Mexico Set

16

It was cold. Featureless grey cloud stretched across the flat countryside as far as the horizon. Rain continued relentlessly so that the last of those villagers who'd been huddled in cottage doorways waiting for a respite now hurried off and got wet. All the gutters were spilling and the rain gurgled down the drainpipes and overflowed the drains. Slanted sheets of it rebounded from the cobblestone village street to make a phantom field of wheat through which occasional motor cars or delivery vans slashed their way like harvesters.

The message from Werner had told me to come to the Golden Bear, and I had come here, and I had waited two days. On the second day a young Oberstabsmeister had arrived at breakfast time. I recognized the dark green VW Passat station wagon. It bore the badge of the Bundesgrenzschutz. For West Germany had border guards too, and one of their jobs was investigating strangers who came to border villages and spent too much time staring eastwards at the barbed wire and the towers that marked the border where people on excursions from the German Democratic Republic got shot dead.

The border guard NCO was a white-faced youth with fair hair that covered the tops of his ears and curled out from under his uniform hat. Tapers,' he said without the formality of a greeting or introduction. He knew I'd watched him as he came in. I'd seen him check the hotel register and exchange a few words with the proprietor. 'How long do you plan to stay?'

'About a week. I go back to work next Monday.' I'd booked the room for seven days. He knew that. 'I'm from Berlin,' I said obsequiously. 'Sometimes I feel I must get away for a few days.'

He grunted.

I showed him my papers. I was described as a German citizen, resident in Berlin, and working as a foreman in a British army stores depot. He stood for a long time with the papers in his hand, looking from the documentation to me and then back again. I had the impression he did not entirely believe my cover story, but plenty of West Berliners came down the autobahn and took their vacations here on the easternmost edge of West Germany. And if he contay the army my cover story would hold up.

'Why here?' said the border guard.

'Why not here?' I countered. He looked out of the window. The rain continued relentlessly. Across the road, workmen were demolishing a very old half-timbered building. They continued working despite the rain. As I watched, a wall fell with a crash of breaking laths and plaster and a shower of rubble. The bleached plaster went dark with raindrops and the cloud of dust that rolled out of the wreckage was quickly subdued. The fallen wall revealed open fields beyond the village, and a shiny strip that was a glimpse of the wide waters of the great Elbe river that divided East from West. The Elbe had always been a barrier; it had even halted Charlemagne. Throughout history it had divided the land: Lombard from Slav, Frank from Avar, Christian from Barbarian, Catholic from Protestant, and now communist from capitalist. 'It's better than over there,' I said.

'Anywhere is better than over there,' said the guard with ill-humour, as if I'd avoided his question. Beyond him I saw the proprietor's son Konrad come into the breakfast room. Konrad was a gangling eighteen-year-old in blue jeans and a cowboy shirt with fringes. He was unshaven but I had yet to decide whether this was a deliberate attempt to grow a beard or a part of the casual indifference he seemed to show for all aspects of his morning ablutions. He began setting the tables for lunch. On each he put cutlery and wineglasses, linen napkins and cruet, and finally a large blue faience pot of special mustard for which the Golden Bear was locally famous. Despite the care and attention he gave to his task I had no doubt that he'd come into the room to eavesdrop.

'I walk,' I said. 'The doctor said I must walk. It's for my health. Even in the rain I walk every day.'

'So I heard,' said the guard. He dropped my identity papers on to the red-checked tablecloth alongside the basket containing breakfast rolls. 'Make sure you don't walk in the wrong direction. Do you know what's over there?'

He was looking out of the window. One hand was in his pocket, the thumb of the other hooked into his belt. He looked angry. Perhaps it was my Berlin accent that annoyed him. He sounded like a local; perhaps he didn't like visitors from the big city, and whatever Berliners said it could sound sarcastic to a critic's ear. 'Not exactly,' I said. Under the circumstances it seemed advisable to be unacquainted with what was 'over there'.

The white-faced Oberstabsmeister took a deep breath. 'Starting from the other side you first come to the armed guards of the Sperrzone. People need a special pass to get into that forbidden zone, a is a five-kilometre-wide strip of ground, cleared of trees and ashes, so that the guards can see everything from their towers. The fields there can only be worked during daylight and under the supervision of the guards. Then comes a five-hundred-metre-deep Schutzstreifen. The fence there is three metres high and made of sharp expanded metal. The tiny holes are made so that you can't get a hold on it, and if your fingertips are so small that they can go into the gaps – a woman's or a child's fingers, for instance – the metal edge will cut through the finger like a knife. That marks the beginning of the "security zone" with dog patrols – free running dogs sometimes – and searchlights and minefields. Then another fence, slightly higher.'

