The Deceiver

Behind his amiable facade, Bruno Morenz was also a very secretive man. He had never told Aust or anyone else in the Service about his “other work”—in any case, it was strictly forbidden and would have led to instant dismissal. He had never told Irmtraut about any ofhis work, or his secret savings. But that was not his real problem—as he saw it.

His real problem was that he wanted to be free. He wanted to start again, and as if on cue he could see how. For Bruno Morenz, well into middle age, had fallen in love. Head over heels, deeply in love. And the good part was that Renate, the stunning, lovely, youthful Renate, was as much in love with him as he was with her.

There, in that cafй on that summer afternoon, Bruno finally made up his mind. He would do it; he would tell her. He would tell her he intended to leave Irmtraut well provided for, take early retirement, quit the job, and take her away to a new life with him in the dream home they would have up in his native north by the coast.

Bruno Morenz’s real problem, as he did not see it, was that he was not heading for, but was well into, a truly massive midlife crisis. Because he did not see it and because he was a professional dissimulator, no one else saw it, either.

Renate Heimendorf was twenty-six, at five feet seven inches a tall and handsomely proportioned brunette. At the age of eighteen she had become the mistress and plaything of a wealthy businessman three times her age, a relationship that had lasted five years. When the man dropped dead of a heart attack, probably brought on by a surfeit of food, drink, cigars, and Renate, he had inconsiderately failed to make provision for her in his will, something his vengeful widow was not about to rectify.

The girl had managed to pillage their expensively furnished love-nest of its contents, which, together with the jewelry and trinkets he had given her over the years, fetched at sale a tidy sum.

But not enough to retire on; not enough to permit her to continue the life-style to which she had become accustomed and had no intention of quitting for a secretarial job and a tiny salary. She decided to go into business. Skilled at coaxing a form of arousal from overweight, out-of-condition, middle-aged men, there was really only one business into which she could go.

She bought a long lease on an apartment in quiet and respectable Hahnwald, a leafy and staid suburb of Cologne. The houses there were of good solid brick or stone construc­tion, in some cases converted into apartments, like the one in which she lived and worked. It was a four-story stone building with one apartment on each floor. Hers was on the second. After moving in, she had carried out some structural refur­bishment.

The flat had a sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, two bed­rooms, and an entry hall and passageway. The sitting room was to the left of the entry hall, the kitchen next to it. Beyond them, to the left of the passage that turned to the right from the hall, were one bedroom and the bathroom. The larger bedroom was at the end of the passage, so that the bathroom was between the two sleeping rooms. Just before the door of the larger bedroom, built into the wall on the left, was a two-yard-wide coat-closet that borrowed space off the bathroom.

She slept in the smaller bedroom, using the larger one at the end of the passage as her working room. Apart from building the coat-closet, her refurbishment had included the soundproofing of the master bedroom, with cork blocks lining the inside walls, papered and decorated to hide their presence, double-glazed windows, and thick padding on the inside of the door. Few sounds from inside the room could penetrate outside to disturb or alarm the neighbors, which was just as well. The room, with its unusual decor and accoutrements, was always kept locked.

The closet in the passage contained only normal winter wear and raincoats. Other closets inside the working room provided an extensive array of exotic lingerie, a range of outfits running from schoolgirl, maid, bride, and waitress to nanny, nurse, governess, schoolmistress, air hostess, police­woman, Nazi Bund Mдdchen, campguard,. and Scout leader, along with the usual leather and PVC gear, thigh boots, capes, and masks.

A chest of drawers yielded a smaller array of vestments for clients who had brought nothing with them, such as Boy Scout, schoolboy, and Roman slave apparel. Tucked in a corner were the punishment stool and stocks, while a trunk contained the chains, cuffs, straps, and riding crops needed for the bondage and discipline scene.

She was a good whore; successful, anyway. Many of her clients returned regularly. Part actress—all whores have to be part actress—she could enter into her client’s desired fantasy with complete conviction. Yet part of her mind would always remain detached—observing, noting, despising. Nothing of her job touched her—in any case, her personal tastes were quite different.

She had been in the game for three years and in two more intended to retire, clean up just once in a rather major way, and live on her investments in luxury somewhere far away.

That afternoon, there was a ring at her doorbell. She rose late and was still in a negligйe and housecoat. She frowned; a client would only come by appointment. A glance through the peephole in her front door revealed, as in a goldfish bowl, the rumpled gray hair of Bruno Morenz, her minder from the Foreign Ministry. She sighed, put a radiant smile of ecstatic welcome on her beautiful face, and opened the door.

“Bruno, daaaaarling ...”

* * *

Two days later Timothy Edwards took Sam McCready out to lunch at Brooks’s Club in St. James, London. Of the several gentlemen’s clubs of which Edwards was a member, Brooks’s was his favorite for lunch. There was always a good chance one could bump into and have a few courteous words with Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, deemed to be possibly the most influential man in England and certainly the chairman of the Five Wise Men who would one day select the new Chief of the SIS for the Prime Minister’s approval.

It was over coffee in the library, beneath the portraits of that group of Regency bucks, the Dilettantes, that Edwards broached specifics.

“As I said downstairs, Sam, everyone’s very pleased, very pleased indeed. But there is a new era coming, Sam. An era whose leitmotif may well have to be the phrase ‘by the book.’ A question of some of the old ways, the rule-bending, having to become, how shall I put it ... restrained?”

“Restrainedis a very good word,” agreed Sam.

“Excellent. Now, a riffle through the records shows that you still retain, admittedly on an ad hoc basis, certain assets who really have passed their usefulness. Old friends, perhaps. No problem, unless they are in delicate positions ... unless their discovery by their own employers might cause the Firm real problems.”

“Such as?” asked McCready. That was the trouble with records—they were always there, on file. As soon as you paid someone to run an errand, a record of payment was created. Edwards dropped his vague manner.

“Poltergeist. Sam, I don’t know how it was overlooked so long. Poltergeist is a full-time staffer of the BND. There’d be all hell let loose if Pullach ever discovered he moonlighted for you. It’s absolutely against all the rules. We do not, repeat do not, ‘run’ employees of friendly agencies. It’s way out of court. Get rid of him, Sam. Stop the retainer. Forthwith.”

“He’s a mate,” said McCready. “We go back a long way. To the Berlin Wall going up. He did well then, ran dangerous jobs for us when we needed people like that. We were caught by surprise. We hadn’t got anyone, or not enough, who would and could go across like that.”

“It’s not negotiable, Sam.”

“I trust him. He trusts me. He wouldn’t let me down. You can’t buy that sort of thing. It takes years. A small retainer is a tiny price.”

Edwards rose, took his handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed the port from his lips.

“Get rid of him, Sam. I’m afraid I have to make that an order. Poltergeist goes.”

At the end of that week, Major Ludmilla Vanavskaya sighed, stretched and leaned back in her chair. She was tired. It had been a long haul. She reached for her packet of Soviet-made Marlboros, noticed the full ashtray, and pressed a bell on her desk.

A young corporal entered from the outer office. She did not address him, just pointed to the ashtray with her fingertip. He quickly removed it, left the office, and returned it cleaned a few seconds later. She nodded. He left again and closed the door.

There had been no talk, no banter. Major Vanavskaya had that effect on people. In earlier years some of the young bucks had noticed the shining short-cropped blond hair above the crisp service shirt and slim green skirt and had tried their luck. No dice. At twenty-five she had married a colonel—a career move—and divorced him three