Mexico Set

15

There was a time when Lisl Hennig's house seemed gigantic. When I was small child, each marble step of that grand staircase was a mountain. Scaling mountains had then required an exertion almost beyond me, and I'd needed a moment's rest when each summit was won. And that was how it now was for Frau Lisl Hennig. The staircase was something she tackled only when she felt at her best. I watched her as she inched her way into the 'salon' and berthed in a huge gilt throne, plumped up with velvet cushions so she didn't put too much strain upon her arthritic knees. She was old, but the brown dyed hair, big eyes and the fine features in her wrinkled face made it difficult to guess exactly how old.

'Bernd,' she said, using the name by which I'd been known at my Berlin school. 'Bernd. Put my sticks on the back of the chair where I can find them if I want them. You don't know what it's like to be crippled in this way. Without my sticks I am a prisoner in this damned chair.'

'They are there already,' I said.

'Give me a kiss. Give me a kiss,' she said testily. 'Have you forgotten Tante Lisl? And how I used to rock you in my arms?'

I kissed her. I had been in Berlin for three days, waiting for Werner to come back from his 'short reconnaissance' to the East Sector, but every day Lisl greeted me as if seeing me after a long absence.

'I want tea,' said Lisl. 'Find that wretched girl Klara and tell her to bring tea. Order some for yourself if you'd like to.' She had always had this same autocratic demanding manner. She looked around her to be sure that everything was in its rightful place. Lisl's mother had chosen these hand-carved pieces of oak furniture, and the chandelier that had been hidden in the coal cellar in 1945. In Lisl's childhood this room had been softened by lacework and embroidery as befits a place to which the ladies retired after dining in the room that now contained the hotel reception desk. This 'salon' was where where Lisl's mother gave the fine ladies of Berlin afternoon tea. And on fine summer days the large windows were opened to provide a view from the balcony as the Kaiser Alexander Guard Grenadiers went marching back to their barracks behind their band.

It was Lisl who first called it a 'salon' and entertained here Berlin's brightest young architects, painters, poets, writers and certain Nazi politicians. To say nothing of the seven brawny cyclists from the Sports Palace who arrived one afternoon with erotic dancers from one of the city's most notorious Tanzbars and noisily pursued them through the house in search of vacant bedrooms. They were here still, many of those celebrities of what Berlin called 'The Golden Twenties'. They were crowded together on the walls of this salon, smiling and staring down from sepia-toned photos that were signed with the overwrought passions that were an expression of the reckless decade that preceded the Third Reich.

Lisl was wearing green silk, a waterfall rippling over her great shapeless bulk and cascading upon her tiny, pointed, strap-fronted shoes. 'What are you doing tonight?' she asked. Klara – the 'wretched girl' who was about sixty and had worked for Lisl for about twenty years – looked round the door. She nodded to me and gave a nervous smile to show that she'd heard Lisl demanding tea.

'I have to see Werner,' I said.

'I was hoping you'd play cards,' she said. She rubbed her painful knee and smiled at me.

'I would have liked that, Lisl,' I said, 'but I have to see him.'

'You hate playing cards with your old Tante Lisl. I know. I know.' She looked up and, as the light fell on her, I could see the false eyelashes and the layers of paint and powder that she put upon her face on the days she went outside. 'I taught you to play bridge. You were only nine or ten years old. You loved it then.'

'I would have loved it now,' I protested untruthfully.

'There is a very nice young Englishman whom I want you to meet, and old Herr Koch is coming.'

'If only I didn't have to see Werner,' I said, 'I would have really liked to spend an evening with you.' She smiled grimly. She knew I hated card games. And the prospect of meeting a 'very nice young Englishman' was rivalled only by the idea of spending the evening listening to the-oft-repeated reminiscences of old Mr Koch.

'With Werner?' exclaimed Lisl, as if suddenly remembering. 'There was a message for you. Werner is delayed and can't see you tonight. He'll phone you early tomorrow.' She smiled. 'It doesn't matter, Liebchen. Tante Lisl won't hold you to your word. I know you have more interesting things to do than play bridge with an ugly old crippled woman like me.'

It was game, set and match to Lisl. 'I'll make up a four,' I said with as much grace as I could muster. 'Where was Werner phoning from?'