He pursed his lips and closed his eyes as if remembering the details from a picture or a diagram. He was speaking as a child recites a difficult poem, prompted by some system of his own rather than because he really understood the meaning of what he said. But for me his words conjured a vivid memory. I'd crossed such a border zone one night in 1978. The man with me had been killed. Poor Max, a good friend. He'd screamed very loudly so that I thought they'd be sure to find us but the guards were too frightened to come into the minefield and Max took out the searchlight with a lucky shot from his pistol. It was the last thing he did; the flashes from the gun showed them where he was. Every damn gun they had was fired at him. I'd arrived safely but so shattered that they took me off the field list and I'd been a desk man ever since. And now, listening to the guard, I did it all again. My face felt hot and there was sweat on my hands.

The guard continued. 'Then a ditch with concrete sides that would stop a tank. Then barbed wire eight metres deep. Then the Selbstschtissgeräte which are devices that fire small sharp pieces of metal and are triggered by anyone going near them. Then there is a road for patrol cars that go up and down all the time. And on each side of that roadway there's a carefully raked strip that would show a footmark if anyone crossed it. Only then do you get to the third and final strip: the Kontrollstreifen with another two fences, very deep barbed wire, more minefields and observation towers manned by machine-gunners. I don't know why they bother to man the towers in the Kontrollstreifen; as far as we know, no escaper along this section has ever got within a hundred metres of it.' He gave a grim little chuckle.

I had continued to butter my bread roll and eat it during this long litany, and this seemed to annoy him. Now that his description had finally ended I looked up at him and nodded.

'Then of course there is the river,' said the guard.

'Why are you telling me all this?' I said. I drank some coffee. I desperately needed a drink, a proper drink, but the coffee would have to do.

'You might as well understand that your friend will not be corh^ said the guard. He watched me. My hand trembled as I brought tv cup down from my mouth and I spilled coffee on the tablecloth.

'What friend?' I dabbed at the stain.

'We've seen your sort before,' said the border guard. 'I know why you are waiting here at the Golden Bear.'

'You're spoiling my breakfast,' I said. 'If you don't leave me in peace I'll complain to the Tourist Bureau.'

'Walk west in future,' he said. 'It will be better for your health. No matter what your doctor might prescribe.' He grinned at his joke.

After the guard had departed, the proprietor's son came over to me. 'He's a bastard, that one. He should be 'over there', that one.' Drüben; over there. No matter which side of the border it was, the other side was always drüben. The boy spread a tablecloth on the table next to mine. Then he laid out the cutlery. Only when he got to the cruet did he say, 'Are you waiting for someone?'

'I might be,' I said.

'Nagel. That's his name. Oberstabsmeister Nagel. He would make a good communist guard. They talk to the communists every day. Do you know that?'

'No.'

'One of the other guards told me about it. They have a telephone link with the border guards on the other side. It's supposed to be used only for river accidents, floods and forest fires. But every morning they test it and they chat. I don't like the idea of it. Some bastard like Nagel could easily say too much. Your friend won't try swimming, will he?'

'Not unless he's crazy,' I said.

'Sometimes at night we hear the mines exploding,' said Konrad. 'The weight of a hare or a rabbit is enough to trigger them. Would you like more butter, or more coffee?'

'I've had enough, thanks, Konrad.'

'Is he a close friend, the one you're expecting?'

'We were at school together,' I said.

Konrad crossed himself, flicking his fingers to his forehead and to his shoulders with a quick gesture that came automatically to him.

Notwithstanding Oberstabsmeister Nagel's warning, I strolled along the river that morning. I was buttoned into my trenchcoat against the ceaseless rain. It is flat this land, part of the glaciated northern lowlands. To the west is Holland, to the north an equally flat Denmark, to the south the heathland of Luneburg. As to the east, a man could walk far into Poland before finding a decent-sized hill. Except that no man could walk very far east.

Near the river there was a battered enamel notice: 'Halt. Zonengrenze.' It was an old sign that should have been replaced a long time ago. The Soviet Union's military-occupation zone of Germany was now fancifully called the German Democratic Republic. But like Werner I could not stop calling it the Russian Zone. Perhaps we should have been replaced a long time ago too.

I walked on through grass so high that it soaked the legs of my trousers right up to the knees. I knew I would be no nearer to Werner out on the river bank but I could not stay cooped up in the Golden Bear. The Elbe is very wide here, meandering as great rivers do on such featureless terrain. And on both banks there are marshy fields, bright green with the tall, sharp-bladed grass that flourishes in such water meadows. And, although the far bank of the river had been kept clear of all obstruction, on this side there were young willow and alder, trees which are always thirsty. From across the river there came a sudden noise: the fierce rattle of a heron taking to the air. Something had flushed it out – the movement of some hidden sentry, perhaps. It flew over me with leisurely beats of its great wings, its legs trailing in the soft air as a child might trail its fingers from a boat.

