Berlin Game

14

I collected Fiona from her sister's house that evening. She'd left a message asking me to take the car there, so she could bring back a folding bed that she'd lent to Tessa at a time when she'd decided to sleep apart from George. The bed had never been put to use. I always suspected that Tessa had used its presence as a threat. She was like that.

Tessa had prepared dinner. It was the sort of nouvelle cuisine extravaganza that Uncle Silas had been complaining of. A thin slice of veal with two tiny puddles of brightly coloured sauces, peas arranged inside a scooped-out tomato, and a few wafers of carrot with a mint leaf draped over them. Tessa had learned to prepare it at a cookery school in Hampstead.

'It's delicious,' said Fiona.

'He was yummy,' said Tessa when she'd finished eating. She never seemed to need more than a spoonful of food at any meal. Nouvelle cuisine was invented for people like Tessa, who just wanted to go through the pretence of eating a meal for the sake of the social benefits. 'He had these wonderful dark eyes that could see right through your clothes, and when he was demonstrating the cooking he'd put his arm round you and take your hands. "Like zis, like zis, " he used to say. He was Spanish, I think, but he liked to pretend he was French of course.'

Fiona said, 'Tessa has cooked the most wonderful things for me while you were away.'

'Like zis?' I asked.

'And meals for the children,' said Fiona hurriedly, hoping to appeal to my feelings of obligation. 'She has given me a gallon of minestrone for the freezer. It will be so useful, Tess darling, and the children just love soup.'

'And how was Berlin?' said Tessa. She smiled. We understood each other. She knew I didn't like the tiny ladies' snack she'd prepared, or her supposed antics with the Spanish cookery teacher, but she didn't give a damn. Fiona was the peacemaker, and it amused Tessa to see her sister intercede.

' Berlin was wonderful,' I said with spurious enthusiasm.

'German food is more robust than French food,' said Tessa. 'Like German women, I suppose.' It was directed at me and more specifically at the buxom German girl I was with when Tessa first met me, back before I married Fiona.

'You know that German proverb: one is what one eats,' I said.

'Feast on cabbage and what do you become?' said Tessa.

'A butterfly?' I said.

'And if you eat dumplings?'

'At least you are no longer hungry,' I said.

'Give him some more meat,' Fiona told her sister, 'or he'll be bad-tempered all evening.'

When Tessa returned from the kitchen with my second helping of dinner, the plate no longer exhibited the finer points of la nouvelle cuisine. There was a chunky piece of veal and a large spoonful of odd-shaped carrot pieces that showed how tricky it was to slice thin even slices. There was only one kind of sauce this time, and it was poured over the meat. 'Where's the mint leaf?' I said. Tessa aimed a playful blow at the place between my shoulders, and it landed with enough force to make me cough.

'Did you notice anything different in the hall?' Tessa asked Fiona while I was wolfing the food.

'Yes,' said Fiona. 'The lovely little table, I was going to ask you about it.'

'Giles Trent. He's selling some things that used to belong to his grandmother. He needs the extra room and he has other things for sale. Anyone who could find space enough for a dining table… Oh, Fiona, it's such a beautiful mahogany table, with eight chairs. I'd sell my soul for it but it would never fit here and this table belonged to George's mother. I dare not say I'd like to replace it.'

'Giles Trent?' I said. 'Is he selling up?'

'He's working with you now, isn't he?' said Tessa. 'He told me he has talked with you and everything is going to be all right. I'm so pleased.'

'What else is he selling?'

'Only furniture. He won't part with any of his pictures. I wish he'd decide to let me have one of those little Rembrandt etchings. I'd love one.'

'Would George agree?' asked Fiona.

'I'd give it to George for his birthday,' said Tessa. 'There's nothing a man can do if you buy something you want and say "Happy birthday" when he first sees it.'

'You're quite unscrupulous,' said Fiona without bothering to conceal her admiration.

'I'd go carefully on Rembrandt etchings,' I told her. 'There are lots of plates around, and the dealers just print a few off from time to time, and ease them into the market through suckers like Giles Trent.'

