"Spy Sinker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

12

London. May 1983.

Fiona's defection – despite the way in which the Department made sure no word of it leaked to press or TV – caused a sensation amongst her immediate circle.

Of those working in the Department that day, Bret Rensselaer was the only person who knew the whole story of Fiona Samson's going. Temporarily assigned to him as a secretary, there was a nineteen-year-old blonde 'executive officer' called Gloria Kent. Bret had contrived to have this strikingly attractive trainee working with him, and her presence helped to straighten an ego bent after his wife's departure. Alone in Bret's office, it was Gloria who was the first to hear that Bernard Samson had been arrested in East Berlin. She was appalled.

Gloria Kent had had a schoolgirl crush on Bernard Samson ever since she had first seen him in the office. Perhaps her feelings showed on her face when she brought the bad news to Bret Rensselaer, for after a muttered curse he told her, 'Mr Samson will be all right.'

'Who will tell his wife?' said Gloria.

'Sit down,' said Bret. Gloria sat. Bret said, 'According to our latest information Mrs Samson is also in East Germany.'

'His car is on a meter and covered in parking tickets.'

Bret disregarded this complication. 'I don't want this to go all round the office, Miss Kent. I'm telling you because I will need you to work with me to allay fears and stop silly rumours.' He looked at her: she nodded. 'We will have to assume that Mrs Samson has defected, but I have no reason to believe that her husband was a party to her activities.'

'What will happen to her children?'

Bret nodded. Miss Kent was quick: that was one of the problems on Bret's mind. 'There is a nanny with them. I have been trying to phone Mrs Samson's sister, Tessa Kosinski – but there is no reply.'

'Do you want me to go and knock on the door?'

'No, we have people to do that kind of thing. Here's the phone number. Keep trying it. And the office number for her husband is in my leather notebook under Kosinski International Holdings. See if he knows where his wife might be. Don't tell him anything other than that both Samsons are delayed on duty overseas. I'm going to the Samsons' house. Ring me there and tell me what's happening. And tell the duty armourer I'm coming down to collect a gun.'

'Yes, sir.' She went back to the office and started phoning. The idea of Fiona Samson defecting to the communists was too overwhelming for her to properly consider the consequences. Everyone in the Department had watched the steady rise of Fiona Samson. She was a paragon, one of those amazingly lucky people who never put a foot wrong. It was impossible not to envy her: a beautiful woman from a rich family who had left her mark on Oxford. Cordon Bleu cook, charming hostess, with two children and a wonderfully unconventional husband whom Gloria secretly coveted.

'Yes?' came a slurred and sleepy voice. 'Ahhhh. What's the time? Who's there?'

It was Tessa, who liked to sleep until eleven o'clock, awakened by the phone. Gloria told her that Mr and Mrs Samson had been unavoidably detained abroad. Would it be possible for Mrs Kosinski to go to the Samsons' house and take charge of the children? She tried to sound very casual.

It took a few moments to allay Tessa's fears that her sister had been hurt in an accident, but Gloria's charm was well up to the situation and Tessa soon decided that the best way to find out more was to go to the Samson house and ask Bret Rensselaer.

In record time Tessa bathed, put on her make-up, found the Chanel beret with camellia that she always wore when her hair was a mess, and threw a plaid car coat round her shoulders. She looked into the study where her husband was studying share prices on his computer and told him what little she knew.

'Both of them? What's it all about?' he said.

'Neither of them said anything about going anywhere,' said Tessa.

'They don't tell you everything.' George had grown used to the secretiveness of his wife's family.

'I don't like the sound of it,' said Tessa. 'I thought there was something odd going on when Fiona asked me to look after her fur coat.'

'Is there anything for lunch?' asked George.

'There's a home-made chicken stew in the freezer.'

'Is that still all right? It's dated 1981.'

'I spent hours on that stew,' said Tessa, aggrieved that such rare forays into domesticity were not appreciated.

By the time that Tessa arrived at the Samson house, two heavily built men who answered to Bret were rolling up the overalls they had worn to probe between the floorboards and investigate every inch of the dusty attic. Bret Rensselaer was standing before the fireplace wearing a black trenchcoat. He finished the coffee he was drinking.

He'd recently seen Tessa at Whit elands, and without preliminaries said, 'Mrs Samson has taken a trip to the East.' He put his cup on the mantelshelf. 'For the time being the children need someone to reassure them… The nanny seems to be taking it very calmly but your presence could make all the difference.' Bret had insisted that Fiona engage a reliable girl who could survive a proper security vetting. The present nanny was the daughter of a police inspector. Now and again Fiona had complained that she was not a very good nanny but now Bret's caution was paying off.