A light wind cut into me but did not disperse the grey mist that followed the river. The sort of morning when border guards get jumpy and desperate men get reckless. Only working men were abroad, and working boats too. Barges, long strings of them, brown phantoms gliding silently on the almost colourless water. They slid past, following the dredged channel that took them on a winding course, sometimes near to the east bank and sometimes near the west one. All communist claims to half the river had faltered on the known difficulties of the deep water channel. Even the East German patrol boats, specially built with shallow-draught hulls, could not keep to the half of the river their masters claimed. There were West German boats too; a police cruiser and a high-speed Customs boat puttering along this deserted stretch of river bank.

I spotted another heron, standing in the shallow water staring down. It was absolutely still, except that it swayed slightly as the reeds and rushes moved in the wind. 'The patient killer of the marshland' my schoolbook had called it – waiting for a fish to swim into range of that spearlike beak. Now and again the wind along the water gusted enough to make the the mist open like curtains. On the far bank a watchtower was suddenly visible. An opened window – mirrored to prevent a clear view of the gunmen – flashed as the daylight was reflected in its copper-coloured glass. And then, as suddenly, the mist closed and the tower, the windows, the man, everything vanished.

When I reached the remains of the long-disused ferry pier I saw activity on the far side of the river. Four East German workmen were repairing the fencing. The supports were tilting forwards, thy foundations in the marshy river bank softened further by the heavy rain. While the four men worked, two guards – kasernierte Volkspolizei – stood by with their machine-pistols ready, and looked anxiously at the changing visibility lest their charges escaped into the mist. Such 'barracks police' were considered more trustworthy than men who went home each night to their wives and families.

More barges passed. Czech ones this time, heading down to where the river crossed the border into Czechoslovakia. Sitting on the hatch cover there was a bearded man drinking from a mug. He had a dog with him. The dog barked at a patch of undergrowth on the far side of the river, and ran along the boat to continue its protest.

As I got to the place at which the dog had barked I saw what had attracted its attention. There were East German soldiers, three of them, dressed in battle order complete with camouflaged helmets, trying to conceal themselves in the tall grass. They were Aufklärer, specially trained East German soldiers, who patrolled the furthermost edge of the frontier zone, and sometimes well beyond it. They had a camera, they always had cameras, to keep the capitalists observed and recorded. I waved at their blank faces and pulled my collar up across my face.

I walked for nearly two hours, looking at the river and thinking about Stinnes and Werner and Fiona, to say nothing of George and Tessa. Until ahead of me I saw a dark green VW Passat station wagon parked. Whether it was Oberstabsmeister Nagel or one of his associates I did not want to find out. I cut back across the field where the car could not follow and from there back to the village.

It was lunchtime when I arrived at the Golden Bear. I changed out of my wet shoes and trousers and put on a tie. As I was polishing the rain spots from my glasses there was a knock at my door. 'Herr Samson? Konrad here.'

'Come in, Konrad.'

'My father asks if you are having lunch.'

'Are you expecting a rush on tables?'

Konrad smiled and rubbed his chin. I suppose his unshaven face itched. 'Papa likes to know.'

'I'll eat the Pinkel and kale if that's on the menu today.'

'It's always on the menu; Papa eats it. A man in this village makes the Pinkel sausage. He makes Brägenwurst and Kochwurst too. Pinkel is a Lüneburg sausage. But people come from Lüneburg, even from Hamburg, to buy them in the village. My mother prepares it with the kale. Papa says cook can't do it properly.' Having heard my lunch order he didn't depart. He was looking at me, the expression on his face a mixture of curiosity and nervousness. 'I think your friend is coming,' he said.

I draped my wet trousers over the central-heating radiator. 'And some smoked eel too; a small portion as a starter. Why do you think my friend is coming?'

'Mother will press the wet trousers if you wish.' I gave them to him. 'Because there was a phone call from Schwanheide. A taxi is bringing someone here.'

'A taxi?'

'It is a frontier crossing point,' explained Konrad, in case I didn't know.

'My friend would not phone to say he was coming.'

Konrad smiled. 'The taxi drivers phone. If they bring someone here, and a room is rented, they get money from my father.'

Schwanheide was a road crossing point not far away, where the frontier runs due north, away from the river Elbe. I gave the boy my trousers. 'You'd better make that two lots of Pinkel and kale,' I said.

Werner arrived in time for lunch. The dining room was a comfortable place to be on such a damp, chilly day. There was a log fire, smoke-blackened beams, polished brass and red-checked tablecloths. I felt at home there because I'd found the same bogus interior everywhere from Dublin to Warsaw and a thousand places in between, with unashamed copies in Tokyo and Los Angeles. They came from the sort of artistic designer who paints robins on Christmas cards.

