Berlin Game

10

Did you ever say hello to a girl you almost married long ago? Did she smile the same captivating smile, and give your arm a hug in a gesture you'd almost forgotten? Did the wrinkles as she smiled make you wonder what marvellous times you'd missed? That's how I felt about Berlin every time I came back here.

Lisl Hennig's hotel, just off Kantstrasse, in the Western Sector, was unchanged. No one had tried to repair or repaint the facade pockmarked by Red Army shell splinters in 1945. The imposing doorway, alongside an optician's shop, opened onto the same grandiose marble staircase. The patched carpet, its red now a faded brown, led up to the 'salon' where Lisl was always to be found. List's mother had chosen the heavy oak furniture from Wertheim's department store at Alexanderplatz in the days before Hitler. And long before the grand old house became this shabby hotel.

'Hello, darling,' said Lisl as though I'd seen her only yesterday. She was old, a huge woman who overflowed from the armchair, her red silk dress emphasizing every bulge so that she looked like molten lava pouring down a steep hillside. 'You look tired, darling. You're working too hard.'

There had been few changes made in this 'salon' since Lisl was a child in a house with five servants. There were photos on every side: sepia family groups in ebony frames, faded celebrities of the thirties. Actresses with long cigarette holders, writers under big-brimmed hats, glossy film stars from the UFA studios, carefully retouched prima donnas of the State Opera, artists of the Dada movement, trapeze performers from the Wintergarten and nightclub singers from long-vanished clip joints. All of them signed with the sort of florid guarantees of enduring love that are the ephemera of show business.

Lisl's late husband was there, dressed in the white-tie outfit he wore to play Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic the night the Führer was in the audience. There were no photos of the bent little cripple who ended his days playing for Trinkgeld in a broken-down bar in Rankestrasse.

Some of these photos were of family friends; those who came to Lisl's salon in the thirties and the forties when it was a place to meet the rich and famous, and those who came in the fifties to meet men with tinned food and work permits. There were modern pictures too, of long-term residents who endured the trials and tribulations: uncertain hot water and the noise of the central heating, and the phone messages that were forgotten and letters that were never delivered, and the bathroom lights that did not work. Such loyal clients were invited into Lisl's cramped little office for a glass of sherry when they settled the bill. And their photos were enshrined there over the cash box.

'You look terrible, darling,' she said.

'I'm fine, Tante Lisl,' I said. 'Can you find a room for me?'

She switched on another light. A large plant in an art-nouveau pot cast a sudden spiky shadow on the ugly brown wallpaper, She turned to see me better, and part of her pearl necklace disappeared into a roll of fatty muscle. 'There will always be a room for you, Liebchen. Give me a kiss.'

But I had already leaned over to give her a kiss. It was a necessary ritual. She had been calling me Liebchen and demanding kisses since before I could walk. 'So nothing changes, Lisl,' I said.

'Nothing changes! Everything changes, you mean. Look at me. Look at my ugly face and this infirm body. Life is cruel, Bernd, my sweetheart,' she said, using the name I'd been known by as a boy. 'You will discover it too: life is cruel.' Only Berliners can mock their own self-pity to produce a laugh. Lisl was one of life's most successful survivors and we both knew it. She roared with laughter and I had to laugh too.

She let her Stuttgarter Zeitung slide onto the carpet. She spent her life reading newspapers and talking about what she discovered in them. 'What has brought you to our wonderful city?' she asked. She rubbed her knee and sighed. Now that arthritis had affected her legs, she seldom went out except to the bank.

'Still selling tablets?' she asked. I'd always said that I worked for a pharmaceutical manufacturer that exported medicines to East and West. She didn't wait for a reply; in any case she'd never believed my story. 'And did you bring photos of your lovely wife and those beautiful children? Is everything all right at home?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Is the top room empty?'

'Of course it is,' she said. 'Who else but you would want to sleep there when I have rooms with balcony and bathroom en suite?'

'I'll go up and have a wash,' I said. The attic room had been my room when my father, a Major in the Intelligence Corps, was billeted here. The place was full of memories.

'I hope you're not going over the other side,' Lisl said. They have all the medicine they need over there in the East. They are getting very rough with medicine sellers.'

I smiled dutifully at her little joke. 'I'm not going anywhere, Lisl,' I said. This is just a holiday.'

'Is everything all right at home, darling? It's not that sort of holiday, is it?'

