Berliner Waltz: An MCU Fiction

[mouli]

Chapter 1: Opening Bars

"What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives."

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The Berlin Wall is awash with light at nighttime, a beacon of Communism facing capitalist Germany with searchlight and border-guards' rifles. Through binoculars and with the help of decrepit West Berlin streetlights there's a view of the West's reply to the Wall, bored young American conscripts in glass-sided checkpoint boxes and a smaller fence to keep curious strangers away from East German rifle fire. One look at the boxes at Checkpoint Charlie tells me that the American is still in his box, that the Wall has not altered one jot and there's no sign of what I came all the way to this damned city for.

"How long have we been here again? Feels like a decade, you know." Pamela Hobson leans back in her seat, slouching in a pantsuit and guaranteed to wrinkle the thing. There's an empty disposable coffee cup in the holder near her, another somewhere the in back of the car where she threw it three hours ago and her eyes are still bloodshot and baggy despite it all. "That damn GI's been there since forever. Face it, Eric, he isn't coming through. Not today."

"A decade ago the Wall was barely up, the American wasn't here and the magazine he's reading wasn't even published. We all thought the Wall would go down, you know. Not stay up like….that." All I can do is wave in the general direction of the concrete monolith with its guard towers and dogs and rifles, endless painted lines on asphalt black as night to mark off traffic directions. Checkpoint Charlie's battered glass-sided booth seems almost puny in comparison, the single GI and his call button a far cry from the army of gloomy men who poke and prod at any vehicle coming through the checkpoint. I shake my head to clear the buzzing tiredness, my eyes aching and sandy as I do. Still, "Only a few hours more, Pam. We wait for daylight. No sign of a border guard patrol, the dogs at the Adlon would be barking otherwise."

Barking dogs in their little walled compound behind the shuttered Hotel Adlon and on the East German side were usually first warning for something on the other side of the Wall's first layers. The dogs would sense something afoot long before the Stasi handlers picked them up and quieted them down. Which, of course, was why me and Pam have the windows open. The November breeze in Germany isn't something I'd normally want to take in. Pam brushes hair out of her face for a moment, lines there that weren't the last time I'd met her, her voice still the same American drawl. "Nothing but the noise of the Wall, Eric. I wish I was back in Virginia or Paris, but the Agency doesn't make those decisions anymore since the new people pulled me in."

The steady hum of the electric lighting at the Wall is like a field of insects in the summer, punctuated by the rustling of the sponge-rubber cushions I'd bought before the stakeout. I've done enough of this to learn that much at least, to save my arse at the cost of a few marks. "The new people. Those, what – Shield, I think they were. How bad is it?"

"I can't tell you much, Eric. They're very big on opsec." Pam gives me a sidelong look, reproachful at being asked something that might tempt her into talking. "I only met a handler once, really. Before this stakeout. I'm on secondment from the Agency. I can tell you the Langley boys don't like that, not one bit they don't."

"Can't stand Paris." Contrary to popular belief, not every Englishman who happens to work in espionage has been to Paris, but sadly I'm not one of them. "Can't stand Parisians, I'll be honest with you. Can't see how you managed there."

Pam laughs at that, a short hoarse bark that's amused and exhausted. We both are, by now. "I don't get why you English don't seem to like Paris. If you speak French right, well, that's all you need."

"Which is why you were there, I take it. You and your bohemian informants in St. Germain-des-Pres. What were you doing in '68, I wonder." I get another reproachful look at the question I've asked before, and this time I can smile back. It's a familiar game we've played for years, something to tether to. Something to talk about other than the new lads in town. This Shield.

"I was only there once before '68." Pam pauses for a moment and looks inside her cigarette-case as if angling for a smoke, putting it away before she gives in. The light of a cigarette would give us away in any case. "A rush job for the boys in DIA. Something to do with the Vietnam negotiations. Informal meetings in Paris. Turned hairy, but that's just how things can go sometimes." Pam Hobson's English is still a broad American accent, the tones of the Eastern Seaboard partly genuine and partly affected, Americanisms belying the fluent Parisian French that she chattered away in when I met her a decade ago on business. Now she's aged as I have, lines etched in her face and her hair done up in sixties fashions marking her as a dowdy old woman compared to the bohemians of West Berlin. She looks out for a moment at the street and the Wall, Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin shining bright as day past the concrete and the border-guards. "No," she says, "Paris isn't that bad. Berlin can be worse."

