Berlin Game

19

Some of the most secret conversations I'd ever heard took place not in any of the debugged 'silent rooms' under the Department's new offices but in restaurants, St James's clubs or even in the backs of taxicabs. So there was nothing surprising about Dicky Cruyer's suggestion that I go to his house about nine 'for a confidential chat'.

A man repairing the doorbell let me in. Dicky's wife, Daphne, was working at home that morning. A large layout pad occupied most of the corner table in the front room. A jam jar of coloured felt-tip pens was balanced on the TV, and scattered across the sofa were scribbled roughs for advertising a new breakfast food. Daphne's art-school training was everywhere evident; brightly painted bits of folk art and crudely woven cushion covers, a primitive painting of Adam and Eve over the fireplace and a collection of matchbox covers displayed in an antique cabinet. The only personal items in the room were photos: a picture of the Cruyers' two sons amid a hundred other grim-faced, grey-uniformed boys in front of the huge Gothic building that was their boarding school; and, propped on the mantelshelf, a large shiny colour photo of Dicky's boat. There was some very quiet Gilbert and Sullivan leaking out of the hi-fi. Dicky was humming.

Through the 'dining area' I could see Daphne in the kitchen. She was pouring hot milk into large chinaware mugs. Looking up she said 'Ciao!' with more than her usual cheerfulness. Did she know her husband had been having an affair with my sister-in-law? Her hair was that straggly mess that only comes from frequent visits to very expensive hairdressers. From what little I knew about women, that might have been a sign that she did know about Dicky and Tessa.

'Traffic bad?' said Dicky as I threw my raincoat onto a chair. It was his subtle way of saying I was late. Dicky liked to have everyone on the defensive right from the start. He'd learned such tactics in a book about young tycoons. I secretly borrowed it from his office bookshelf one weekend so that I could read it too.

'No,' I lied. 'It only took me ten minutes.'

He smiled and I wished I'd not got into the game.

Daphne brought cocoa on a dented tin tray advertising Pears soap. My cup celebrated the silver jubilee of King George V. Dicky complimented Daphne on the cocoa and pressed me to have a biscuit, while she gathered up her pens and paper and retreated upstairs. I sometimes wondered how they managed together; secret intelligence was a strange bedfellow for a huckster. It was better to be married to a Departmental employee; I didn't have to ask her to leave the room every time the office came through on the phone.

He waited until he heard his wife go upstairs. 'Did I tell you the Brahms network was going to fall to pieces?'

It was, of course, a rhetorical question; I was expected to confirm that he'd predicted that very thing with uncanny accuracy a million times or more, but I looked at him straight-faced and said, 'You may have done, Dicky. I'm not sure I remember.'

'For Christ's sake, Bernard! I told Bret only two days ago.'

'So what's happened?'

'The people have scattered. Frank is here.'

'Frank is here?'

'Don't just repeat what I say. Yes, dammit. Frank is here.'

'In London?'

'He's upstairs taking a bath and cleaning up. He arrived last night and we've been up half the night talking.' Dicky was standing at the fireplace with fingers tapping on the mantelshelf and one cowboy boot resting on the brass fender.

'Aren't you going into the office?' I cradled the cocoa in my hands, but it wasn't very hot so I drank it. I hate cold cocoa.

Dicky tugged at the gold medallion hanging round his neck on a fine chain. It was a feminine gesture and so was the artful smile with which he answered my question.

I said, 'Bret will know Frank is in London. If you are missing from the office, he'll put two and two together.'

'Bret can go to hell,' said Dicky.

'Are you going to drink your cocoa?'

'It's real chocolate, actually,' said Dicky. 'Our neighbours across the road brought it back from Mexico and showed Daphne how the Mexicans make it.'

I recognized Dicky's way of saying he didn't like it. 'Here's health,' I said, and drank his cocoa too. His mug was decorated with rodents named Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. It was smaller than mine; I suppose Daphne knew he didn't much like cocoa the way the Mexicans fixed it.

'Yes. Bret can go to hell,' repeated Dicky. The gas fire wasn't on. He gently kicked the artificial log with the tip of his boot.

If Dicky was hell-bent on a knock-down-drag-out fight my money would be on Bret Rensselaer. I didn't say that; I didn't have to. 'This is all part of your plan to keep Bret out of things?'