'Are they allowed to do that?' Tessa asked.

'What's to stop them?' I said. 'It's not forgery or faking.'

'But that's like printing money,' said Fiona.

'It's better,' I said. 'It's like using your husband's money and saying 'Happy birthday'.'

'Have you had enough veal?' said Tessa.

'It was delicious,' I said. 'What's for dessert – Chinese gooseberries?'

Tess wants to watch the repeat of " Dallas " on TV tonight. We'd best be getting that bed downstairs and go home,' said Fiona.

'It's not heavy,' said Tessa. 'George carried it all by himself, and he's not very strong.'

I had the folding bed tied onto the roof rack of the car and we were on our way home by the time Tessa sat down to watch TV. 'Drive carefully,' said Fiona as we turned out of the entrance to the big apartment block where George and Tessa lived and saw the beginning of the snow. 'It's so good to have you home again, darling. I do miss you horribly when you're away.' There was an intimacy in the dark interior of the car and it was heightened by the bad weather outside.

'I miss you too,' I said.

'But it all went smoothly in Berlin?'

'No problems,' I said. 'Snow in April… my God!'

'But nothing to clear poor Giles?'

'Looks like he's even deeper in, I'm afraid.'

'I wish Tessa wouldn't keep seeing him. But there's nothing serious between them. You know that, don't you?'

'Why would he be selling his furniture?' I said.

'Antiques and furniture have been getting good prices lately. It's the recession, I suppose. People want to put their money into things that will ride with inflation.'

'Sounds like a good reason for hanging onto them,' I said. 'And if he must sell them, why not send them to a saleroom? Why sell them piece by piece?'

'Is there tax to be paid on such things? Is that what you mean?'

'The etchings are small. The lithographs can be rolled up,' I said. 'But the furniture is bulky and heavy.'

'Bernard! You don't think Giles would be idiot enough to run for it?'

'It crossed my mind,' I said.

'He'd be a fool. And could you imagine poor old Giles in Moscow, lining up to collect his vodka ration?'

'Stranger things have happened, darling. Surprises never end in this business.'

I turned onto Finchley Road and headed south. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way, couples who'd had an evening on the town and were now heading for their homes in the northern suburbs. The snow was melting as it touched the ground but the air was full of it, like a TV picture when an electric mixer is working. The flakes drifted past the neon signs and glaring shopwindows like coloured confetti. A few dabbed against the windscreen and clung for a moment before melting.

'I was talking to Frank about the old days,' I said. 'He told me about the time in 1978 when the Baader-Meinhof gang were in the news.'

'I remember,' said Fiona. 'Someone got the idea that there was to be a second kidnap attempt. I was quite nervous, I hadn't seen one of those security alerts before. I was expecting something awful to happen.'

'There was a radio intercept from Karlshorst. Something about an airport in Czechoslovakia.'

'That's right. I handled it. Frank was in one of his schoolmaster moods. He told me all about the intercept service, and how to recognize the different sorts of Russian Army signals traffic by the last but one group in the message.'

'Frank never passed that intercept back to London,' I said.

'That's very likely,' said Fiona. 'He always said that the job of the Berlin Resident is to ensure that London is not buried under an avalanche of unimportant material. Getting intelligence is easy, Frank said, but sorting it out is what matters.' She shivered and tried to turn up the heater of the car, but it was already fully on. 'Why? Is Frank having second thoughts? It's a long time ago – too late now for second thoughts.'

I wondered if she was thinking of other things; too late perhaps to be having second thoughts about a marriage. 'Look at that,' I said. A white Jaguar had skidded on the wet road and mounted the pavement so that its rear had swung round and into a shop window. There was glass all over the pavement, white like snow, and a woman with blood on her hands and her face. The driver was blowing into a plastic bag held by a blank-faced policeman.

'I'm glad I didn't take the Porsche over to Tessa's tonight. You don't stand a chance with the police if they find you behind the wheel of a red Porsche. When are you getting the new Volvo?'

'The dealer keeps saying next week. He's hoping my nerve will break and I'll take that station wagon he's trying to get rid of.'

