"London Match" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

7

It was still early when I left Lange and walked north to the Tiergarten and what is the most mysterious part of the present-day city of Berlin. The park was empty, its grass brown and dead and glazed with frost. The trees were bare, like scratchy doodles upon the low grey sky. Rising from behind the trees, like a gilt-tipped rocket set for launching, the Siegessäule column. Its winged Victoria – which Berliners call 'golden Elsie' – celebrates the last war that Germany won, some hundred and ten years ago.

And as you turn the corner, you see them – stranded along the edge of the Tiergarten like the gigantic hulks of a rusting battlefleet. They are the embassy buildings that until 1945 made this 'diplomatic quarter' the centre of Berlin 's most exclusive and extravagant social life – Berlin is not the capital of West Germany; Bonn enjoys that distinction. So these roofless, derelict buildings standing on the sacrosanct foreign ground of other governments have been left untouched for almost forty years.

The ruined embassies had always fascinated me, ever since we had trespassed there to play dangerous games in my school days. There was the window from which Werner launched his model glider and fell thirty feet into the stinging nettles. Through the broken shell I could see the rafters I'd climbed as a dare and won from a boy named Binder one out of his coveted collection of forbidden Nazi badges. The roof was high and the rafters rickety. I looked at the dangers now and shuddered. I looked at many such previously encountered dangers now and shuddered; that's why I was no longer suitable for employment as a field agent.

I went round the Diplomatenviertel not once but twice. I wanted to be quite sure that I was being followed; it's so easy to become paranoid. He was not a real professional; he wasn't quick enough, for one thing, and what professional would wear a distinctive beard and short tartan-patterned coat? He was carrying a large brown-paper parcel, trying to look like someone taking a Christmas present across town, but he wasn't delivering a present to somewhere across town; he was following me; there was no doubt about that. I stopped and peered up at the old Italian Embassy. Some rooms at the back seemed to be occupied, and I wondered who would live in such a place. The bearded man stopped and seemed to wonder too.

My decision to visit Lange this morning was a spontaneous one, so my follower must have been with me since I left Tante Lisl's before breakfast, and that meant he'd probably been outside the hotel all night. All night on Christmas Eve; where do you find such dedication these days? From Tante Lisl's he must have used a car, otherwise I would have spotted him earlier. He'd have found it easy enough to anticipate the speed and direction of a solitary walker in the almost empty streets. I should have noticed the car right from the start. I was becoming too old and too careless. He stopped again; he must have guessed he'd been spotted, but he was still sticking to the book, ducking out of sight and keeping his distance. He was inexpert but diligent. It was easy to guess that he'd hoped to do the whole job from inside a car, hence the brightly coloured car coat, but now that I'd come poking about in the Tiergarten, he'd had to get out of the car and earn his money. Now he was conspicuous, especially with that big parcel under his arm.

I looked back. I couldn't see his car but he hadn't had many alternatives about where to leave it. I walked west, uncertainly changing direction but heading southward enough to keep him hoping that I would return to where he'd left the car. Was he alone? I wondered. Surely no professional would try to tail a suspect without any assistance whatsoever. But it was Christmas and perhaps all he had to do was to report my movements. He wasn't a private eye; whatever their shortcomings, they can all follow an errant husband and stay out of sight. And if he wasn't a KGB man and he wasn't a private eye, what was left? One of our own people from the Berlin Field Unit? Even my advanced paranoia couldn't believe that one of those lazy bastards could be persuaded into action on Christmas Day. Now I strolled back towards the park. I stopped to examine the trunk of a tree where someone had carved a hammer and sickle that was bent to become a swastika. I used the chance to watch him out of the corner of my eye. The parcel slipped from his grasp and he took his time about picking it up. He was right-handed; well, that was a useful thing to bear in mind.

I paused again at the little river in the park. But today the famous Berliner Luft was too cold for water to survive in. There were two people skating on the ice. A man and a woman, elderly judging by their stately posture and the way they skated side by side, long overcoats, flowing scarfs, and heads held high, like an illustration from some nineteenth-century magazine.

I hurried along the path as if suddenly remembering an appointment. Then I stooped down to hide. It wouldn't have worked with anyone more experienced, so it was really a test of his expertise. I still had no measure of him and couldn't guess what his motives might be. As it was, he walked right into it. That is to say, he walked right into me. It was the hurrying that did it; it often stampedes the pursuer into incautious and impulsive actions. That was how Hannibal won the Battle of Lake Trasimene after crossing the Apennines. All it needed was that sudden dash towards Rome to make Flaminius chase after him and blunder right into his ambush. Hannibal would probably have had the makings of a good field agent.