'Our plan,' said Dicky. 'Our plan.'

'I still haven't had that confidential memo you promised me.'

'For God's sake. I'm not going to let you down.' From upstairs there came the sound of the Rolling Stones. 'It's Daphne,' explained Dicky. 'She says she works better to music.'

'So what is Frank up to? Why come here to whisper in your ear? Why not report to the office?'

Again came Dicky's artful smile. 'We both know that, Bernard. Frank is after my job.'

'Frank is a hundred years old and waiting for retirement.'

'But retiring from my desk would give him another few thousand a year on his pension. Retiring from my desk, Frank would be sure of a CBE or even a K.'

'Have you been encouraging Frank to think he's getting your job? There's not a chance of it at his age.'

Dicky frowned. 'Well, don't let's rake that over, at least not for the time being. If Frank has unspoken ambitions, it's not for us to make predictions about them. You follow me, don't you?'

'Follow you, I'm way ahead of you. Frank helps you to get rid of Bret Rensselaer. Then you get Bret's job and Frank gets yours – except that Frank won't get yours.'

'You've got an evil mind,' said Dicky without rancour. 'You always think the worst of everyone around you.'

'And the distressing tiling about that is the way I'm so often proved right.'

'Well, take it easy on Frank. He's shaken.'

Dicky was of course exaggerating wildly, both about the disintegration of the Brahms net and about Frank Harrington's morale. Frank came downstairs ten minutes later. He looked no worse than I would have looked after sitting up with Dicky all night. He was freshly shaved, with two tiny cuts where he'd trimmed the edges of his blunt-ended moustache. He wore a chalk-stripe three-piece suit, clean shirt and oxford shoes polished to a glasslike finish, and he was waving that damned pipe in the air. Frank was tired and hoarse with talking, but he was an expert at making the best of himself and I knew he'd display no sign of weakness in front of Dicky and me.

Frank seemed pleased to see me. 'I'm glad you're here, Bernard. Has Dicky put you in the picture?'

'I've told him nothing,' said Dicky. 'I wanted him to hear it from you. Drinking chocolate, Frank?'

Frank looked quickly at his gold wristwatch. 'A small gin and tonic wouldn't go amiss, Dicky, if it's all the same to you.'

'It's cocoa, Frank,' I said. 'Made the way they drink it in Mexico.'

'You said you liked it,' said Dicky defensively.

'I loved it,' I said. 'I drank two of them, didn't I.'

'If you've got Plymouth gin,' said Frank, 'I'll have it straight or with bitters.' He went over to the fireplace and knocked out his pipe.

When Dicky came back from the drinks wagon and saw the charred tobacco ashes in the hearth, he said, 'Christ, Frank! Can't you see that that's a gas fire.' He handed Frank the gin and then went down on his knees at the fireplace.

'I'm awfully sorry,' said Frank.

'It looks just like a real open fire,' said Dicky as he used one of Daphne's discarded breakfast-food roughs to marshal the pipe dottle into a tiny heap that could be hidden under the artificial log.

'I'm sorry, Dicky. I really am,' said Frank as he sat back on the sofa with a yellow oilskin tobacco pouch on his knees. He looked at me and nodded before sipping his gin. Then, in a different sort of voice, he said, 'It could become bad, Bernard. If you're going over there, this would be the time to do it.'

'How bad?'

Dicky got to his feet and slapped his hands against his legs to get rid of any ash on his fingers. 'Bloody bad,' said Dicky. 'Tell him how you first found out what was going on.'

'I'm not sure I know what is going on yet,' said Frank. 'But the first real sign of trouble came when I had a call from the police liaison chap in Bonn. The border guards at Hitzacker in Lower Saxony had fished a fellow out of the Elbe. He'd got over the Wall and across all those damned minefields and border obstacles and into the river. He was just about done in, but he wasn't injured in any way. From the West German police report I gather there'd been no sounds of shooting or anything from the other side. It was as near as you can get to a perfect escape.'

'Lucky man,' said Dicky.

'Or a well-informed one,' said Frank. 'The border runs along the northeast bank of the river there, so the East Germans can't put obstacles and mantraps in the water. That's why the DDK keep bellyaching about the way the border should run along the middle of the Elbe. Meanwhile it's a good place to try an escape.'

