World War Two Will Not Take Place (7 page)

Mount could probably safeguard his own anonymity by ringing the Foreign Ministry from a public phone, and asking for Konrad Eisen, Toulmin's real name. But anything incoming on the general lines would go through a switchboard, and who would trust government switchboards in this country as it was at present, or, come to that, government switchboards anywhere at any time? Germany kept an exceptionally strict eye on government employees since the formidable 1933 ‘Restoration of the Civil Service' law. If Toulmin had been exposed and arrested, the switchboard might have instructions to divert any calls for him. Possibly, someone else would reply and apologize courteously for Konrad Eisen's absence, while trying to find the purpose of Mount's call and his name and address and present location – particularly that, yes very particularly that – and, in any case, keep him chatting.

Instant hang up by Mount would follow, to defeat a trace, and this must be the end of all inquiries at the office, and the end of any nearness by Mount now or ever to that phone booth. But, in fact, he knew he could not risk such a call, in case Eisen-Toulmin
was
still at the Ministry and liable to be pinpointed by it. To ring would be diametrically against all agreed procedures for contact.

So, then, should he get down to the Wilhelmstrasse in the morning or evening or both and try to intercept Eisen, known as Toulmin, between the station and the Foreign Ministry building there, on his way in or out? Irksome. Had he allowed Olga's worries to take an unwarranted hold? They hardly added up to much: a client fails to arrive for a week to a couple of girls, and this gets the alarms going. Did that seem reasonable, even taking proper account of what this country was at present and of Toulmin's congestion? In Mount's view, the whole project had started from panic – SB's strange tremor of regret – and perhaps now drops of it had percolated through to Mount. Maybe; if a man as habitually solid as SB could panic, panic must have something to be said for it occasionally, such as on
this
occasion.

Anyway, Mount decided to carry out some loitering near the Ministry at the right times on three successive days. He didn't think he would be noticeable. Because of its clutch of famous and historic government buildings the area attracted tourists, and he could merge: the area was known as Diplomatstrasse. They would see the new Reich Chancellery under construction for Hitler at the junction of Voss Strasse and Wilhelmstrasse, and not far-off was the Unter den Linden, one of Berlin's main drags. He hadn't settled what to do if he spotted Toulmin. At least he'd have proved Toulmin existed still. But this wouldn't explain why he had not appeared lately – supposing the girls' anxieties made sense. Should Mount try to speak to him? If they'd turned Toulmin, might this be what they were waiting for, planning for, keeping Toulmin apparently unmarked and able to walk for? Would he have plain clothes attendants nearby, ready to bag any stranger who approached? It could be the simplest of pounces. Mount remained uncertain how to react, hoped he'd make the right instinctive decision at the time. Possibly, he'd get some kind of signal from Toulmin: warning him off, or welcoming him.

In fact, though, Mount's ardent shilly-shallying didn't matter. He foot-leathered around the big buildings and wide streets, staring everywhere, as if seeing it all for the first time. His staring never found Eisen-Toulmin. Accosting wasn't offered.

After the third evening's dud duty, Mount went to the Toledo club, hoping Toulmin might have by now come back to Inge and Olga. Perhaps he had somehow missed him around the Wilhelmstrasse. Perhaps Toulmin had been ill at home or even in hospital. Inge wasn't present in the club. She had several appointments of a charmingly established type every other Tuesday, Olga said – consecutive bookings. They had not seen Toulmin. Mount and Olga drank rum and blackcurrant together at the bar. She seemed to think he might like her to return to the apartment with him. ‘Inge does not take her accessories with her for the Tuesday appointments. They are not required. These clients are elderly and physically limited in what they can do. Inge leaves her accessories here behind the bar. I am certainly entitled to borrow them,' she said in a pleasantly inquiring tone.

He'd make sure no further chair breakage occurred. Tomorrow, when she had left after breakfast, he must take the underground again, this time to the eastern suburbs where Toulmin had a flat in the Lichtenberg district. A loiter here might be more risky – the same sort of possibilities, but stronger. If something bad had happened to him, his home could be under watch, in the hope of catching contacts like Mount. Toulmin, who was Eisen, lived alone after a divorce, or lived alone last time his dossier was adjusted. No children.

