Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton Read Free Book Online

face, ‘…look after themselves.’
    ‘And you are jealous?’ I asked seriously.
    ‘Perhaps I am,’ said Stok. ‘Perhaps that’s it.’ He put the knight back and he pulled the skirt of his overcoat together.
    ‘So you are going to sell me Semitsa as a little bit of private enterprise of your own?’ I said. ‘If you’ll forgive the workings of my bourgeois mind.’
    ‘You live only once,’ said Stok.
    ‘I can make once do,’ I said.
    Stok heaped four spoonfuls of coarse sugar into his tea. He stirred it as though he was putting an extra rod into an atomic pile. ‘All I want is to live the rest of my life in peace and quiet—I do not need a lot of money, just enough to buy a little tobacco and the simple peasant food that I was brought up on. I am a colonel and my conditions are excellent but I am a realist; this cannot last. Younger men in our security service look at my job with envy.’ He looked at me and I nodded gently. ‘With envy,’ he repeated.
    ‘You are in a key job,’ I said.
    ‘But the trouble with such jobs is that many others want them too. Some of my staff here are men with fine college diplomas, their minds are quick as mine once was; and they have the energy to work through the day and through the night too as once I had the energy to do.’ He shrugged. ‘This is why I decided to come to live the rest of my life in your world.’
    He got up and opened one of the big wooden shutters. From the courtyard there was the beat of a heavy diesel engine and the sound of boots climbing over a tailboard. Stok thrust his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and flapped his wings.
    I said, ‘What about your wife and your family, will you be able to persuade them?’
    Stok continued to look down into the courtyard. ‘My wife died in a German air raid in 1941,my only son hasn’t written to me for three and a half years. What would you do in my position, Mr Dorf? What would you do?’
    I let the sound of the lorry rumble away down Keibelstrasse.
    I said, ‘I’d stop telling lies to old liars for a start, Stok. Do you really think I came here without dusting off your file? My newest assistant is trained better than you seem to think I am. I know everything about you from the cubic capacity of your Westinghouse refrigerator to the size your mistress takes in diaphragms.’
    Stok picked up his tea and began to batter the lemon segment with the bowl of his spoon. He said, ‘You’ve trained well.’
    ‘Train hard, fight easy,’ I said.
    ‘You quote Marshal Suvarov.’ He walked across to the chessboard and stared at it. ‘In Russia we have a proverb, “Better a clever lie than the foolish truth”.’ He waved his teaspoon at me.
    ‘There was nothing clever about that clumsy piece of wife-murder.’
    ‘You’re right,’ said Stok cheerfully. ‘You shall be my friend, English. We must trust each other.’ He put his tea down on the desk top.
    ‘I’ll never need an enemy,’ I said.
    Stok smiled. It was like arguing with a speak-your-weight machine.
    ‘Truthfully, English,’ he said, ‘I do not want to defect to the West but the offer of Semitsa is a genuine one.’ He sucked the spoon.
    ‘For money?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Stok. He tapped the fleshy palm of his left hand with the bowl of the spoon.
    ‘Money here.’ He closed his hand like a vault.

Chapter 7
    Knights can pass over squares controlled by
enemy forces. Knights always end their move
on a square of the opposite colour.
    Tuesday, October 8th
    There was plenty of activity at Checkpoint Charlie. Photoflashes sliced instants from eternity. The pavement shone with water and detergent under the pressmen’s feet. Way down towards Hallesches Tor a US military ambulance flasher sped towards the emergency ward and was all set to change direction to the morgue.
    One by one the reporters gunned their VWs and began composing tomorrow’s headlines in their minds. ‘Young Berliner killed in wall crossing’ or ‘Vopos Gun Down