'Wundervoll,' said Lisl with a great smile. 'Where was he phoning from, darling? How would I know a thing like that?' I think she'd guessed that Werner was in the East Sector, but she didn't want to admit it, not even to herself. Like so many other native Berliners she tried not to remember that her town was now a small island in the middle of a communist sea. She referred to the communist world by means of jokes, half-truths and euphemisms, the same way that 300 years earlier the Viennese had shrugged off the besieging Ottoman Turks. 'You don't really understand the bidding,' said Lisl. 'That's why you'll never be a good bridge player.'

'I'm good enough,' I said. It was stupid of me to resent her remark, since I had no ambition to become a good bridge player. I was piqued that this old woman was able to trap me into an evening's bridge using the same obvious tactics that she'd used on me when I was an infant.

'Cheer up, Bernd,' she said. 'Here is the tea. And I do believe there is cake. No lemon needed, Klara. We drink it English style.' The frail Klara set the tray down on the table and went through the ritual of putting out the plates, forks and cups and saucers, and the silver bowl that held the tea-strainer. 'And here is my new English friend,' said Lisl, 'the one I was telling you about. Another cup and saucer, Klara.'

I turned to see the man who'd entered the salon. It was Dicky's college chum from Mexico City. There was no mistaking this tall, thin Englishman with his brown, almost ginger, hair brushed flat against his skull. His heart-shaped face still showed the effects of the fierce Mexican sun. His ruddy complexion was marked in places by freckles that, together with his awkwardness, made him look younger than his thirty-eight years. He was wearing grey flannels and a blue blazer with large decorative brass buttons and the badge of some cricket club on the pocket. 'Bernard Samson,' he said. He stretched out his hand. 'Henry Tiptree. Remember?' His handshake was firm but furtive, the sort of handshake that diplomats and politicians use to get through a long line of guests. 'What good luck to find you here. I was talking to a chap named Harrington the other night. He said you knew more about this extraordinary town than any other ten people.' His voice was cultured, throaty and rather penetrating. The sort of voice the BBC assign to reading the news the night someone very important dies. 'Extra… awwwrdinary town,' he said again, as if practising. This tune he held the note even longer.

'I thought you worked in Mexico City.'

'Und guten Tag, gnädige Frau,' he said to Lisl, who had been wrinkling her brow as she concentrated enough to understand this sudden onslaught of English. Henry Tiptree bent over to kiss the bejewelled hand which she lifted for him. Then he bowed again and smiled at her with that sort of sinister charm that baritones show in Hollywood musicals about old Vienna. He turned to me. 'You thought I worked in Mexico City. And so did I. Haw haw. But when you've worked in the diplomatic service for a few years, you start to know that the chap you last heard of doing the Korean language course in Seoul will next be seen working as an information officer in the embassy in Paris.' He scratched the side of his nose reflectively. 'No, some guru in the Personnel Department considered that my schoolboy German was just what was needed for me to be attached to you chaps for an undecided period of time. No explanation, no apologies, no time to get ready. Wham, bam, and here I am. Haw haw.'

'Quite a surprise,' I said. 'I believe we're playing cards together this evening.'

'I'm so pleased you're joining us,' said Henry, and seemed genuinely pleased. 'This is what I call the real Berlin, what? The beautiful and cultured Frau Hennig here, and this wonderful chap Koch whom she's told me all about. These are the people one wants to meet, not the free-loading johnnies who come knocking at the door of your average embassy.'

Lisl was smiling; she understood enough English to know that she was beautiful and cultured. She tapped my arm. 'And wear a jacket and a tie, will you, Leibchen? Just to make your old Lisl happy. Just for once wear a nice suit, the one you always wear to see Frank Harrington.' Lisl knew how to make me look a bloody fool. I looked at Tiptree; he smiled.

We played cards in Lisl's study, a small room crammed with her treasures. This was where she did the accounts and collected the money from her guests. She kept her bottle of sherry here in a cupboard otherwise filled with china ornaments. And here, with its prancing angels and winged dragons, was the grotesque ormolu mantel clock that could sometimes be heard throughout the house chiming away the small hours. There was a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm over the fireplace; around it a slight brightness of the wallpaper showed it was the place where a larger signed photo of Adolf Hitler had hung for a decade that had ended with the family home becoming this hotel.