'Don't move,' I said. I had him from behind, my arm round his throat and the other twisting hell out of his right arm while he was still looking for me far down the path. He grunted. I was holding his neck too tight. 'I'm going to release you,' I said, 'but if you move carelessly after that, I'll have to really hurt you. You understand, don't you?'

He still didn't answer properly so I relaxed my hold on his throat a bit more to let him breathe. When I let him go he bent double and I thought he was going to collapse on me. I looked at him with surprise. The arm seam of his coat was torn and his hat was knocked off. He was making terrible noises. I suppose I'd grabbed him too tightly; I was out of practice. But he shouldn't have been gasping; a young man like him, well under thirty, should have been in better physical shape. Still bent over he clutched his middle, taking very deep breaths.

'Who the hell are you?' I said.

'We'll ask the questions, Mr Samson!' There was another of them, a slim bespectacled man in a flashy brown-suede overcoat with fur collar. He was holding a gun and not bothering too much about who saw it. 'Hands behind your back, Samson. You know how these things are done.' I cursed my stupid overconfidence. I should have guessed that such clumsiness as the bearded man displayed was all part of the trick. They'd now made me play Flaminius to their Hannibal.

The bearded one – still gasping for breath – rubbed me down quickly and thoroughly and said, 'He has nothing.'

'No gun, Samson? This is not the expert we've heard so much about. You're getting old and careless.'

I didn't answer. He was right. I'd chosen not to go to Lange with a gun under my arm because it would have made it harder to deny my connection with London Central.

'Here he comes,' said the man. 'It took him long enough, didn't it.' He was watching a dented panel truck trundling over the brown grass. The skaters were nowhere to be seen now: they were all part of the same team sent to get me.

The rear doors of the van opened to reveal a gleaming wheel chair. They pushed me up onto the chair and strapped my ankles and neck to the steel framework. Then they blindfolded me as the van drove away. It was all over in five minutes.

The roads were empty. The journey took no more than twenty minutes. The blindfold was good enough to prevent me seeing where I was, but I was bumped up steps and the gates of an elevator were carelessly slammed against my arm.

They unstrapped me and locked me in a room. I was left to remove my own blindfold, not so easy when one's arms are cuffed behind one's back. It was impossible not to admire their efficiency and to deplore my own unpreparedness. There was no doubt where they'd brought me: I was in East Berlin, just a few minutes' walk from Checkpoint Charlie. But from this side of the Wall, it's a long walk back.

There were two windows. It was an anteroom – really a place where people waited. But the people who waited here had to have bars on the windows and heavy locks on the doors, and the window glass was frosted to make it difficult to see out. At the top of each window there was a small ventilation panel. I could reach that far only by putting a stool on the tabletop. With hands cuffed behind me I almost toppled as I scrambled up. Now through the narrow gap – the panel opened only as far as the bars permitted – I could see across the city. There was no movement: no cars, no trucks, no people. I recognized the massive USSR Embassy in the Linden from the shape of the roof. Nearby there was the last remaining section of the Adlon Hotel; a few cramped rooms in the rear that in the thirties were used only for the personal servants of the hotel's clients. And there were the parking lot and the hillock that marked the site of the Führerbunker where Hitler had fought his last battles against marriage and the Red Army and, defeated by both Venus and Mars, blew out his troubled brains. Now I knew where I was: this was Hermann Goring's old Air Ministry, one of the few examples of Nazi architecture to escape both Anglo-American bombers and Soviet planners.

I went back to the hard wooden chair and sat down. It was Christmas Day – not a festival that any sincere Communist cares to celebrate, but there were enough insincere ones to empty the building. It was silent except for the occasional, distant sounds of a slammed door or the hum of the lift. I looked round the room: no books or papers, the only printed item a brightly coloured poster that was a part of the Kremlin's contribution to the anti-nuke debate. But the missile to be banned was labelled 'NATO'. There was no mention of Russian missiles – just a handsome young Communist and a snarling GI. There was a second door in the room. It had a glass panel over which had been stuck patterned translucent paper. Such paper was commonly used in the East Bloc where frosted glass was sometimes in short supply. Standing with my back to the door I was able to peel a little of it back from the corner. A sticky compound remained on the glass, but I scratched it away with my fingernail.