'Of course,' said Tessa. 'I'll do anything I can.'

'We're very much in the dark at present,' Bret told her, 'but whatever the truth of it there will be no official comment. If you get any calls from the Press, or any other kind of oddball, say you are the housekeeper, take their number and call my office.' He didn't tell Tessa that every call to this phone was being monitored and two armed men were watching the house to make sure that Moscow didn't try to kidnap the children.

One of the children – Billy – came from the kitchen where Nanny was frying eggs and sausages for lunch. 'Hello, Auntie Tess. Mummy is on holiday.'

'Yes, isn't that fun?' said Tessa, leaning down to kiss him. 'We are going to have a wonderful time too.'

Billy stood there looking at Bret for a moment and then summoned up the courage to say, 'Can I look at your gun?'

'What's that?' said Bret, uncharacteristically flustered.

'Nanny says you have a gun in your pocket. She says that's why you won't take your raincoat off.'

Bret wet his lips nervously, but long before he could think of any reply, seven-year-old Sally appeared and grabbed Billy by the arm. 'Nanny says you are to come to the kitchen and have your lunch.'

'Come along children,' said Tessa. 'We'll all have lunch together. Then I'll take you somewhere lovely for tea.' She smiled at Bret and Bret nodded his approval and appreciation.

'I'll slip away soon,' said Bret. He'd heard somewhere that Tessa Kosinski had been using hard drugs, but she seemed very normal today, thank heavens.

In the dining room, Nanny was dishing up the food. She had set the big polished table for four, as if guessing that Tessa would eat with them.

After the two technicians had packed away their detection apparatus and left, Bret took a quick look round on his own account. Upstairs on Fiona's side of the double bed a nightdress was folded neatly and placed on the pillow ready for her. On the bedside table he saw a book from the Department's library. He picked it up and looked at it: a coloured postcard – advertising a 'hair and beauty salon' off Sloane Street – was being used as a bookmark. He stood there for a moment relishing the intimacy of being in her bedroom. From a security point of view there was nothing to worry him anywhere. The Samsons had worked for the Department a long time: they were careful people.

As he let himself out of the front door, Bret heard Billy insisting, 'Well, I'll bet he's shot lots of people.'

Bernard Samson had been arrested in a Biergarten near Müggelheimer Damm. It was a forest that stretched down to the water of the Müggelsee. A thousand or so inebriated men celebrating Himmelfahrt – Ascension Day – had provided the congestion and confusion in which Bernard, and his closest friend Werner Wolkmann, had helped two elderly refugees to escape westwards. It was not a simple act of philanthropy: one of the escapees was an agent of the Department.

Werner and the others had got away when Bernard created a diversion. It was a brave thing to do but Bernard had had ample time to regret his rash gesture. They had locked him in an office room on the top floor of the State Security Ministry's huge office block on Frankfurter Alice.

This office was not like the cells in the basement – from which some prisoners never emerged – but its heavy door and barred window, plus the difficulty of moving from floor to floor in a building where every corridor was surveyed by both cameras and armed guards, was enough to hold anyone but a maniac.

Bernard had been interrogated by an amiable KGB officer named Erich Stinnes. He spoke the same sort of Berlin German that Bernard had grown up with, and in many things the two men saw eye to eye. 'Who gets the promotions and the big wages – desk-bound Party bastards,' said Stinnes bitterly. 'How lucky you are not having the Party system working against you all the time.'

'We have got it,' said Bernard. 'It's called Eton and Oxbridge.'

'What kind of workers' state is that?' said Stinnes.

'Are you recording this conversation?' asked Bernard.

'So they can put me in prison with you? Do you think I'm crazy?'

It was the sort of soft treatment that was usually followed up by browbeating from a ferocious tough guy partner, but Stinnes was waiting for a 'KGB Colonel from Moscow', who turned out to be Fiona Samson from London.

By that time Bernard Samson had begun to suspect what was about to happen. Some of the clues that Bret Rensselaer had so artfully supplied to the other side had become evident to the ever more worried Bernard.

The desperate realization that his wife was a KGB Colonel was a betrayal of such magnitude that Bernard felt physically ill. But the effect upon him – and the agony of it – was not greater than many men have suffered when discovering that their wife has been unfaithful to them with another man. For each individual there is a threshold beyond which pain does not increase.

