The Marylebone Drop Read online

  “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  Alec Wicinski scowled, then stared for a moment or two at Bachelor’s coffee cup. Then said, “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll run the name through the records, see if it rings any bells. And if it does I’ll let you know, and then you can take it through official channels, okay?”

  “Thanks, Alec.”

  “But don’t tell anyone I made a pass at it first. We’re not supposed do favours. Not even for people we don’t actually know, but just bumped into at a funeral.”

  “Hell of a funeral, though,” Bachelor said.

  Alec grinned. “It was,” he said. “It was a hell of a funeral.”

  Afterwards, Bachelor lingered in the library, drinking two more cups of coffee, then—inevitably—had to take himself off to find the nearest toilet. And as he did so, he had that sense of foreboding again; a glimpse of a life spent looking for facilities he could use. Brushing his teeth in car park lavatories. Lurking near department store bathrooms, trying to look like a customer.

  For the first ever time, it struck him: if this was what he had to look forward to, should he maybe just bow out?

  It wasn’t a moment of illumination; more a taking-on-board of something found at the back of his mind. Not the answer, necessarily, because something might turn up, but still: a way out of his current predicament; a means of avoiding the humiliations piling up ahead, like a roadblock designed by Kafka. He could simply pull the switch. The thought didn’t fill him with a sense of triumph, but the fact that it didn’t fill him with dread struck the deeper chord. It was said that people who talked about killing themselves never actually did so. And he wondered if those people who did had had moments similar to this one; whether their first inkling that that big word, suicide, had specific relevance to themselves arrived not hand-in-hand with calamity but during an ordinary day; and whether it had felt to them, as it did to him, like opening an envelope addressed to The Occupier, and finding their own name on the letter within.

  And then he shuddered and filed such thoughts away, though he knew that a seal had been broken, and that he’d be forced to dip into this dark jar again in the future, probably at night.

  There was a bathroom down the corridor. After he’d peed, while he was washing his hands, someone else entered, and Bachelor spoke almost without intending to. “Do they still have showers on this floor? I pulled an all-nighter. I could really do with cleaning up.”

  “Next floor down,” he was told.

  “Thanks.”

  Next floor down was easily found. The building’s geography was coming back to him as he wandered: showers, yes, and wasn’t this where the bunking-down rooms were, where staff could crash when they were under the hammer? In the shower room were cupboards with towels, and even overnight kits: toothpaste, toothbrush, soap. He stayed under water as hot as he could manage until his skin grew lobster-pink. Then brushed his teeth and dressed again.

  He was working on automatic now. It barely constituted a plan. Back in the corridor he made his way towards the bedrooms. None were in use. He chose one, let himself in, and locked the door behind him. The room wasn’t much bigger than the single bed it contained, but that was all he was interested in. He undressed again, climbed into the bed, and when he flipped the light switch, the room became totally dark; a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light. For the first time in weeks, Bachelor felt alone and completely secure. Within minutes he slept, and dreamed about nothing.

  It didn’t do to be a man of habit, so Martin Kreutzmer wasn’t: varying the routes he took to work; shuffling the bars he frequented, and the shops he patronised with no discernible brand loyalty. Some days he wore a suit; others, he dressed like a student. But he contained multitudes, obviously—he was a handler, an agent-runner, and handlers are all things to all joes—so it wasn’t surprising that some of his identities took a less stringent attitude: an identity hardly counted as such if it couldn’t be broken down into lists. Likes/dislikes, favourite haunts, top ten movies. So when he was being Peter Kahlmann, he did the things Peter Kahlmann liked to do, one of which was visit Fischer’s every so often, because even agent runners enjoy a taste of the homeland now and again. He’d barely sat, barely glanced at the menu, when the waiter was asking him, “Did your uncle’s friend get in touch?”

  “. . . I’m sorry?”

  “Mr. Dortmund. One of our regulars, I’m surprised you’ve not crossed paths before. Though you’re not usually here in the mornings, like he is.”

  “Could you start at the beginning, please?”