Frank Harrington, head of Berlin Station, arrived at Lisl's exactly on the dot of four. 'You got fed up with sleeping on that sofa at Werner's place, did you?'

I looked at him without replying.

'We are slow,' said Frank, 'but eventually we hear all the news.'

'You brought it?'

'I brought everything.' He put an expensive-looking black leather document case on the table and opened it. 'I even brought that A to Z street guide I borrowed from you in London. Sorry to have had it so long.'

'That's okay, Frank,' I said, throwing the London street guide into my open suitcase so that I wouldn't forget it. 'And where is the man who delivered this stuff?'

'He went back.'

'I thought he was staying so I could debrief him. That's what London wanted.'

Harrington sighed. 'He's gone back,' he said. 'You know how people are in situations like this. He got nervous yesterday and finally slipped off back over there.'

That's a pity,' I said.

'I saw a lovely-looking girl downstairs talking to Lisl. Blonde. Couldn't have been more than about eighteen. Is she staying here?'

Frank Harrington was a thin sixty-year-old. His face was pale, with grey eyes and a bony nose and the sort of black blunt-ended stubble moustache that soldiers affect. His question was an attempt to change the subject, but Frank had always had an eye for the ladies.

'I couldn't tell you, Frank,' I said.

I began to sort through the papers he'd brought. Some of them were verbatim accounts of meetings that had taken place at the Foreign Office when our Secret Intelligence Service people went over there for special briefings. None of the material was of vital importance, but that it had got back to East German intelligence was worrying. Very worrying.

Frank Harrington sat by the tiny garret window from which I used to launch my paper aeroplanes, and smoked his foul-smelling pipe. 'You don't remember the time your father organized a birthday party for Frau Hennig?' Frank Harrington was the only person I knew who called Lisl Frau Hennig. 'He had a six-piece dance band downstairs in the salon and every black marketeer in Potsdamerplatz contributed food. I've never seen such a spread.'

I looked up from the papers.

He waved his pipe at me in a gesture of placation. 'Don't misunderstand me, Bernard. Your father had no dealings with the black market. The contributors were all Frau Hennig's friends.' He laughed at some thought passing through his mind. 'Your father was the last man to have dealings with the black market. Your father was a prude, so prim and proper that he made lesser mortals, like me, sometimes feel inadequate. He was a self-made man, your father. They are all like that – a bit unforgiving, unyielding and inclined to go by the book.' He waved his pipe again. 'Don't take offence, Bernard. Your dad and I were very close. You know that.'

'Yes, I know, Frank.'

'No proper education, your father. Left school when he was fourteen. Spent his evenings in the public library. Retired a Colonel, and ended up running the Berlin office, didn't he? Damned good going for a self-educated man.'

I turned over the next lot of papers to get to the memo on cipher machines. 'Is that what I'm like?' I asked him. 'Unforgiving, unyielding and inclined to go by the book?'

'Oh, come along, Bernard. You're not going to tell me you wish you'd been to university. You're berlinerisch, Bernard. You grew up in this funny old town. You were cycling through the streets and alleys before they built the Wall. You speak Berlin German as well as anyone I've ever met here. You go to ground like a native. That's why we can't bloody well find you when you decide you can't be bothered with us.'

'Ich bin ein Berliner.' I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. The day after President Kennedy made his famous proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field day with talking doughnuts.

'You think your father should have sent you back to England so that you could read politics and modern languages? You think it would have been better to have listened to Oxford academics telling you where Bismarck went wrong, and some young tutor explaining which prepositions govern the dative case?'

I said nothing. The truth was I didn't know the answer.

'Bloody hell, laddie, you know more about this part of the world than any Oxbridge graduate can learn in a lifetime.'

'Would you put that in writing, Frank?'

'You're still annoyed about young Dicky Cruyer getting the desk? Well, why wouldn't you be angry? I made my position clear from this end. That you can be sure of.'

'I know you did, Frank,' I said as I tapped the papers together to make them fit back into the brown paper envelope. 'But the fact is that you don't just learn about history and grammar at Oxford and Cambridge, you learn about the people you meet there. And in later life you depend upon those judgments. Knowing the streets and alleys of this dirty old town doesn't count for much when there is a desk falling vacant.'

Frank Harrington puffed at his pipe. 'And Cruyer was junior to you in service as well as younger.'

'Don't rub it in, Frank,' I said.