'Go to some other dealer.'

'He's giving me a good trade-in price on this jalopy.'

'Why not have the station wagon, then?'

'Too expensive.'

'Let me give you the difference in price. Your birthday is coining up soon.'

'I'd rather not, darling. But thanks all the same.'

'It would be awfully useful for moving beds,' she said.

'I'm not going to give your father the satisfaction of using any of his money.'

'He'll never know.'

'But I will know, and I'm the one who told him where to put his dowry.'

'Where to put my dowry, darling.'

'I love you, Fiona,' I said, 'even if you do forget my birthday.'

She put her fingertips to her lips and touched my cheek. 'Where were you that night in 1978?' she said. 'Why weren't you at my side?'

'I was in Gdansk, involved in that meeting with the shipyard workers who never turned up. It was all a KGB entrapment. Remember?'

'I must have repressed the memory of it. Yes, Gdansk, of course. I was so worried,'

'So was I. My career has been one fiasco after another, from that time to this.'

'But you have always got out safely.'

'That's more than I can say for a lot of the others who were with me. We were in good shape in 1978 but there's not much left now.'

'You were always away on some job or other. I hated being in Berlin on my own. I hated the dark streets and the narrow alleys. I don't know what I would have done without dear old Giles to take me home each night and cheer me up with phone calls and books about Germany that he thought I should read to improve myself. Dear old Giles. That's why I feel so sorry for him now he's in trouble.'

'He took you home?'

'It didn't matter what time I finished work – even in the middle of the night when the panic was on – Giles would come up to Operations and have a cigarette and a laugh and take me home.'

I carried on driving, swearing at someone who overtook us and splashed filth on the windscreen, and only after a few minutes' pause did I say, 'Didn't Giles work over in the other building? I thought he'd need a red pass to come up to Operations.'

'Officially he did. But at the end of each shift – unless one of the panjandrums from London was there – people from the annex used to come into the main building. There was no hot water in the annex, and most of us felt we needed to wash and change after eight hours in that place.'

'But there was an inquiry. A man named Joe Brody questioned everyone about a leak that night.'

'Well, what are you supposed to say, darling? Do you think anyone is going to let Frank down? I mean, are you going to say that people from the annex come up and steal paper and pencils and take their girlfriends up to that sitting room on the top floor?'

'Well, I didn't know all that was going on.'

'Girls talk together, darling. Especially when there are just a few girls in a foreign town. And working in an office with the most disreputable lot of men.' She squeezed my arm.

'So everyone told lies to Joe Brody? Giles Trent did have access to the signals?'

'Brody is an American, darling. You can't let the old country down, can you?'

'Frank would throw a fit if he knew,' I said. It was appalling to think of all Frank's regulations, memoranda and complicated routines being flouted by everyone even when he was there in the office. In those days I'd spent most of my working hours off on the sort of assignment that the more artful executives avoid by pleading their German isn't fluent enough. Clever Dicky, stupid Bernard.

'Frank is just a selfish pig,' said Fiona. 'He likes the money and the prestige but he hates the actual work. What Frank likes is playing host to the jet set while the taxpayer gets the bill.'

'There has to be a certain amount of that,' I said. 'Sometimes I think the D-G only keeps Frank over there to pick up all the gossip. The D-G loves gossip. But Frank understands what is gossip and what is important. Frank has got a talent for anticipating trouble long before it arrives. I could give you a dozen examples of him pulling the coals out of the fire, acting only on gossip and those hunches he has.'

'Who will get Berlin when Frank retires?'

'Don't ask me,' I said. 'I suppose they will go to that computer and see if they can find someone who hates Berlin as much as Frank does, who wastes money as extravagantly as Frank does, who speaks that same Kaiserliche German that Frank does, and who looks like an Englishman on a package tour, as Frank manages to look.'

'You're cruel. Frank's so proud of his German too.'