For Fiona the pain was made worse by the guilt of inflicting it upon a man who loved her. She was very tired – and the journey had left her with a splitting headache – that morning when they brought Bernard in to face her. It was a test – perhaps the toughest one she would face – of her ability, her conviction and her resolution to pursue her role even in the face of Bernard's contempt and hatred.

Brought in by a guard he was dirty and unshaven. His eyes stared at her in a way she had never seen before. It was a horrible hateful exchange but she played her part determined that Bernard would see no glimmer of hope. Only his despair would protect her.

There was a tray with coffee pot and cups on the desk but Bernard didn't want any. 'Is there anything to drink in this office?' he demanded.

She found a bottle of vodka and gave it to him. He poured it into a cup and drank a large measure in one gulp. Poor Bernard: she suddenly became afraid that this would be the beginning of a long drunken bout. 'You should cut down on the drinking,' she said.

'You don't make it easy to do,' he said. He smiled grimly and poured more for himself.

'The D-G will send for you, of course,' she said more calmly than she felt. 'You can tell him that the official policy at this end will be one of no publicity about my defection. I imagine that will suit him all right, after all the scandals the service has suffered in the past year.'

'I'll tell him.'

She watched him: he'd gone green. 'You never could handle spirits on an empty stomach,' said Fiona. 'Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?'

'It's you I'm sick of,' he said.

It was as much as she could bear. She pressed the floor button and the guard came to take her husband away. Against her training, and her better judgement, she blurted out, 'Goodbye then, darling. Do I get one final kiss?'

But Bernard thought she was gloating. 'No,' he said and turned away.

As soon as Bernard had been taken through Check-point Charlie and released, Fiona pleaded tiredness and went back to the hotel suite they had provided as temporary accommodation. She took a long hot bath, two sleeping pills and went to bed. She slept the clock round. When she finally awoke there was a moment in which she believed that it was all a terrible dream, that she was at home in London with no complications to her life. She pulled the bedclothes over her head and stayed there unmoving while she slowly came to terms with the bizarre world in which she found herself.

After that terrible encounter with her husband, Fiona's arrival and installation in East Berlin was more endurable. The debriefing seemed to go on forever, but Bret Rensselaer had thought of just about everything and her prepared answers seemed to satisfy the men who asked the questions.

The KGB personnel chief had gone to a lot of trouble to make her as comfortable as possible, and the minuscule apartment with its hard bed and outdated kitchen had to be compared with the crowded rooms and shared kitchens and bathrooms that were a normal part of living in the capital of the DDR.

Her office in the KGB/Stasi operational command building was light, and it had a new sheepskin rug and a pinewood desk, imported from Finland. These were considered status symbols. More important, they'd assigned to her a fifty-year-old male secretary named Hubert Renn, who spoke fluent Russian, some French, a little English and could take shorthand. Renn was a hard-line communist of a kind which only Berlin produced, and which was now almost extinct. He was the son of a stone mason, and together with his fifteen brothers and sisters had grown up in a dark three-room tenement in a cobbled alley in Wedding. During the nineteen twenties das rote Wedding was so solidly communist that the block was run on communal lines by appointed Party officials. Renn's mother had been a member of the ISK – Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund – a political sect so strict that its members rejected alcohol, tobacco and meat. She left the ISK upon marriage, since only full-time workers were permitted membership.

Short, agile, undernourished and eternally combative in spirit, Renn was also efficient. It was typical of his frugality and practicality that when he turned back the lapel of his jacket he revealed a selection of pins, safety-pins and even a needle.

When Fiona first came face to face with her newly appointed secretary she thought that they'd met before. This mistaken familiarity came from her memories of people depicted in old photos of Berlin streets. Despite this feeling she was to discover that Renn was like no other person she'd ever met. With his thick neck, truculent ruddy face, neglected teeth and the short hair that responded to neither brush nor comb, here was a character straight out of Brecht.

Little Hubert Renn had been exposed to Leninism and Marxism while in the dented tin bath that doubled as a cradle. Essentially militant, the ISK rejected Marx's theory about the inevitable collapse of capitalism. The necessity of violent struggle was something he had heard his mother and father endlessly debating. After such an upbringing no one could teach Renn anything about the phraseology of left-wing politics. Even Pavel Moskvin, a Moscow-backed bully with whom Fiona had that morning crossed swords, could not best him in political argument. But Renn didn't mince words about 'the German road to socialism' or spend much time discussing why, at the vital Parteitag in April 1946, the party's declared aspirations had been based upon Marx and Engels and not Lenin and Stalin. Renn – who had been present at that historic congress – preferred to ask, somewhat archly, why it had taken place in the Admiralspalast theatre, noted otherwise for 'top comedy routines'.

