There was the offer of a drink that Mawby declined; there was the brisk establishment of Christian names. The man called himself Hermann.
He would ask questions to ascertain the nature of the assignment, then they would discuss practicabilities, then they would talk of the price to be paid.
'Is there a date involved, Charles?'
Mawby flinched from the familiarity. 'The thirteenth or fourteenth of June.'
'How many are there to be transported?'
'One elderly man and his adult daughter.'
'Where in the DDR are they living?'
'They will be staying in Magdeburg. On the fifteenth they return to Moscow.'
'They are Russian then?'
'They are German.'
'Who will make contact with them for the arrangements?'
'That will be our responsibility.'
'They could be brought to a point where a car could meet them?'
'We would bring them to that point, yes.'
'For two persons it is difficult to conceal them in a car, they would require documentation. Who would provide the papers?'
'We would provide them with West German passports and general cover material.'
'Is the face of this man known to the DDR authorities, would his picture have been in the newspapers?'
'Never.'
'You are anxious to make it so simple, Charles, but I tell you that it is not easy.' Hermann wheezed with theatrical effect, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.
'To me it is very simple,' Mawby clipped in response.
'Not so. If it were easy then you would manage your own affairs. And you give little time for the arrangements. You have not thought of the linking of the vehicle papers with the documentation of the driver, his assistant and the passengers. Those are two reasons why it is not easy.
Thirdly…'
'Why is there the need of a second man in the car?'
'You know little of the documentation required for this journey, Charles. Any West German who makes use of the Berlin to Helmstedt autobahn is considered as a transit passenger through the DDR territory.
His passport is stamped on entry and exit. So the driver will have his pass- port stamped when he leaves West Berlin. At a suitable moment in the journey he will collect two passengers, but they do not have the stamp and that must be attached while the car is moving towards the DDR checkpoint at Marien- born. The driver cannot do that, he is at the wheel, another must be there to do it. Understand me, Charles, it is not the stamp that is the difficulty, it is the signature that goes with the stamp. The signature for the passengers who are picked up must match with that on the papers of the driver. So the driver must have an assistant and he is the man who will attach the signature, and he must work in the moving car between Berlin and Marienborn, that is their check point opposite Helmstedt. You follow me, Charles?'
'I quite understand…' Mawby doing his best to take the lecture in his stride, as no more than his due.
'Thirdly, the people that you want taken from the DDR will have an importance, or you as foreigners would not be interested by them. You are not involved with bringing to freedom your friend or your relation, you are bringing someone who is of political use to you. If the pigs there catch a driver then he will stay eight or ten years in the gaol, not happy years. But if there is the smell of political action, if he is working for a foreign power then they will make more of it, perhaps fifteen years. It is not a safe business, you know that, Charles?'
'I'm perfectly aware of that.' Mawby trying not to catch the eye of the nude.
'The price would be 25 thousand marks. Twenty-five thousand marks for each passenger that we bring through.'
Mawby stiffened, felt a sweat bead spring at his hairline. The calculations swarmed over him. Three marks eighty to the pound.
Thirteen thousand, one hundred and fifty sterling. 'That's bloody steep, Hermann, for a drive down the autobahn…'
The man was hunched in his chair, peering in surprise at Mawby. Adam Percy kept aloof.
'I did not suppose that this money would come from your own pocket, Charles.'
Mawby pulled for his rank. 'We have a certain influence in this country.'
Hermann laughed. A light, fine cackle. A small and diminutive noise from such a carcase of a man. 'Don't play with me, Charles. You have told me that an East German who is resident in Moscow will be in Magdeburg till the 15th of June, a man who interests a foreign agency.
How long would it take the Volkspolizei to identify the man you want carried? I think a few hours only. Don't make threats to me, Charles.'
Mawby rose from his chair. 'I'll have to refer the matter back.'
'But don't sit on it. And remember that it is not your money.'
'I will ring you in the evening with the answer.'
'If you accept then we should meet again tomorrow.' Hermann grinned, climbed from his chair and advanced on Mawby with a hand outstretched.
The farewells were brief. Mawby and Percy walked briskly out into the late afternoon air, the nude at Mawby's heel.
Smithson sat in his armchair with the street map on his knees, Johnny opposite him, after dinner coffee in his hands.
'Magdeburg had come through the war pretty well till January 16th in 1945, when the American air force came on the scene. Sixteen thousand people died that day and the inner city was obliterated, and I mean that.
They started again with a heap of rubble and ended up with rows of flats, functional little homes for the workers. There was pre-war industry there and that's been expanded, mostly engineering. It's a major rail centre for the south-west of the DDR. the honeypot that originally attracted the bombs. Now it's a provincial capital with all the trappings, big parks, a crop of theatres and concert halls along with new developments towards the north, Neue Neustadt, Nordwest and Olven- stedt. There's only one hotel that's offering rooms to foreigners, the International, where you'll be, which is highly convenient to us, the cat will be right on top of the mouse… Now we'll turn to the policing of the city. There will be a unit of SSD there. There is a headquarters of the Volkspolizei Bizirksbehorde, operating out of Halber- stadter Strasse 2, they're the provincial police. The town police, Volkspolizei Kreisamt, are little more than souped- up traffic men. Because of the proximity of the border there's a strong detachment of Schutzpolizei, they're security police and slightly down the ladder from SSD, also at Halberstadter Strasse. They keep their eyes open, their ears open. They look hard and they listen hard.'
The Deputy-Under-Secretary had a suite of offices at Century House.
An outer room for meetings. A smaller room for his desk and easy chair.
An annexe where he had the use of a single bed if he had no wish to return to his Hampshire home or to spend the night at his club. They were light and comfortable quarters, but too recent for his taste and like many of his senior colleagues he still hankered for the old days of the Queen Anne's Gate building and its peeling glories. The evening had blanketed the London skyline below his windows, the lights eddied on the
Thames beneath. The House of Commons steeples and clock- face swam in their floodlighting. Columns of cars nudged forward on the miniaturised Embankment beneath him.
Mawby's telex still lay on the desk of his private office. A good man, Mawby, a tried and trusted man, a man with a future, who might one day inherit this upper office. The telex from Mawby requesting authorisation for the payment of 13,150 pounds sterling to a German national for the lift down the autobahn to Helmstedt. Eight months of the Deputy-Under-Secretary's salary, quite a handful for the wide embrace of 'miscellaneous'. But he had authorised it without question. If it was good enough for Mawby, it was…
The telephone warbled.
The green receiver with the scrambler distortion devices.
'Yes.'
'Fenton here.' Peter Fenton, Director of the Security Service. Rather a tiresome voice.