'He'd get away with it if he didn't try writing out those instructions for the German staff and pinning them on the notice board. The only time I've ever seen Werner laughing, really laughing uncontrollably, was in front of the notice board in the front hall. He was reading Frank's German language instruction: "What to do in case of fire. " It became a classic. There was a German security man who used to recite it at the Christmas party. One year Frank watched him and said, "It's jolly good the way these Jerries are able to laugh at the deficiences of their own language, what? " I said, "Yes, Frank, and he's got a voice a bit like yours, did you notice that?" "Can't say I did," said Frank. I never was quite sure if Frank understood what the joke was.'

'Bret said the D-G mentioned your name for the Berlin office.'

'Have you seen Bret much while I was away?'

'Don't start that all over again, darling. There is absolutely no question of a relationship between me and Bret Rensselaer.'

'No one's mentioned it to me,' I said. The job, I mean.'

'Would you take it?'

'Would you like to go back there?'

'I'd do anything to see you really happy again, Bernard.'

'I'm happy enough.'

'I wish you'd show it more. I worry about you. Would you like to go to Berlin?'

'It depends,' I said cautiously. 'If they wanted me to take over Frank's ramshackle organization and keep it that way, I wouldn't touch it at any price. If they let me reshape it to something better suited to the twentieth century… then it could be a job well worth doing.'

'And I can easily imagine you putting it to the D-G in those very words, darling. Can't you get it into your adorable head that Frank, Dicky, Bret and the D-G all think they are running a wonderful organization that is the envy of the whole world. They are not going to receive your offer to bring it into the twentieth century with boundless enthusiasm.'

'I must remember that,' I said.

'And now I've made you angry.'

'Only because you're right,' I said. 'Anyway, it's hardly worth discussing what I'd say if they offered me Frank's job when I know there is not the slightest chance they will.'

'We'll see,' said Fiona. 'You realize you've driven past our house, don't you? Bernard! Where the hell are we going?'

There was a parked car… two men in it. Opposite our entrance.'

'Oh, but Bernard. Really.'

'I'll just drive around the block to see if there's any sort of backup. Then I'll go back there on foot.'

'Aren't you taking a parked car with two people in it too seriously? It's probably just a couple saying good night.'

'I've been taking things too seriously for years,' I said. 'I'm afraid it makes me a difficult man to live with. But I've stayed alive, sweetheart. And that means a lot to me.'

The streets were deserted, no one on foot and no occupied parked cars as far as I could see. I stopped the car. 'Give me five minutes. Then drive along the road and into our driveway as if everything was normal.'

She looked worried now. 'For God's sake, Bernard. Do be careful.'

'I'll be okay,' I told her as I opened the door of the car. 'This is what I do for a living.'

I took a pistol from my jacket and stuffed it into a pocket of my raincoat. 'You're carrying a gun?' said Fiona in alarm. 'What on earth do you want with that?'

'New instructions,' I said. 'Anyone who regularly carries Category One papers has to have a gun. It's only a peashooter.'

'I hate guns,' she said.

'Five minutes.'

She reached out and gripped my arm. 'There's nothing between me and Bret,' she said. 'There's nothing between me and anyone, darling. I swear it. You're the only one.'

'You're only saying that because I've got a gun,' I said. It was a rotten joke, but she gave it the best sort of smile she could manage and then slid across to the driver's seat.

It was cold, and flakes of snow hit my face. By now the snowfall was heavy enough to make patterns on the ground, and the air cold enough to keep the flakes frozen so they swirled round in ever-changing shapes.

I turned into Duke Street, where we lived, from the north end. I wanted to approach the car from behind. It was safer that way; it's damned awkward to twist round in a car seat. The car was not one I recognized as being from the car pool, but on the other hand it wasn't positioned for a hot-rubber getaway. It was an old Lancia coupé with a radio-phone antenna on the roof.

The driver must have been looking in his rearview mirror because the door swung open when I got near. A man got out. He was about thirty, wearing a black leather zip-fronted jacket and the sort of brightly coloured knitted Peruvian hat they sell in ski resorts. I was reassured; it would be a bit conspicuous for a KGB hit team.