By resting my face close against the glass it was possible to see into the next room. There were two people there, a man and a woman. Both wore white linen: a doctor and nurse. The woman was about forty; over her greying hair she wore a small starched cap. The man was younger, twenty-five or so. His white jacket was unbuttoned and there was a stain on the lapel that might have been blood. A stethoscope hung from his neck. He stood by the door writing in a small notebook. He consulted his wristwatch and then wrote more. The nurse was leaning against a two-tier bunk bed looking at something bundled there on the lower bed. She looked back to catch the doctor's eye. He looked up from his writing and she shook her head. The movement was almost imperceptible, as if she'd been shaking her head all morning. She was Russian, I had no doubt of that. She had the fiat features, narrowed eyes, and pale colouring that are typical of people from Russia 's eastern Arctic. She turned back to the bundle of clothes and touched it tenderly. It was too small to be a person – except a very small person. She leaned closer, fussing in the way that mothers do when babies sleep face down. But this was too big for a baby. She moved a trifle. It was a child – a red woolly striped hat had slipped from its head. Swaddled in thick blankets an elbow protruded from between. A yellow sleeve – an anorak. And shiny boots. Jesus Christ, they had Billy! Little Billy. Here in Berlin.

The scene wobbled, my pulse raced, and my throat was suddenly dry. Only by steadying myself against the wall was I able to prevent myself fainting. Billy! Billy! Billy! I leaned close to the peephole again. The nurse moved away to get a small enamel tray from the table. She carried it carefully to the sink and took from it a hypodermic syringe. She put the needle into a glass of pink-coloured liquid. I felt ill. No matter how much my brain told me to remain calm, my emotions took over. Now I knew why men with wives and families were so seldom used as field agents.

They are watching, they are watching you, now, at this moment, I told myself for the hundredth time. This is all a well-prepared act to disorient you and soften you up for what comes next. But it didn't help much. I could think of nothing except my son and what these bastards might do to him. Surely to God, Fiona knows about this. Surely she would stop them hurting her own son. But suppose Fiona doesn't know?

There was the sudden noise of a key being inserted into the lock. Someone was entering from the corridor. There was enough time for me to get back to the bench and sit down. There was enough time for me to look relaxed and unconcerned, but I'm not sure I managed that.

'Herr Samson!' We knew each other. He was a great bull of a man, about fifty years old, with a big peasant frame upon which years of manual labour had layered hard muscle. His skull shone through close-cropped hair. His large nose was surmounted by a big broad forehead. Pavel Moskvin. The London Central computer described him as a KGB 'political adviser'. That could mean anything. Political advisers were sometimes the brightest of bright graduates, multilingual polymaths who could quote Groucho as readily as Karl Marx. Such men used a stretch with the KGB as a finishing school. But Moskvin was long past all that. I had him marked down as the sort of untalented plodder who'd graduated from the factory floor having discovered that the Party always looks after its own. The USSR was filled with men like him; their unthinking loyalty was what held the whole creaky system together.

'Where is my wife?' I asked him. It wasn't a textbook opening or anything that London Central would have approved, but I knew they'd have me on a tape and there seemed a good chance that Fiona would be monitoring the dialogue.

'Your wife? Why would you want to know that, Herr Samson,' said Moskvin mockingly. His German was awkward and ungram-matical but his manner said everything.

'My people know I'm here, Moskvin,' I said. They'll be putting out a red alert any time now.'

'Are you trying to frighten me?' he said. 'Your people know nothing, and they don't care. It is Christmas. You are all alone, Herr Samson, all alone. Your people in London will be eating pudding, watching your Queen speaking on television and getting drunk!'

'We'll see,' I muttered ominously, but his version of what London Central might be doing sounded only too likely.

'Why don't you behave sensibly, Samson?'

'For instance?'

There were footsteps in the corridor. He half turned towards the door, his head cocked to listen. The break in his attention gave me the chance I'd been praying for. With both hands cuffed behind me, I grasped the backrest of the chair. Then, with head bowed low to counter the weight, I twisted my body and with all my force heaved the chair in his direction.

It was too heavy for me. It hit him in the legs instead of on the side of the head, but the violence of it caught him unprepared so that he staggered back cursing and spluttering with rage.

