Free London Match by Len Deighton Page B

Munte. He smiled and drank some of the Madeira and then shifted about, deciding how to explain it all. 'The bank's intelligence staff went over to the Warschauer Strasse office once a week. They would have all the new material in trays waiting for us. Old Mr Heine was in charge there. He'd produce for us each item according to subject.'
    'Raw?' I said.
    'Raw?' said von Munte. 'What does that mean?'
    'Did they tell you what the agent said or did they merely tell you the content of his message?'
    'Oh, the messages were edited, but otherwise as received. They had to be; the staff handling the material didn't know enough about economics to understand what it was about.'
    'But you identified different sources?' I asked yet again.
    'Sometimes we could, sometimes that was easy. Some of it was total rubbish.'
    'From different agents?' I persisted. My God, but it was agony to deal with old people. Would I be like this one day?
    'Some of their agents sent only rumours. There was one who never provided a word of good sense. They called him "Grock". That wasn't his code name or his source name; it was our joke. We called him "Grock", after the famous clown, of course.'
    'Yes,' I said. But I'm glad von Munte had told me it was a joke; that gave me the cue to laugh. 'What about the good sources?' I said.
    'You could recognize them from the quality of their intelligence and from the style in which it was presented.' He sat back in his chair. 'Perhaps I should explain what it was like in the Warschauer Strasse office. It wasn't our office. It is supposed to be an office belonging to Aeroflot, but there are always police and security guards on the door, and our passes were carefully scrutinized no matter how often we visited there. I don't know who else uses the building, but the economic intelligence staff met there regularly, as I said.'
    'And you were included in "economic intelligence staff'?"
    'Certainly not. They were all KGB and security people. My superior was only invited to attend when there was something directly affecting our department. Other bank officials and Ministry people came according to what was to be discussed.'
    'Why didn't the briefing take place at the KGB offices?' I asked. Silas was sitting upright on his metal chair, his eyes closed as if he were dozing off to sleep.
    'The Warschauer Strasse office was — perhaps I should say is — used at arm's length by the KGB. When some Party official or some exalted visitor has enough influence to be permitted to visit the KGB installation in Berlin, they are invariably taken to Warschauer Strasse rather than to Karlshorst.'
    'It's used as a front?' said Silas opening his eyes and blinking as if suddenly coming awake from a deep slumber.
    'They wouldn't want visitors tramping through the offices where the real work was being done. And Warschauer Strasse has a kitchen and dining room where such dignitaries can be entertained. Also there is a small lecture hall where they can see slide shows and demonstration films and so on. We liked going over there. Even the coffee and sandwiches served were far better than anything available elsewhere.'
    'You said you could tell the source from the quality and the style. Could you enlarge on that?' I asked.
    'Some communications would begin an item with a phrase such as "I hear that the Bank of England" or whatever. Others would say, "Last week the Treasury issued a confidential statement." Others might put it, "Fears of an imminent drop in American interest rates are likely to bring . . .". These different styles are virtually sufficient for identification, but correlated with the proved quality of certain sources, we were soon able to recognize the agents. We spoke of them as people and joked about the nonsense that certain of them sometimes passed on to us.'
    'So you must have recognized the first-class material that my wife was providing.'
    Von Munte looked at me and then at Silas. Silas said, 'Is this official, Bernard?' There was a