He let me come closer and kept his hands at his sides, well away from his pockets. 'Mr Samson?' he called.

I stopped. The other occupant of the car hadn't moved. He hadn't even turned in his seat to see me. 'Who are you?' I said.

'I've got a message from Mr Cruyer,' he said.

I went closer to him but remained cautious. I was holding the peashooter in the pocket of my coat and I kept it pointing in his direction. 'Tell me more,' I said.

He looked down at where the gun made a bulge and said, 'He told me to wait. You didn't leave a contact number.'

He was right about that. Fiona's request to move that damned bed had been waiting for me at home. 'Let's have it, then.'

'It's Mr Trent. He's been taken ill. He's in a house near the Oval. Mr Cruyer is there.' He motioned vaguely to the car. 'Shall I call him to say you're coming?'

'I'll go in my car.'

'Sure,' said the man. He pulled the knitted hat down round his ears. 'I'll ask Mr Cruyer to call you and confirm, shall I?' He was careful not to grin but my caution obviously amused him.

'Do that,' I said. 'You can't be too careful.'

'Will do,' he said, and gave me a perfunctory salute before opening the car door. 'Anything else?'

'Nothing else,' I said. I didn't let go of the gun until they'd driven away. Then I went indoors and poured myself a malt whisky while waiting for Cruyer's call. Fiona arrived before the phone rang. She gave me a tight embrace and a kiss from her ice-cold lips.

Cruyer was not explicit about anything except the address and the fact that he'd been trying to get me for nearly an hour, and would I please hurry, hurry, hurry. Not wanting to arrive there complete with folding bed, I lifted it from the roof rack before leaving. The exertion made me short of breath and my hands tremble. Or was that due to the confrontation with the man from the car? I could not be sure.

The part of south London that takes its name from the Surrey County cricket ground is not the smart residential district that some tourists might expect. The Oval is a seedy collection of small factories, workers' apartments and a park that is not recommended for a stroll after dark. And yet, tucked away behind the main thoroughfares, with their diesel fumes, stray cats and litter, there are enclaves of renovated houses – mostly of Victorian design – occupied by politicians and civil servants who have discovered how conveniently close to Westminster this unfashionable district is. It was in such a house that Cruyer was waiting for me.

Dicky was lounging in the front room reading The Economist. He habitually carried such reading matter rolled up in the side pocket of his reefer jacket which was now beside him on the sofa. He was wearing jeans, jogging shoes and a white roll-neck sweater in the sort of heavyweight wool that trawler-men require for deck duty in bad weather.

'I'm sorry you couldn't reach me,' I said.

'It doesn't-matter,' said Dicky in a tone that meant it did. ' Trent has taken an overdose.'

'What did he take? How bad is he?' I asked.

'His sister found him, thank God,' said Dicky. 'She brought him here. This is her house. Then she called a doctor.' Dicky said doctor as another man might say pervert or terrorist. 'Not one of our people,' Dicky went on, 'some bloody quack from the local medical centre.'

'How bad is he?'

Trent? He'll survive. But it's probably a sign that his Russian pals are turning the screws a bit. I don't want them tightening the screws to the point where Trent decides they can hurt him more than we can.'

'Did he say that? Did he say he's coming under pressure?'

'I think we should assume that he is,' said Dicky. 'That's why someone will have to tell him the facts of life.'

'For instance?'

'Someone is going to have to explain that we can't afford to have him sitting in Moscow answering the questions that a KGB debriefing panel will ask. Losing a few secret papers is one thing. Helping them build a complete diagram of our chain of command and the headquarters structure, and filling in personal details about senior officers for their files would be intolerable.' Dicky held the rolled-up magazine and slapped the open palm of his left hand with it. Ominously he added, 'And Trent had better understand that he knows too much to go for trial at the Old Bailey.'

'And you want me to explain all that?' I said.

'I thought you'd already explained it to him,' said Dicky.

'Did it occur to you that a suicide attempt might indicate that he's already been pressed too hard?'

