A Perfect Spy

His Berlin apartment was in the centre of Unter den Linden, on the top floor of a sprawling Biedermeier house that had miraculously survived the bombing. His bedroom was on the garden side so he didn’t hear their car pull up, but he heard their spongy footsteps on the stairs and had a memory of the Fremdenpolizei stealing up Herr Ollinger’s wooden staircase in the early hours of the morning that policemen like the best. Pym knew it was the end, though of all the ways he had imagined the end he hadn’t expected it to come this way. Fieldmen feel those things and learn to trust them, and Pym was a fieldman twice over. So he knew it was the end and in a quiet way he was neither surprised nor disconcerted. He was out of bed and into the kitchen in a second, because the kitchen was where he had been concealing the rolls of film for his next rendezvous with Axel. By the time they pressed the doorbell he had unrolled six reels and exposed them, and touched off the instant-ignition code pad that he had hidden in an oilskin inside the lavatory cistern. In his clear-eyed acceptance of his fate, he even contemplated something rather more drastic, for Berlin was no Vienna and he kept a pistol in his bedside locker and another in a drawer in the hall. But something about the apologetic way they murmured “Herr Pym, wake up, please,” through the letter box discouraged him, and when he looked through the peephole and saw the amiable shape of Police Lieutenant Dollendorf and the young sergeant at his side, a shaming awareness came over him of the shock he would cause them if he took that path. So they’re pulling a soft entry, he thought as he opened the door: first you spread your wolf-children round the building, then you put in Mr. Nice Guy by the front door.

Lieutenant Dollendorf, like most people in Berlin, was a client of Jack Brotherhood, and earned a small retainer by looking the other way when agents were being hustled back and forth across the profitable stretch of Wall in his district. He was a cosy Bavarian fellow with all the Bavarian appetites, and his breath smelt permanently of Weisswurst.

“Forgive us, Herr Pym. Excuse the disturbances, so late,” he began, smiling too broadly. He was in uniform. His gun was still in its holster. “Our Herr Kommandant asks that you come immediately to headquarters on a personal and urgent matter,” he explained, still not touching his gun.

There was resolution in Dollendorf’s voice as well as embarrassment, however, and his sergeant was peering sharply up and down the stairwell. “The Herr Kommandant assures me that everything can be arranged discreetly, Herr Pym. He wishes at this stage to be delicate. He has made no approach to your superiors,” Dollendorf insisted, as Pym still hesitated. “The Kommandant has high respect for you, Herr Pym.”

“I have to dress.”

“But quickly, if you are so kind, Herr Pym. The Kommandant would like the matter dealt with before he has to hand it over to the day shift.”

Pym turned and walked carefully to his bedroom. He waited to hear the policemen following him, or a barked order, but they preferred to remain in the hall, looking at the Cries of London prints, courtesy of the Firm’s accommodation section.

“May I use your telephone, Herr Pym?”

“Go ahead.”

He dressed with the door open, hoping to overhear the conversation. But all he heard was: “Everything in order, Herr Kommandant. Our man is coming immediately.”

They walked down the broad stairs three abreast, to a parked police car with its light flashing. Nothing behind it, no late-night loiterers in the street. How typical of the Germans to disinfect the entire area before arresting him. Pym sat in the front with Dollendorf. The sergeant sat tensely behind. It was raining and two in the morning. A red sky was seething with black cloud. Nobody spoke any more.

And at the police station Jack will be waiting, thought Pym. Or the Military Police. Or God.