'I think the cards need a good shuffle,' said Lisl plaintively as she arranged in front of her the few remaining counters for which we gave fifty pfennigs each. Lisl's losses could not possibly come to more than the price of the bottle of sherry that between us we'd almost consumed, but she didn't like losing. In that respect and many others she was very berlinerisch.

The four of us were arranged round the circular-topped mahogany tripod table, at which Lisl usually sat to take her breakfast. The four chairs were also mahogany; superbly carved with Venetian-style figure-of-eight backs, they were all that was left of the sixteen dining chairs that her mother had so cherished. Lisl had been talking about the European royal families and the social activities of their surviving members. She was devoted to royalty and convinced of the divine right of kings, despite her frequently proclaimed agnosticism.

But now Lothar Koch had started one of his long stories. 'So what was I saying?' said Koch, who was incapable of shuffling cards and talking at the same tune.

'You were telling us about this most interesting secret report on the Dutch riots,' prompted Henry.

'Ah, yes,' he said. Lothar Koch was a small motheaten man, with dark-ringed troubled eyes and a nose far too large for his small sunken face. Mr Koch had a large gold Rolex wrist-watch and liked to wear spotted bow-ties in the evening. But his expensive-looking suits were far too big for him. Lisl said that they fitted him before he lost weight, and now he refused to buy any more clothes. I'm far too old to buy new suits, he'd told Lisl when he celebrated his seventieth birthday in a suit that was already too baggy. Now he was eighty-five, still shrinking, and he still hadn't bought any new clothes. Lisl said he stopped buying overcoats when he was sixty, Ja, ja, ja. There had been riots in Amsterdam. That was the start of it. That was 1941. Brandt came into my office soon after the riots…'

'Rudolf Brandt,' explained Lisl. 'Heinrich Himmler's secretary.'

'Yes,' said Koch. He looked at me to be sure I was listening. He knew I'd heard all his stories before and that my attention was apt to wander.

'Rudolf Brandt,' I confirmed. 'Heinrich Himmler's secretary. Yes, of course.'

Having confirmed that I was paying attention, Koch said, 'I remember it as if it was yesterday. Brandt dumped on to my desk this report. It had a yellow front cover and consisted of forty-three typewritten pages. Look what that fool Bormann has come up with now, he said. He meant Hitler, but it was customary to blame Bormann for such things. It's true Bormann had countersigned each page, but he was just the Head of the Party Chancellery, he had no political power. This was obviously the Fuhrer. What is it? I asked. I had enough paperwork of my own to read; I wasn't looking for another report to occupy my evening. Brandt said, the whole population of Holland is to be resettled in Poland.'

'Good God,' said Henry. He took a minuscule sip of his sherry and then wiped his lips with a paper napkin advertising König Pilsener. Lisl got them free. Tiptree had changed his clothes. Perhaps in response to Lisl's sartorial demands of me, he was wearing a white shirt, old school tie and a dark grey worsted suit of the type that is issued to really sincere employees by some secret department of the Foreign Office.

'Yes,' said Lisl loyally. She'd heard the story more times than I had.

'Eight and half million people. The first three million would include "irreconcilables", which was Nazi jargon for anyone who wasn't a Nazi and not likely to become one. Also there would be market-garden workers, farmers and anyone with agricultural training or experience. They would be sent to Polish Galicia and there create a basic economy to support the rest of the Dutch, who would arrive later.'

'So what did you tell him?' said Henry. He pinched the knot of his tie between finger and thumb, and shook it as if trying to remove a small striped animal that had him by the throat.

Mr Koch looked at me. He realized that I was the 'irreconcilable' part of his audience. 'So what did you say, Mr Koch?' I asked.

He looked away. My display of intense interest had not convinced him I was listening, but he continued anyway. 'How can we put this impossible strain upon the Reichsbahn? I asked him. It was useless to appeal to these people on moral grounds, you understand.'

'That was clever,' said Henry.

