lid of his filter and grimaced at the pain. ‘Every day I burn my fingers.’ He dropped a sugar cube into his coffee, looked up and said, ‘I know your “plausible voice of the simple man” and I know that you are just using us for your own ends.’
‘So forget her,’ I said. ‘Forget I ever said anything about Vulkan, the girl or Louis Paul Broum.’
Grenade wrote something on his notepad.
‘And, as you well know, I can’t do that; no more than you could if we were sitting in your office with the roles reversed. Tell me.’ He lifted the lid again. ‘It’s ready now. Why did you take so much trouble with this girl and yet let the man go free?’
Through the French windows the sky was almost black. I looked around at Grenade’s office: the brown-stained wainscoting, the plaster walls discoloured in patches near the ceiling and the old-fashioned metal radiators under which a rash of cream-coloured pimples proclaimed the haste of a clumsy painter. On the wall a pendulum paced the glass confines of its cage.
‘We still need the man,’ I said. On Grenade’s desk was a wrought-metal device like a toy merry-go-round; the ‘riders’ were shiny bulbous rubber stamps. Grenade spun the merry-go-round. He laughed a soft little laugh. ‘Ask me,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear the suspense.’
‘Well naturally,’ I said, ‘we would like you to let him move freely at least for the next week or so, but I’d like you to take a look at him, tell me what he’s carrying, then let him go.’
Grenade shook his head and smiled; the first drops of rain smacked the window. ‘It’s not undeserved, you know, this reputation you Englishmen have gained.’
‘You can have the girl,’ I said indignantly. ‘She’ll show you the whole network if you play her right. All I want …’
Grenade waved a long bony hand at me. ‘It’s a bargain if you answer me one question.’ He didn’t wait to see if I agreed. ‘But the truth now, don’t try to deceive me or I shall be angry.’ It had begun to rain steadily and a complex rivulet of water was moving under the French window.
‘You’ll have the truth or silence,’ I said. The radiator made a noise like a machine gun. Grenade stretched out a long thin elegant leg and, steadying his hands on the desk, gave it a powerful kick. The noise stopped. Still looking at the painted metal radiator, Grenade said, ‘How did you know that we had Vulkan under surveillance?’
‘I knew that STASI1 knew where the girl was. In fact, they deliberately leaked the information to us. It seemed probable that if they had had a consort watch2 on this girl you would be watching the watchers and the watched.’ Grenade gave me a deep bow of mock dignity and mock gratitude. A fierce gust of wind made the glass of the French window move in its frame.
‘If they had told me that the girl was in Paris, I wouldn’t have jumped to any such conclusion. But Hendaye; if you dropped an “h” in your paternoster they’d know out as far as the three-mile limit.’
Grenade kicked the central heating again and said, ‘Sounds all right.’
I polished my spectacles and tried to look like the respectable type of Englishman. I wondered how much of it Grenade swallowed. It wasn’t too far from the truth but then no lie worth the name ever was. I had got the tip from East Germany even though it was from Red Army Command Security and not from STASI. He had said that Hendaye was the place, although he had talked of the man, not the girl. What about the girl? Working for West German Security certainly made it hang together better as far as Grenade was concerned. As for the girl, she had to start looking out for herself one day.
Grenade got up from his desk and walked across to a roll-front cabinet. Out of it he slid a drawer of a card file index. He took one card back to his desk. He read the card through and flipped it to scan the back. ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘We’ll do that for you.’ Like a man promising delivery on a vacuum cleaner.
I stood up abruptly and resting the flat of my palm upon his desk I leaned my face close to him. I noticed a small scar on his forehead and the way hair grew from only one nostril. ‘You’ll be thanking me for doing you a favour the next time you are in London,’ I said softly.
Grenade languidly spun the merry-go-round, selected a rubber stamp and printed the word ‘Nul’ on the back of my hand. ‘Don’t press your luck,’ he said, then he offered his thin hand across the desk and shook my hand firmly. ‘Take care,’ he said, ‘it’s a nasty vicious city.’
‘I’ll only be in Berlin a few more days,’ I said.
‘I meant London,’ he said drily. He rang a small bell on his desk and a slight young man with a haircut en brosse and rimless spectacles opened the door.
‘Albert will take you down,’ said Grenade. ‘It will save all sorts of complications at the door. We have gone terribly secret since the last time you were here.’ Grenade smiled again.
I followed Albert down the staircase that curved around the inside of the huge stair-well. Halfway down I heard Grenade’s voice. I looked up the great vertical tunnel into the glare of an overhead skylight. Grenade was leaning over the balcony. He looked minute in this great stone building, full of carefully penned archives and aged bureaucrats scratching quietly in a silence broken only by the clink of nib against inkwell. Grenade called again, almost whispering the words, ‘As a liar, my friend, you are incorrigible.’ The perspective of the great curves of balustrade repeated themselves as far as infinity, like the echoes of Grenade’s whisper. I saw his head prise a way through one of the smallest rings and smile.
‘The word,’ I said, ‘is professional.’ I started again down the staircase of this Caligarian cabinet. I knew that it would take ages to get that marking ink off my hand. I rubbed it self-consciously.