Len Deighton - Spy Hook

When told we hadn't he took us down to the kitchen, where two frantic cooks were slaving to produce a tableful of exotic dishes. Gloria and Dodo vied to name for me the different dishes, and disputed the authentic recipes for them. I tried everything. Veal strips in sour cream, garlicky stewed beef cubes with rich red paprika. There were breadcrumbed fried chicken pieces, boiled pork with horseradish and river fish flavoured with garlic and ginger. It was not the food I'd ever encountered in modern Hungary, a country where cooks render meat stew completely tasteless and measure each portion with government-issued 100-gram ladles.

'So you like Hungarian food, eh?' said Dodo. The only really good meal I'd eaten there was at a big country house near Lake Balaton. The food from Kafer in Munich, smuggled over the border. My host was a black-market dealer who had a security colonel as the guest of honour. But when Dodo said, as everyone has to say, that the Hungarians eat damned well nowadays and that Budapest is fast becoming a place for gourmets to journey to, I nodded and smiled and gobbled my food and said yes it was.

After eating we wandered off to find a place where we could sit down in comfort. The rooms had emptied as the gypsy band drew many of the guests upstairs. In the corner of this room there was a large table with posters and brochures advertising a new book called The Wonderful World of Hungarian Cooking . I realized that the egregious Dodo had simply helped us to gatecrash a particularly lavish publication party. He saw me looking at the display and he smiled without offering any explanation. He was like that.

A waiter, in a smart white jacket and gold shoulder loops, came over to us and offered coffee and small jam-filled pancakes. Dodo declined the food so that he could go on with his stories about his youth in Vienna. 'The landlady – as mean and venal as only Viennese landladies can be – had a Schiele charcoal portrait hanging in her kitchen. Her kitchen! She'd wrung it from the poor devil for some insignificantly small debt. She didn't even appreciate her good fortune. The old cow! She'd rather have a coloured one, she kept saying. Well, all those coloured Schiele pictures had the coloured wash applied long after the drawing was complete. Anyone with any taste at all would have preferred this delicate charcoal portrait… a young woman. It might have been Schiele's wife Edith. That would have made it more valuable of course.' I tried not to listen to him. Another waiter looked into the room. Dodo hurriedly downed the rest of his whisky and waved an arm for more without even looking to see if the waiter had noticed. Those were the days!' said Dodo and sat back red-faced and breathing heavily. It wasn't clear whether he was referring to Schiele's times in Vienna, or his own. I didn't ask. There were not many respites from Dodo's remorseless chatter and I was beginning to get a headache.

But there was little chance of him remaining quiet for more than a moment or two. In record time a double Scotch arrived and Dodo was off on another story.

He was well oiled by the time the coffee waiter returned with offers of second helpings, and Dodo's cheerfulness had turned to his own jocular sort of sarcasm that was edged with hostility. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. 'We know – those of us who have had the honour to work for Her Majesty's Government in positions of trust and danger – that fortune favours the brave. Right, Bernard right?'

He'd made similar remarks earlier in the evening and now I decided not to let it go. I'm not sure I know what you mean,' I said. Gloria glanced at him and at me, having heard the irritation in my voice.

'A field agent who is smart doesn't get paid off with an MBE and a big thank you. A clever field agent knows he can get a sackful of gold sovereigns and knows there are more where they came from. See what I mean?'

'No,' I said.

He hit my shoulder again in a gesture that he probably thought fraternal. 'And so he should be. I'm not against that. Let the people at the sharp end make a bit of money. It's only right and fair.'

'Do you mean Daddy?' Gloria asked. Her voice too had a note of warning, had he been sober enough to heed it.

He made a hissing sound and said, 'Darling, what your dear father was paid – and what I got – was chicken feed compared with what those in the know can tuck away. If you haven't discovered that by now, Bernard will fill in the details.'

'I never met any rich field agents,' I said.

'Really, darling, no?' A slowly expanding artful grin illuminated his whole face.

'What do you mean?' I asked him.

'If you want to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about then so be it.' He drank his whisky, spilling some down his chin, and turned his head away.

'You'd better tell me,' I said.

'Damn it!' Big smile. 'You and that wife of yours.'

'Me and that wife of mine… what?'

'Come along, darling.' A knowing grin. Tour wife was in Operations, right? She was a trustee for some kind of "sinking fund". She disappeared and so did all the money. Don't tell me that you didn't get your hands on a few pounds, or that some of it wasn't put away in the children's names somewhere.'

'Uncle Dodo, that's enough,' said Gloria sharply.

'Let him go on,' I said. 'I want to hear more.'

Like a cunning little animal his eyes went from one to the other of us. 'Berlin, the Ku-Damm,' he said meaningfully.

'What about it?'

'Schneider, von Schild und Weber.'

'It sounds like a bank,' I said.

'It is a bank,' said Dodo with great satisfaction, as if his argument was already won. 'It is a bank.'

'So what?'

'You want me to go on, darling?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Weber – grandson of the original partner – handles special financial matters for the British government. That's where your money came from.' He recited it as if I was trying to make a fool of him.

'Money? What money? And how did I get it?' I asked, convinced now that he was crazy, as well as drunk.

'You're a signatory to the account.'

'Rubbish.'

'It's a fact, and easily proved or disproved.' The waiter came and put a small plate of chocolate mints on the table. Dodo didn't offer them round, he peeled the wrapping from one, inspected it and popped it into his mouth.

'Who told you all this?' I said.

Still chewing the mint, Dodo said, 'I've known young Weber for years. When I was pensioned off from the Department, it was Weber's father who arranged everything for me.'

I looked at him, trying to see into his mind. He chewed at the mint and stared at me with unseeing eyes.

'You're always in Berlin, darling. Go to the Ku-Damm and have a word with Weber.'

'Maybe I shall.'

'The money is sure to be held in short-term bonds. It's the way they do it. A dozen or more signatories to the account – no less! – but there have to be two different signatures. You and your wife, for instance.'

'A dozen signatories?'

'Don't pretend to be so naive, darling. That's a common device, we all know that.' The malevolence was unbridled now.

'Bogus names?' said Gloria.

'No need to use bogus names. Use real names. It disguises the purpose of the fund, and can give an account a bit of class if someone came snooping around. Providing the signatories don't find out about it.'

'Perhaps that's how Bernard's name got there,' said Gloria softly. She obviously believed Dodo's story.

Dodo's beady eyes were almost hypnotic. There was something frightening about him: a whiff of evil. 'If you never got your hands on any of that loot, you've really been swindled darling.' He laughed softly enough to show that it wasn't a possibility he would spare much time pondering. Then he looked at Gloria, inviting her to join in the fun. When she looked away he picked up his drink and swilled down a good mouthful of it. 'Must go,' he said. 'Must go.'