Mount had his details on recall: address, home telephone number, real name – Konrad Paul Eisen – former wife's name, political sympathies, career stages to date, present salary, parents, siblings; nothing written. Notes were peril. To offset the need for them, there had been two days in training given to memory exercises and tests. Besides those word-for-word extracts from his ‘Psychological Silhouette', he could still recite a big slab of Robert Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy
, one paragraph of it backwards, starting with ‘laughter of occasion ridiculous or cause such no', instead of ‘no such cause or ridiculous occasion of laughter'. Oliver Fallows, in the Section, could do the first half of Browning's poem ‘Fra Lippo Lippi' – in English, ‘Friar Lippo Lippi' – backwards, and would, if you encouraged him, finishing on the title, ‘Lippi Lippo Fra', which he thought had a better ring to it than the original.

FOUR

A
n officer in the field had a lot of autonomy, and Mount decided he needed no authorization from London to burgle Toulmin's place. ‘
Please, sir, may I spin his drum?
' Serfish. Of course, he hoped a break-in would not be necessary. He'd walk the streets around where Toulmin lived in the hope of seeing him coming or going, just as he had walked the streets around the Foreign Office. But if this search also failed he might have to get inside the apartment somehow.

His training course had spent a week on how to break into properties and do a thorough rummage – so, clearly, they expected you to break into properties and do a thorough rummage some time, times. He'd been issued with very effective ‘children', as lock-busting equipment was known. The term came from rhyming slang: children = boys and girls = twirls, slang for skeleton keys. But he guessed that a request now for permission to pop into Toulmin's nest on the quiet would be refused. He'd never convince Stephen Bilson the urgency justified the risk. After all, the real impulse came from Inge and Olga and their anxieties over Toulmin's untreated congestion, apparently made worse by hitting the floor in the furniture mishap with Olga on top of him. SB was better off not knowing this, especially as Mount's report to London on the ruined chair had been an outright lie. Suppose he went ahead and it came to light he'd ignored the ban on forced entry; Mount would most likely get kicked out of the Service. What kind of job could an ex-snoop get? Yellow Press reporter, maybe. He didn't think much of that, though.

Any break-in would involve two different peril types. First, to Mount, personally and physically, and through him to Toulmin. If they'd detected and arrested him, Mount's search would give final proof of Eisen-Toulmin's treachery: a spy suddenly short of whispers had turned up desperately seeking his whisperer. Get both into a Gestapo sack. Second, came the prospect of an appallingly flagrant espionage catastrophe that would fracture Anglo-German relations and put at hazard Hitler's state visit to London, so dear to the king. If SB considered any or either of these likely, he might urgently pull Mount out of Germany. This wouldn't be another panic, but tactics, based on a profit and loss forecast. In that estimate, loss might look much likelier. SB had seen God knew how many troops sent to their death in the war. The experience made him careful with his men's and women's lives. Also, he'd want to safeguard the Hitler visit, if that's what Edward and Wallis desired, and what he might desire for his own purposes, also. The monarch employed him, was his commander in chief. Fealty: SB owed it, existed for it.

Mount didn't feel ready to quit Berlin yet, though. He'd look like someone who did a bunk when things went rough and left his agent to the hunters. Wasn't Mount bound to feel big loyalty to someone he'd taken part with in a thoroughgoing foursome, this in addition to Toulmin's worth as an informed, informer voice? If things went rougher Mount might still have to run, or try to: effect ‘instant unscheduled closure of mission and withdrawal', as the official vocab went. Decoded and de-euphemized, ‘unscheduled' meant ‘Christ, they're on to us'. And ‘withdrawal' meant ‘make a run for it'. But he judged galloping retreat not at all necessary so far.