'How did it go?' I asked. Werner shrugged. He would tell me in his own good time. He always had to get his thoughts in order. He ordered a tankard of Pilsener. Werner never seemed to require a strong drink no matter what happened to him, and he still hadn't finished his beer by the time the smoked eel and black bread arrived. 'Was there any trouble?'

'No real trouble,' said Werner. The rain helped.'

'Good.'

'It rained all night,' said Werner. 'It was about three o'clock in the morning when I came through Potsdam…'

'What the hell were you doing in Potsdam, Werner? That's to hell and gone.'

'There were road repairs. I was diverted. When I came through Potsdam it was pouring with rain. There was not a soul to be seen anywhere; not one car. Not even a police car or an army truck until I got to the centre of town; Friedrich Ebert Strasse… Do you know Potsdam?'

'I know where Friedrich Ebert Strasse is,' I said. 'The intelligence report I showed you said that there has lately been a traffic cheeky, at the Nauener Tor after dark.'

'You read all that stuff, do you?' said Werner admiringly. 'I don't know how you find time enough.'

'I hope you read it too.'

'I did. But I remembered too late. There was a checkpoint there last night. At least there was an army truck and two men inside it. They were smoking. I only saw them because of the glow of their cigarettes.'

'Were your papers okay? How did you account for being over there? That's a different jurisdiction.'

'Yes, it's Bezirk Potsdam,' said Werner. 'But I would have talked my way out of trouble. The diversion signs are not illuminated. I should think a lot of people get lost trying to find their way back to the autobahn. But the rain was very heavy and those policemen decided not to get wet. I slowed down and almost stopped, to show I was law-abiding. The driver just wound down the window of the truck and waved me through.'

'It didn't use to be like that, did it, Werner? There was a time when everyone over there did everything by the book. No more, no less; always by the book. Even in hotels the staff would refuse tips or gifts. Now it's all changed. Now no one believes in the socialist revolution, they just believe in Westmarks.'

'These were probably conscripts,' said Werner, 'counting out their eighteen months of compulsory service. Maybe even Kampfgruppen.'

'Kampfgruppen are keen,' I said. 'Unpaid volunteers, they would have been all over you.'

'Not any longer,' said Werner. 'They can't get enough volunteers. The factories pressure people to join nowadays. They make it a condition of being promoted to foreman or supervisor. The Kampfgruppen have gone very slack.'

'Well, that suits me,' I said. 'And when you were coming through Potsdam with papers that say you have limited movement in the immediate vicinity of Berlin, I suppose that's all right with you too.'

'It's not just the East,' said Werner defensively. He regarded any criticism of Germans and Germany as a personal attack upon him. Sometimes I wondered how he reconciled this patriotism with wanting to work for London Central. 'It's the same everywhere: bribery and corruption. Twenty or more years ago, when we first got involved in this business, people stole secrets because they were politically committed or patriotic. Moscow's payments out were always piddling little amounts, paid to give Moscow a tighter grip on agents who would willingly have worked for nothing. How many people are like that nowadays? Not many. Now both sides have to pay dearly for their espionage. Half the people who bring us material would sell to the highest bidder.'

'That's what capitalism is all about, Werner.' I said it to needle him.

'I'd hate to be like you,' said Werner. 'If I really believed that I wouldn't want to work for London.'

'Have you ever thought about your obsession with working for the department?' I asked him. 'You're making enough money; you've got Zena. What the hell are you doing schlepping around in Potsdam in the middle of the night?'

'It's what I've done since I was a kid. I'm good at it, aren't I?'

'You're better at it than I am; that's what you want to prove, isn't it, Werner?' He shrugged as if he'd never thought about it before. I said, 'You want to prove that you could do my job without tarnishing yourself the way that I tarnish myself.'

'If you're talking about the hippies on the beach…'

'Okay, Werner. Here we go. Tell me about the hippies on the beach. I knew we'd have to talk about it sooner or later.'

'You should have reported your suspicions to the police,' said Werner primly.

'I was in the middle of doing a job, Werner. I was in a foreign country. The job I do is not strictly legal. I can't afford the luxury of a clear conscience.'

'Then what about the house in Bosham?' said Werner.

'I do things my way, Werner.'

'You started this argument,' said Werner. 'I have never criticized you. It's your conscience that's troubling you.'

'There are times when I could kill you, Werner,' I said.

Werner smiled smugly, then we both looked round at the sound of laughter. A party of people were coming into the dining room for lunch. It was a birthday lunch given for a bucolic sixty-year-old. He'd been celebrating before their arrival, to judge by the way he blundered against the table and knocked over a chair before getting settled. There were a dozen people in the party, all of them over fifty and some nearer seventy. The men were in Sunday suits and the women had tightly waved hair and old-fashioned hats. Twelve lunches: I suppose that's why the kitchen wanted my order in advance. 'Two more Pilsener,' Werner called to Konrad. 'And my friend will have a schnapps with his.'