The clock reads eleven forty-five P.M. and the carafe I brought reads empty, but a flicker of motion tells me that salvation is at hand. "There's something coming through."

Pam doesn't bother to move her head from her slouch, hair spilled out over her eyes as she leans back in the front passenger seat. "It's a Trabant with West German registration and a civilian driver. It'll come through Charlie, park while the driver and his friend have a hot dog and a coffee from the kiosks, and head back through the gates just past midnight."

I sit back and watch. Just as Pam had predicted, it's a plain gray Trabant. The blocky little East German car with West Berlin plates, unmarked with the driver wearing a badly fitting suit.

"We're near where they usually park," says Pam with her eyes still half-lidded and bloodshot from tiredness, "They're border guards who man the entrance booths and confiscate incoming Westmarks. The regulations say that civilians from the West have to be out by midnight. So they come out and have a coffee and a hot dog in a civilian vehicle before heading back in after midnight."

A police car cruises by with two cops in it, slowly with its blinkers off and siren silent. One of the cops recognizes the Audi I've borrowed from a contact here, raising his hand in tired salutation has he drives past us towards Checkpoint Charlie. One look through the binos at the Wall once the cops pass tells me that a couple of East German border guards have moved up behind the barriers across the road to the East, stamping their feet now and again to restore circulation. It's bitterly cold even in the car, and it's worse outside. I lower the binos and ask, "Are you sure he'll come across here, Pam? Not at the Bornholmerstrasse checkpoint?"

"This is the third time you've asked, Eric."

"Just trying to be sure," I said with a touch of defensiveness, "You know how bad things can cock up. You've seen the sort of guidance reports we get from London and Langley on the ground in Europe. Wouldn't be a surprise that they've got the wrong crossing checkpoint."

The American shakes her head at that, a hint of a smile in her voice, "They used to be like that, Eric. They got better after the Wall. We got better at this, you know. And besides, you still owe me twenty marks from the time you bet that the Wall would go down by 1965."

"We all thought that. That the Wall wasn't going to stay up forever. They'd take it back down when you Yanks protested enough." Another impatient look at the Wall through binos shows nothing, "You know that half of us had no idea what was happening at the time? Resident senior agent was reading guidance reports from London about how the Soviets might be crossing to West Berlin, the only real sources that confirmed the Wall going up were the radio-taxi dispatchers."

"I know." Pam grins now, straightening up and holding out a hand for binoculars. I hand them over – not as if holding them has helped my impatience – and she takes the same look at the barriers that I did before shaking her head. Still no crossing. "I was in Washington at the time. We met in...what? '64?"

"Yeah. 1964." It feels like an age, and I don't like being reminded of my age.

"Right. So, Washington in '61, aide and confidential typist at Langley." She smiles sourly as if remembering something bitterly amusing, "Took them long enough to give me field duty. In '61 when the Wall went up they were glad it was a wall and not the Red Army in West Berlin. Tell you that much. There's no way Washington would've done more than mildly protest things."

"What about your new agency?" I've heard rumors, "Lots of things they're supposed to have done. Assassinations, kidnappings, digging for weird relics of things that shouldn't be."

"My new agency is not something I kiss and tell about, Eric." Pamela's voice is tart enough that I can recognize when I've run out her patience, "They've been busy, but so was Langley. And we have a contact to wait for. So let's wait, and maybe change the damn subject."

"He's not coming." The gray Trabant is making its way back to the barriers with the GI at the gate doing no more than check its papers before it rumbles its way back to East Berlin. "We're three hours past the deadline and the Wall is fully staffed." The cold is misting over the windshield slowly, some of the lights already seeming like bright blobs as condensation creeps over the top of the windshield.

Pamela grimaces for a moment when I look at her for the word to leave, thinking things over much more than I've known her to. Something about her new employers makes her act the eager new agent again. "We wait. Twenty minutes, no more. We can't linger outside the Adlon the whole damn night, not in an Audi." She gives me a reproachful look as if the Audi is my fault, this after contacting me with eight hours' notice and a note from London seconding me to her operation. There's the awkward bulge of a gun in her coat and the further awkwardness of commanding an operation that the other agencies aren't briefed on, not beyond a brief telegram from Head Office in London to me in Berlin.