'A border crossing? Why did Bonn get involved and why did anyone call you?'

' Bonn got interested when the interrogator at the reception centre found that the escapee was an East German customs official.'

Frank looked at me as if expecting a reaction. When I gave none, he spent a few moments trying to light his pipe. 'An East German customs official,' he said again, and waved the match in the air to extinguish it. He almost tossed the dead match into the fireplace but remembered in time and placed it on the large Cinzano ashtray that Dicky had put at his elbow. 'Max Binder. One of our people. A Brahms network man.'

Dicky had had a whole night of Frank's measured story-telling and now he tried to hurry things along. 'When Frank put in the usual "contact string" for the rest of the Brahms network next morning, he got no response from anyone.'

'I didn't say that, Dicky,' said Frank pedantically. 'I got messages from two of them.'

'You didn't get messages,' said Dicky even more pedantically. 'You got two "out of contact" signals.' Dicky had decided that the failure of the Brahms network was his big chance, and he was determined to write the story his own way.

Frank grunted and sipped his gin.

Dicky said, 'Those bastards have been working a racket with the import bank credits, and making a fortune out of it. And Bret's probably been authorizing false papers and the contacts and everything they needed.'

'Werner keeps complaining about the false papers,' I said.

'That was just to put us off the scent,' said Frank. 'The false papers were what they needed more than anything else.'

'We've had a lot of unofficial complaints from the DDR about "antisocial elements given aid and assistance",' I said.

Frank looked up from his pipe and said sharply, 'I resent that, Bernard. You know only too well that those East Germans keep up a regular bombardment of complaints along those lines. How the hell was I to know that this time their cocktail-party diatribes were based on fact?'

Dicky could not restrain a grim smile, and he turned away to hide it. The Brahms network being no more than a criminal gang manipulating the Department for its own profit must surely be enough to bring Bret Rensselaer crashing to the ground. And into the bargain Bret would lose his Brahms Four source. 'Frank says he expects the DDR to prefer murder charges against them,' Dicky added.

'Who? Where?' I said. I immediately thought of Rolf Mauser and was sufficiently surprised to allow my consternation to show. I'd been worrying about the way I'd urged Bret to okay a rollover loan for Werner. Would he suspect that I was a part of this racket? To cover myself, I got up and went over to the drinks wagon. 'Okay if I pour myself a drink, Dicky?'

'Has anyone been in touch with you?' Frank asked me. 'Rolf Mauser's son thinks he went to Hamburg. My bet would be London.'

'Anyone else?' I said, holding up the gin bottle. 'No. No one's contacted me up to now.'

Frank returned my gaze for a moment before shaking his head. 'No,' he said, 'I only said that murder charges would be the next step if the net's been penetrated. It's a device the DDR use for fugitives,' he explained. 'A murder charge automatically makes a fugitive Category One. It gets their descriptions circulated by teleprinter and the call goes out to the armed forces, as well as all the police services and the border guards. And of course there is always more chance of a murderer being reported by the public. These days the man in the East German street has become rather tolerant of black marketeers.' Frank looked at me again. 'Right, Bernard?'

I sipped a little of the gin I'd poured for myself and wondered to what extent Frank guessed that I'd seen Rolf or one of the network. Dicky wasn't suspicious; he could obviously think of nothing except how to use this new situation for his own advancement, but Frank had known me since I was a child. It was not so easy to fool Frank. 'It had to come,' said Frank. 'Brahms have been no use to us except to channel back material from Brahms Four. They've got into mischief, and now they're in trouble. We've seen it happen before, haven't we?'

'You say they're running, without backup or any support or anything from us?'

'No. That's Dicky's interpretation. They might simply be taking cover for a couple of days,' said Frank. 'It's what they do when the security Forces are having a routine shakeout.'

'But no matter how routine the shakeout,' I said, 'they might be picked up. And Normannenstrasse will give them an offer they can't resist and maybe blow another network or so. Is that what you're thinking, Frank?'

'What kind of offer they can't resist?' said Dicky.

I didn't answer but Frank said, 'The Stasis will make them talk, Dicky.'

Dicky poured himself a drink. 'Poor bastards. Max Binder, old Rolf Mauser – who else?'