He laughed. I felt guilty about describing him as an old woman, but it would make no difference to his career whatever I said about him, because Frank was due to retire any time, and being pulled out of Berlin would be no hardship for him. He hated Berlin and made no secret of it. 'Let me write to the D-G,' said Frank as if suddenly inspired with a brilliant idea. 'The old man was a trainee with me back in the war.'

'For God's sake, no!' That was the trouble with Frank; just like Lisl, he always wanted to treat me as if I were a nineteen-year-old going after his first job. He wasn't so much an old woman as a well-meaning old auntie.

'So what do you make of all that wastepaper?' he said, poking a match into the bowl of his pipe as if searching for something.

'Garbage,' I said. 'It's just a lot of guesswork someone in Moscow has dreamed up to get us worried.'

Frank nodded without looking up at me. 'I thought you'd say that. You'd have to say that, Bernard. Whatever it was like, you'd have to say it was rubbish.'

'Can I buy you a drink?' I said.

'I'd better get back to the office and put that stuff into the shredder.'

'Okay,' I said. He'd guessed that London wanted it destroyed. Frank knew how their minds worked. Maybe he'd been here too long.

'You'll be wanting to go round town and see some of your playmates, I suppose.'

'Not me, Frank.'

He smiled and puffed his pipe. 'You were always like that, Bernard. You never could bear letting anyone know what you were up to.' It was just the sort of thing I remember him saying to me when I was a child. 'Well, I'll look forward to seeing you for dinner tomorrow night. Just wear anything, it's only potluck.'

After he'd left, I went to my suitcase to get a fresh shirt. A folded piece of envelope, used as a bookmark, had fallen out of the street guide Frank had returned to me. It was addressed to Frau Harrington, but the address was no more than a postbox number followed by a post code. It was a damned weird way to get a letter to Frank's wife. I put it into my wallet.

The Russians got the State Opera, the Royal Palace, the government buildings and some of the worst slums; the Western Powers got the Zoo, the parks, the department stores, the nightclubs and the villas of the rich in Grunewald. And spiked through both sectors, like a skewer through a shish kebab, there is the East-West Axis.

The Bendlerblock, from where the High Command sent the German Army to conquer Europe, has now been converted to offices for a cosmetic manufacturer. The Bendlerstrasse has been renamed. Nothing here is what it seems, and that appeals to me. The Anhalter Bahnhof, a yellow brick façade with three great doors, was once the station for the luxury express trains to Vienna and all of southeast Germany. It is no longer a busy terminus. The great edifice stands upon a piece of waste ground long since abandoned to weeds and wild flowers. Werner Volkmann chose it as a meeting place as he had sometimes done before. It was usually a sign that he was feeling especially paranoid. He was carrying a small document case and wearing a big black overcoat with an astrakhan collar. On someone else it might have suggested an impresario or a nobleman, but it simply made Werner look like someone who bought his clothes at the flea market in the disused S-Bahn station on Tauentzienstrasse.

It was getting dark. Werner stopped and looked up the street. From over the high graffito-covered wall there was the reflected glare of bluish-green light that in any other city would have marked the position of a large stadium lit for an evening's football. But beyond this wall there was the large open space of the Potsdamerplatz. Once the busiest traffic intersection in Europe, it had now become a brightly lit Todesstreifen, a death strip, silent and still, with a maze of barbed wire, mines and fixed guns.

Werner loitered on the corner for a moment, turning to watch a dozen or more youngsters as they passed him and continued towards Hallesches Tor. They were attired in a weird combination of clothes: tight leotards, high boots and Afghan coats on the girls; studded leather sleeveless jackets and Afrika Korps caps on the men. Some of them had their hair dyed in streaks of primary colours. Werner was no more surprised by this sample of Berlin youth than I was. Berlin residents are exempt from military service, and there is a tendency among the young to celebrate it. But Werner continued to watch them, and waited, still staring, until a yellow double-decker bus stopped and took aboard everyone waiting at the bus stop. Only then did he feel safe. He turned abruptly and crossed the street at the traffic lights. I followed as if to catch the green.

He went into Café Leuschner and, after putting his hat on the rack, chose a seat at the rear. His document case he placed carefully on the seat next to him. I waved as if catching sight of him for the first time and went over to his table. Werner called to the waiter for two coffees. I sat down with a sigh. Werner had arrived late, an unforgivable sin in my business.

'It was one of Frank Harrington's people,' said Werner. 'I had to be sure I'd got rid of him.'

'Why would Frank have someone following you?'