Still, it isn't as if I don't have my own cards in hand. There's a recorder wired up to the car battery and a mike taped behind my sun-visor, the silent payment to the SIS for being called in on short notice to pull one of Shield's informers out of the East. "Does your new agency know you're using me rather than your usual contacts in East Berlin?" She might have been impatient with my questions, but this is something I have a right to know.
It's also something the mike and the recorder are very interested in.

Pamela shakes her head tiredly, fiddling with her cigarette case again as if wanting a smoke. "They won't mind much. We're pulling out someone who's one of yours as well as ours. Spying for democracy and freedom." She smiles a little, the expression not reaching her eyes, "Besides, the other German office guys are all busy with other ops. Shield is stretched and Langley's eyes have been on Southeast Asia for too damn long."

"Ah, yes." The border guards are pacing away from the barriers once they're back up, the East Berliner Trabant back inside the Wall. Our contact has yet to arrive at Checkpoint Charlie. "Democracy and freedom. Speaking of which, why not hand this over to SIS if it's our man coming out? You Yanks usually send the office boys, after all. Freedom to do more significant things in Southeast Asia and all that."

"I don't know anything about that." She shrugs, "Not my department. You want to know? Join up." She smiles in the dim light cast from the streetlamps, white teeth bright and even. "My job is to grab the guy and debrief him in London, in the presence of someone your agency will send across. As you know."

I sigh at that, disappointment mingling with boredom as the wait stretches on. My breath mists in the cold November air, the residual warmth of the Audi not enough. My watch now says half past one in the morning. "Let's get something to eat. One of us can handle the wait. Something warm, potatoes and sausage and good beer."

"Mhm." Pam's amusement is palpable, "Maybe you ought to have brought your own food, Eric." She jerks her head in the direction of the Wall, "But then, there's the Hotel Ganymede. Beer and wurst, just up the road on Friedrichstrasse."

"Very funny." Between me and warm food at the Ganymede is the Berlin Wall, machine guns and barbed wire and humorless East German customs bureaucrats who happen to have guns. "Shall we leave? Half past one and no sign yet."

Pam nods tiredly and waves a hand in vague assent, and I start the ignition. "Try again tomorrow, Pam?"

"No." She's disappointed, her voice making that plainly evident. "This was the last try he had. I'm on a redeye back to Washington tomorrow to sleep in a real bed that isn't in some damn hotel."

"Give my regards to Chris, then." I haven't seen her husband at all, but the thin golden ring on her finger was shown to me back in 1961 and it's still there, "He's fine, I hope."

Pamela's silent for a moment before nodding, hands brushing hair back out of her eyes and her fingers then scrabbling for a cigarette. "He's fine. We're debating kids right now, things have been hectic since I changed bosses." I hand her the lighter before she can ask for it, and she takes a long grateful drag while I take the Audi past the bright lights of central West Berlin. "You can tell your bosses I'm thankful. Especially the Admiral. And you still owe me twenty marks."

"I'll be meeting the Admiral in London," I said, "And I paid you in Paris in '68."

 

[mouli]

Chapter 2.1: American Variation​

Some of the mandarins at Whitehall get to work in the new buildings in central London, places that have central heating and a budget for office decoration. Some of the more exalted ones at the Foreign Office get to have windows overlooking the changing of the guard. The military has its blocks on Horse Guards while the Admiralty have theirs at Trafalgar Square where Nelson looks grimly outwards to the sea while pigeons leave presents on his head.
My office is unfortunately nowhere near any of those.

The Service sends its old warhorses and its more grammar-school types to pasture in an old building marked off as offices for an obscure insurance firm. So it's to old Camden Town that I'm forced to go once back in London, the faint scent of garbage on the breeze another sign of the strikes going on, a steady beat of labor agitation. The Daily Mail screams from block-capital headlines that this is Communist work, while the Times bemoans the cost to the nation while wishing the strikers would be 'reasonable'. A few pence gets me the Times from a newsboy that's got only two papers to spare, while another few pence gets me the fare to Camden and the office of the Service.
The satellite office for Liaison Control, Europe. A wonderfully resonant title, I've always felt, for a task that usually amounted to cleaning up after the Americans passed on through.