He kicked the chair aside. 'I'll teach you…' he said and stepped forward to punch me. He didn't aim anywhere; he hit me as an angry drunk might pound a wall. But Moskvin was a heavyweight. His blows didn't have to be aimed; they hit like sledgehammers and I was slammed against the wall so hard that I lost my balance and slid to the floor. 'You crazy fool!' he growled and wiped his mouth with the reddened knuckles of his fist. 'If you want a fight I'll take you downstairs and kill you with my bare hands.'

Slowly I scrambled to my feet and he kicked the chair over to me again with the side of his boot. I sat down on it and closed my eyes. I had a terrible pain inside me, as though molten lead was pouring through my lungs.

When Moskvin spoke again, he'd recovered some of his former composure. 'Be sensible. Face the truth. Your wife has chosen to work with us of her own free will. Do you really believe that we are holding her captive? Is that what your bosses in London have told you? Forget it. She is one of us, Samson. She does not wish to return to the West; she will never go back there. Never.' He watched me carefully and I stared back at him. 'Do you want a cigarette?' he asked finally.

'No,' I said, although I needed one desperately. We both knew the way it went; you accept a cigarette, you say thank you, and the next thing you're chatting away and reaching for the writing paper, 'I don't smoke.'

He smiled. He knew all about me. With Fiona working for the KGB, there was little about me that they couldn't find out. The pain lessened a little as I shifted my position and controlled my breathing, but one of his punches seemed to have torn a ligament and the big trapezius muscle of my back sent sharp pains right up to my neck.

'Why make life miserable for both of you?' said Moskvin in what he obviously thought a friendly manner. His German was better now; perhaps this was a text he'd prepared and practised. 'While you are working for the German Stations Controller in London and your wife is here in Berlin, the two of you must be permanently unhappy.'

'What are you proposing?' I said. I tried not to look at the glass-panelled door but it was difficult. Moskvin watched me carefully. He knew I'd seen into the next room. His arrival was too prompt to be anything but a reaction from a man watching what I did. Yes, I could see it now; the camera was behind that damned anti-nuke poster. A circular patch of the lettering was dull – open-weave cloth through which a focused camera could see clearly.

'There would be nothing for you here, Samson. We know everything you could tell us.'

I nodded. Had they really given up hope of enrolling me, or was this some subtle way of trying to get me to prove I knew more than they thought. 'You're right,' I said.

'So why not an overseas posting?' said Moskvin. He had both hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, fidgeting with something metallic that clanked. When he brought his hands into view there were three clips of pistol ammunition in his ringers. He fiddled with them. When he saw me looking at him he said, 'Don't have any more of those stupid ideas, Samson. The gun is downstairs in my safe.' Lots of bullets; it was characteristic of this violent primitive.

'Overseas?'

'You know Washington; you like Americans.'

'Lots of people want to go to Washington,' I said to gain time. 'Who knows when a vacancy will come.'

Moskvin continued to play with the clips. ' Washington gossip says London Central will fill two vacancies in the next month or two. Two senior jobs – that's what our Washington office tells us.'

Through the blur of pain my memory said he was right: sickness and a promotion had created two unexpected vacancies in the Washington Embassy. I'd seen the signal on Bret's desk. I was senior enough to apply for either. 'No,' I said.

'Think about it,' said Moskvin. Under his silky voice I could hear the hatred and contempt that he was trying to hide.

'Or what?'

'No threats,' said Moskvin. 'But surely it would be more civilized?'

'More civilized than staying in London to undo some of the harm of my wife's treachery?'

'Be more sophisticated and less arrogant, Herr Samson. Can you really believe that your contribution to the work at London Central will make any difference?'

I shrugged – but it hurt.

'What are you trying to prove, Samson? We've got an operations file on you that's that thick.' He indicated with finger and thumb. 'And that's without all the dangerous tricks you've done undetected. How long can you go on trying to prove you're a field agent? Until you get yourself killed, is that it?'

'You wouldn't understand,' I said.

'Because I'm a desk man?' He almost lost control over his rage. 'Vanity, is that it? Prove yourself over and over again so you can be sure you're not a coward? Just as the repressed homosexual becomes a womanizer to prove he's really a man?' Was that some reference to his ex-colleague Stinnes? If it was, he gave no further evidence of it. He put away his playthings and stood, hands on hips, his long black greatcoat open to reveal an ill-fitting grey suit and dark roll-neck sweater. He looked like someone who'd dressed in response to a fire alarm.

