The Other Side of Silence

I went into the bathroom for a pee and saw my forgotten jacket was still hanging on the back of the door where I’d left it on the night I’d come from Julia Rose’s house in La Turbie. That seemed a long time ago now. Because the early morning air was cool, I put the jacket on. When I came out of the bathroom Hennig was pacing up and down like a neurotic bear, with another drink in his hand. There were even tears on his cheeks and I almost felt sorry for him, he looked so like the way I felt myself.

“It’s a pity,” he said. “I really would have liked to get even with that damn woman myself. I feel really angry about it. Jesus, I think she affected me much more than I realized.”

I shrugged. “Get used to it. I have.”

“No, really.” He put down his tumbler, picked up the hammer, and hefted it meaningfully for a moment before tossing it onto the sofa. “I think bashing her brains in would make me feel so much better. I don’t know how else a man is supposed to heal after something happens to him like that.”

“In this particular case, getting away alive is the best revenge, don’t you think?”

“Says you. Me, I think I’d prefer to bash in her brains. But slowly, you know. I’d like to take the time to enjoy it. One blow a minute.”

“You’re just saying that. And you think it will be sweet. But take it from one who knows. It isn’t. It never is.”

“What are you? Hamlet? Look, Gunther, don’t try to handle me. I know what I want, okay?”

“Then it’s just as well she’s not here, I guess.”

“It makes no difference,” he said. “One day I will catch up with her and I’ll pay her back.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. She’ll walk into a hotel room and I’ll be there, waiting behind the door, with a garrote in my hand.”

I shrugged. “Have it your own way.”

“You really don’t feel the same? She betrayed you. She played you like a hand of cards. Believe me, if anyone should want to kill her, it’s you, Gunther.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“As a matter of interest, what were your orders, Hennig? Just to help discredit Roger Hollis, I suppose.”

“That’s right. It was a good operation, too. And it would have worked but for Anne French. She’s got a mad streak, don’t you think? Either that or the woman is made of steel. Probably both.”

“Of course, it’s perfectly conceivable that it wasn’t Anne who betrayed you, but Mielke and Wolf. That the whole operation was really meant to put Roger Hollis back in good odor with his Whitehall masters. That she was told to do it from the outset.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you? I’m afraid I’ve formed the opinion that she was always meant to betray your operation. Yes, from the very beginning. That those were General Wolf’s orders. I’m afraid I really didn’t buy all that stuff about falling out of love with the Communist Party. It would certainly explain why Wolf picked her and not someone with family back in the GDR, who could be threatened with reprisal. No one like that would ever have done what she did.”

But Hennig wasn’t having any of it. I didn’t blame him; it sounded madly convoluted to me, too. Just madly convoluted enough to be the kind of thing that people in the secret services might actually think of.

“Nonsense,” he said. “What you’re saying-there’s no way I wouldn’t have known about a plan like that. Mielke and Wolf would certainly have said something.”

“Why? Because you’re that important? Nonsense. The whole operation worked all the better if you were ignorant of it. Anne’s betrayal now puts Hollis in the clear. And forever after, probably. Which can only mean MI5’s deputy director was Moscow’s man all along and will remain so. That Othello was never meant to discredit Hollis but actually to achieve the exact opposite.”

“No, it was Anne who betrayed me. Not them. Wolf isn’t that clever. Nobody is.” He clenched his fists and walked around the room cursing Anne and swearing to a whole variety of ugly revenges on her. I almost felt sorry for him. And in a way for her, too.

“Kill the goldfish in the pond or burn the house down if it makes you feel any better,” I said.

“What would be the point of that? It’s not hers. It’s rented. She’s not coming back here. If I thought there was even half a chance of that happening, I’d wait here and burn the house down with her in it.”

“You know, there’s a difference between revenge and vengeance,” I said, putting my hand in my jacket pocket.

“Is there? I can’t say I appreciate the difference very much, or even care.”

“Revenge is personal. An act of passion. An injury is revenged. But I think vengeance is about justice. That’s something very different. Crimes are avenged, don’t you think so?”

“Does it matter which it is when you’re the one being shot?”

“Probably not,” I said, and brought my hand out of my pocket. There was a gun in it. Julia Rose’s Beretta 418. The one that had killed my friend Antimo Spinola.

“That’s the second time you’ve pointed a gun at me,” he said. “There better not be a third, Gunther. What’s the idea this time?”