Camden is depressing but the Service's offices are worse, the stains on the building's nameplate having been there since I've been in the place and somehow growing. The place where the more grammar school types and the Service's lost dogs wind up has peeling paint and ancient lino, a secretary that probably thinks some of us are spying for Adolf and an oversight board that reeks of Parliament. After the usual drama about my aging ID card and the fact that only Blake who works the dog-ends of the Balkans is willing to vouch for me, the portals of the Service open before me. They creak.

I roll the Times up under my arm in the manner my boss does it, and push open the door that says Richard Sykes, Liaison Control. Sykes looks up from his desk as I enter, a thin Englishman two years younger than I. He keeps apologizing for that fact, to use the chance to remind himself of fast promotions that he's got in a place that doesn't usually do fast promotions. I plop myself down in the plain wooden chair and slouch a little, eyes still sandy from last night's stakeout and the flight over from Berlin. "What news from the upper echelons, sir?"

"I did tell you already, Eric, call me Dicky." He smiles widely, a salesman's smile with the expression never quite reaching his eyes, practiced and sure. Sykes is perfectly informal, open-necked shirts and jeans while in the civil service, every inch the Wunderkind among the department heads and their Eton or Guards ties. "They think it's a cushy coasting ride here, up to the top from Camden to Whitehall. Nobody seems to get what a bloody mess it is to work with the Americans, the French, the Spaniards and God only knows who else while maintaining some amount of independence." He's stirring his coffee as he talks, the clink of spoon on china constant and rhythmic enough to give my sleep-deprived mind a headache.

So I just nod tiredly, not really here to meet Dicky in any case. "Where's the old man? I was told that the Admiral wanted to debrief me." Unsaid is the fact that the Admiral is Sykes' boss and therefore not a name lightly invoked, and the way good old call-me-Dicky Sykes' lips press together for a moment in irritation is testament to that fact.

"The Admiral is busy. I'll be handling the debrief, Eric. Do begin, there's a good chap." He has a pen and a paper ready as if to take notes, pausing for a moment as if remembering something. "Ah, yes. Coffee?"

A steaming cup gets placed in front of me when I nod, the nectar that'll erase my headache being something too hot to sip comfortably right now. I blow on it before speaking, but the report's something short enough that I don't much need to bother with technical aspects. "He didn't come across. The stakeout was a wash, and the Americans don't have a backup plan. Strauss Three is dead in the water there in East Berlin, sir." I've always found the codenames – musicians, for Christ's sake – faintly ridiculous, but they're damned useful for sounding important. "We waited at Checkpoint Charlie as instructed, waited for a signal from the border guards. The details were with the American liaison – Pamela Hobson."

"Yes." Dicky sips his coffee and gently sets cup and saucer on the polished wooden table, "Just a shade too bitter, don't you think Eric? Roasted too long, I think."

"Instant tastes all the same to me, I'm afraid."

"This is hand-ground Colombian, ground just before it was brewed." He says it calmly, as if tolerant of my idiosyncrasies or acknowledging the attempt to irritate him. "Now, you said he didn't come over. What was the American reaction to Strauss Three? Did Strauss Three send any sort of abort signal?"

"The American reaction was from Pamela Hobson, and was entirely exhausted." I politely refrain from reminding Dicky Sykes that I am also exhausted after a night of staking out Checkpoint Charlie in an Audi with windows open, "Strauss Three sent nothing at all. Zip, zilch, nada as the Yanks like to say. Sitting here sipping hand ground Colombian won't bring Strauss Three back across the wire."
Dicky Sykes says nothing at all for a moment.

Instead of waiting and being polite, I decide to poke again. Strauss Three saved my life in Leipzig once, and I owe him for that. "Has he re-established contact yet? Send any sort of signal across the wire? He knows the contact points on the Wall and through the U-Bahn, you know."

Dicky takes his time, riffling through some papers in a file before replying. "We received a routine report from the German contacts that Strauss Three likes to use. The Gehlen Organization. He's safe. Gone to ground." Dicky picks at a fingernail, avoiding my eyes for a moment.