My father was an anarchist, he told Fiona once when they were discussing some of the heresies, and that was the key to Renn's character, for Renn too was an anarchist in his soul. Fiona wondered if he realized it; perhaps he simply didn't give a damn any more. Some who'd waited too long for the millennium became like that. Renn's description of Pavel Moskvin – a 'Moscow-backed bully' – was freely offered to Fiona that morning before she'd met the man. And Renn was just as ready to be outspoken about everyone else in the building.

For the first couple of weeks Fiona had suspected that this outlandish old fellow had been put into her office as some sort of agent provocateur, or because no one else in the building would put up with such an oddball, but it didn't take her long to understand that in the DDR the bureaucratic process didn't work like that. It wasn't so easy, for even the most senior staff, to arrange to get the secretary that they wanted, and old Renn would not be an agent provocateur easy to run. The truth was that staff were assigned according to a rota in the personnel office. Her grade was eligible for a clerk of Renn's seniority and his previous boss had retired the week before she arrived.

Fiona and her secretary had spent all of Wednesday in a small conference centre in Köpenick Altstadt, in the wooded outskirts of Berlin. She had witnessed lengthy and sometimes acrimonious exchanges between her colleagues. There had been senior security men from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary meeting to discuss the still somewhat muddled and disorganized political reform groups, and religious groups, in the East Bloc. Agreeing upon a concerted policy of dealing with them was not so easy. Fiona was pleased at the material she was gathering. It was exactly the sort of intelligence that Bret Rensselaer was so keen on, and the anxiety the communist security men had revealed at this meeting in every way supported Bret's projections. When contact was eventually established with London she would have a policy formulated.

She was going through the meeting in her mind while they waited for the car that would take them back to the Mitte. The others had been collected by a bus from the transport pool but Fiona was entitled to her own car. Cars, more than any other perquisite or privilege, were a sign of status, and establishing status was all-important in the DDR. So they waited.

Fiona walked down to the river, admiring the cobbled streets and the crooked old buildings. Surrounded with trees, Köpenick's church and Rathaus huddled upon a tiny island at a place where the River Spree divided. On the adjacent island – Schlossinsel – there was a richly decorated seventeenth-century palace. In its magnificent Wappensaal Frederick the Great had stood trial for desertion. From where they were standing it was possible to raise a loud cheer for the dilatory rate at which East Berlin was being rebuilt. From this view it was easy to visualize Köpenick on the day that renowned bogus captain marched in to discover how devoutly the Germans revere a military uniform, no matter who wears it.

She had hoped that the fresh air would help rid her of her headache: she'd been having too many of these racking headaches lately. It was stress, of course, but that didn't make the pain any easier to endure.

'Herr Renn,' said Fiona: she never called him by his first name.

Renn had been looking at the traffic crossing the bridge. Soon the East would be clogged with cars just as the West already was. He looked at her. 'Did I forget something, Frau Direktor?'

'No. You never forget anything. You are the most efficient clerk in the building.'

He nodded. What she said was right and he acknowledged the truth of it.

'Do you trust me, Herr Renn?' It was a deliberate way of shocking him.

'I don't understand, Frau Direktor.' He glanced round but there was no one else standing along the riverfront: just workers and shoppers going home.

'I never get the minutes of the morning meetings until late in the afternoon of the following day. Is there a reason for that?'

'Everyone receives the minutes by the same delivery.' He gave a sly smile. 'We are slow; that is the only reason.' A large air-conditioned bus came crawling over the bridge. Pale Japanese faces pressed against its grey smoked glass. From inside it came the shrill commentary of the tour guide of which only the words 'Hauptmanns von Köpenick' could be easily distinguished. The bus moved slowly on and was lost behind the trees. 'They never go and see the Schloss or the Art Museum,' said Renn sadly. 'They just want to see the town hall. The tour guide will tell them about the bootmaker who bought an army captain's uniform from a pawn shop, assumed command of some off-duty grenadiers and arrested the mayor and the city treasurer. Then they will all laugh and say what fools we Germans are.'

'Yes,' said Fiona. Despite the Schloss and the dark green woodland and the clear blue lakes and the rivers, the only thing anyone ever remembered about Köpenick was its captain.