'And the Wehrmacht was preparing for the attack on the USSR,' said Mr Koch. 'The work that involved was terrible… especially train schedules, factory deliveries and so on. I went across to see Kersten that afternoon. It was showery and I went out without coat or umbrella. I remember it clearly. There was a lot of traffic on Friedrichstrasse and I was drenched by the time I got back to my office.'

'Felix Kersten was the personal medical adviser to Heinrich Himmler,' explained Lisl.

Koch said, 'Kersten was a Finnish citizen, born in Estonia. He wasn't a doctor but he was an exceptionally skilled masseur. He'd lived in Holland before the war and had treated the Dutch royal family, Himmler thought he was a medical genius. Kersten was especially sympathetic to the Dutch and I knew he'd listen to me.'

'Why don't you deal the cards,' I suggested. Koch looked at me and nodded. We both knew that if he tried to do it while continuing his story he would get his counting hopelessly muddled.

'It's a fascinating story,' said Henry. 'What did Kersten say?'

'He listened but didn't comment,' said Koch, tapping the edges of the pack against the table-top. 'But afterwards his memoirs claimed that it was his personal intervention that saved the Dutch. Himmler suffered bad stomach cramps and Kersten warned him that such a vast scheme as resettling the entire population of Holland would not only be beyond the capabilities of the German railways but, since it would be Himmler's responsibility, it could mean a breakdown in his health.'

'They dropped it?' said Henry. He was a wonderful audience, and Mr Koch basked in the attention Henry was providing.

Koch riffled the cards so that they made a sound like a short burst of fire from a distant MG 42. He smiled and said, 'Himmler persuaded Hitler to postpone it until after the war. By this time, you see, our armies were fighting in Yugoslavia and Greece. I knew there was no chance of it ever happening.'

'I say, that's extraordinary,' said Henry. 'You should have got some sort of medal.'

'He did get a medal,' I said. 'You did get a medal, didn't you, Herr Koch?'

Koch riffled the cards again and murmured assent.

'Mr Koch got the Dienstauszeichnung, didn't you, Mr Koch?'

Mr Koch gave me a fixed mirthless smile. 'Yes, I did, Bernd.' To Henry he said, 'Bernd thinks it amusing that I was given the Nazi long-service award for ten years in the Nazi Party. But as he also knows…' A finger was raised and waggled at me. '…my job and my grade in the Ministry of the Interior made it absolutely necessary that I joined the Party. 1 was never an active Party worker, everyone knows that.'

'Herr Koch was an irreconcilable,' I said.

'You are a trouble-maker, Bernd,' said Mr Koch. 'If I hadn't been such a close friend of your father I would get very angry at some of the things you say.'

'Only kidding, Lothar,' I said. In fact I remained convinced that old Lothar Koch was an irredeemable Nazi who read a chapter from Mein Kampf every night before going to sleep. But he always showed a remarkable amiability in the face of my remarks and I admired him for that.

'What's all this "Bernd" nonsense, Samson?' said Henry with a puzzled frown on his peeling red forehead. 'You're not a German, are you?'

'Sometimes,' I said, 'I feel I almost am.'

'This woman should have a medal,' said Koch suddenly. He indicated Lisl Hennig. 'She hid a family of Jews upstairs. She hid them for three years. Do you know what would have happened if the Gestapo had found them – echhh.' Mr Koch ran his index finger across his throat. 'She would have gone into a concentration camp. You were a mad fool, Lisl, my dear.'

'We were all mad fools in one way or another,' said Lisl. 'It was a time of mad foolishness.'

'Didn't your neighbours know you were hiding them?' asked Tiptree.

The whole street knew,' said Koch. The mother of the hidden family was her cook.'

'Once we had to push her into the refrigerator,' said Lisl. 'She was so frightened that she struggled. I'll suffocate, she shouted, I'll suffocate. But the kitchen maid – a huge woman, long since dead, God bless her – helped me, and we put all the food on the table and pushed Mrs Volkmann inside.'

'The Gestapo men were here, searching the house,' said Mr Koch.

'Just three of them,' said Lisl. 'Jumped-up little men. I took them to the bar. That is as far as they wanted to search.'

'And the woman in the refrigerator?' said Henry.

'When the level of the schnapps went half-way down the bottle we decided it would be safe to get her out. She was all right. We gave her a hot-water bottle and put her to bed.'