Dicky became absorbed in the problem of rolling The Economist up so tightly that no light could be seen through it. After a long silence he said, 'I didn't tell the stupid bastard to sell out his country. You think because he's a Balliol man I want to go easy on him.' He got out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth unlit.

'I never went to college,' I said. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

He heaved himself off the sofa and went to the mantelshelf where he rummaged for matches and pulled at a flower petal to see if the daffodils were plastic; they weren't. 'You didn't go to college but sometimes you hit the nail on the head, Bernard old friend. I've been thinking of that conversation you had with Bret Rensselaer this afternoon. It was only sitting here tonight that I began to see what you were getting at.' I'd never seen Dicky so restless. He found a matchbox on the shelf, but it was empty.

'Is that so?'

'You think everything's coming up too neat and tidy, don't you? You don't like the way in which that material implicating Trent has conveniently come into Frank's hands in Berlin. You're suspicious about his being on duty the night that damned radio intercept was filed. In short, you don't like the way everything points to Giles Trent.'

'I don't like it,' I admitted. 'When I get all my questions answered fully, I know I'm asking the wrong questions.'

'Let's cut out all this nebulous talk,' he said. He put the matchbox back on the shelf, having decided not to smoke. 'Do you think Moscow know we are on to Trent? Do you think Moscow intend to use him as a scapegoat?' Carefully he put his unlit cigarette back into the packet.

'It would be a good idea for them,' I said.

'To make us think every leak we've suffered for the last few years has been the work of Trent?'

'Yes, they could wipe the slate clean like that. We put Trent behind bars and heave a sigh of relief and convince ourselves that everything is fine and dandy.'

Now Dicky used the magazine to imprint red circles on his hand, examining the result with the sort of close scrutiny fortune tellers give the palms of wealthy clients.

'There would be only one reason for doing that,' said Dicky. He looked up from his hand and stared into my blank face. 'They'd have to have someone placed as well as Trent… someone who could continue to provide them with the sort of stuff they've been getting from Trent.'

'Better,' I said. 'Much better.'

'Why better?'

'Because Moscow Centre always like to get their people home. They'll spend money, arrest some poor tourist to use as hostage, or even spring from jail an agent serving a sentence to swop him. But they really try hard to get their people home.'

'I could tell you a few people who now find they don't like it "at home",' said Dicky.

'That doesn't make any difference,' I said. 'The motive that Moscow Centre play upon is getting them safely back to Russia… medals and citations and all that hero bullshit that Moscow do so well.'

'And there is no sign yet that they are going to try getting Trent back to Moscow.'

'And that will spoil their record,' I said. 'They'd have to have a really good reason for letting Trent fall off the tightrope. There's only one sort of motive they could have, and that's positioning or making more secure another agent. A better agent.'

'But maybe the Russians don't know we're on to him.'

'And maybe Trent doesn't want to go to Moscow. Yes, I thought of both those possibilities, and either could be true. But I think Trent is going to be deliberately sacrificed. And that would be very unusual.'

'This other person,' said Dicky. 'This other agent that Moscow might already have in position… You're talking about someone at the very top? Am I right?'

'Look at the record, Dicky. We haven't run a good double agent in years and we haven't landed any of their important agents either. That adds up to one thing only: someone here is blowing everything we do,' I said. 'We've had a long string of miserable failures, and some of them were projects that Trent had no access to.'

The record can be a can of worms – we both know that,' said Dicky. 'If they had someone highly placed, they wouldn't be stupid enough to act on everything he told them. That would leave a trail a mile wide. They are too smart for that.'

'Right,' I said. 'So the chances are that Moscow know even more than the evidence suggests.'

'Do you think it could be me?' said Dicky. He beat a soft but rapid tattoo on his hand.

'It's not you,' I said. 'Maybe it's not anyone. Maybe there is no pattern of betrayal – just incompetence.'

'Why not me?' Dicky persisted. He was indignant at being dismissed so readily as a suspect.