'Just to clean the fish from my fingers,' I said. The boy smiled. It was an old German custom to offer schnapps with the eel and use the final drain of it to clean the fingers. But like lots of old German customs it was now conveniently discontinued.

The birthday party occupied a long table by the window but they were too close for Werner to continue his account. So we chatted about things of no importance and watched the celebration.

Konrad brought our Pinkel and kale, a casserole dish of sausage and greens, with its wonderful smell of smoked bacon and onions. And, having decided that I was a connoisseur of fine sausage, his mother sent a small extra plate with a sample of the Kochwurst and Brägenwurst.

The birthday party were eating a special order of Schlesisches Himmelreich. This particular 'Silesian paradise' was a pork stew flavoured with dried fruit and hot spices. There was a cheer when the stew, in its big brown pot, first arrived. And another cheer for the bread dumplings that followed soon after. The portions were piled high. The ladies were tackling it delicately, but the men, despite their years, were shovelling it down with gusto, and their beer was served in one-litre-size tankards which Konrad replaced as fast as they were emptied.

Manfred, the red-faced farmer whose birthday was being celebrated, kept proposing joke toasts to 'celibacy' and 'sweethearts and wives – and may they never meet' and then, more seriously, a toast for Konrad's mother who every year cooked this fine meal of Silesian favourites.

But the party did not become more high-spirited as the celebration progressed. On the contrary, everyone became more dejected, starting from the time that Manfred proposed a toast to 'absent friends'. For these elderly Germans were all from Breslau. Their beloved Silesia was now a part of Poland and they would never see it again. I'd caught their accents when they first entered the room, but now that memories occupied their minds, and alcohol loosened their tongues, the Silesian accents became far stronger. There were quick asides and rejoinders that used local words and phrases I didn't know.

'Our Germany has become little more than a gathering place for refugees,' said Werner. 'Zena's family are just like them. They have these big family gatherings and talk about the old times. They talk about the farm as if they left only yesterday. They remember the furniture in every room of those vast houses, which fields never yielded winter barley and which had the earliest crop of sugar-beet, and they can name every horse they've ever ridden. And they do what these people at the next table are doing: they eat the old dishes, talk about long dead friends and relatives. Eventually they will probably sing the old songs. It's another world, Bernie. We're big-city kids. People from the country are different from us, and these Germans from the eastern lands knew a life we can't even guess at.'

'It was good while it lasted.'

'But when it ended it ended for ever,' said Werner. 'Her family got out just ahead of the Red Army. The house was hit by artillery fire before they would face the reality of it and actually start moving westwards. And they came out with virtually only what they stood up in – a handful of cash, some jewellery and a pocketful of family photos.'

'But Zena is young. She never saw the family estates in East Prussia, did she?'

'Everything was blown to hell. Someone told them that there's a fertilizer factory built over it now. But she grew up listening to these fairy stories, Bernie. You know how many kids have fantasies about really being born aristocrats or film stars.'

'Do they?' I said.

'Certainly they do. I grew up wondering whether I might really be the son of Tante Lisl.'

'And who does Zena grow up thinking her mother might be?'

'You know what I mean, Bernie. Zena hears all these stories about her family having dozens of servants, horses and carriages… and about the Christmas balls, hunting breakfasts, ceremonial banquets and wonderful parties with military bands playing and titled guests dancing outside under the stars… Zena is still very young, Bernard. She doesn't want to believe that it's all gone for ever.'

'You'd better persuade her it is, Werner. For her sake, and for your own sake too.'

'She's a child, Bernie. That's why I love her so much. It's because she believes in all kinds of fairy stories that I love her.'

'She doesn't really think of going back, does she?'

'Going back in time, yes. But not going back to East Prussia.'

'But she has the accent,' I said.

Werner looked at me as if I'd mentioned some intimate aspect of his wife that I should not have known about. 'Yes, she's picked it up from her parents. It's strange, isn't it?'

'Not very strange,' I said. 'You've more or less told me why. She's determined to hang on to her dreams.'

'You're right,' said Werner, who'd gone through the usual teenage dalliance with Freud, Adler and Jung. 'The desire is in her subconscious but the fact that she chooses speech as the characteristic to imitate shows that she wants that secret desire to be known.'

Oh my God, I thought. I've started him off now. Werner lecturing on psychology was among the most mind-numbing experiences known to science.

I looked across to where the birthday party was having the.dessert dishes cleared away, and ordering the coffee and brandy that would be served to them in the bar. But Manfred was not to be hurried. He had his glass raised and was proposing yet another toast. He nodded impatiently at Konrad's suggestion that they retire to the next room. 'The words of our immortal Goethe,' said Manfred, 'speak to every German soul when he says, "Gebraucht der Zeit. Sie geht so schnell von hinnen; dock Ordnung lehrt euch Zeit gewinnen." '

There were murmurs of agreement and appreciation. Then they all drank to Goethe. As they all trooped off to the bar, I said to Werner, 'I never feel more English than when I hear someone quoting your great German poets.'