  Afterwards, he enjoyed his coffee break, to all outward appearance unbothered by the exchange: Yes, now he remembered; old Mr. Dortmund—Solly, that was it—had indeed been in touch, and yes, it was lovely to hear from someone who’d known Uncle Hans in the Old Days. Not many of that generation left. And yes, thank you, a slice of that delicious torte: What harm could it do? He gazed benignly round, and cursed inwardly. What had he done to attract the attention of an old man? There was only one answer: the drop. If the old man had noticed this, he must have been in the game himself. And if he’d taken it upon himself to establish Martin’s—Peter’s—identity, maybe he still was. Maybe he still was.

  Martin blamed himself. Here on friendly ground—more or less—his duties were mostly administrative, and the bulk of his time was spent schmoozing compatriot bankers and businessmen, who thought him something to do with the Embassy. Hannah Weiss was his only active agent, and yes, he’d made a game of his dealings with her, partly so she could learn how things were done properly; partly because he got bored otherwise. Lately, though, the ground had been shifting. European boundaries were being resurrected; the collapse of the Union couldn’t be ruled out. There were those who said it couldn’t happen, and those who couldn’t believe it hadn’t happened yet, and as far as Martin was aware, similar groups of people had said similar things about the Wall, both when it went up and when it came down again. It wasn’t like the Cold War was about to be redeclared. But still, Hannah’s value as an agent could only increase in the future. It was time to stop playing games.

  As for the here and now, the report she’d passed him, here in Fischer’s, indicated that all was going to plan. Her move from BIS to the Brexit Secretary’s office was in the bag. With that jump, her value to the BND would increase fivefold; no longer an amusing sideline, she’d be a genuine source of useful data. But even if that weren’t so, he chided himself, he remained at fault for putting her in harm’s way. Even amusing sidelines had to be taken seriously. Practising old-school spycraft on the streets of London was one thing; getting spotted doing it was another. Hannah’s career to date might have been little more than a joke one Service was playing on another, but they wouldn’t simply waggle a finger in her face if she was caught. And whoever this Solomon Dortmund was, he looked set to make that happen, if he hadn’t done so already.

  Caught by sudden urgency, Martin Kreutzmer paid and left. In the old days, he’d have had to head back to his office and set research wheels in motion; track this fox Dortmund to his den. But these days you could do all that on the move, which is exactly what Martin did, striding along the High Street, coat collar up against the wind; one glove dangling by a fingertip from his teeth as he squeezed information from his phone.

  Back in the Park, Alec Wicinski was doing much the same thing.

  Dark curly hair; glasses half the time; a need to shave twice a day, though needs didn’t always must in his case. Alec was a tie-wearer, a reader, and a walker; not one for hill and field or coastal path, but a pounder of city streets, his usual cure for the bouts of insomnia that plagued him being to march through London after-hours. His fiancée, Sara, joked that she’d picked him up on a street corner in the middle of the night. They’d actually met through a mutual friend, the old-fashioned way. Alec once worked out that they were the only engaged couple he knew who hadn’t met online, and s
till wasn’t sure whether to be surprised by that, and if so, why.

  Alec, as noted, was an analyst, and oppo research his specialist subject, “oppo” being granted broad definition these days. The lines were wavier than they used to be, old rivalries nearer the surface, and anyone who wasn’t spying for us was spying on us. That, at least, was the motto on the hub, where whistleblowing was the worst of crimes. There was something about an enemy pretending to be a friend, or a friend pretending to be an enemy, that could be lived with; but that either kind could pretend to have a conscience was a play too far. The boys and girls on the hub knew things could get murky, and that dirty truths had to be buried deep to keep the soil fertile; dragging them to the surface did nobody good. Lech understood this, and any dirty truths he uncovered that he was unhappy about he shelved in an attic corner of his mind, alongside his memories of his grandfathers’ generation; those who’d fled Poland before the occupation, and fought their war under foreign skies. Back then, there was no doubting who the enemy was. Things were black or they were white, and even when they weren’t—when there was shading round the edges—you acted as if they were, because that was what life during wartime was like, especially when your country was overrun. You’d picked your side. You didn’t get to dictate strategy.