"Why didn't he turn up, then?" The coffee's beginning to hit me, blessed wakefulness slowly coming up with my headache receding for the moment. "If he can make contact with Gehlen, why can't he turn up?"

"No details, no names and no pack-drill." He smiles at me apologetically, as if thinking that would clear the air. He's every inch the Englishman that a foreigner would take as one, the model of the bowler-hatted English stockbroker with the same narrow, bony face that some call handsome. "Give him time. You know how it is – you can't badger the informants in the field. Let them lie. That was always your policy, Eric."

"The only way to do it, Dicky." I can't say much else, much as I'd like to know what the hell is going on. "There's more, though. Pamela Hobson now works for that secret American agency. Shield."

"Ah. That is something indeed." He makes a note on the paper in front of him, "Things are rather exciting then. I do envy you field men, I've always wanted to be back in the field. You people have the best of it, better than meetings with the politicians in London."

"I've been a liaison desk man for the last two years, Dicky, you know that." I'm also tired and irritable and in no mood to tolerate being condescended to by a man whose field posts had been the great espionage hotspots of Australia and Canada, "I fly a desk in West Berlin and handle the mess cleaning when someone steps in it over there. I got a telegram with the Admiral's signature asking for me specifically and mentioning Hobson, which is why I took the job."

Dicky just smooths his shirt for a moment, sipping the last of his coffee and holding his free hand under his chin as if to ward off the last few drops. A look at my empty cup on the table tells him I've drunk the lot far earlier, "Quite good, wouldn't you say Eric?"

"I'd prefer a bigger cup or a gin, to be honest."

He doesn't respond to that, "I think you're still grateful to Strauss Three for that mess in Leipzig. For him coming back to Leipzig and giving you a hop out." He greets my look of surprise with a calm nod, "I read the files, Eric. You know as well as I do that I like to know the background well."

Strauss Three has damn good reason for my gratitude, "It was the decent thing to do, Dicky."

"It was," says Dicky with the infuriating expression of condescending friendliness that he likes to play up as if to contrast to the ex-servicemen in Intelligence, "It was, but Strauss Three likes to do that sort of thing. He's an idealist. A risk-taker. And that's not the only reason he did it."

"You weren't there, sir." With all due respect, which I want to say out loud is to say very little. I don't.

"Strauss Three knew that you would finger him if you wound up in a Lubyanka cell, Eric. He was on the verge of giving Gehlen the emergency-exit signal before he changed his mind and went back for you" Dicky's voice is earnest and personable, as if to ape the avuncular Admiral who brought grammar-school boys like me into the Service.

"Even then," I said, "Even then it's a decent thing. And anyways, it's all ancient history."

"Anyways." Dicky cracks his knuckles loudly, picking up his pen again. "Tell me about this Shield and Pamela Hobson. What were their priorities, in your view?"

"In my view." This time I hesitate, licking my lips nervously and wondering what in God's name Dicky means with that phrasing. "So you're saying that you've already been briefed on Shield. Why not tell me on the way in?" He smiles and raises a hand as if to silence me, and I change the subject back to Pam and the stakeout. "In my eyes, odd. Pamela Hobson has been an Agency woman for a decade and possibly more. She's old in this game, Dicky, married and pondering children. You don't get that old without being cautious, and these Shield people had her motivated to take risks even for some chickenfeed operation like this one."

"Risks such as?" He's writing as I talk, pen-nib scratching on paper as if this is too secret to entrust to some stenographer. I know he has one, that ancient old basilisk at the entryway acts as the department stenographer.

"A general inclination to be more aggressive during the stakeout. Expectations that we would have a better vehicle available. A complete disinclination to talk about her employers." That one, at least, is odd. Spies make for excellent moaners even if you don't get much out of them, "I've known her to bitch about the Agency whenever she can, sir. This time? Not a peep. The recordings ought to show more."

The pen abruptly stops writing, "The recorder and mike were in the vehicle and properly hooked up, then?"

"Yes. Why d'you ask?"