'The sad thing is,' said Renn, 'that poor old Wilhelm Voigt, the bootmaker, didn't want the city funds; he wanted a residence permit, and Köpenick had no department authorized to issue one. He wasn't a Berliner, you see, and his escapade was a fiasco.'

'I am not a Berliner, nor even a German by birth…' She did not finish.

'But you speak the most beautiful German,' said Renn, interrupting her. 'Everyone remarks upon it: wonderful Hochdeutsch. When I hear it, I feel selfconscious about my miserable accent.' He looked at her. 'Do you have a headache?'

She shook her head. 'Do you not sometimes wonder if I am a class enemy, Herr Renn?'

He pursed his lips. 'Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born into a bourgeois family,' said Renn in what was a typically ambivalent reply.

'Leaving the birth of Comrade Lenin aside for the moment,' said Fiona. 'If there was an attempt to have me removed from this job, what would be your attitude?'

His already contorted face became agitated as he wet his lips and frowned to indicate deep thought. 'I would have to consider the facts,' he said finally.

'Consider the facts?'

'I have a wife and family,' said Renn. 'It is them that I have to consider.' He turned to see the river, slow and unctuous now; once it had been fast, clear and fresh. Not so long ago anglers had landed big fish here, but there was no sign of any now. He stared down into the water and hoped the Frau Direktor would be satisfied.

'Are you saying that you would throw me to the wolves?' said Fiona.

'Wolves? No!' He turned to her. 'I am not a thrower, Frau Direktor. I am one of the people who are thrown.' The church clock struck six. His working day was over and done. He opened his overcoat in order to reach into his back pocket for a flask. 'About this time I sometimes take a small glass of schnapps… If the Frau Direktor would permit.'

'Go ahead,' said Fiona. She was surprised. She didn't know that the old man was such a dedicated drinker but it explained a lot of things.

He unscrewed the top to use it as a cup, and poured a sizeable measure. He offered it to her. 'Would the Frau Direktor…?'

'No, thank you, Herr Renn.'

He brought it up towards his mouth carefully, so as not to spill it, bending his head to meet it. He drank half of it in one gulp, looked at her as it warmed his veins, and said, 'I'm too old to get into vendettas.' A pause. 'But that doesn't mean I have no guts for it.' A street-car went past, its wheels screaming protest on the rails as it turned the corner. 'Is the Frau Direktor quite sure…?'

'Quite sure, thank you, Herr Renn.'

He held the drink and stared across the river as if she wasn't there, and when he spoke it was as if he was talking to himself. 'Most of the people on our floor are Germans, time-serving officials like me. None of them are looking for a battle: they are waiting for their pension. The eight "friends" are another matter.' He drank the rest of the schnapps from the metal cup.

Fiona nodded. Since 1945 Russians were always called 'friends', even when some German war veteran found himself recounting the way in which such 'friends' had jumped into his trench and bayoneted his comrades. 'Perhaps I will have a drink,' said Fiona.

Renn wiped the rim of the cup with his fingers and poured one for her. 'Six of those friends are in other departments, and would not be promoted whatever happened to you.'

Fiona took a tiny sip of schnapps. It was damned strong stuff: she nearly choked on it. No wonder the old man had a red-veined face. 'I see what you mean,' she said. It left the two Russians, both German specialists: Pavel Moskvin and the one who affected the operating name of Stinnes (as Lenin and Stalin had assumed theirs). These were the two men she had clashed with during the conference that afternoon. Tough professionals who had let her know that working for a woman was not a relationship to which they would gladly accede. The argument had come about because of a proposed operational journey to Mexico City. She suspected that the whole thing was chosen simply as a way of showing her how formidable their combined strengths could be against her.

Renn said, The big man – Moskvin – is the dangerous one. He has considerable influence within the Party machine. At present he is in disgrace with Moscow – some black-market scandal which was never made public – and such men will go to absurd lengths to prove their worth. He is emotional and violent; and well-adjusted people fall victim to action that is sudden and unpremeditated. The other man – Erich Stinnes – with his convincing Berlin German, complete with all the slang and expletives, is an intellectual: icy cold and calculating. He will always think in the long term. For someone as clever as you, he will prove easier to deal with.'

'I hope so,' said Fiona.

'We must drive a wedge between them,' said Renn.

'How?'

'We will find a way. Moskvin is a skilful administrator but Stinnes has been a field agent. Field agents never really settle down to the self-discipline and cooperation that our work demands.'

