London Match Read Online Free PDF Page B

man's like. Deputy D-G came in yesterday on one of his rare visits to the building. He's enraptured about the progress of the Stinnes debriefing.'
    'If Stinnes is a plant . . .'
    'Ah, if Stinnes is a plant . . .' Dicky sank down in his Charles Eames chair and put his feet on the matching footstool. The night was dark outside and the windowpanes were like ebony reflecting a perfect image of the room. Only the antique desk light was on; it made a pool of light on the table where the report and transcript were placed side by side. Dicky almost disappeared into the gloom except when the light reflected from the brass buckle of his belt or shone on the gold medallion he wore suspended inside his open-neck shirt. 'But the idea that Stinnes is a plant is hard to sustain when he's just given us three well-placed KGB agents in a row.'
    He looked at his watch before shouting 'Coffee' loudly enough for his secretary to hear in the adjoining room. When Dicky worked late, his secretary worked late too. He didn't trust the duty roster staff with making his coffee.
    'Will he talk, this one you arrested in Berlin? He had a year with the Bonn Defence Ministry, I notice from the file.'
    'I didn't arrest him; we left it to the Germans. Yes, he'll talk if they push him hard enough. They have the evidence and — thanks to Volkmann — they're holding the woman who came to collect it from the car.'
    'And I'm sure you put all that in your report. Are you now the official secretary of the Werner Volkmann fan club? Or is this something you do for all your old school chums?'
    'He's very good at what he does.'
    'And so we all agree, but don't tell me that but for Volkmann, we wouldn't have picked up the woman. Staking out the car is standard procedure. Ye gods, Bernard, any probationary cop would do that as a matter of course.'
    'A commendation would work wonders for him.'
    'Well, he's not getting any bloody commendation from me. Just because he's your close friend, you think you can inveigle any kind of praise and privilege out of me for him.'
    'It wouldn't cost anything, Dicky,' I said mildly.
    'No, it wouldn't cost anything,' said Dicky sarcastically. 'Not until the next time he makes some monumental cock-up. Then someone asks me how come I commended him; then it would cost something. It would cost me a chewing out and maybe a promotion.'
    'Yes, Dicky,' I said.
    Promotion? Dicky was two years younger than me and he'd already been promoted several rungs beyond his competence. What promotion did he have his eye on now? He'd only just fought off Bret Rensselaer's attempt to take over the German desk. I'd thought he'd be satisfied to consolidate his good fortune.
    'And what do you make of this Englishwoman?' He tapped the roughly typed transcript of her statement. 'Looks as if you got her talking.'
    'I couldn't stop her,' I said.
    'Like that, was it? I don't want to go all through it again tonight. Anything important?'
    'Some inconsistencies that should be followed up.'
    'For instance?'
    'She was working in London, handling selected items for immediate shortwave radio transmission to Moscow.'
    'Must have been bloody urgent,' said Dicky. So he'd noticed that already. Had he waited to see if I brought it up? 'And that means damned good. Right? I mean, not even handled through the Embassy radio, so it was a source they wanted to keep very very secret.'
    'Fiona's material probably,' I said.
    'I wondered if you'd twig that,' said Dicky. 'It was obviously the stuff your wife was betraying out of our day-to-day operational files.'
    He liked to twist the knife in the wound. He held me personally responsible for what Fiona had done; he'd virtually said so on more than one occasion.
    'But the material kept coming.'
    Dicky frowned. 'What are you getting at?'
    'It kept coming. First-grade material even after Fiona ran for it.'
    'This woman's transmitted material wasn't all from the same source,' said Dicky. 'I remember what she said when you played your tape to