Dicky grimaces this time, the stockbroker having made a bad trade. "You don't know, then. The recordings were wiped at certain time stretches. Blank, and between the blanks damn little. All we got that was substantive was the first twenty minutes, then static or just ambient noise from the stakeout. Whenever you asked a question the reply was a wash. The last bit that we have for certain is you asking her about why you're there." He grins at me sourly, "Not the best attempt at a probe, that."

I just shrug, not really giving a damn. "I've known Pam Hobson on and off for a decade, Dicky. She knows what I do and there's not much use in stealth." Still. It takes me a moment to cudgel my sleepy brain back to the events of last night, fuzzy memories lining up for inspection while Dicky waits on the other side of the desk. When I had asked about why I was there...ah. "The cigarette case."

"Pardon?"

"She took out her cigarette case quite often, as if she wanted a smoke but couldn't have one." I shrug again, this time with an ember of irritation in my gut at Pam's seeming cloak-and-dagger obsession. "Not that unusual, you see it quite often. Nighttime near the Wall you don't want to have a light in the car. Better to seem as though you're sleeping in an old Audi than to look like a cop on stakeout."

"So this cigarette case of hers had some sort of selective jammer." Dicky speaks slowly, "That you couldn't detect."

"Yes." It sounds like bullshit from some serialized novel, but it's true. "I know what it sounds like."

Sykes smiles suddenly, "No worries, Eric. No worries." He makes another note, carefully, on the paper before putting his pen down and gesturing to the carafe in the corner on its little table, "Another cup, perhaps? I just need to fetch something."

I nod, get a splash of the coffee in my cup and wait while Dicky Sykes 'takes care of something'. He takes first five minutes then ten, time stretching on while I try to puzzle out what's going on. Pam with her shiny toys that make no sense, Dicky seeming to take their existence on faith when he's always been every inch the devil's advocate in the past. Shield is more than just intelligence, it seems.

Dicky Sykes comes back in fifteen minutes, apologetic and with a brown manila folder under one arm. It's thick, bearing the red stamp of secrecy and dumped unceremoniously on the desk like some relic of a past time. One look at the yellowing paper inside it tells me that perhaps this is some relic of a past time. "You're going to sign for this and read it, Eric. In your own time. Use the reading rooms here. Now that you're in the operation we might as well brief you in full."

I nod, waiting for the sting in the tail. Dicky Sykes doesn't disappoint, "Eric old boy, you're to head up the liaison with Shield again. They've asked for a Berlin liaison. Probably some form of extraction for Strauss Three. That or another option. We're to leverage Mozart One in this."

I let out a long, low whistle, impressed despite myself. "Mozart. You're pulling in the Admiral's golden boy there, the source that the old man himself built. What are the cousins across the water paying us, do you know?"

Dicky smiles thinly as if discussing money is some unwelcome but tolerated lower-class foible, "Strauss Three is a source deemed to be critical. We're to use Mozart One to get him out. As far as what the operation is to be about, well. Listen and learn, old boy. Put the file back. You can read that dusty thing later."

AN: Feedback welcome and requested. The plot is still building. Some of this is based on Len Deighton's work, some of it on John le Carre's. The latter author died last week, and that's part of why I'm writing spy fiction again.

 

[mouli]

Chapter 2.2: Listen and Learn​

"Listen and learn," says Dicky Sykes in his clean, pressed suit and confident features like some sort of film or television personality playing at being a spy. He steeples his hands on his desk with a brief gesture at the thick file in front of me, "It begins with Strauss Three and what he was handing to us. And moreover who he was initially in contact with." There's a theatrical air to his tone and a gleam in his eye as if he's enjoying this, the dramatic briefing scene from some sort of war film where a gentleman officer lays out the stakes of a great plan.
I'm almost tempted to start whistling Hitler only has one ball.

Instead of doing that I just say what's obvious with more than a little relish, "Strauss Three was the one that saved my life in Leipzig, Dicky. I was his contact point for near on three years in Berlin and I was the man in Liaison for the last two years that handled his feeds to the Americans. I think I know the background." I know it possibly better than Dicky does, that much I'm sure of.