He did recognize another worrying uncertainty. If they knew about Toulmin, how
long
had they known and watched him? As a result, did they also know about Toulmin's trysts at the Steglitz apartment, and about Stanley Charles Naughton? Mount wondered, and knew SB would also wonder. Mount chose not to make him wonder even more by disclosing too much. At any rate, not immediately. Mount thought of the woman on the stairs and the broken chair conversation. Was she really just a woman on the stairs and the broken chair conversation only a broken chair conversation? Did she report back somewhere? And report back what?

But he mustn't let himself get paralysed by such doubts and frets. The training preached carefulness, yes, but also enterprise, resolve, audacity. He began to plan the break-in. It might be unavoidable. There'd be two objectives. One: discover if Toulmin were there, possibly dead. Two: suppose Toulmin weren't in there dead, look for anything that might say what had happened to him: mainly, this meant documents, notebooks, memos, blood and bone fragments on the wallpaper, photographs, letters. He saw complexities:

At Lichtenberg, Toulmin's place was in one of those famous apartment blocks made of prefabricated concrete slabs,
plattenbauten
. Mount loved the mass-produced look of them. For coolness and lack of frippery, these buildings went even further than the ‘New Objectivity' creations in Steglitz. People needed accommodation, and they could get it in Lichtenberg behind such gorgeously unfancy, swiftly installed walls. Plain, utilitarian, grey-buff facades announced their honest purposeful purpose – shelter. This was how architecture should be. It recognized a job had to be done and did it. A crane swung an arm about for a couple of days a few years ago, dangling those destined jigsaw rectangles, and suddenly, out of nothing, homes arrived. Hitler often demanded living room for the German people,
Lebensraum
. Well, voilà, old cock! Plenty of living rooms here in neat, two and three storey developments.

Mount had been brought up in Bath when not away at school. His mother still lived there for some of the year. You could get sickened by the saucy elegance and swank of all that smug Georgian stuff in piss-yellow local stone. Beau Nash, the eighteenth-century Welsh dandy-fop, delighted in Bath. Naturally he did. Curved streets – why? Flamboyant. Someone had had a bad attack of geometry: describe an arc and call it Royal Crescent.

You didn't get any of that malarkey in Lichtenberg. When they originally took on Toulmin as an agent, Mount and Nicholas Baillie secretly tailed him home one evening to check he lived where he said: standard courtesy for new chums, or those wanting to become chums. Mount fell for the construction style then, rhapsodized to Baillie about its clever practicality. Nick objected. He
would
. While doing an ink sketch of the frontage to mark out what they guessed to be the Eisen or Toulmin windows, he had sounded off with the stock arty chatter about concrete's drab impersonality and the inherent slabbiness of slabs. The buildings looked jaily even without iron bars, he'd said. Anyone could tell he was stuck with standard, snobby Cambridge reverence for the pretty lines of King's College. Of course slabs were slabby. Slabbiness kept winter out. Personality? Yes, they had personality – dutiful, protective, unpretentious, good at fitting in.

Mount had memorized Baillie's drawing and could identify what might be the windows of Toulmin's apartment, just as Toulmin could identify
his
second floor flat in Steglitz, though Toulmin never had to signal a welcome with lights, because the rules of contact said Mount must not, repeat NOT, come calling, or even hang about the district. Visits might deeply imperil the host. And in usual conditions Mount wouldn't have visited or even reconnoitred. Conditions, though, had become very
un
usual, hadn't they? He thought he might have to break in and do a nose about. The apartment was the only concrete – concrete! – connection he had with Toulmin now. It gave a focus, of a sort. He didn't know which sort, only that it seemed more precise than wandering around the Diplomatstrasse pavements near the Foreign Ministry.

But the break-in must be a far-off prospect. It assumed he never saw Toulmin coming or going outside, and never managed a word or two. It also assumed the apartment remained dark at night. In a sense, Mount
did
want a signal from Toulmin's lights. Of course, if the lights came on they wouldn't necessarily prove Toulmin was present, or Toulmin alone. There might be a reception group, devoted to the Fatherland and Lugers, hoping to catch someone searching for him at one of the two most likely spots: his home and the Ministry.