'What do you mean?' said Werner, with more than a trace of indignation.

'Such ideas would win few converts in England at any level of intellect, affluence or political thought. Consider what our friend just proclaimed so proudly. In English it would become something like "Employ each hour which so quickly glides away… " So far, so good. But then comes '… but learn through order how to conquer time's swift flight.' '

'It's a rotten translation,' said Werner. 'In the context gewinnen is probably meant as "reclaim" or "earn".'

'The point I'm making, my dear Werner, is the natural repulsion any Englishman would feel at the notion of inflicting order upon his time. Especially inflicting order upon his leisure time or, as is possibly implied here, his retirement.'

'Why?'

'For Englishmen order does not go well with leisure. They like muddle and disarray. They like "messing about in boats", or dozing in a deckchair on a beach, or pottering about in the garden, or reading the newspapers or some paperback book.'

'Are you trying to persuade me that you are very English?'

'That fellow Henry Tiptree is in Berlin,' I said. 'He's that tall friend of…'

'I know who he is,' said Werner.

'Tiptree asked me if I was German.'

'And are you German?'

'I feel very German when I'm with people like Tiptree,' I said. Konrad came to the table brandishing his menu. He was looking at Werner with great interest.

'So if Tiptree starts quoting Goethe at you, you'll have a nervous collapse,' said Werner. 'Do you want a dessert? I don't want a dessert, and you're getting too fat.'

'Just coffee,' I said. 'I don't know what I am. I see those people from Silesia. You tell me about Zena's family. I look at myself and I wonder where I can really call home. Do you know what I mean, Werner?'

'Of course I know what you mean. I'm a Jew.' He looked at Konrad. 'Two coffees; two schnapps.'

Konrad did not hurry us to leave the dining room after he brought the order. He poured the coffees and brought tiny glasses of clear schnapps and then left the bottle on the table. It was of local manufacture. Konrad seemed to think that anyone who'd come from 'over there' would need an ample supply of alcohol. But I had to wait until we were quite alone before I could get down to business. I looked round the room to be sure there was no one who could hear us. There was no one. From the next room came the loud voices of the Silesians. 'What about Stinnes?'

Werner rubbed his hands together and then sniffed at them. There was still the fishy smell of the smoked eel. He splashed some of the alcohol on his napkin and rubbed his fingers with the dampened cloth. 'When I went over there I thought it would be a waste of time.'

'Did you, Werner?'

'I thought if London Central want me to go there and cobble up some sort of report I would oblige them. But I didn't believe I could find out very much about Stinnes. Furthermore I was pretty well convinced that Stinnes had been leading us up the garden path.'

'And now?'

'I've changed my mind on both scores.'

'What happened?'

'You're concerned about him aren't you?' said Werner.

'I don't give a damn. I just want to know.'

'You identify with him.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' I said.

'He was born in 1943, the same year that you were born. His father was in the occupying army in Berlin, just as your father was. He went to a German civilian school just as you did. He is a senior-grade intelligence officer with a German speciality, just as you are a British one. You identify with him.'

'I'm not going to argue with you, Werner, but you know as well as I do that I could prepare a list a mile long to show you that you're talking nonsense.'

'For instance?'

'Stinnes has also had a Spanish-language speciality for many years, and seems to be a KGB expert on Cuba and all things Cuban. I'll bet you that if Stinnes was lined up for a job in Moscow it was to be on their Cuba Desk.'

'Stinnes didn't originally go to Cuba just because he could speak Spanish,' said Werner. 'He went there primarily because he was one of Moscow's experts on Roman Catholicism. He was in the Religious Affairs Bureau; Section 44. Back in those days the Bureau was just two men and a dog. Now, with the Polish Church playing a part in politics, the Bureau is big and important. But Stinnes has not worked for Section 44 for many years. His wife persuaded him to take the Berlin job.'

'That's good work, Werner. His marriage?'

'Stinnes has always been a womanizer. It's hard to believe when you look at him but women are strange creatures. We both know that, Bernie.'

'He's getting a divorce?'

'It all seems to be exactly as Stinnes described. They live in a house – not an apartment, a house – in the country, not far from Werneuchen.'

'Where's that?'

'North-east, outside the city limits. It's the last station on the S-Bahn. The electric trains only go to Marzahn but the service continues a long way beyond.'

'Damned strange place to live.'

'His wife is German, Bernie. She came back from Moscow because she couldn't learn to speak Russian. She'd not want to live with a lot of Russian wives.'