There's a knock at the door and a shout from Dicky that we're busy before he resumes, "Apologies for that, Eric. The commissionaire likes to do the rounds a bit early these days." He shuffles the papers on his desk for a moment as if thinking or searching for the bureaucratic key to espionage, long fingers dancing among the aging forms and records in search of something specific. "I've read the case files for the incident in Leipzig and for most of the rest. I'll still go over the background for the sake of completeness, you understand." He nods at the desk-drawer, "This is on the record, you know."

"Yes, sir." I pause for a moment while Dicky gives me a little of-course-we-all-understand smile, "Records are dangerous, especially for this matter. Strauss Three was heavily classified."

"Of course." He gives me a moue of irritation before continuing, "I'm cleared for it as are the others involved, Eric. Now, to Strauss Three." He gives a wave of a hand as if presenting something, a sweep of a thin arm towards some imaginary horizon on his left, "Now, picture Berlin at the end of the War. Starving Germans, a wretched place of living in the middle of the ruins that Hitler left behind. The Russians, the Americans and ourselves scrambling among the rubble for something that might have been useful."

"One of those useful things was former Nazis." I'm a tad more sullen than I normally am with Dicky, but by God am I tired. My eyes are aching despite the coffee and I have no time for this. There's a familiar pressure behind my forehead that signals a headache. "Strauss Three met the Admiral when he was with Military Intelligence in Berlin, was a clerk and accountant for a Gauleiter before the war and was all too willing to turn his coat. He'd be in his sixties by now. He rose in the ranks for the Stasi before being transferred to some bank in East Germany. I know all this, Dicky. Spare me the background"

There's a wave of assent, slow and probably intended to be debonair from Dicky as his hands reach for where his cigarette case used to be before he'd started giving it up. I raise an eyebrow and he grimaces before clearing his throat, "Yes. Well, then you also know that Strauss Three was feeding us economic intelligence of the highest order. Investment reports from the East German Staatsbank and its industrial investment arm. Critical to the current state of affairs." He pauses for a moment before speaking, as if he's wondering what to say and picking his words carefully. "The Admiral was able to use this intelligence to the utmost degree, and those after him who handled Strauss Three were likewise able to make use of it. Some of it was fed to the Americans."

It made the Admiral's career, that much I know. Dicky might have been mincing words, but I'd met Strauss Three once before. I know what his reports had done for the man now in the director's chair. "Dicky, Dicky, Dicky." I'm too damned tired for this, "The Admiral ran Strauss Three personally until he couldn't, we both know that. We also know that Strauss Three was insistent on being run personally by the Admiral or by his picked deputy. That was me, until 1968. Then I was relieved."

"Yes. Well, after that we maintained contact using the reports that you had sent in."

He's sweating a little, and I damn well know why. My mouth is dry when I state the meaning of his words in plain English rather than the weaseling he's been doing, "You used my contact codes and drop markings to get his reports. You never made face to face contact since 1968. And you never let Strauss Three know that I wasn't running him anymore. You never let our best asset in the Staatsbank know that his stipulations weren't met." I'm in absolute awe of the sheer complete shambles here, "Does the Admiral know that the lot of you did this? Do the mandarins at Military Intelligence who we run the Strauss circle alongside? Who authorized this.." I trail off, waving a hand in the air angrily and almost hissing out the words, "This complete idiocy."

Dicky's reply is clipped and curt, the passive anger of the gentleman that he fancies himself to be intermingled with the fact that he knows he's in the wrong here. There's a defiant note in his voice, as if he's daring me to say anything more, "This was authorized at the highest level, Eric. Before you ask – yes, we're still paying Strauss Three and we're running him this way because we cannot do a proper handover the way the Admiral did for you. Now calm down and listen to the briefing." He softens his tone a little after that, carrot coming after stick while I slump somewhat in the chair and feel the aches of yesterday's stakeout catching up to me. "Now listen and learn, old chap. I understand that it's been a long night for you and I'll overlook a lot for one of our most valued men, but there are limits you know."

I'm too damned tired for this. "Mind if I light up?" I might as well, seeing as my eyes are aching from lack of sleep and it's apparently Departmental decision not to let me know how or why they ran my agent using my protocols.
Dicky waves his hand as if to say go ahead. I light up and listen. He starts to speak.