'Let's leave the mourning until we know they are in the bag,' I said. 'Where's Max Binder now?'

'He's still in the reception centre in Hamburg. The interrogation people won't let us have him until they are through.'

'I don't like that, Frank,' said Dicky. 'I don't like some little German interrogator grilling one of our people. Get him out of there right away.'

'We can't do that,' said Frank. 'We have to go through the formalities.'

'Our Berlin people don't go into the reception centre,' said Dicky.

Patiently Frank explained, ' Berlin is still under Allied military occupation, so in Berlin we can do things our way. But things that happen in the Federal Republic have to go through the state BfV office and then through Cologne, and these things take time.'

'When did you see him, Frank?'

Daphne Cruyer tapped and put her head round the door. 'I'm off to the agency now, darling. We're auditioning ten-year-olds for the TV commercial. I can't leave my assistant to face that horde of little monsters on her own.' She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat, long blue cloak and shiny boots. She had changed her image since her visit to Silas in floral pinafore and granny glasses.

'Bye, bye, darling,' said Dicky, and kissed her dutifully. 'I'll phone you at the office if I'm working late again.'

Daphne gave me an affectionate kiss too. 'You men are always working late,' she said archly. Now I was convinced she knew about Dicky and Tessa. I wondered if her amazing outfit was also a reaction to Dicky's infidelity.

Only after we'd all watched Daphne climb into her car and drive away did Frank answer my question.

'The positive identification was enough for me,' said Frank. 'No sense in me trailing all the way out to some godforsaken hole in Lower Saxony. I wasted all next day trying to contact the rest of them.'

'Daphne's forgotten to take her portfolio,' said Dicky, picking up a flat leather folder from the table where she'd put it while kissing him. 'I'll phone her office and tell them to send a motorcycle messenger.' It was the sort of solicitude shown only by unfaithful husbands.

Dicky left the room to make his phone call from the hall. His loud voice was muffled by the frosted glass panel.

'You'd better tell me the real story,' I told Frank. 'While Dicky's phoning.'

'What do you mean?'

'A DDR customs man swimming across the Elbe would excite the police liaison man in Bonn like a plate of cold dumplings. And even if this discovery did get him so animated, why would he think of you as someone who must be told immediately?' Frank didn't respond, so I pushed. 'Police liaison in Bonn aren't given any phone numbers for SIS Berlin, Frank. I thought even Dicky would sniff at that one.'

'They went to Max Binder's home to arrest him.'

'On what charge?'

'We don't know. It must have been something to do with their forfait racket. His wife was home. She got a message to him and he cleared out quickly.'

'You got this from Max Binder?'

'I got it from someone who was told by Werner,' admitted Frank. 'Werner is in no danger. There's no evidence that anyone but Binder was involved. And Max Binder escaped by swimming the Elbe at Hitzacker, just as I described. He's still in the reception centre. I want to contact Brahms Four, but no one will tell me how.'

From the hall I could still hear Dicky's voice. He had explained in considerable detail what the portfolio contained and from where it had to be collected, but now he was worrying if a motorcycle messenger would be able to carry it. The doorbell rang twice and Dicky shouted to tell the electrician to stop testing it. 'You got it from someone who told Werner,' I repeated. 'And who was that, Frank?'

'Zena told me,' said Frank, prodding about in the bowl of his pipe so that he wouldn't have to meet my stare. 'She's a captivating creature, and I adore the little thing. She has to see Werner from time to time. She filled in some details of this Max Binder story.' He sucked at his pipe but no smoke came.

'I see.'

'You know about me and Zena Volkmann, don't you?' He probed into the bowl of his pipe. When he was sure that the tobacco was not alight, he put the pipe into his top pocket and took a swig at his drink.

'Yes, I know, Frank. I guess she gave you that box of papers that I came to Berlin to look at.'

'It was genuine,' said Frank.

'All too bloody genuine,' I agreed. 'It was straight from Moscow Centre. Top-grade stuff, carefully selected to make it look as if Giles Trent was their only man in London. Where did she get it from?'

'Zena knows a lot of people,' said Frank,

'She knows too many people, Frank. Too many of the wrong people.'

'It's better that we don't go into all that with Bret, and everyone at London Central.'

'Zena is obviously in on this racket that Brahms have been running.'