'You went out there?'

'I saw the wife. I said I was compiling a census for the bus service. I asked her how often she went into Berlin and how she travelled.'

'Jesus. That's dangerous, Werner.'

'It was okay, Bernie. I think she was glad to talk to someone.'

'Don't do anything like that again, Werner. There are people who could do that for you, people with papers and back-up. Suppose she'd sent for the police and you'd had to show your papers?'

'It was okay, Bernie. She wasn't going to send for anyone. She was nursing a bruised face that was going to become a black eye. She said she fell over but it was Stinnes who hit her.'

'What?'

'Now do you see why it's better I do these things myself? I talked to her. She told me that she was hoping to move back to Leipzig. She came from a village just outside Leipzig. She has a brother and two sisters living there. She can't wait to get back there. She hates Berlin, she told me. That's the sort of thing a wife says when she really means she hates her husband. It all fits together, Bernie.'

'So you think Stinnes is on the level? He has been passed over for promotion and he does want a divorce?'

'I don't know about the promotion prospects,' said Werner, 'but the marriage is all but over. I went to all the houses in that little street. The neighbours are all German. They talked to me. They've heard Stinnes and his wife arguing, and they heard them shouting and things breaking the night before I saw her with a battered face. They fight, Bernie. That's an established fact. They fight because Stinnes runs around with other women.'

'Let me hang this one on you. This business – the arguments with his wife, his womanizing and his being in a dead-end job – is all arranged by the KGB as part of a cover story. At best, they will lead us on into this entrapment to see what we're going to do. At worst, they'll try to grab one of us.'

'Grab one of us? They won't grab me; I've just been twice through the checkpoints. I see no reason to think they are going to grab Dicky. When you say grab one of us, you mean grab Bernie Samson.'

'Well, suppose I do mean that?'

'No, Bernie. It's not just a cover story. Stinnes punched his wife in the face. You're not telling me that he did that as part of his cover story too?'

I didn't answer. I looked out of the window. Already the workmen were back from lunch and at work on the demolition. I looked at my watch; forty-five minutes exactly. That's the way it was in Germany.

Werner said, 'No one would go home and hit his wife just to fit in with a story his boss invented.'

'Suppose it was all part of some bigger plan. Then perhaps it would be worth while.'

'Why don't you admit you are wrong, Bernie? Even if they thought they were going to get the greatest secrets in the world, Stinnes did not punch his wife for that reason.'

'How can you be sure?'

'Bernie,' said Werner gently. 'Have you calculated the chances of my going out to that house and seeing her with a bruised face? A million to one? If we were discussing rumours, I might go along with you. If I had only the reports of the neighbours, I might go along with you. But a man doesn't smash his wife's face in on the million-to-one chance that an enemy agent would take what you describe as a dangerous chance.'

'You're right, Werner.'

He looked at me a long time. I suppose he was trying to decide whether to say the rest of it. Finally he said, 'If you want to hear what I really think, it comes closer to home.'

'What do you really think, Werner?' Now that the last remaining wall was down, they started to bulldoze the rubble into piles.

'I think Stinnes was in charge in Berlin until your wife took over his department. She told you Stinnes was her senior assistant…'

That was obviously not true. If Stinnes was her senior assistant the last person she'd tell would be me.'

'I think she threw Stinnes out. I think she sent him off to Mexico to get him out of her way. It's the same when anyone takes over a new department; a new boss gets rid of all the previous top staff and their projects.'

'Maybe.' I looked at the workmen. I'd always thought that old buildings were better made than new ones. I'd always thought they were solid and well built but this one was just as flimsy as any of the new ones that greedy speculators threw together.

'You know what Fiona is like. She doesn't like competition of the sort that Stinnes would give her. It's just what Fiona would do.'

'I've been giving a lot of thought to what Fiona might do,' I said. 'And I think you're right about her wanting to get rid of Stinnes. Maybe she's decided to get rid of him for good and all.' Werner looked up and waited for the next bit. 'Get rid of him to us by letting him get enrolled.'

Werner closed his eyes and pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger. He said, 'A bit far-fetched, Bernie. She went to England to warn you off. You told me that.' His eyes remained shut.

'That might be the clever part of it. She warns me to lay off Stinnes; she knows that it will have no effect on me.'

'And her threats to kidnap the children?'

'There were no threats to kidnap the children. I was thinking back to the conversation. She offered to let things stay as they are for a year.'

He opened his eyes and stared at me. 'Providing Stinnes was left alone.'

'Okay, but it was all very negative, Werner, and Fiona is not negative. Normally I would have expected her to say what I must do and she'd say what she'd do in return. That's the sort of person she is; she makes deals. I think she wants us to enrol Stinnes. I think she'd like to get rid of him permanently. If she really wanted to stop us enrolling him she'd send him to some place where we couldn't get our hands on him.'