  Those foreign skies were his own now, but his Polish extraction—at least, he’d always assumed that’s what it was, though maybe it was some individual quirk all his own—kept history fresher in his mind than most of his colleagues managed. And whereas the general attitude was that right would ultimately triumph, something in Lech’s bones sang of doom, or whispered along with the chorus: he was in his job to prevent bad things happening, but couldn’t entirely suppress the fear that sooner or later he’d fail, that they’d all fail, that their home skies would look down on cataclysm. His grandfathers had taught him this much: that if you expected things to get worse, history would generally see you all right. Not that he’d be thanked for broadcasting this round the office.

  For the moment, though, he did what he could.

  Peter Kahlmann. Alec had a few spelling variations up his sleeve, but that was the version he entered first, running a multiple-site search on a number of Service engines: foreign operatives, British civilians, persons of interest of any nationality. The breadth meant he couldn’t expect a response any time soon, so he let his laptop get on with it, while he busied himself with a report on a recent op in the Midlands—seventeen arrests, and an armed assault on Birmingham International scotched at the planning stage. Preventing bad things happening: one for our side, he thought, and suppressed the inevitable comeback from his mental gremlin, Nobody wins all the time.

  Outside, it was starting to snow.

  The flat was off Edgware Road, in a pleasant block with railinged-off basement areas, almost all of which contained an army of terracotta pots with small, neatly sculpted evergreens standing sentry. Upper storeys boasted windowboxes on most of the sills. At this time of year, they were little more than a gardener’s memento mori; the odd scrappy fighter among them battling the winter, but most standing fallow, waiting the bad months out. As if in vindication of their decision, it started to snow as Martin Kreutzmer approached; big chunky flakes drifting lazily down, the way Christmas card artists prefer, and a nice change from the dirty sleet London usually conjured up.

  Outwardly, the block maintained the appearance of a row of houses, each with its own front door up a flight of stone steps. Sets of doorbells were fixed to the brickwork, labelled by name, and Martin had no trouble finding the one he was after: No. 36, Flat 5. He looked up and down the road. There were few people, and the only moving traffic was out of sight: shunting up and down Edgware Road. All he was doing, he told himself, was checking out the opposition. There remained the possibility that Solomon Dortmund was exactly who he said he was: a friend of Martin’s uncle. Except Martin didn’t have any uncles, and even if he did, they wouldn’t have any friends. So maybe Solomon Dortmund was in play, which meant Martin had to find out who was pulling his strings. For his own part, he was fireproof: the worst the British Secret Service could do to him was purse its lips in his direction. But if Hannah was blown, he’d have to put her on the next flight out of the country.

  First things first: Martin rang the bell. Old people respond to doorbells; ingrained politeness, combined with a sense of need: the need to show visitors they were up and dressed, mobile, compos mentis. It was possible he was projecting. Anyway, Solomon Dortmund didn’t answer his bell, meaning the odds were he was out, which gave Martin a whole new set of options: act as if the worst had happened, and pull Hannah’s rip-cord, or carry on digging in case the whole thing turned out to be an old man’s brainfart. When in doubt, he thought, secure your joe; that was the bedrock of agent-running. Back home they’d throw their hands up and ask if he was getting scaredy-cat in age, but screw that: they weren’t the ones who’d be carted off in a Black Maria if it all went wrong. He wasn’t about to gamble Hannah’s future just to keep the bean counters happy, so he was pulling the cord, and that was the decision he’d come to as the door opened and an old woman emerged, a dog in her arms, a shopping basket looped through one of them too. “You are such a nuisance,” she was saying, and Martin could only presume she was addressing the dog. Confirmation arrived when she looked him directly in the eye. “He is such a nuisance.”

  “But a fine fellow all the same,” he told her. “Let me get that for you.” Meaning the door, which he held while she made her slow way through: dog, shopping basket, a walking stick too, it turned out. “Can I see you down the steps?”

  “That would be kind.”

  “Let me just fix this,” he said. “Don’t want to have to disturb anyone again.” He lay his gloves down to prevent the door shutting and then, to forestall any interrogation as to who he was visiting, and what the nature of his business was, kept up an unbroken commentary on dogs he had known while helping his companion to the pavement: was he one for chasing squirrels? Martin himself had heard that terriers were the very devil for squirrels; had known one personally, hand on heart, that had learned to climb trees. Sweetest dog in the world, that quirk apart. Would rescue ducklings, and escort lost fledglings back to their nests, but squirrels: that dog had an issue with squirrels. By the time all was done, and she was heading off towards Marks & Spencer, Martin had almost convinced himself he’d known her years, such was the degree of fondness with which she took her leave. Dear boy. He headed back up the steps, retrieved his gloves, and closed the door behind him. Solomon Dortmund: Flat 5. Two flights up.