'Start life again, Herr Samson. Forget the pain of the past.' He saw me glance towards the door. 'What do I have to do to persuade you?' He smiled and I could see the sadistic glee in his face. He knew I'd seen into the next room.

'I'll think about it,' I told him. Was Billy still there, I wondered? It was torture carrying on this conversation.

'Don't think about it,' said Moskvin softly. His voice rose to a shout as he added, 'Do it!'

'I said I'd think about it.'

'Then think about this too,' he yelled. He snatched the door open and stood in the doorway. With hands cuffed, I'd stand no chance against him – he'd already proved that. But I pushed close to see over his shoulder.

'Billy!' I called but the bundled figure made no response. 'Why drug the child?' I said. I couldn't keep the weariness and defeat from my voice. The doctor and nurse had gone. Even the disinfectant, the hypodermic and the enamel tray had gone. 'Where's the doctor?' I asked.

'Doctor?' said Moskvin. 'What doctor? Are you mad?' He went striding across the room to the bunk bed. 'Think about this, Samson,' he yelled over his shoulder. He raised his arm, his massive fist clenched over the bed.

'No, don't!' It was a plea now, the fight had gone out of me. But he paid no heed to my call. His punch almost broke the wooden frame of the bed, with such force did it descend. The terrible blow swept everything across the room: blankets, the pathetic wollen hat, the boots and anorak. It all clattered to the floor in a heap.

Moskvin laughed. 'What did you think, Samson? Did you think we had your son in here?' Now I could see that these were not Billy's clothes: just clothes like them.

I leaned against the wall. I felt the bile rising in my throat. I closed my lips tight, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me throw up. But it was not possible. I leaned forward and vomited my breakfast across the floor along with a generous measure of Mrs Koby's homemade wine.

Moskvin really laughed then. It was the first spontaneous human reaction I'd ever seen from him. He unlocked my handcuffs. 'We'll get a car and take you back to the West, Samson. Where would you like to go, Frau Hennig's hotel?'

I nodded and used a handkerchief to wipe my face and my clothes. The sweet-sour smell of the vomit was in my nostrils.

'You'll need to wash and change,' said Moskvin. 'But you just remember this, clever Mr Field Agent: any time we want you, we'll pick you up as easily as we did today. And not just you, Samson; your children, your mother, your friend Volkmann… any time we want you. You remember that, my friend.' He laughed again. I could hear him laughing as he marched off down the corridor and shouted for the driver. I looked back at the TV monitor. Was Fiona watching? And did she feel proud of herself?

When I got back to Tante Lisl's I took a long hot bath and examined my cuts and bruises. Then I changed my clothes to take Lisl to the Volkmanns' for what we both thought was to be a quiet sit-down meal. We were wrong.

It was a ferocious event; the sort of frantic party you find only in Berlin and New York. The hi-fi was playing 'Hello, Dolly!' as I went in, and the guests were in that restrained sort of fancy dress that provides a chance to wear jewellery and expensive hair-dos. It was noisy and crowded and the air was blue with tobacco smoke and there was the fragrance of French perfumes and Havana cigars.

Tante Lisl showed little surprise at the mad scene to which I'd brought her. She'd brought up little Werner after his parents died, and she felt for him that compassionate condescension that motherhood brings. She sat in the corner on the thronelike chair that Werner had thoughtfully placed there for her. She sipped her champagne and surveyed the antics of the guests with a wry superiority, like a tribal chief watching the sort of ceremonial dances that end in human sacrifice. She'd prepared carefully for the party: false eyelashes and real pearls; Tante Lisl's ultimate accolade.

I went to the buffet table in the dining room to assemble a plate of food for her. The room, like every other room in the apartment, was crowded. In front of me there was a tall thin Mephistopheles. He was engaged in earnest conversation with a man in a white-silk roll-neck sweater. He said in uncertain English, 'We Germans are so very like you Americans! That's why there is this constant friction. Both our countrymen respond to ideology, both seek always to improve the world, and both often want to improve it by means of military crusades.'

'And both like clean toilets,' said the American in the roll-neck sweater. ' Germany is the only goddamned country in Europe that doesn't have filthy bathrooms.'