' London has been kicking Frank's ass,' said Werner. 'There is talk of replacing him immediately.'

'What have you got to do with that? Why follow you?'

'Is there some kind of leak in London?' said Werner. Knowing it was unlikely that I'd answer him, he said, 'It's only fair you tell me. You ask me to go over the wire for you, it's only fair you tell me what's going on in London.'

'No leak,' I said. I might have added that no one had yet asked him to go 'over the wire' and that his regular visits to the East were a damned good reason for him knowing as little as possible about what was happening in London.

'And the money? Will London help me with the bank?'

'No money either,' I said.

Werner hunched lower over the table and nodded sorrowfully. I looked round the café. It was a roomy place, its gilt-framed mirrors supported by plaster cherubs and its plastic-topped tables fashioned to look like marble. There was a fine old counter that ran the whole length of the room. I'd known it when the Leuschners' father was serving behind it. Berlin kids could get genuine American ice cream here until Leuschner's daughter married her soldier and went to live in Arkansas.

The coffee arrived: two small electroplated pots, together with tiny jugs of cream, sugar wrapped in coloured paper advertising tea, and the usual floral cups and saucers. Floral-patterned cups and saucers: they reminded me of my childhood breakfasts when my father used to correct my mother's inadequate German.' "Es geht um die Wurst",' "It depends on the sausage", means "Everything depends on it". But "Mir ist alles Wurst", or "It's all sausage to me", means "I really don't care".' My mother just smiled and poured more coffee into the floral-patterned cups. She had intended to say that there might not be enough sausage for all of us that evening. But my father was inclined to make everything more complicated than it need be. That too was a characteristic of the self-made man.

I said, 'Why did we go through all that business of meeting without being observed? I could just have met you in here.'

'And then we would have both been sitting here with Frank's watcher.'

'Have it your way, Werner,' I said.

'Frank Harrington is worried,' said Werner.

'What about?' I said, no longer entirely concealing my irritation. 'I thought Frank wouldn't let you near his office.'

Werner smiled one of the special oriental smiles that he thought made him appear inscrutable. 'I don't have to go into the office to hear the latest news from there. Frank is getting a lot of trouble from London. Rumours say there's a leak. Frank is frightened he'll be the scapegoat. He's frightened they'll get rid of him and find some way of not paying his pension.'

'Balls!'

'If Frank was recalled, do you think the Berlin office would start to use me again?'

'There is no leak of information.'

'Good,' said Werner, looking at me and nodding. There was nothing quite so disconcerting as Werner trying to be sincere. 'Max Binder went back. He had a wife and three kids, and he couldn't get a job. Finally he went back to the East.'

Max Binder was at school with us, a studious kid who sang the solo part in 'Silent Night' every Christmas and had a secret hoard of forbidden Nazi badges that we all coveted. I'd always liked him. 'Max is one of the best,' I said. 'His wife was from the East, wasn't she?'

'They got one of those "wedding cake" apartments on Stalinallee.' Werner still called the street by its old name. 'Nowadays people realize that those apartments are not so bad. At least they have high ceilings and lots of cupboards and storage space. The new places out at Marzahn are really jammed tight together. They've got families of four living in the space of Max's broom cupboard.'

'You've been across recently? You've seen Max?'

'I see Max from time to time. He has a good job now. He's in the customs service – chief clerk.'

There was something in Werner's voice that caught my attention. 'Are you in some racket with Max?'

'With Max?' Nervously he poured himself more coffee.

'I know you, Werner, and I know Max. What are you up to?'

'It's Max's office that handles the paperwork for some of my forfait deals, that's all.'

The avalizing, you mean. The guarantee that the money will be paid. So that's it.'

Werner made no attempt to deny that there was some sort of fiddle going on. 'Look, Bernard. I saw Zena last week. She's promised to come back to me.'

He wanted my congratulations. 'That's good, Werner.'

'She was in Berlin… just a quick visit. We had lunch together. She wanted to know how I was.'

'And how were you?'

'I want her back, Bernie. I can't manage without her. I told her that.'

'And?'

'I told her I'd have more money. Money was always the problem with us. If I make a bit more money, she'd come back to me. She more or less promised.'

'I'll try again to get London to approve the money, Werner. Forget this mad idea of forging the avals or whatever it is you're doing. If you get into trouble in the East, they'll toss you into the cooler and throw away the key. It'll be "defrauding the people" or some such all-embracing charge, and they'll hammer you to make sure no one else pulls the same trick.'