'It's possible,' said Frank. He finished his gin and licked his lips.

'It's not possible, Frank. It's all too bloody obvious. That girl's been making a fool of you. She's been in league with Werner and all the others all the time.'

'You're trying to tell me that your pal Werner was pimping for his own wife?' Frank's voice was harsh; he was determined to forgo his own illusions only by destroying mine too.

'I don't know,' I said. 'Perhaps the breakup with Werner came first. Then she found herself with something she could sell to the Brahms net and Werner was the only contact with them she had.'

'Sell what to the Brahms net?' Frank was uneasy now. He clipped and undipped the flap of his yellow tobacco pouch and studied the tobacco as if it was of great interest to him.

'Information, Frank.'

'You're not suggesting that I told her anything that could become critical?'

'We'd better find out, Frank,' I said. 'We'd better find out damned soon. We've got field agents who must be warned if Zena Volkmann has been providing your pillow talk to men who might wind up in Normannenstrasse.'

'Don't let's overreact,' said Frank. 'I get information from her; she gets none from me.'

'It won't seem like overreaction to me, Frank,' I said. 'Because I'm going to be there. I'm going to be on the wrong side of Charlie pulling your chestnuts out of the fire, and trying to dance quickly enough to keep the Stasis a jump or two behind me. So just to make sure Zena doesn't hear about my travel plans, I'm going to keep well clear of you and your extramarital activities, Frank.'

'Don't be a fool, Bernard. Do you think any of those clowns you drink with in Steglitz would know how to get you through the wire safely? Do you think any of those kids you were at school with know the town as well as I know it? I've spent most of my life reading about, looking at and talking to Berliners. I get my information from a million different sources and I study it. That's what I do all day long, Bernard. I know Berlin like a librarian knows his shelves of books, like a dentist knows a patient's mouth, like a ship's engineer knows the bits and pieces of his engine. I know every square inch of that stinking town, from palace to sewer.'

'You know the town, Frank. You know it better than anyone, I'll admit that.'

Frank looked at me quizzically. 'For God's sake!' he said suddenly. 'You're not saying you don't trust me.' He stood up to face me and banged his chest with a flattened hand. 'This is Frank Harrington you're talking to. I've known you since you were a tiny tot.'

'Let it go, Frank,' I said.

'I won't,' said Frank. 'I told your father I'd look after you. I told him that when you joined the Department, and I told him it at the very end. I said I'd look after you, and if you're going over the other side, you're going to do it my way.'

I'd never seen Frank get so emotional. 'Let me think about it,' I said.

Tm serious,' said Frank. 'You go my way or you're not going.' It was a way of avoiding it, and for a moment I felt like taking the opportunity. 'My way or I'll veto it.'

From the hall I could hear Dicky telling the electrician that he was charging too much to fix the bell. Then Dicky put his head round the door and borrowed a fiver from me. 'It's the black economy,' explained Dicky as he took the money. 'You can only get things done if you pay spot cash.'

'Okay, Frank,' I said when Dicky had gone. 'We'll do it your way.'

'Just you and me,' said Frank. 'I'll get you over there.' He didn't promise to get me back again, I noticed.

'Dicky is keeping everything very tight,' I said. 'Did he tell you that?'

Frank was examining his oilskin pouch again to see how much tobacco he had left. 'You can't go wrong that way,' he said.

'Not even Bret,' I said.

'It's coming from someone,' said Frank. 'It's coming from someone with really good access to material.'

I didn't say anything. Such a remark from Frank was lèse-majesté and I could think of nothing to reply.

I looked at the clock over the fireplace and wondered aloud if that was really the time. I told Frank to come and have dinner with us some time, and he promised to phone if he could fit it in. Then I shouted goodbye to Dicky, who was still on the phone explaining that Daphne's folio of breakfast-food roughs was vitally important. It was a contention that someone on the other end of the phone seemed to doubt.

Of the Departmental safe houses in which to meet Giles Trent I had chosen the betting shop in Kilburn High Road. The girl behind the counter nodded as I came in. I pushed past three men who were discussing the ancestry of a racehorse, and went through a door marked 'staff only' and upstairs to a small front room. Its window overlooked the wide pavement, where a number of secondhand bathtubs and sinks were displayed.