  Must be a game old bird right enough, Martin thought, as proud of his command of English idiom as he was of his ability to get up the stairs without losing breath. He’d found no images of Solomon Dortmund on his quick trawl through the ether, but the one in his mind had the old man a robin: bright of eye and twice as perky, hopping up and down these stairs twice a day, for all he was eighty. Ninety? And here was his door, and Martin rapped on it, and again there was no response. This wasn’t great tradecraft, but sometimes you rode your luck. Plan an operation, and it took you weeks. Grab an opportunity, and you could be back in your foxhole by teatime, mission accomplished. It was a good solid door, and a top-hole lock. There were spies out there, good and bad, who could find their way through a locked door, but Martin Kreutzmer wasn’t one of them. He’d read a few books, though. He ran a hand along the top of the doorframe and found nothing, then bent to the welcome mat. Who kept a welcome mat outside their front door? An old person. Or maybe just a hospitable person, he amended, and lifted the mat and found the spare key carefully taped to the underside. Solomon, Solomon, he thought. Thank you for that. He heard a noise downstairs and froze, but the noise—a door opening and closing—was followed by its own echo: someone going out onto the street. He looked at the key. Yes or no? He’d not have a better chance. Three minutes tops, he told himself. Just to find out who this geezer—this robin—thinks h
e is.

  And he let himself into the flat.

  And here was the snow they’d been expecting, thought Solomon; a few little flurries to start with, to make everyone sentimental about how pretty London looked with its edges rounded, and then more intently, more seriously; this was snow with a job to do, snow that would cause everything to grind to a halt: buses and taxis, the underground, the people, the shops, the law, the government. All these years gone by, and he still didn’t know what it was with the British and snow. Pull on your boots, wear gloves, spread a little salt and put shovels in the hands of the right people: What was so difficult about that? But no, let any kind of weather turn up looking grim and the country went into shock. But ah well, he thought; ah well, at least he’d had the sense to notice which way the wind was blowing. So here he was, loaded shopping bags in each hand, and if the snow meant he was confined to his flat for a week, while the oafs on the Council ran round like headless chickens, wondering what the white stuff was and how to make it go away again, at least he wouldn’t be wondering where his next tin of sardines was coming from, or be forced to re-use coffee grounds. That had happened before.

  He had to put all his bags down to find his doorkeys. They were never in the pocket you’d put them in; that was something else a long life had taught him, that keys were determined to drive you out of your mind, but ah, here they were, and he could perhaps fish them out without removing his gloves, but no, that wasn’t going to happen: off come the gloves, Solomon. Off come the gloves, as if he were about to enter battle, when in fact his day’s campaign was over: he had his shopping, he had his keys—yes, there they were, plain as daylight in his hand—and now all he had to do was carry this shopping up two flights of stairs and he could settle down in his chair while the outside world did its worst.

  The door was open, the shopping bags lugged over the threshold, the door was closed again, the light was on. Solomon felt dizzy when this was completed, and was breathing hard. Nonsense to suggest that a little exertion was too much for him; but on the other hand, on the other hand. He had outlived everyone he had ever loved, and while he viewed a number of those still breathing with affection, he wouldn’t miss them when he was gone as much as he’d delight in the company of those he’d be joining. And it was often the case, he reflected, that you had such thoughts at the bottom of a staircase. Once you’d reached the top, there were more immediate things to dwell on, such as the contents of his shopping bags. Tins of sardines and necessary pints of milk apart, a few treats had been included. An old man doesn’t need chocolate. But an old man has every right to a few things he doesn’t need, when the snow outside is falling hard, and no telling when he’d next make it to Fischer’s. The dizziness passed, and he chuckled. What were a few more flights of stairs? His life so far, he’d long lost count of how many stairs he’d climbed. Everyone did, after the first few.