'And killing the boy, MacKenzie. How does that fit into the theory?'

'She had a witness with her all the time – the black girl – and there were others too. That's why she was talking in riddles. She didn't want to see me alone so there was no chance of them suspecting her of double-crossing them. I think the MacKenzie murder was a decision made by someone else; the back-up team. She'd have a backup team with her. You know how they work.'

Werner sat motionless for a moment as he thought about it. 'She's ruthless enough for it, Bernie.'

'Damn right she is,' I said.

He waited a moment. 'You still love her, don't you?'

'No, I don't.'

'Whatever you want to call it, something prevents you thinking about her clearly. If it came to the crunch, that something would prevent you doing what needed to be done. Maybe that wouldn't matter so much except that you are determined to believe that she feels the same way about you. Fiona is ruthless, Bernie. Totally dedicated to doing whatever the KGB want done. Face it, she'd eliminate MacKenzie without a qualm and, if it comes to it, she'll eliminate you.'

'You're an incurable romantic, Werner,' I said, making a joke of it, but the strength of his feelings had shaken me.

Now Werner had said what he thought about Fiona, he was embarrassed. We sat silent, both looking out of the window like strangers in a railway carriage. It was still raining. 'That Henry Tiptree,' said Werner eventually. 'What does he want?

'He doesn't like super-luxury hotels such as the Steigenberger, with private baths, and room service, disco and fancy food. He likes the real Berlin. He likes to rough it at Lisl's.'

'Crap,' said Werner.

'He tried to get me drunk the other night. He probably thought I was going to bare my soul to him. Why crap? I like Lisl's and so do you.'

Werner didn't bother to answer my question. We both knew that Henry Tiptree was not like us and was unlikely to share our tastes in anything from music and food to cars and women. 'He's spying on you,' said Werner. 'Frank Harrington's sent him to Lisl's to spy on you. It's obvious.'

'Don't be silly, Werner.' I laughed. It wasn't funny. I laughed just because I was sitting across the table from Werner, and Werner was sitting there safe and sound. I said, 'To hear you talk, Frank Harrington rules the world. Frank is only the Berlin Resident. All he's interested in is nursing the Berlin Field Unit along until he retires. He's not training his spies to chase me across the world from Mexico City to Tante Lisl's in order to get me drunk and see what secrets he can winkle out of me.'

'You always try to make me sound ridiculous.'

'Frank isn't out to get you. And he's not trying to get me either.'

'So who is this Henry Tiptree?'

'Just another graduate of the Foreign Office charm school,' I said. 'He's helping to write one of those reports about the Soviet arms build-up. You know the sort of thing; what are the political intentions and the economic consequences.'

'You don't believe any of that,' said Werner.

'I believe it. Why wouldn't I believe it? The department is buried under the weight of reports like that. Forests are set aside to provide the pulp for reports like that. Sometimes I think the entire staff of the Foreign Office does nothing else but concoct reports like that. Do you know, Werner, that in 1914 the Foreign Office staff numbered a hundred and seventy-six people in London plus four hundred and fifty in the diplomatic service overseas. Now that we've lost the empire they need six thousand officials plus nearly eight thousand locally engaged staff.'

Werner looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes. 'Take the Valium and lie down for a moment.'

That's nearly fourteen thousand people, Werner. Can you wonder why we have Henry Tiptrees swanning round the world looking for something to occupy them?'

'I don't like him,' said Werner. 'He's out to make trouble. You'll see.'

'I'll ask Frank who he is,' I offered. 'I'll have to make my peace with Frank. I'll need his help to keep London off my back.' I tried to make it sound easy, but in fact I dreaded all the departmental repercussions that would emerge when I surfaced again. And I was far from sure whether Frank would be able to help. Or whether he would want to help.

'Are you driving back to Berlin? I had to leave the car in the East, of course. I'll phone Zena and say I'll be back for dinner. Are you free for dinner?'

'Zena will want you all to herself, Werner.' Surely Frank Harrington would stand by me. He'd always helped in the past. We had a father-and-son relationship, with all the stormy encounters that that so often implies. But Frank would help. Within the department he was the only one I could always rely upon.

'Nonsense. We'll all have dinner,' said Werner. 'Zena likes entertaining.'

'I'm not too concerned about Tiptree,' I said. It wasn't true, of course. I was concerned about him. I was concerned about the whole bloody tangled mess I was in. And the fact that I'd denied my concern was enough to tell Werner of those fears. He stared at me; I suppose he was worried about me. I smiled at him and added, 'You only have to spend ten minutes with Tiptree to know he's a blundering amateur.' But was he really such a foolish amateur, I wondered. Or was he a very clever man who knew how to look like one?

'It's the amateurs who are most dangerous,' said Werner.