'Anal oriented, we psychiatrists say,' Mephistopheles told him. 'In other countries people just want to get in there, do what has to be done, and get out again as soon as possible. But you Americans and we Germans like to have toilets we can spend time in. One glance in any of these home-improvement magazines will confirm that.'

A movement of the crowd around the buffet allowed me to push forward to the table near the window and reach the stack of empty plates and silverware. I looked round me. Only in Berlin would they have a party like this in daylight. Outside it was gloomy, but to the west there was even a little sunlight breaking through the clouds. The food was disorienting too. It was not exactly what I'd think of as Christmas Day lunch, but it was a magnificent display of luxuries. Although a great deal had already been eaten, new plates of food kept appearing, brought by waitresses in neat black dresses and fancy lace aprons. This was a Fresserei, a feast where people gobble like animals. There were lobster tails in mayonnaise and crab claws in wine sauce. There was caviar and cold salmon, foie gras with truffles, and a dozen types of sliced sausage.

'There's blood on your face,' said a woman with diamond-studded spectacles, reaching past me to get more Leberwurst and potato salad. 'Naughty boy. You look as if you'd been fighting.'

'I have,' I said. 'I found Santa Claus in my sitting room helping himself to my whisky.' In the Tiergarten the bearded man's sleeve buttons had cut my cheek, and when I dabbed the place, I found it had been bleeding again.

The diamond spectacles discovered a dish of smoked eel garnished with jelly. Uttering a whoop of joy she heaped her plate with eel and black bread and moved away.

I put a selection of food onto two plates and, balancing them carefully, moved off through the crowd. Enough space had been cleared in the centre of the floor for a dozen or more people to dance, but they had to hug really close. Berliners give themselves wholeheartedly to everything they do: Berlin opera and concert audiences cheer, boo, jeer or applaud with a mad tenacity unknown elsewhere. And so it was with parties; they sang, they danced, they gobbled and guzzled, hugging, arguing and laughing as if this party were the final expression of everything they'd ever lived for.

A very handsome young black man, dressed in the shiny silk shorts and brightly coloured singlet of a boxer – and with gloves suspended from his neck in case anyone missed the point – was talking to Zena Volkmann, his hostess, while both were picking at one plate of food.

Zena Volkmann was wearing glittering gold pants and a close-fitting black shirt upon which a heavy gold necklace and a gold flower brooch showed to good effect, as did her figure. Her face was still tanned dark from her recent trip to Mexico and her jet-black hair was loose and long enough to fall over her shoulders. She saw me and waved a fork.

'Hello, Zena,' I said. 'Where's Werner?'

'I sent him to borrow ice from the people downstairs,' she answered. And immediately turned back to her companion, saying, 'Go on with what you were saying.'

I saw other people I knew. In the corner there was Axel Mauser who'd been at school with me and Werner. He was wearing a beautifully tailored white-silk jacket with black pants, bow tie and frilly shirt. He was talking to a woman in a silver sheath dress and waving his hands as he always did when telling a story. Tante Lisl's here,' I told him as I went past. 'She'd love you to say hello, Axel.'

'Hello, you old bastard,' said Axel, getting me into focus. 'You look terrible. Still up to your tricks?'

'Just say hello,' I said. 'She'll be hurt if you forget her.'

'Okay, Bernd, I won't forget. You know my wife, don't you?'

I said hello. I hadn't recognized the woman in the silver dress as Axel's wife. Every other time I'd seen her she'd been in a grimy apron with her hands in the sink.

By the time I took the plates of food, cutlery, and black bread to Lisl, I was too late. Old Lothar Koch had already brought a plate for her. He was sitting beside her, embarrassed perhaps to see her here and explaining his sudden recovery from the influenza that had prevented him dining with her the previous evening. Koch was a shrunken little man in his middle eighties. His ancient evening suit was far too big for him, but he'd long ago declared that his life expectancy precluded him wasting money on new clothes. I said hello to him. 'Miracle drugs,' said Lothar Koch to me and to Lisl and to the world at large. 'I was at death's door last night, Bernd. I was just telling Frau Hennig the same thing.' I called her 'Lisl' and he called her 'Lisl', but when he talked to me about her she had to be 'Frau Hennig', even when she was sitting there with us. He was like that. He wiped his large nose on a crisp linen handkerchief.

I decided to abandon both plates of food. What I really needed was a drink. I joined a big crowd at the table where an overworked waitress was dispensing champagne.