That was Werner's mother,' said Lisl to me.

'I know, Lisl,' I said. 'You were very brave.'

Often after such bridge games Lisl had provided a 'nightcap' on the house, but this time she let us pay for our own drinks. I think she was still smarting because my inexpert bridge had won me five marks while she ended up losing three. She was in one of her petulant moods and complained about everything from the pain in her knees to the tax on alcohol. I was thankful that Lisl decided to go early to bed. I knew she wouldn't sleep. She'd read newspapers and perhaps play her old records until the small hours. But we said our goodnights to her and soon after that Lothar Koch phoned for a taxi and departed.

Henry Tiptree seemed anxious to prolong the evening, and with a bottle of brandy on the table in front of us I was happy to answer his questions. 'What an extraordinary old man,' said Henry, after Koch said goodnight and tottered off down the stairs to his waiting taxi.

'He saw it all,' I said.

'Did he really have to become a Nazi because he worked in the Ministry?'

'It was because he was a Nazi that he got a job in the Ministry. Prior to 1933 he was working at the reception desk of the Kaiserhof. That was a hotel that Hitler used a great deal. Lothar knew most of the Nazi big-shots. Some of them came in with their girlfriends, and the word soon went round that if you needed to rent a room by the hour then Lothar – the one with the Party badge on the lapel of his coat – was the right clerk to see.'

'And for that he got a job in the Ministry of the Interior?'

'I don't know that that was the only reason, but he got the job. It wasn't, of course, the high-ranking post that Lothar now likes to remember. But he was there and he kept his ears open. And he closed his eyes to such things as Lisl hiding Werner's parents.'

'And are his stories true?'

'The stories are true. But Lothar is prone to change the cast so that the understudy plays leading man now and again.'

Henry studied me earnestly before deciding to laugh. 'Haw haw,' he said. 'This is the real Berlin. Gosh. The office wanted to put me into the Kempinski or that magnificent new Steigenberger Hotel but your friend Harrington told me to install myself in here. This is the real Berlin, he said. And, by gosh, he's right.'

'Mind if I pour myself a little more of that brandy?' I said.

'Oh, I say. Let me.' He poured me a generous measure while taking only a small tot for himself.

'And I guess you're here for some damned cloak-and-dagger job with Dicky?'

'Wrong twice,' I said. 'Dicky is safely tucked up in bed in London and I am only here to collect a bag of documents to carry back to London. It's a courier's job really, but we're short of people.'

'Damn,' said Henry. 'And I was persuading myself that the worried look on your brow all evening was you fretting about some poor devil out there cutting his way through the barbed wire, what?' He laughed and drank some brandy. From Lisl's room I heard one of her favourite records playing. It was scratchy and muffled.

… No one here can love and understand me,

Oh what hard-luck stories they all hand me…

'I'm sorry to disappoint you,' I said.

'Couldn't we compromise?' said Henry cheerfully. 'Couldn't you tell me that there is at least one James Bond johnny out there risking his neck among the Russkies?'

'There probably is,' I said. 'But no one has told me about him.'

'Haw haw,' said Henry, and drank some brandy. At first he'd been drinking very sparingly but now he abandoned some of that caution.

'Tell me what you're doing here,' I said.

'What am I doing here? Yes, what indeed. It's a long story, my dear chap.'

'Tell me anyway.' I looked at my watch. It was late. I wondered where Werner had phoned from. He was in a car with East German registration. That always made it more complicated; he wouldn't bring that car into the West. He'd planned to return through the Russian Zone and on to the autobahn that comes from Helmstedt. I'd never liked that method; the autobahns were regularly patrolled to prevent East Germans meeting West German transients at the roadside. I'd arranged for someone to be at the right place at the scheduled time this morning. Now I had no idea where he was, and I could do nothing to help him. Lisl's record started again.

Pack up all my cares and woe.

Here I go, singing low,

Bye-bye, blackbird…

'Do you have time to hear my boring life story?' said Henry. He chuckled. We both knew that Henry Tiptree was not the sort of man who confided his life story to anyone. Never complain, never explain, is the public-school canon.

'I have the time,' I said, 'and you have the brandy.'