"Strauss Three was to be jointly run with Military Intelligence until he started passing us word about Soviet investments being funneled into the Staatsbank. We fed those to the Agency-" He pauses for another moment before choosing the right words, "-the CIA, that is, due to the manner in which is corroborated some information that they handed over to us. That led to Strauss Three being tapped for more information on Soviet investment in particular. The money related to something called Project Winter."

"Project Winter." The words roll around in my mouth like some sort of bad thriller's title, "Sounds rather ominous. Might just be a port refurbishment for the submarine base at Stettin."

"Stettin is Polish now, Eric." Dicky's smile is a gentle reminding one this time, his hands now reaching for a set of keys and unlocking a drawer. He draws out a thin sheaf of paper from the drawer and places it in front of me atop the thick file on Strauss Three, "No, it's nothing quite that mundane. The project name was enough to get these Americans involved a year ago. This Shield. They started requesting access to Strauss Three and the Admiral was inclined to allow it."

"To allow it in exchange for what?" The more I hear about this agency the more I'm curious, something this secretive and with this much bureaucratic heft should frighten every mandarin from here to the Foreign Office rather than make Dicky Sykes smile at my question with a patronizing edge to his reply.

He shakes his head, "Not cleared for that, Eric. And neither am I." He's almost reproachful, as if I ought to have known this. "Needless to say, we ran Strauss Three in conjunction with the Shield teams until last night, when we got word from them that Strauss Three had triggered his emergency exit. We arranged for an exfil using a suborned team from the East German utilities companies." He shrugs, "Gehlen was uncooperative and the utilities people have to cross over to the West to check the piping or so I understand. The Shield and Agency personnel were able to make sure of the border guards being blind to things for a few hours."

"But he didn't show."

"He didn't show." Dicky nods sharply, more alert by half than I am and too damned peppy for my sleepy self to stomach. "Strauss Three has been paid for the past twelve years into a bank account in Munich held in trust by one of our front companies for the name and details that we have already handed over to him. At his annual rate and at the piecework bonus rate, no less. The Americans have topped that up with their fees. That money has not been touched."

"So he didn't get out independently." I smile sardonically, a whimsical thought bubbling up, "Maybe he just wanted to spend his pay, Dicky? Strauss Three didn't strike me as a pure idealist, you know."

I get a reproachful look from across the table, "Strauss Three is idealist enough to stay on for a long time behind the wire, Eric. He dislikes the Communists as much as any of us do." I'm tempted to tell Dicky that I really don't, not to the extent that some of the Department do, but again – I don't. He instead speaks with a more assured note in his voice and more rapidly as well, as if he's reciting a prior briefing from someone senior who's made his decisions for him. "What we need to know is why he triggered the exit and wasn't able to show. We want to know what happened to Strauss Three and pull him out before something happens to him, yes, but we also want the last piece of information that he was bringing across with him. Or he said he would bring when he sent the emergency-exit signal."

"That information being?"

Dicky smiles thinly, "I was not cleared to know, apparently. The Americans are disinclined to share and the Admiral is inclined to listen to them on that." Interesting. Also amusing, considering how angry Sykes is and how satisfied his earlier reminder to me was about Need to Know.

I stir a little to prod Dicky, "So the task is to get the information out first and Strauss Three out second? And are we supposed to do this in house or with the Americans again?"

"You're the only one to know Strauss Three personally, Eric." Dicky meets my eyes this time, utterly serious. "You're the only one we have apart from the Admiral who know him well enough to make sure he's honest and not compromised. The Americans and Whitehall want that information and they want to know if the previous bits were on the level. All measures have been authorized."

"Strauss Three has been our man in Berlin for damn near a decade." For all that I considered him to be an unrepentant bastard, I want to add. "XPD is not something that we should be considering for him. Not after all that we've got out of him."

"All options are on the table, Eric." As if to tell me how serious the Department is being, Dicky is at pains to remind me that XPD – Expedient Demise – is on the table for Strauss Three if he's been turned. "We have to get him out, or we have to get his information out. The reason you're with me is that you're to be the English representative on the Shield and Agency team. Since you're the one that Strauss Three knows personally and all that. I was to brief you on it all."

"England first and the mission second, I assume?"

Dicky smiles again, a thin smile that's somehow razor-sharp. Every inch the sharp-suited politician. "Quite so, Eric. Quite so."