'That's a bloody good costume,' remarked a very young sheriff doffing his ten-gallon hat to a man dressed as a Berlin cop. But the man dressed as the cop was not amused. He was a Berlin cop, desperately trying to find someone who'd left a light-blue Audi blocking the entrance to the underground garage.

'Cocktails to the right, champagne to the left,' said a waitress trying to disperse the crowd.

I moved forward and got a bit nearer to the drinks. In front of me there was an elderly architecture lecturer talking with a delicate-looking female student. I knew them both as people I'd met with the Volkmanns. The lecturer was saying '… leaving politics to one side, Hitler's plans for a new Berlin were superb.'

'Really,' said the pale girl; she was a history student. 'I think the plans were grotesque.'

The Anhalter and Potsdam railway stations were to be rebuilt to the south of Tempelhof so that the centre of the city could have an avenue three miles long. Palaces, magnificent office buildings, and a huge triumphal arch. On the northern side there was to be a meeting hall with a dome eight hundred and twenty-five feet across with space inside for one hundred and fifty thousand people.'

'I know. I went to your lectures about it,' said the girl in a bored voice. 'Afterwards I went to the library. Did you know that the only part of Hitler's plan ever put into effect was the planting of deciduous trees in the Tiergarten? And that only restored the old mixed forest that Frederick the Great had felled to help pay for the Silesian Wars.'

The lecturer seemed not to have heard. He said, 'City planning needs firm central government. The way things are going, we'll never see a properly planned town anywhere.'

'Thank God for that,' said the bored girl. She picked up two glasses of champagne and moved away. He recognized me and smiled.

As soon as I'd got my champagne I began looking for somewhere to sit. Then I saw Werner. He was standing in the doorway that led to his bedroom. He was looking harassed. I went across. 'Quite a party, Werner,' I said in admiration. 'I was expecting a small sit-down for eight or ten.'

He ushered me into the bedroom. Now I saw how enough space had been cleared for the dancing. Furniture was packed into the bedroom so that it was piled almost to the ceiling. There was only just space enough for Werner and me to stand. He closed the bedroom door.

'I just have to have a few minutes to myself,' he explained. 'Zena says we need more ice, but we've got tons of ice!'

'Well, it's a hell of a spread, Werner. I saw Axel… Axel Mauser dressed up like I'd never believe. Is he still working for the police?'

'Axel's wife got a big promotion in AEG. She's some kind of executive now and they're moving out of that lousy apartment in Märkisches Viertel to a place near the forest in Hermsdorf.'

'You'd better give Tante Lisl a kiss and a formal greeting,' I said. 'She keeps asking where you are. In her day, the host and hostess stood at the door and shook hands with everyone as they were announced.'

'Zena loves this sort of party,' said Werner, 'but it's too noisy for me. I come and hide. I don't know half those people out there. Would you believe that?' He wrung his hands and said, 'Did you go and see Lange?' He straightened some of the dining-room chairs that were stacked one upon the other. Then he looked at me, 'Are you all right?'

'I phoned him and went across there this morning.'

Werner nodded mournfully. 'He's still the same, isn't he? Still bad-tempered. Remember how he used to shout at us when we were kids?' Werner wasn't looking at me. Stuck under the seats of the dining chairs there were manufacturers' labels. Werner suddenly began reading one as if deeply interested in the dates and codes.

'I didn't realize how much he hates Bret Rensselaer,' I said. 'Lange still blames Bret for his having to leave the Department.'

Werner abandoned his study of the label and gave me a little smile that showed no sympathy for Lange. 'He only says that because he's been on the shelf ever since. When Lange resigned from the Department he thought he was going to get a wonderful job somewhere else and go back and show your dad and all the rest of them what a big success he was.¹

'I don't know what he lives on,' I said.

'His wife inherited her parents' apartment in Munich. They lease it out and live on the income from it.'

'I was followed this morning, Werner,' I said. I drank the rest of my champagne. What I needed was something stronger.

He looked up sharply and raised his eyebrows. I told him about the bearded man and the way I'd been kidnapped and held in East Berlin.

'My God!' said Werner. He went white. 'And then they released you?'

'I wasn't really worried,' I told him untruthfully. 'It was obviously just to throw a scare into me.'

'Perhaps taking a job in Washington would be the best course.'

'You've never worked in an embassy,' I reminded him. 'Those people live in a fantasy world… Ritz crackers, white wine and randy wives. I had six months of that; never again.'