'You're always in time for the coffee,' said Trent. He was standing at a wooden bench. Upon it there was a bottle of Jersey milk, a catering-size tin of Sainsbury's powdered coffee and a bag of sugar from which the handle of a large spoon protruded. Trent was pouring boiling water from an electric kettle into a chipped cup with the name Tiny painted on it in nail varnish. 'No matter how long I wait for you, the moment I decide to make coffee, you arrive.'

'Something came up,' I said vaguely. For the first time I could see Trent as the handsome man who was so attractive to Tessa. He was tall, with a leonine head. His hair was long and wavy. It was not greying in that messy mousy way that most men's hair goes grey; it was streaked with silver, so that he looked like the sort of Italian film star who got cast opposite big-titled teenagers.

'I really don't think it's necessary for us to go through this amazing rigmarole of meeting here in this squalid room.' His voice was low and resonant.

'Which squalid room would you prefer?' I said, taking a cup from those arranged upside down on the draining board of the sink. I put boiling water, coffee powder, sugar and milk into it.

'My office is no distance from yours,' said Trent. 'I come across to that building several times a week in the normal course of my work. Why the devil should I be making myself conspicuous in this filthy betting shop in Kilburn?'

'The thing I don't like about powdered coffee,' I said, 'is the way it makes little islands of powder. They float. You get one of those in your mouth and it tastes horrible.'

'Did you hear what I said?'

'I didn't realize you wanted an answer,' I said. 'I thought you were just declaiming about the injustice of life.'

'If you put the coffee in first, then poured the hot water on it a little at a time, it would dissolve. Then you put the cold milk in.'

'I was never much good at cooking,' I said. 'First of all, you are not nearly as conspicuous going into a broken-down betting shop in Kilburn as you like to think. On race days, that shop downstairs is crowded with men in expensive suits who put more on a horse than you or I earn in a year. As to your point that it would be better security procedure for us to meet in my office or yours, I can only express surprise at your apparent naiveté.'

'What do you mean?'

'Security from who?' I said. 'Or, as you might put it, from whom? What do you think is secure about meeting in that office of yours, with all those Oxford graduates staring at us with wide eyes and open mouths? You think I've forgotten the way I had a procession of chinless crustaceans coming in and out of your office the last time I was over there? Each one staring at me to see if people from SIS wore their six-shooters on the hip or in shoulder harness.'

'You imagine things,' said Trent.

'I do,' I said. That's what I'm paid to do: imagine things. And I don't need to spend a lot of tune imagining what could happen to you if things went sour with Chlestakov. You might be a world authority on making instant coffee but you'll be safer if you leave the security arrangements to me.'

'Don't give me that security lecture all over again,' he said. 'I don't want a twenty-four-hour guard on my home or special locks on the doors and windows.'

Then you're a bloody fool.' I said. We were both standing by the wooden table as we talked. There were only hard little wooden chairs in the room; it was more restful to stand up.

'Chlestakov didn't turn up,' said Trent. He was looking out the window, watching a young woman with a baby in her arms. She was stopping people as they walked past. Most of them walked on with tight embarrassed expressions on their faces. 'She's begging,' said Trent. 'I thought those days had gone for ever.'

'You spend too much time in Mayfair,' I said. 'So who came?'

'And no one gives her anything. Do you see that?'

'So who came?'

'To the meeting at Waterloo station? No one came.'

'They always send someone,' I said. 'And keep well back from the window. Why do you think we put net curtains up?'

'No one arrived. I did it exactly by the book. I arrived under the big four-faced clock at seven minutes past the hour. And then went back two hours later. Still no one. Then I went to the standby rendezvous.'

'Where was that?'

'Selfridge's food department, near the fresh fish counter. I did it exactly as arranged.'

'Moscow Centre like to stick to the tried and true methods,' I said. 'We arrested one of their people under that damned clock back in 1975.' I went to the window where he stood and watched the woman begging. A man wearing a dark raincoat and grey felt hat was reaching into his inside pocket.

'She's had luck at last,' said Trent. 'I wondered why she didn't stand outside Barclays Bank, but I suppose a betting shop is better.'

'Can't you spot a plainclothes cop when you see one?' I said. To beg or gather alms in a public place is an offence under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, and by having the baby with her she can be charged under the Children and Young Persons Act too.'