Werner nodded. 'I'm just going to do it a couple of times so I have enough cash not to have to go crawling to the banks any more. Those money-market bastards are squeezing me, Bernie. They take the cream off every deal I do.'

'I said forget it, Werner.'

'I promised to take Zena to Spain for a really good holiday. Ever been to Marbella? It's wonderful. One day I'll buy a little place there and settle down. Zena needs some sunshine and a rest. So do I. Something like that would give us a new start. Maybe South America, even. It's worth taking a chance for a new start in life.'

Werner had finished two cups of black coffee and now he was holding the pot and shaking the last few drips from the spout. I said, 'Does Frank know about your import and export racket?'

'Frank Harrington? Good God, no. He goes out of his way to avoid me. Last month I was in that change office in Zoo station cashing traveller's cheques. Frank was there already. When he caught sight of me, he left the line and walked out. Frank Harrington is avoiding me. No. Hell, he's the last person I'd discuss it with.' He picked up the second coffeepot, swirling it to find out if there was coffee in it. 'Can I have the rest?'

I nodded. 'Why not tell Frank?'

This time Werner put cream into his coffee. He had the compulsive desire to drink and nibble that is often a sign of nervousness. 'I don't want him to know I'm going over there frequently.'

'Is there something you're not telling me?'

He became very concerned with his coffee, unwrapping another sugar cube, breaking it and putting half into his cup. Then he put the unused half in his mouth and chewed it noisily while he smoothed the wrapper flat with the edge of his hand. 'Don't mother me, Bernie. We grew up together. We both know what's what.'

'You're not playing footsie with those people in the East?' I persisted. 'You haven't come to some damn-fool arrangement with them?'

'So I can give away all your secrets, you mean?' He folded the sugar wrapper carefully and neatly to make a tiny paper dart. He flew it towards the salt and pepper in a test flight. 'What could I tell them? That Frank cuts me dead in the change office, that you come into town and stay at Lisl's? Shall I tell them that rumours say that London 's chosen you to take over Berlin from Frank but Frank won't approve you as his successor?'

I looked at his paper dart. 'You could be useful to them, Werner. You've got an ear to the ground.' I picked up the dart and threw it back at him, but it didn't fly for me.

'Can't you understand?' he said in a low voice. 'No one gives me work any more. Frank has put the boot in. I used to get jobs from the Americans and your military intelligence people were always having something come up they couldn't handle. Now I don't get any of those jobs any more. I don't know enough to be a double, Bernie. I'm out of it. Your jobs are the only ones I get these days, and you only give me those for old times' sake – I know it and so do you.'

I didn't remind Werner that only a few minutes earlier he'd been insisting that it was 'only fair' to tell him everything I knew about the leaks in London. 'So they're saying that I'm to get Berlin? Maybe they are even saying who will get my job when I move.'

Werner picked up the dart. It flew well for him but only because he took his time refolding the wings and adjusting everything for optimum aerodynamics. 'You know what it's like in this town, people are always gossiping. I don't want you to think I believe any of that stuff.'

'Come on, Werner. You've got my attention now. You might as well tell me what you've heard. I'm not going to break down and weep about it.'

Those words appeared to have more meaning for him than I ever intended. We were speaking German and it is in the nature of German syntax that you have to compose the sentence in your mind before you start to say it. You can't start each sentence with a vague idea and change your mind halfway through, as people brought up to speak English do. So once Werner began he had to say it. 'There are rumours that your wife is taking over your job from you in London.'

'Now that's a neat twist,' I said. I still didn't guess what poor old Werner was trying to tell me.

He held the dart up to his face so that he could see it properly in the poor light of the cafe. He gave all his attention to it as he spoke rather hurriedly. 'They say you're splitting up, you and your wife. They say… they say that Rensselaer and your wife are…' He launched the dart, but this time it spiralled down into his saucer and the wings went brown with spilled coffee.

'Bret Rensselaer,' I said. 'He's nearly old enough to be her father. I can't imagine Fiona falling for Rensselaer.'

The expression on Werner's face let it be known that the failure of imagination was entirely mine. 'If Rensselaer felt guilty about giving Cruyer the German desk and taking your wife from you, he'd be smart to get Berlin for you. It would get you out of his way. The money is good and the unaccountable expenses are the best in the business. It's a job you'd dearly like, and be damned good at. You'd never turn it down, Bernie, you know that.'

