The Berlin Assignment Read online

  THE BERLIN ASSIGNMENT

  ADRIAN DE HOOG

  THE BERLIN ASSIGNMENT

  ADRIAN DE HOOG

  BREAKWATER BOOKS LTD.

  100 Water Street • P.O. Box 2188 • St. John’s • NL • A1C 6E6

  www.breakwaterbooks.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  De Hoog, Adrian, 1946-

  The Berlin Assignment / Adrian de Hoog

  ISBN 1-55081-218-1

  I. Title.

  PS8607.E482B47 2006 C813’.6 C2006-901462-0

  © 2006 Adrian de Hoog

  Cover Image:

  Reichstag nach Mitternacht, acrylic, 40 X 60 cm, 2002, Rudolf Stuessi

  Editor: Jocelyne Thomas

  Design: Rhonda Molloy

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  We acknowledge the financial support of

  The Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing activities.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

  Printed in Canada.

  For Regina, Ariane and Julian, who were there.

  PATERFAMILIAS I

  Years later, members of the Service still drew on the Berlin fiasco. Few stories embellished their gossip in quite the same way. As Service scandals go, it might have been a small event. After all, minor lapses are common in diplomatic outposts. But this was different. A lid had been slammed down on Berlin. Not a scrap of information was ever put into the records. Nothing on file explained why Anthony Hanbury, serving there as consul, was unceremoniously yanked out. Hanbury was neither aggressive nor ambitious. He wasn’t a difficult man, nor overly pedantic. No undermining Service animosity seemed to have been at work. How, then, did his assignment end in an atmosphere of intrigue? Were the knives out for him? And, if so, why?

  Some thought Irving Heywood, senior staff member in the personnel department at the time, priest in charge of Investitures (to use Service jargon), might have started one of those sub-surface suspicions and kept it fuelled until Hanbury finally fell victim. Enough members of the Service have met their end through that ploy. But people on good terms with Heywood discounted it. They were confident the Investitures priest had told them everything he knew, little as that was. Moreover, when Hanbury’s assignment fell into place, Heywood was priest in the Disarmament Priory. Only later did he move to Investitures. Hanbury was Heywood’s deputy in the Priory – had been for years – and as far as anyone could tell they got along. Their long liaison might explain why Heywood gossiped fervently about Hanbury, but it was an unlikely cause for the bizarre end to the assignment. No, the fiasco did not arise from within the Service. If knives had been out, they were external. And the place of their unsheathing had to be Berlin.

  Only two facts were known. One, that the high priest, top man in the Service, suddenly and personally tore asunder the assignment that Investitures had lovingly created scarcely one year before. The other was that there had been some prodding by the spooks. All else was obscure.

  Gossip-mongers agreed the Berlin event had to be a nugget. And they kept it polished. One day a file would come to light; such files always do. And past experience told them the story would have a lustre, a delightfully tainted glow.

  Recalling the defeats of colleagues has always been a pleasant by-product of longevity in the Service, but few could match Irving Heywood’s store of knowledge, or zest for gossip. Temperamentally unsuited for law, or medicine, or commerce, Heywood in centuries past would have been destined for the Church. His type is not unusual in the Service. Moreover, Service members – like churchmen – are trained to perform solemn rites. And so it was that a metaphor – the Service as a religious order – developed. Cheeky recruits used it first. It caught on, expanded, deepened, and finally became commonplace. The Personnel Department turned into Investitures; policies towards Asia were formed in – where else? –The Asian Temple;The Zealots looked after Europe; the spooks inhabited The Crypt; and Irving Heywood, when Tony Hanbury worked for him, was priest in charge of The Disarmament Priory. Their task was to promote the cause of international peace.