'If you'd been a Moscow agent, you would have handled the office differently. You would have kept your secretary in that anteroom instead of moving her inside where she can see what you are doing all the time. You'd make sure you know all kinds of current matters that you don't bother to find out. You wouldn't leave top-secret documents in the copying machine and cause a hue and cry all round the building the way you did three times last year. A Moscow agent wouldn't draw that kind of attention to himself. And you probably would know enough about photography not to make such a terrible mess of your holiday snapshots the way you do every year. No, you're not a Moscow man, Dicky.'

'And neither are you,' said Dicky, 'or you wouldn't have brought it up in the first place. So let's stick together on this one. You're going to Berlin to contact the Brahms net. Let's keep your reports of.that trip confidential verbal ones. And from now on let's keep the wraps on Trent and everything we do, say or think about him. Between us, we can keep a very tight hold on things.'

'You mean, don't tell Bret?'

'I'll handle Bret. He'll be told only what he needs to be told.'

'You can't suspect Bret?' Immediately I thought of Fiona. If she was having an affair with Bret, any investigation of Bret would reveal it. Then there would be the very devil of a fuss.

'It can be anyone. You've said that yourself. It could be the D-G.'

'Well, I don't know, Dicky,' I said.

Dicky became agitated. 'Oh, I see what you're thinking. You think this might be a devious method of starving Bret of information. So that I can take over his job.'

'No,' I said, although that was exactly what had crossed my mind.

'Let's not kick off to a bad start,' said Dicky. 'We've got to trust each other. What do I have to do to make you trust me?'

'I'd want something in writing, Dicky. Something that I could produce just before they sentence me.'

'Then you'll do as I suggest?'

'Yes.' Now that Dicky had voiced my fears, I felt uneasy – or, rather, I felt frightened, bloody frightened. A Moscow agent in place endangered all of us, but if he was caught, maybe he'd leave the whole Department discredited and disbanded.

Dicky nodded. 'Because you know I'm right. You bloody well know I'm right. There is a Moscow agent sitting right at the top of the Department.'

I didn't remind Dicky that he'd started off by saying that it was my conversation with Bret that eventually made him see what I was getting at. It was better that Dicky thought it was all his own idea. Balliol men like to be creative.

There were footsteps and a knock at the door. The doctor came in. 'The patient is sleeping now, Mr Cruyer,' he said respectfully. Given the Victorian setting, I had expected a man with muttonchop whiskers and stovepipe hat. But the doctor was young, younger than Dicky, a wide-eyed boy, with long wavy hair that reached down to his stiff white collar, and carrying a battered black Gladstone bag that he must have inherited from some venerable predecessor.

'So what's the prognosis, Doc?' said Dicky. ' The doctor put his bag down on the floor while he put his overcoat on. 'Suicide is no longer the rare tragedy it once was,' he said. 'In Germany, they have about fourteen thousand a year, and that's more than die there in traffic accidents.'

'Never mind the statistics,' said Dicky. 'Is our friend upstairs likely to try again?'

'Look, Mr Cruyer, I'm just a GP, not a soothsayer. But whether you like statistics or not, I can tell you that eight out of ten suicides speak of their intentions beforehand. If someone sympathetic had been available to your friend, he probably wouldn't have taken this desperate step. As to whether he'll try again, if you give him the care and attention he obviously requires, then you will know what he's going to do long before any quack like me gets called in to mop up the mess.'

Dicky nodded as if approving the doctor's little speech. 'Will he be fit by tomorrow?' said Dicky.

'By the weekend, anyway,' said the doctor. Thanks to Miss Trent.' He moved aside to let Giles Trent's unmarried sister push past him into the room. 'Her time as a nurse served her well. I couldn't have done a better job myself.'

Miss Trent did not respond to the doctor's unctuous manner. She was in her late fifties, a tall thin figure like her brother. Her hair was waved and darkened and her spectacles decorated with shiny gems. She wore a cashmere cardigan and a skirt patterned in the Eraser tartan of red, blue and green. At the collar of her cotton blouse she wore an antique gold brooch. She gave the impression of someone with enough money to satisfy her modest tastes.