I thought about it. It made me feel sick, but I was determined not to reveal that. 'And I wouldn't stand in Fiona's way if she got the chance of a senior post in Operations. She'd be the only woman on staff level there.' I smiled. 'It's neat, Werner. Like all good rumours it's heater than the truth. The fact is that Fiona can't stand Rensselaer, and the old man would never allow a woman in there, and no one's going to offer me Berlin when Frank goes.' I smiled, but my smile got stuck and he looked away.

'How can you be sure?' said Werner. 'I never thought my wife would go off to Munich with that Coca-Cola driver. I met him a couple of times. She told me he was the brother of a girl at her office. She said he sometimes gave her a lift home. He was in the apartment when I got back one evening. He was having a beer with her. I never suspected a thing. I was like you are now. She said he was a bit stupid. That's all it took to convince me there was nothing between them. It was just like you said just now. I thought she couldn't stand the guy, like you say your wife can't stand Rensselaer.' He unwrapped another sugar cube and began to fold himself another flying dart. 'Maybe the fact is that you can't stand him – just like I couldn't stand that truck driver – and so you can't imagine your wife going for him either.' He abandoned his half-made dart and drifted it into the ashtray. 'I've given up smoking,' he said mournfully, 'but I fidget a lot with my hands.'

'You didn't get me over here just to tell me all this stuff about Rensselaer having an affair with Fiona, did you, Werner?'

'No. I wanted to ask you about the office. You're the only person I know who sees Frank Harrington to talk to him on equal terms.'

'I don't see him on equal terms,' I said. 'Frank treats me like I'm a twelve-year-old child.'

'Frank is very patronizing,' said Werner. 'In Frank's day, they were all Cambridge pansies or Greek scholars, like Frank, who thought a little job in the intelligence service would be a good way to earn money while they wrote sonnets. Frank likes you, Bernard. He likes you very much. But he could never reconcile himself to the idea that a tough little Berlin street kid like you could take over the job he's doing. He's friendly with you, I know. But how do you think he really feels about taking orders from someone without a classical education?'

'I don't give him orders,' I said, to correct the record.

'You know what I mean,' said Werner. 'I just want to know what Frank has got against me. If I've done something to make him annoyed, okay. But if it's a misunderstanding, I want a chance to clear it up.'

'What do you care about clearing it up?' I said. 'You've got some racket going that's going to give you a villa in Marbella and Rioja and roses for the rest of your days. What the hell do you care about this clearing up misunderstandings with Frank?'

'Don't be dumm, Bernie,' he said. 'Frank could make a lot of trouble for me.'

'You're imagining things, Werner.'

'He hates me, Bernie, and he's frightened of you.'

'Frightened?'

'He's frightened at the idea of you taking over from him. You know too much – you'd ask too many questions, awkward questions. And all Frank cares about these days is keeping himself pure for his index-linked pension. He'll do nothing to prejudice that, never mind all that stuff he gives you about how friendly he was with your father.'

'Frank is tired,' I said. 'Frank has got the " Berlin blues". He doesn't hate anyone. He doesn't even hate the Communists any more. That's why he wants to go.'

'Didn't you hear me tell you that Frank Harrington has blocked your appointment here?'

'And didn't you hear me tell you that that was all bloody rubbish? I'll tell you why they don't use you any more, Werner. You've become a gossip, and that's the worst thing that can happen to anyone in this business. You tell me stupid rumours about this and about that, and you tell me that no one likes you and you can't understand why. You need to pull yourself together, Werner, because otherwise you'll have to add me to that long list of people who don't understand you.'

Werner was hunched over the table, the bulky overcoat and fur collar making him look even bigger than he really was. When he nodded, his chin almost touched the table. 'I understand,' he said. 'When I first realized my wife had betrayed me, I couldn't say a civil word to anyone.'

'I'll call you, Werner,' I said, getting to my feet. 'Thanks for the coffee.'

'Sit down,' said Werner. His voice was soft, but there vas an urgency that transcended our bickering. I sat down. Two men had entered the café. The younger Leuschner had been checking the levels of the bottles of drink arrayed under the big mirror. He turned round and smiled the sort of smile that is the legacy of ten years behind a bar. 'What's it to be?' Nervously he wiped the pitted marble counter, which was one of the very few things in the café that had survived the war as well as the Leuschner brothers. 'Would you like to eat? I can give you Bratwurst with red cabbage, or roast chicken with Spätzle.'