  Irving Heywood enjoyed few things more than reminiscing on the porch of his cottage in the Gatineau hills on summer weekend afternoons. Looking out over one of the countless, water-filled dimples in the Canadian Shield, maintaining a subconscious tally of his alcoholic intake (as diplomats learn to do in lifetimes of excess), Heywood conversed with friends – other members of the Service on home duty – about the world and its political disasters in the way others might swap notes on the season’s produce ripening in their gardens: tales of encounters with Idi Amin’s secret police, phlegmatic accounts of UN cease-fires ending in failure, stories of trade negotiations gone awry, suspicions about diplomatic double-crossings by close allies. And, of course, the endless delight in the snafus created by colleagues.

  Today, as usual, talk on the porch is drifting from one Service character to another, but always comes back to Hanbury and Berlin. “He had his limitations.” Heywood recalls. “He wasn’t exactly a world-conquering type. But still, why accept Berlin? Naturally I asked. Hanbury didn’t explain; he just shrugged. He had a strange, I would say a fatalistic way of shrugging. Three years ago that was. Christ, Manny, how time flies.” Irving Heywood’s sidekick today is Manny Stepney, Trade Commissioner. Heywood has known him for decades, ever since they served together in junior positions in Lagos. Stepney is a man of few words, which is why Heywood likes him.

  The lake shimmers through the trees. In another hour, the sun will sink behind the solid wall of green on the opposite shore. Loons will start their lament. The mighty insect world will arise out of slumber and fish will splash out a ballet. When Irving and Manny stand, legs heavy with the drinking, they’ll pause a moment to dispel lightheadedness before moving to the dock, stripping down, sliding into water which is deep and cool and bites the senses. Take your pick for distance: half an hour to the middle, twice as long around the island, where boulders just beneath the surface provide cover for bass. The wake left behind by a slow breaststroke sounds loud in the stillness. Beneath the evening’s iridescent sky, the water’s curative effect clears the mind. The world and its affairs shrink in importance, while the appetite for steak expands.

  But the swim is still an hour off. First, on the porch, the gossip must run its course.

  “Maybe Hanbury wanted Berlin. Maybe he was in luck,” speculates Stepney.

  “Hanbury didn’t need to go to Berlin,” Heywood repeats, eyes half closed. “He proved he could handle being number two in Kuala Lumpur. And the years he spent with me in the Priory were, with a few exceptions, not that bad. So, he could have gone out as number two again, to some place challenging. Manila, for example. He had options.” Heywood sounds as if he’s sorry his former deputy went to Berlin.

  “Didn’t Anderson go to Manila instead?” asks Stepney.

  “Yes,” says Heywood, “and he didn’t last either. We know why with Anderson. But Berlin and Hanbury…” he sighs “…it’s a riddle. I’m still looking for the key. So far nothing, Manny.”

  “Maybe, it’s locked away with the Cabinet secrets,” observes the trade commissioner.

  “In that case, Germany’s Cabinet. Not ours.”

  “And what was Anderson’s problem?”

  Heywood draws in his br
eath. He sucks until his great frame balloons. A long slow exhalation follows, and a heave to his lips of a tumbler filled with iced rye whiskey. Telling tales out of school, using alcohol’s soft workings to render them a little taller, is pleasurable for Heywood. “Manila, number two and head of chancery,” he begins. “Not a bad deal for Anderson. We had lunch the week before he left. My God, he was conspiratorial. He spent the whole time whispering. ‘They want me to turn the place around,’ he said. So I asked, ‘what’s wrong with Manila that isn’t wrong everywhere else?’ He looked around to make sure no one was listening and said Godinski was the problem. Naturally I wanted to know from whom he had that, but he wouldn’t say. Then he said – you’ll like this one, Manny, it’s sort of your style – he said, ‘fish always stink from the head down.’”

  “So Godinski was a suspect ambassador,” a nodding Stepney concludes.

  “Frankly, I didn’t believe Anderson,” Heywood continues lightly. “We’ve all been through briefings before assignments. They tell you what’s wrong with an embassy when there’s a mess down below, never if there’s one higher up. Ambassador Godinski could have been a problem, but Anderson would have been the last to know. Still, he said he had a mandate. Off he went, like a knight, lance at the ready, and visor down. Every one of us has had that urge. But you know how it gets tempered once you hit the ground. Not so with Anderson. He accused Godinski of wrongdoing the moment he arrived and they went at each other like Rocky Mountain goats. I can categorically state – that wouldn’t have happened with Hanbury.”