'The bastard,' said Trent.

'The plainclothes cop is there because this is a safe house,' I said. 'He doesn't know that, of course, but he knows that this is Home Office notified premises. The woman doesn't beg regularly or she'd have learned to keep clear of betting shops, because betting shops attract crooks and crooks bring cops.'

'Are you saying the woman is working for the KGB, and they are keeping this SIS safe house under observation?'

I didn't answer his question. They must have thought you were being followed, Trent. That's the only explanation for Chlestakov failing to show up. The Russians always show up at a rendezvous. Tell me again about the previous meeting.'

'You're right, a police car's arrived and they're putting her into it.' He looked at me and said, 'It went very well. I told Chlestakov that I might be able to get my hands on the Berlin System, and he went crazy at the thought of it. He took me to dinner at some fancy club in Curzon Street and insisted that we order a big meal and very expensive claret. I'm not all that fond of fancy French food, but he obviously wanted to keep me sweet. That's why I can't understand why the Embassy have cut me.'

'Not the Embassy,' I said. 'Just the KGB Section of the Embassy. They have a motive – you can be quite sure that the Russians always have a motive for everything they do.'

'You said they work out of Moscow for everything.'

'Did I? Well, if I said that, I was right. The London Section Chief wouldn't change his underwear until Moscow Centre have approved the kind of soap the laundry use.'

'But why would Moscow tell them to cut me? And if they were going to drop me, why not tell me so?'

'I don't know, Giles old friend.'

'Don't call me Giles old friend in that sarcastic way.'

'You'll have to put up with me calling you Giles old anything in any way I choose for the time being,' I said. 'Because if Moscow Centre have decided to drop you, it might not simply be a matter of them leaving you off the list of people invited along for vodka and caviar, and a film show about the hydroelectric plant at Kuibyshev.'

'No?'

'It might mean they will get rough,' I told him.

He took this suggestion very calmly. 'Would you like to hear what I think?'

'I'd like to hear it very much,' I said. I was being sarcastic but Trent didn't notice.

'I think you had Chlestakov picked up.'

'Picked up? By Special Branch, you mean?'

'Special Branch or your own duty arresting officer. Or perhaps by some agency or department distanced from you.'

'What sort of agency "distanced" from us could I have used to "pick up" Chlestakov?'

'The CIA.'

'You're talking like an eighteen-year-old anti-nuke demonstrator. You know we'd not let the bloody CIA pick up anyone in this country. And you know very well that there are no agencies distanced from us, or undistanced from us, that could take a Russian national into custody.'

'No one ever gets a straight answer from you bullyboys,' said Trent.

'Are you drunk, Trent?' I said, going closer to him.

'Of course not.'

'Christ, it's not even lunchtime.'

'Why the hell shouldn't I have a drink if I fancy one? I'm doing all your dirty work for you, aren't I? Who will get a medal and promotion if we pull the wool over the eyes of old Chlestakov? You will, you and Dicky bloody Cruyer and all that crowd.'

I grabbed him by the lapel and shook him until his head rolled. 'Listen to me, you creep,' I said softly. 'The only dirty work you're doing is clearing up your own shit. If you take another drink before I give you my permission, 'I'll get a custody order and lock you away where you can't put agents' lives at risk.'

'I'm not drunk,' he said. He had in fact sobered up now that I'd shaken his brains back into operation.

'If I lose one agent, I'll kill you, Trent.'

He said nothing; he could see I was serious. 'They're your friends, aren't they,' he said. 'They're your Berlin schoolfriends. Ahhh!'

I shouldn't have hit him at all but it was only a little jab in the belly and it helped him to sober up still more.

I picked up the phone and dialled our Federal emergency number. I recognized the voice at the other end. 'Peter? This is Bernard. I'm in the Coach and Horses.' All our safe houses had pub names. 'And I need someone to get a male drunk home and look after him while he sobers up. And I don't want anyone whose heart can be broken by a sob story.'

I put the phone down and looked at Trent. He was sitting on one of the hard chairs, holding his belly and crying silently.

'You'll be all right,' I told him. 'Save your tears for Chlestakov. If he's no longer any use to them, they'll send him home and give him the sort of job that will encourage the ones still here to work harder.'