The men were thirty-year-old heavyweights, with robust shoes, double-breasted raincoats and hats with brims big enough to keep rain from dripping down the neck. I caught Werner's eye. He nodded; they obviously were policemen. One of them picked up the plastic-faced menu that had been put before them. Young Leuschner twirled the end of the big Kaiser Wilhelm moustache that he'd grown to make himself look older. Now, with his balding head, he didn't need it any more. 'Or a drink?'

'Chocolate ice cream,' said one of the men in a voice that dared anyone to be surprised.

'Schnaps,' said the other.

Leuschner chose from one of the half-dozen varieties of strong clear liquor and poured a generous measure. Then he put two scoops of ice cream into a dented serving dish and supplied napkin and spoon. 'And a glass of water,' mumbled the man, who'd already begun to gobble the ice cream. His companion turned to rest his back against the edge of the counter and look casually round the room as he sipped his drink. Neither man sat down.

I poured milk into my cup, in order to provide myself with something to do, and stirred it with care. The man eating the ice cream finished it in record time. The other muttered something inaudible, and both men came across to the table where I was sitting with Werner.

'You live near here?' said the chocolate ice cream.

'Dahlem,' said Werner. He smiled, trying to hide his resentment.

'That's a nice place to live,' said the ice-cream cop. It was difficult to decide how much was pleasantry and how much was sarcasm.

'Let's see your papers,' said the second man. He was leaning all his weight on the back of my chair and I could smell the Schnaps on his breath.

Werner hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether anything was to be gained by making them prove they were policemen. Then he brought out his wallet.

'Open up the case,' said the ice cream, pointing to the document case Werner had placed on the seat beside him.

'That's mine,' I said.

'I don't care if it belongs to Herbert von Karajan,' said the cop.

'But I do,' I said. This time I spoke in English.

He glanced at my face and at my English clothes. I didn't have to spell it out that I was an officer of the 'protecting powers'. 'Identification?'

I passed to him the Army officer's card that identified me as a Major Bishop of the Royal Engineers. He gave me a bleak smile and said, 'This identification expired two months ago.'

'And what do you think might have happened since then?' I said. 'You think I've changed into someone else?'

He gave me a hard stare. 'I'd get your identification brought up to date if I was you, Major Bishop,' he said. 'You might find the next policeman you encounter suspects you of being a deserter or a spy or something.'

'Then the next policeman I encounter will make a fool of himself,' I said. But by that time both men were moving off across the room. The ice cream dropped a couple of coins onto the counter as he passed.

'Bloody Nazis,' said Werner. 'They picked me because I'm a Jew.'

'Don't be a fool, Werner.'

'Then why?'

'There could be a million reasons why a cop asks for papers. There could be some local crime… a recognized car nearby… someone with a description like you.'

'They'll get the military police. They'll come back and make us open the case. They'll do it just to show us who's the boss.'

'No, they won't, Werner. They'll go down the street to the next café or bar and try again.'

'I wish you weren't so damned obstinate.'

'About what?'

'Frank Harrington. This is the way he keeps the pressure up.'

'Have you ever stopped to think how much it costs to keep a man under surveillance? Four men and two cars on eight-hour shifts working a five-day week. We're talking about a minimum of six men and three cars. The cars must be radio-equipped to our wavelength, so that rules out rented ones. The men must be trained and vetted. Allowing for insurance and special pensions and medical schemes all Department employees have, each man would cost well over a thousand Deutschemark. The cars cost at least another thousand each. Add another thousand for the cost of backup and we're talking about Frank spending ten thousand marks a week on you. He'd have to hate you an awful lot, Werner.'

'Ask him,' said Werner sullenly. I had the feeling that he didn't want to be disillusioned about Frank's vendetta lest he have to face the fact that maybe Frank sacked him because he wasn't doing the job the way they wanted it done.

I raised my hands in supplication. 'I'll talk to him, Werner. But meanwhile you cut it out. Forget all this stuff about Frank persecuting you. Will you do that?'

'You don't understand,' said Werner.

I looked at the document case that I'd pretended was mine. 'And, just to satisfy my curiosity, what is in "my" case, Werner?'

He reached out to touch it, 'Would you believe nearly half a million Swiss francs in new paper?'

I looked at him but he didn't smile. 'Take care, Werner,' I said. Even when we'd been kids together, I never knew when he was fooling.