Len Deighton - Berlin Game

They were all dressed up to the nines, of course. The ladies wore long dresses and the mezzo-soprano had jewellery in her hair. The wife of the man from the central bank had diversified into gold and the lady museum director wore Pucci. The men were in dark suits with the sort of buttonhole ribbons and striped ties that provided all the information needed, to anyone entitled to know.

Over dinner the talk was of money and culture.

'There's seldom any friction between Frankfurt and Bonn,' said the man from the Bundesbank.

'Not while you are pouring your profits back to the government. Ten billion Deutschemark – is that what you're giving to the politicians again this year?' said Frank. Of course they must have guessed who Frank Harrington was, or had some idea of what he did for a living.

The Bundesbank man smiled but didn't confirm it.

The lady museum director joined in and said, 'Suppose you and Bonn both run short of money at the same time?'

'It's not the role of the Bundesbank to support the government, or to help with the economy, get back to full employment or balance trade. The Bundesbank's primary role is to keep monetary stability.'

'Maybe that's the way you see it,' said the mezzo-soprano, 'but it only requires a parliamentary majority in Bonn to make the role of the central bank anything the politicians want it to be.'

The Bundesbank official cut himself another chunk of the very smelly double-cream Limburger, and took a slice of black bread before answering. 'We're convinced that the independence of the Bundesbank is now regarded as a constitutional necessity. No government would affront public opinion by attempting to take us over by means of a parliamentary majority.'

Frank Harrington's son, who'd read history at Cambridge, said, 'Reichsbank officials were no doubt saying the same thing right up to the time that Hitler changed the law to let him print as much paper money as he needed.'

'As you do in Britain?' said the Bundesbank official politely.

Mrs Harrington hurriedly returned to the mezzo-soprano and said, 'What have you heard about the new Parsifal production?'

' Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit .' These words – 'You see, my son, time here turns into space' – provided Mrs Harrington, the mezzo-soprano and the ancient-pottery expert with an opportunity to pick the plot of Parsifal over for philosophical allusions and symbols. It was a rich source of material for after-dinner conversation, but I wearied of listening to it and found it more amusing to argue with Poppy about the relative merits of alcool blanc and whether poire , framboise , quetsche or mirabelle was the most delicious. It was an argument that dedicated experiment with Frank Harrington's sideboard array had left unresolved by the time Poppy got to her feet and said, 'The ladies are withdrawing. Come with me.'

The desire to flirt with her was all part of the doubts and fears I had about Fiona. I wanted to prove to myself that I could play the field too, and Poppy would have been an ideal conquest. But I was sober enough to realize that this was not the right time, and Frank Harrington's house was certainly not the place.

'Poppy dearest,' I said, my veins fired by a surfeit of mixed eaux de vie , 'you can't leave me now. I will never get to my feet unaided.' I pretended to be very drunk. The truth was that, like all field agents who'd survived, I'd forgotten what it was like to be truly drunk.

' Poire is the best,' she said, picking up the bottle. 'And a raspberry for you, my friend.' She banged the bottle of framboise onto the table in front of me.

She departed clutching the half-full bottle of pear spirit, her empty glass and discarded shoes to her bosom. I watched her regretfully. Poppy was my sort of woman. I drank two cups of black coffee and went across the room to corner Frank. 'I saw Werner last night,' I told him.

'Poor you,' said Frank. 'Let me top up your brandy if you are going to start on that one.' He stepped away far enough to get the brandy, but I put a hand over my glass. 'What an idiot I am,' said Frank. 'You're drinking that stuff the ladies are having.'

I ignored this barb and said, 'He thinks you've got it in for him.'

Frank poured some brandy for himself and furrowed his brow as if thinking hard. He put the bottle down on a side table before he answered. 'We have an instruction on his file. You know, Bernard, you've seen it.'

'Yes, I checked it out,' I said. 'It's been there five years. Isn't it time we let him try again?'

'Something not very sensitive, you mean. Umm.'

'He feels out of things.'

'And so he might,' said Frank. 'The Americans don't use him and he's never done anything much for anyone else here.'

I looked at Frank and nodded to let him know what a stupid answer that was: the Americans got copies of the sheet that said we were not using Werner. They would not use him without some very good reason. 'He thinks you have a personal grudge against him.'

'Did he say why?'

'He said he can't understand why.'

Frank looked round the room. The police official was talking to Poppy; he caught Frank's eye and smiled. Frank's son was listening to the mezzo-soprano, and Mrs Harrington was telling the maid – uniformed in the sort of white cap and apron that I'd seen otherwise only in old photos – to bring the semi-sweet champagne that would be so refreshing. Frank turned back to me as if regretting that nothing else demanded his immediate attention. 'Perhaps I should have told you about Werner before this,' he said. 'But I try to keep these things on a "need to know" basis.'

'Sure,' I said. Poppy was laughing at something the policeman told her. How could she find him so amusing?

'I put Werner in charge of the communications room security one night back in September 1978. There was a lot of signals traffic. The Baader-Meinhof gang had hijacked a Lufthansa Boeing, and Bonn was convinced they were flying it to Prague… You ask your wife about it, she'll remember that night. No one got a wink of sleep.'

He sipped some of his brandy. 'About three o'clock in the morning, a cipher clerk came in with an intercept from the Russian Army transmitter at Karlshorst. It was a message from the commanding general requesting that some military airfield in southwest Czechoslovakia be kept operational on a twenty-four-hour basis until further notice. I knew what that message referred to because of other signals I'd seen, and I knew it wasn't anything to do with the Baader-Meinhof people, so I put a hold on that message. My interception unit was the only one to file that signal that night, and I've checked that one through NATO.'

'I'm not sure what you're getting at, Frank,' I said.

'That damned message went back through Karlshorst with "intercepted traffic" warnings on it. Werner was the only person who knew about it.'

'Not the only person, Frank. What about the cipher clerk, the operator, the clerk who filed the signal after you'd stopped it, your secretary, your assistant… lots of people.'

Artfully, Frank steered the conversation another way. 'So you were talking to dear old Werner last night. Where did this reunion take place – Anhalter station?'

The surprise showed on my face.

Frank said, 'Come along, Bernard. You used that old military identification card I let you have, and you were too damned idle to hand it back when it expired. You know those bogus cards have numbers that ensure we get a phone call when one turns up in a police report. I okayed it, of course. I guessed it was you. Who else would be in Leuschner's cafe at that time of night except drug pushers, pimps, whores and vagabonds, and that incurable romantic Bernard Samson?'