'I thought you were going to say: I have the time if you have the inclination, as Big Ben said to the leaning tower of Pisa. What? Haw haw,'

'If you're working on something secret…' I said.

He waved away any such suggestion. His hand knocked against his glass and spilled some of his drink, so he poured more. 'My immediate boss is working on one of those interminable reports that will be called something like "Western Negotiating Policy and Soviet Military Power". He will have his name on the front and get promoted on the strength of it. I'm just the chap who, after doing all the legwork, will wind up with my name lost in a long list of acknowledgements.' This thought prompted him to drink more seriously.

'And what will it say, your long study?'

'I say, you are polite. You know what it will say, Samson. It will say all those things we all know only too well but that politicians are desperately keen we should forget.'

'Such as?'

'That eighty per cent of all armaments established in Central Europe since 1965 belong to the Warsaw Pact countries. It will say that between 1968 and 1978 American military spending was cut by forty per cent, and during the same period Soviet military spending increased by seventy-five per cent. It will record how Western military strength was cut by fifty thousand men, while during the same period the East increased its forces by one hundred and fifty thousand men. It will tell you nothing that you don't already know.'

'So why write it?'

'Current theory has it that we must look for the motives behind the huge Soviet military build-up. Why are the Russkies piling up these enormous forces of men, and gigantic stockpiles of armaments? My master feels that an answer can be found by looking at the detailed tactical preparations made by Russian army units in the front line, units that are facing NATO ones.'

'How will you do that?' I asked. Lisl's record was now playing for the third time.

'It's a long and arduous process. We have people who regularly talk with Russian soldiers – on day-to-day matters – and we interrogate deserters and we have reports from cloak-and-dagger outfits.' He bared his teeth. 'Have some more brandy, Samson. I heard you're quite a drinker.'

'Thanks,' I said. I wasn't sure I liked having that reputation but I wasn't going to spare his brandy to disprove it. He poured a large measure for both of us and drank quite a lot of his.

'I'm mostly with your people,' he said. 'But I'll be spending time with other outfits too. Dicky arranged all that. Awfully good fellow, Dicky.' A lock of ginger hair fell forward across his face. He flicked it back as if annoyed by a fly. And when it fell forward again pushed it back with enough force to disarrange more hair. 'Cheers.'

'What will you be doing with them?' I said.

He spoke more slowly now. 'Same damn thing. Soviet Military Power and Western… what did I say it was called?'

'Something like that,' I said. I poured out more brandy for both of us. We were near the bottom of the bottle now.

'I know what you're doing, Samson,' he said. His voice was pitched high, as a mother might speak to a baby, and he raised a fist in a joking gesture of anger. 'At least… I know what you're trying to do.' His words were slurred and his hair in disarray,

'What?'

'Get me drunk. But you won't do it, old chap.' He smiled. 'I'll drink you under the table, old fellow.'

'I'm not trying to make you drunk,' I said. 'The less you drink the more there is for me.'

Henry Tiptree considered this contention carefully and tried to find the flaw in my reasoning. He shook his head as if baffled and drained the brandy bottle, dividing it between us drip by drip with elaborate care. 'Dicky said you were cunning.'

'Then here's to Dicky,' I said in toast.

'Cheers to Dicky,' he responded, having misheard me. 'I've known him a long tune. At Oxford I always felt sorry for him. Dicky's father had investments in South America and lost most of his money in the war. But the rest of Dicky's family were well off. Dicky had to watch his cousins dashing about in sports cars and flying to Paris for weekends when Dicky didn't have the price of a railway ticket to London. It was damned rotten for him, humiliating.'

'I didn't know that,' I said.

'Chaps at Oxford said he was a social climber… and he was, and still is… But that's what spurred Dicky into getting such good results. He wanted to show us all what he could do… and, of course, having no money meant he had a lot of time on his hands.'

'He has a lot of time on his hands now,' I said.

Henry Tiptree looked at me solemnly before giving a sly grin. 'What about another bottle of this stuff?' he offered.

'I think we've both had enough, Henry,' I said.

'On me,' said Henry. 'I have a bottle in my room.'