'Do you think it was Fiona's idea? What was behind it?'

'I just can't decide,' I said.

'A doctor and a nurse… pretending they had your son… too bizarre for Fiona. It smells like Moscow.'

'I'd prefer to think that.'

'You'll report it, of course,' said Werner.

'I don't come out of it too well, do I?'

'You must report it, Bernie.'

'How did they get to hear about the vacancies coming up in Washington?' I said.

'The word gets round quickly,' said Werner cautiously. He guessed what I was going to say.

'You know who automatically gets first notice of any changes in Washington, don't you?' I said.

Werner came closer to where I was standing and lowered his voice. 'You're not getting some sort of obsession about Bret Rensselaer are you?' he asked.

'Obsession?'

'You keep on about him. First it was those code names… about how no agent ever had two names. And you try to persuade me that there is still a KGB man in London Central.'

'I've told you no more than facts,' I said.

'No one can argue with facts, Bernie. But the Bret Rensselaer role you're trying to write into this script of yours is not something that has emerged from calm and rational reasoning; it's personal.'

'I don't give a damn about Bret,' I said.

'You know that's not true, Bernie,' said. Werner in a sweet and reasonable voice. 'You went round to Lange knowing that he hates Bret. You wanted to hear someone say that Bret was some kind of monster who deliberately wrecked the early networks. You knew what Lange was going to say before you went; we've both heard all that rigmarole from him a hundred times. If you're trying to put a noose round Bret's neck, you'll need something a damn sight more reliable than Lange's gossip or news about vacancies in Washington. You try and prove Bret a bad security risk and you're going to make a fool of yourself.'

'Why would I want to do that?' I protested.

'There was a time when you suspected he was having an affair with Fiona…'

'I was wrong,' I said quickly. Werner looked up; I'd said it too damned quickly. 'There was no substance in that,' I added, more calmly this time.

'You resent Bret. No matter how irrational that might be, you resent him.'

'Why should I?'

'I don't know. He's rich and charming and something of a ladies' man. I resent him too; he's too damned smooth, and he has a cruel streak in him. But keep your head, Bernie.'

'I'll keep my head.'

Werner was not convinced. 'Bret has everything going for him. Bret is an Anglophile: everything British is wonderful. The British like hearing that kind of praise – it's exactly what they believe – and so Bret is very popular. You won't find it easy to move against him.'

'I've already discovered that,' I said. 'For all Silas Gaunt's caustic remarks and Dicky Cruyer's bitter envy of him, neither of them would be happy to see Bret facing a board of enquiry.'

'Bret's an old-fashioned US gentleman – honest and brave.'

'Is that the way you see him?'

'It's the way he is, Bernie. He's not KGB material. Promise me you'll think about what I'm telling you, Bernie. I don't give a damn about Bret. It's you I'm thinking of. You know that, don't you?'

'Sure I do, Werner. Thanks. But I'm not gunning for Bret. I just want to talk with Stinnes and get a few ends tidied away.'

'Did you wonder if the Stinnes defection might be a KGB stunt?'

'Yes, lots of times, but he's given us some good ones; not wonderful, but good,' I said. 'And now it looks like the Miller woman was murdered. She was a long-term agent, Werner. Would they really kill one of their own just to make Stinnes look kosher?'

'We haven't found her body yet,' said Werner.

'Leaving it inside the ambulance would make it too easy for us,' I said. But Werner was right: until we had an identified corpse, there was always the chance that she was alive.

Then what about the chances of Brahms Four being a KGB plant?'

I thought about it before answering. 'I don't think so.'

But Werner noticed my hesitation and followed it up. 'Did von Munte really need to be brought out of the East? He was an old man and so was his wife. How long before he'd be old enough to make one of those permitted visits to the West?'

'Don't be stupid, Werner. Officials with his sort of confidential information are not permitted to come West on visits, even if they live to be a hundred years old.'

'But suppose von Munte was a plant? Sent to give us dud information. You said Silas Gaunt was difficult and protective when you tried to question him. Suppose London Debriefing Centre have already detected that he's a KGB plant. Suppose they've lodged him with Silas Gaunt to keep him on ice and make sure he doesn't do any damage.'

'That would require a faith in the brilliance of the London Debriefing Centre staff that I just can't muster,' I said.

'That's what I mean, Bernie. You're determined to see it the way you want it.'