The Coldest Case by Martin Walker (mobi reader android txt) 📕

Bruno protested as Balzac lathered his neck and jaw. Then Beau and Bella came up, rather more sedately, and Bruno set off past the chicken coop he’d helped to build and went to the stables to visit his horse, Hector. Bruno stroked his glossy neck and gave him a carrot he’d plucked from his garden and washed before leaving. All the ponies were gone, which meant Miranda was probably still out with the schoolgirls. Bruno could hear the sound of Pamela’s voice from the paddock, encouraging the novices to sit up straight and relax their hands as they trotted their horses around the circular fence.

He waved to Pamela and leaned on the fence to observe the riders, checking his watch. He was a little early. He, Pamela and Fabiola had arranged to give the horses their evening ride in good time before dinner. Pamela called out that Jack was in the office so Bruno strolled across, greeted the Englishman and put the bottle of Ortus on the desk before embracing him.

‘Good to see you, Bruno, and you, Balzac,’ Crimson said, bending to fondle the dog’s long ears. ‘I missed you both when I was away. It’s such a pleasure to have dogs in my life again, and it’s wonderful for the grandchildren. Growing up with dogs and horses is a great thing for the young.’

‘We humans have been domesticating dogs around here for thousands of years so we’ve all sort of grown up together,’ said Bruno. ‘How was your trip to Washington?’

‘The politicians over there are almost as weird as ours in England,’ Crimson replied with a bitter laugh. ‘I suppose every country has the right to go completely crazy once in a while and it’s now the turn of us Anglo-Saxons. It’s good to be back in the Périgord and I’ll look forward to trying that bottle of Ortus. Hortus deorum quo ortus es – if I remember my Latin that’s “risen from the gardens of the gods”.’

‘How was the conference?’

‘Interesting but somewhat frustrating. It’s thirty years since the Berlin Wall came down but our American friends are still sitting on a treasure trove of Stasi intelligence files that scholars think should be more widely shared. Our friend Jacqueline was particularly outspoken, as you might imagine, but without success.’

‘I thought you British and the Americans had always shared intelligence under that famous special relationship you talk about,’ Bruno said.

‘We share a great deal, along with the Canadians and Australians, but not everything. And this stuff is still quite sensitive. The Americans say, quite rightly, that they distributed a great deal of this archive – it’s called the Rosenholz dossier – to the relevant NATO partners. Along with the Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians we’ve been allowed to examine anything that the CIA says concerns us.’

‘But not the French?’ Bruno asked.

‘No, not the French, nor the Italians and Spaniards. It’s partly fear of leaks but as you may know there’s an old feud between the CIA and French intelligence that goes back to De Gaulle’s time. Did you ever hear of a man called Philippe de Vosjoli, the only French intelligence man who ever defected to the United States?’

Startled, Bruno raised his eyebrows and shook his head at the same time. This was news to him and the very thought of a French official ‘defecting’ to a NATO ally was extraordinary.

‘It’s all ancient history, back in the sixties, long before you were born, and it was all tied up with the Cuban missile crisis. De Vosjoli was the French intelligence liaison man at their Washington embassy with good contacts in Cuba and he got some of the intelligence that alerted the Americans to the missiles the Russians were installing. The Americans trusted him, and when de Vosjoli refused to obey orders to start spying on American nuclear technology, he was recalled to Paris. Fearing arrest or worse, he refused to go and the Americans gave him asylum,’ Jack said, reaching into a cupboard and bringing out a bottle of Bowmore and a couple of glasses.

He poured them each two fingers, added a splash of still mineral water and handed one to Bruno, saying, ‘Cheers.’ The two men chinked glasses and sipped appreciatively.

‘This Rosenholz dossier was the master list of all Stasi intelligence agents. Truckloads of files of index cards were burned after the Berlin Wall fell but Erich Mielke, the minister in charge of the Stasi, ordered microfilm copies made and kept them in his office. He sent one set of copies to the KGB liaison centre in Karlshorst and a year later, after the Berlin Wall came down, a defecting Soviet filing clerk sold them to the CIA in Warsaw, allegedly for sixty-five thousand dollars – probably the best deal the Americans made since they bought Manhattan island. There’s a lot of disinformation about this. Another theory says some very senior Stasi officials bought themselves immunity with the files.’

‘And these were the lists of all the foreign spies the Stasi had recruited? All over the world?’

‘That’s right, but even more than that. Some two hundred and eighty thousand files in all, mostly East Germans. Something like fifty thousand West Germans were in the files but only about a thousand of them were serious agents. We investigated just over a hundred British citizens who were named in the files and nobody was ever prosecuted. Most of them were peace and anti-nuclear campaigners, well-meaning idealists whom the Stasi thought might be useful. Some of the stuff was clearly invented or exaggerated, probably so that the real Stasi agents could inflate their claims for expenses. The Stasi’s selection control was pitiful, always after quantity rather than quality. But some of the people recruited in Germany and Scandinavia and at NATO were very important indeed.’

‘And France?’ Bruno enquired, finishing his glass of Scotch and shaking his head when Jack offered a refill.

‘Who knows? The CIA isn’t telling. Back in 2003 they claim they gave the Germans the full archive – nearly four hundred compact