The furnishing of the room was like Miss Trent: sober, middle-class and old-fashioned. The carpets, bureau-bookcase and skeleton clock were valuable pieces that might have been inherited from her parents, but they did not fit easily there and I wondered if these were things Giles Trent had recently disposed of.

'I used my common sense,' she said, and rubbed her hands together briskly. There was a trace of the Highlands in her voice.

The young doctor bade us all goodnight and departed. Goodness knows what Dicky had told him but, despite his little outburst, his manner was uncommonly respectful.

'And you're the man my brother works for,' said Miss Trent.

'Yes, I am,' said Dicky. 'You can imagine how shocked I was to hear what had happened.'

'Yes, I can imagine,' she said frostily. I wondered how much she guessed about her brother's work.

'But I wish you hadn't called in your local doctor,' said Dicky. He gave her the card listing the Departmental emergency numbers. 'Much better to use the private medical service that your brother is entitled to.' Dicky smiled at her, and held his smile despite the stern look she gave both to the card and to Dicky. 'We'll get your brother into a nice comfortable room with a night nurse and medical attention available on the spot.' Again the smile, and again no response. Miss Trent's countenance remained unchanged. 'You've done your bit, Miss Trent.'

'My brother will stay here,' she said.

'I've made all the arrangements now,' said Dicky. He was a match for her; Dicky had the thick-skinned determination of a rhino. I was interested to watch the confrontation, but again and again my thoughts went back to Fiona. Morbidly I visualized her with Bret: talking, dancing, laughing, loving.

'Did you not hear what I said?' Miss Trent asked calmly. 'My brother needs the rest. You'll not be disturbing him.'

'That's a decision that neither of us need concern ourselves with,' said Dicky. 'Your brother has signed a contract under the terms of which his employers are responsible for his medical care. In situations like this' – Dicky paused long enough to raise an eyebrow – 'your brother must be examined by one of our own medical staff. We have to think of the medical insurance people. They can be devils about anything irregular.'

'He's sleeping.' This represented a slight retrenchment.

'If his insurance was revoked, your brother would lose his pension, Miss Trent. Now I'm sure you wouldn't want to claim that your medical knowledge is better than that of the doctor who examined him.'

'I did not hear the doctor say he could be moved.'

'He wrote it out for me,' said Dicky. He'd put the piece of paper between the pages of his magazine and now he leafed through it. 'Yes, here we are.' He passed the handwritten document to her. She read it in silence and passed it back.

'He must have written that when he first arrived.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Dicky.

'That was before he examined my brother. Is that what you were doing all the time before he came upstairs?'

'The ambulance will be here any moment, Miss Trent. Could I trouble you to put your brother's clothes into a case or a bag? I'll see you get it back of course.' A big smile. 'He'll need his clothes in a day or two, from what I understand.'

'I'll go with him,' she said.

'I'll phone the office and ask them,' said Dicky. 'But they almost always say no. That's the trouble with trying to get things done at this time of night. None of the really senior people can be found.'

'I thought you were senior,' she said.

'Exactly!' said Dicky. That's what I mean. No one will be senior enough to countermand my decision.'

'Poor Giles,' said the woman. 'That he'd be working for a man such as you.'

'For a lot of the time, he was left on his own,' said Dicky.

Miss Trent looked up suddenly to see what he meant, but Dicky's face was as blank as hers had been. Angrily she turned to where I was sitting holding a folded newspaper and pencil. 'And you,' she said. 'What are you doing?'

'It's a crossword,' I said. 'Six letters: the clue is "Married in opera but not in Seville ". Do you get it?'

'I know nothing of opera. I hate opera, and I know nothing of Seville,' said Miss Trent. 'And if you've nothing more important than that to ask me, it's time you took yourself out of my house.'

'I've nothing more important than that to ask you, Miss Trent,' I said. 'Perhaps your brother will be able to solve it.'

Jesus, I thought, suppose Bret turned out to be a Moscow man and was trying to recruit Fiona to his cause. That would really be messy.

'It's not a crossword at all,' said Miss Trent. 'You're making up questions. That's the classified page.'

'I'm looking for another job,' I explained.