  “Gentle Hanbury, eh? You think with Hanbury, Godinski would have cooed?” Stepney’s voice has a sudden touch of vitriol.

  Heywood snorts. “Godinski as dove! I like that, Manny. That’s good. Speaking factually though, we know Godinski liked being surrounded by yes-men. Hanbury could have handled that. But not Anderson. As you’d expect, Godinski pulled rank. Anderson got sentenced to silence and meditation. What happened next? You guessed it…diplomatic drift. Hit him like a ton of bricks. For months on end, nearly a year in fact, he arrived at the embassy every day around noon with a head like a football, then knocked off in the early afternoon, heading straight back to the club. A textbook case. His zeal took him down for the count in Manila. He’s still down. Turns out his mandate was nothing more than a loose remark by someone in accounting that Ambassador Godinski had double-counted the cost of a couple of lunches.”

  The trade commissioner shakes his head. He doesn’t show it – Manny Stepney never shows much of himself – but he enjoys Heywood’s stories. Heywood has a knack for making the Service sound Gothic. And the stories are better, more detailed, now that Heywood is the Investitures priest. Heywood, Stepney knows, is incapable of forgetting an anecdote about failure. He reflects on what it must be like to fail and can’t help thinking of Hanbury in Berlin.

  Heywood’s thoughts have been leading in that direction also. Is now a good time to begin Berlin? No, the Investitures priest decides, not yet. He doesn’t like to start Berlin too quickly, not on lazy summer afternoons. The Berlin file is flimsy. It hasn’t that much overt failure in it, not like Manila. Hanbury was on his own in Berlin, and gossip from fellow travellers, the colour commentary from the sidelines, is missing. The Berlin file, Heywood sometimes thinks, is a Teutonic file – colourless and blunt – and if deployed ineptly it would stop a conversation, not promote it. Stick to Manila for a while. Dredge up one more Godinski tale.

  The Investitures priest raises his gaze towards the tree tops and says, “The question has been asked, Manny, why Godinski didn’t save his new head of chancery. Why didn’t he notice that Anderson was suffering from diplomatic drift?” Stepney lifts his glass of whiskey, tilts his head back, finishes it and sits forward, leaning over the porch railing, staring into the forest in the pose of a hunting dog. Stepney smells game. “The point to make about Godinski,” says Heywood, “is that he tuned out long before Anderson arrived. The ambassador went to work all right, but mostly to do crossword puzzles. He went out for lunch early so that he could get back early to play cards with the clerks on their break. He was generally sullen, except when he played cribbage. Every point he pegged was a triumph. He’d show his old spark then. It seemed cribbage allowed him to relive the negotiations of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. That’s where he made his reputation.”

  “Bad for business, that treaty,” remarks the trade commissioner gravely. “Cost us reactor sales all over the world.” He continues peering dolefully into the distance.

  Heywood knits his brows together, as if he’s an oracle now, ready to predict chaos. “Once, a delegation of prairie school-board types was visiting Manila. Godinski loathed receptions, but since one of the visitors was a childhood chum from Wawanesa, he felt compelled to have one. The usual mix attended: expats on World Bank contracts, diplomats from second-tier countries, local heavies keen on a few free drinks. The residence was full. It was a wonderful place, you know, a sweeping driveway lined with blooming hibiscus, stately steps up to a grand entrance, marbled hallways, flowering plants everywhere, the air filled with the busy sounds of the tropics. Someone told me that arriving at that house was like entering paradise.”

  Heywood leans far back. Paradise. He reflects on it. For him paradise is more than a stately mansion. For him, it’s a state of mind. That’s what the Service is – his paradise. Each movement of the whisky tumbler to his lips quickens a feeling of heavenly affection. Anderson, Godinski, Hanbury, all souls with blemishes. He loves them like kin. On afternoons like this, love cascades around inside Irving Heywood. He is overwhelmed by love for Hannah too. With her help he did a decent job, he believes, spread over several continents, to raise four precocious sons.