'That's true,' said Fiona, and for a moment thought of her husband and his endless difficulties at the London office.

'Don't allow your authority to be undermined. Moscow has put you here because they want to see changes. If there is resistance, Moscow will support change and whoever is making the changes. Therefore you must be sure you are the one making the changes.'

'You are something of a philosopher, Herr Renn.'

'No, Frau Direktor, I am an apparatchik.'

'Whatever you are, I am grateful to you, Herr Renn.' She looked in her handbag, found some aspirins and swallowed two of them without water.

'It is nothing,' said the old man as he watched her gulp the pills, although of course they both knew he'd stuck his neck out. Even more important, he'd indicated to her that under other circumstances he'd probably yield more. Fiona wondered whether he was already calculating what she could do for him in return. She dismissed the idea; better to wait and see. Meanwhile he might prove an invaluable ally.

'To you, perhaps, but a friendly word goes a long way in a new job.'

Renn, who'd been watching the bridge, touched his hat as if in salutation but in fact he eased the hat because the band was too tight. 'From each according to ability; to each according to need,' quoted the old man, stuffing the flask back into his pocket. 'And here comes our Volvo.' Not car, she noted, but Volvo. He was proud that she rated an imported car. He smiled at her.

In a year or so she would scuttle off back to the West and Hubert Renn would be left to face the music: Stasi interrogations were not gentle. They would be bound to suspect that he was in league with her. She hated the thought of what she was doing to him. It made her feel like a Judas, but that of course is exactly what she was. Bret had warned her that these conflicting loyalties were stressful but that didn't make them any easier to bear.

When she got home, to one of the coveted apartments in the wedding cake blocks that line Frankfurter Alice, she sat down and thought about the conversation for a long time. Finally she began to understand something of Renn's motivation. Just as the Russians could not fathom the way in which some Europeans could be staunch capitalists but rabidly anti-American, Fiona had not understood the deeply felt anti-Russian feelings that were a part of Hubert Renn's psyche. Renn, she was later to discover, had seen his mother raped by Russian soldiers and his father beaten unconscious during those memorable days of 1945 when the commander's Order of the Day told the Red Army 'Berlin is Yours'. And later she was to hear Hubert Renn refer to his Russian 'friends' by the archaic and less friendly word 'Panje'.

She washed a lettuce and cut thin slices from a Bockwurst. It was the fresh fruit she missed so much: she still couldn't understand why such things were so scarce. She had found a privately owned baker near the office and the bread was good. She'd have to be careful not to put on weight – everything plentiful was fattening.

It was an austere little room well suited to reflection and work. The walls were painted light grey and there were only three pictures: an engraving of a Roman emperor, a sepia photo of fashionable ladies circa 1910 and a coloured print of Kirchner's Pariser Platz. The frames, their neglected condition, as well as the subject matter, suggested that they had been selected at random from some government storage depot. She was grateful for that human touch just the same. Her bedroom was no more than an alcove with a hinged screen. The old tubular-framed bed was painted cream and reminiscent of the one she'd slept in at her boarding school. There were many aspects of life in the DDR – from the endless petty restrictions to the dull diet – that reminded her of boarding school. But she told herself over and over that she had survived boarding school and so she would survive this.

When she went to bed that night she was unable to sleep. She hadn't had one night of sound natural sleep since coming over here. That terrible encounter with Bernard had been a ghastly way to start her new life. Now every night she found herself thinking about him and the children. She found herself asking why she'd been born with a lack of the true maternal urge. Why had she never delighted in the babies and wanted to hug them night and day as so many mothers do? And was she now being acutely tortured by their absence because of the way she had squandered those early years with them? She would have given anything for a chance to go back and see them as babies again, to cuddle them and feed them and read to them and play with them the nonsense games that Bernard's mother was so good at.

Sometimes, during the daytime, the chronic ache of being separated from her family was slightly subdued as she tried to cope with the overwhelming demands made upon her. The intellectual demands – the lies and false loyalties – she could cope with, but she hadn't realized how vulnerable she would be to the emotional stress. She remembered some little joke that Bret had made about women adapting to a double life more easily than a man. Every woman, he said, was expected to be a hooker or matron, companion, mother, servant or friend at a moment's notice. Being two people was a simple task for any woman. It was typical Rensselaer bullshit. She switched on the light and reached for the sleeping tablets. In fact she knew that she would never return to being that person she'd been such a short time ago. She had already been stretched beyond the stage of return.