'Even if it's on you, we've had enough,' I said. I got to my feet. I was in no hurry. I wasn't drunk but my response times were down and my coordination poor. What time in the morning would Werner phone, I wondered. It was stupid of me to tell Werner that he would be going on the payroll. Now he'd be determined to show London Central what they'd been missing for all those years. With Werner that could be a surefire recipe for disaster. I'd seen Werner when he wanted to impress someone. When we were at school there had been a pretty girl named Renate who lived in Wedding. Her mother cleaned the floor at the clinic. Werner was so keen to impress Renate that he tried to steal an American car that was parked outside the school. He was trying to force the window open with wire when the driver, an American sergeant, caught him. Werner was lucky to get away with a punch in the head. It was ridiculous. Werner had never stolen anything in his life before. A car – Werner didn't have the slightest idea of how to drive. I wondered if he'd had trouble in the Sector or out in the Zone. If anything happened to him I'd blame myself. There'd be no one else to blame.

Henry Tiptree was sitting rigidly in his seat, his head facing forward and his body very still. His eyes flicked to see about him; he looked like a lizard watching an unsuspecting fly. A less tidy man would not have appeared so drunk. On the impeccable Henry Tiptree such slightly disarranged hair, the tie knot shifted a fraction to one side and the jacket rumpled by his attempts to fasten the wrong button made him look comic. 'You won't get away with it,' he said angrily. He was going through the various stages of drunkenness from elation to depression via happiness, suspicion and anger.

'Get away with what?' I asked.

'You know, Samson. Don't play the innocent. You know.' This time his anger enabled him to articulate clearly.

'Tell me again.'

'No,' he said. He was staring at me with hatred in his eyes.

I knew then that Tiptree played some part in spinning the intricate web in which I was becoming enmeshed. On every side I was aware of suspicion, anger and hatred. Was it all Fiona's doing, or was it something I had brought upon myself? And how could I fight back when I didn't know where to find my most deadly enemies, or even who they were?

'Then goodnight,' I said. I drank the rest of the brandy, got up from the chair and nodded to him.

'Goodnight, Mr bloody Samson,' said Tiptree bitterly. 'Champion bloody boozer and secret agent extraordinary.'

I knew he was watching me as I walked across the room so I went carefully. I looked back when I got as far as the large folding doors that divided the salon from the bar. He was struggling to get to his feet, reaching right across to grip the far edge of the table. Then, with whitened knuckles, he strained to pull himself up. He seemed well on the way to succeeding, but when I got to the stairs I heard a tremendous crash. His weight had proved too much and the table had tipped up.

I returned to the bar where Henry Tiptree had fallen full-length on the floor. He was breathing very heavily and making slight noises that might have been groans, but he was otherwise unconscious. 'Come along, Henry,' I said. 'Let's get out of here before Lisl hears us. She hates drunks.' I knew if he was found there in the morning Lisl would blame me. No matter what I said, anything that happened to this 'English gentleman' would be my fault. I put the table back into position and hoped that Lisl hadn't heard the commotion.

As I dragged Tiptree up on to my shoulder in a fireman's lift, I began to wonder why he'd come here. He'd been sent, surely, but who had sent him? He wasn't the sort who came to stay in Tante Lisl's hotel, and went down the corridor for a bath each morning and then found there was no hot water. The Tiptrees of this world prefer downtown hotels, where everything works, even the staff – places where the silk-attired jet-setters of all sexes line up bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Brut, and turn first to those columns of the newspaper that list share prices.

Henry Tiptree had the glossy polish that the best English boarding schools can sometimes provide. Such boys quickly come to terms with bullies, cold showers, corporal punishment, homosexuality, the classics and relentless sport, but they acquire the hardness that I'd seen in Tiptree's face. He had a mental agility, plus a sense of purpose, that his friend Dicky Cruyer lacked. But of the two I'd take Dicky any time. Dicky was just a free-loader, but behind all the haw haws and the schoolboy smiles this one was an expensively educated storm-trooper.

As I crossed the salon, with Tiptree's whole weight upon me, I swayed and so did the mirror, the floor and the ceiling, but I steadied myself again and paused before going past the door that led to Lisl's room.

Her record was still playing and I could imagine her propped up amid a dozen lace pillows nodding her head to the music:

Make my bed and light the light,

I'll arrive late tonight.

Blackbird, bye-bye.