  He clears his throat to shake off the emotions. “Back to Godinski. The educational administrators from Medicine Hat, Fort Qu’Appelle, Neepawa, Wawanesa – places like that – flew out of Calgary just as a blizzard was coming on. You can guess they were overwhelmed by Manila. It’s a fair distance from snowdrifts up to your kitchen windows at minus forty to Godinski’s palace in the tropics. The party started well enough. The Canadians liked the moist floral air. Everyone else liked Godinski’s free booze. But half way through Godinski commandeers his third secretary to play cards. This goes on for an hour. The visitors from western Canada are embarrassed, the Filipinos amused. At the end, slurring, Godinski tells the third secretary to get these damned people the hell outta here! You can imagine the shuffling that started towards the front door. By the way, he seldom lost at cribbage. He’d just taken the poor kid for ten bucks.” The Investitures priest inhales deeply through his nostrils, though it’s unclear whether he’s signaling admiration or disgust.

  “There’s a saying,” Stepney interjects. “It takes three generations to make a gentleman. I bet Godinski’s old man was an immigrant, straight from some place like Minsk.” In a fading voice he adds, “Let’s hope he’s got a son.” Heywood raises his ferocious eyebrows and breaks into a grating laugh, which clashes with the stillness of the forest. He appreciates how Stepney sometimes puts things. Coming out of a slouch, he takes the thermos with chilled whisky and reaches over to Stepney who, glass in hand, responds with a practised sideways swing. Heywood pours a generous amount, then treats himself. “Speaking of sons,” he says, “Lecurier holds the record in that department. I asked him about it once. We were on a jaunt through Europe to lobby for our position on North Atlantic fish. Paterfamilias globalis. That’s what he called himself. He always became animated when asked him about his children. He was fond of all of the ones he knew. There were plenty and their skin colour varied.”

  Heywood thinks of his own children. He waited patiently in his youth for someone to come along to match his New Brunswick genes and Hannah, British-born, was the one. He met her during his first assignment, in Lagos, in the Stepney drawing room. Stepney’s wife Laura sang with Hannah in a local Anglican choir. She brought Irving and Hannah together. As happens to foreigners in far-away plac
es, a romance developed, and quickly led to marriage. Manny was Irving’s best man and Laura was Hannah’s maid of honour. Hannah became the type of wife who once sustained the British Empire: unfailingly cheerful, an imaginative cook, an enthusiastic gardener, lively at receptions. In short, a perfect mate for an ambitious Service man. Everyone instinctively flocked around Hannah at parties. Irving usually stood around helplessly for a while – a backwoodsman’s habit he never shook – until the alcohol took hold. At a certain moment, expertly chosen by Hannah, when he was ripe, she’d throw him an opening and Irving would barrel forward with his stories. Their success on the cocktail circuits had no limits, save those posed by Heywood’s liver.

  Now that the reminiscing has gotten around to Lecurier and his children, Heywood’s pride surges over his own offspring. He is thinking that he, also, is a paterfamilias. Unlike Lecurier however, his boys are legal. Apart from number three, a problem child, they take after Hannah. A curious coincidence, Heywood sometimes mused, that all but number three were fathered in his favourite conservative position. In contrast, number three was the product of a wild night on a Cuban beach. They had been on vacation. A tempest was raging and nature’s violence carried him away. Perversely, he insisted on penetrating Hannah from behind as she, legs astride and feet firmly planted, leaned forward into the tearing wind. Number three had been restless and adversarial – a stormy boy – from the moment of his birth, perhaps from the moment of conception. Heywood always kept this speculation to himself, but he did occasionally think, if indeed undiscovered forces arising from the style and energy of the reproductive act determine personality, that all the world should marvel at Lecurier’s imagination, given his rambunctious brood.