Len Deighton - Berlin Game

Joe Brady, the American 'from Siemen's' drifted over to us. 'What kind of caper are you two hatching up?' he said.

'We were talking about Anhalter station,' said Frank.

Joe Brody sighed. 'Before the war, that was the centre of the universe. Even now old-time Berliners walk out there to look at that slab of broken masonry and fancy they can hear the trains.'

'Joe was here in '39 and '40,' said Frank. 'He saw Berlin when the Nazis were riding high.'

'And came back with the U S Army. And shall I tell you something else about Anhalter Bahnhof? When we got copies of Stalin's order to his Belorussian Front and his Ukraine Front for a converging attack that would take Berlin and end the war, the point at which those great armies would meet was specified as Anhalter Bahnhof.'

Frank nodded and said, 'Joe, tell Bernard what we did about that Karlshorst signal… the one about the airfield remaining open for the Russian commanding general. Do you remember?'

Joe Brody was a bright-eyed bald American who held his nose while he was thinking, like a man about to jump into deep water. 'What do you want to know, Mr Samson?'

Frank Harrington answered on my behalf. 'Tell him how we discovered who had divulged that interception.'

'You've got to realize that this wasn't a big deal,' Brody said slowly. 'But Frank thought it was important enough to suspend the clearance of everyone on duty that night until we got a lead on it.'

'We checked everyone who handled the message,' said Frank. 'I had nothing against Werner. I suspected the cipher clerk, as a matter of fact, but he came out clean.'

'Was Giles Trent handling signals traffic at that time?'

'Giles Trent? Yes, he was here then.'

'No, no,' said Brody. 'No chance you can pin this on Giles Trent. The way I understand it, he had no access to signals traffic.'

'Can you remember so well?' I said.

Brody's gold-rimmed glasses flashed as he turned his head to be sure he wasn't overheard. 'Frank gave me a free hand. He told me to dig as deep as I wanted. I guess Frank wanted me to go back to my people and tell them you Brits weren't about to paper over the cracks in the future.' Frank wet his lips and smiled to show he was still listening even if he had heard the story before. 'So I dug,' said Joe Brody. 'It was your guy Werner something…'

'Werner Volkmann,' I supplied.

'Volkmann. That's right!' said Brody. 'We eliminated the others, one by one. This other guy – Trent, Giles Trent – took a little extra time because London got sticky about letting us read his file. But he was in the clear.' He grabbed his nose again. 'Volkmann was the leak, believe me. I've done hundreds of these investigations.'

'And never made a mistake?' I asked.

'Not that kind of mistake,' said Brody. 'I don't go around ripping away a security clearance just to make myself feel six feet tall. This was Volkmann. Not Trent, nor any of the others – unless everyone was telling me lies. So you can tell your people in London the file is closed on that one.'

'Suppose I told you Trent is now an orange file?' I said.

'Holy cow!' said Brody without too much emotion. 'Is this going to become another one of those?'

'It looks as if it's nipped in the bud,' I said. 'But I would take a lot of convincing that Trent wasn't in on your problem too.'

'I know the feeling, young man,' said Brody. 'Research and investigation are no damn use if they don't support those prejudiced judgments we've already worked so hard on.'

'Anyone except Werner – that's it, isn't it?' said Frank.

'No!' I said too loudly. 'It's not that.'

'Bernard was at school with Werner,' Frank explained to Brody. 'Your loyalty does you credit, kid,' said Brody. 'Jesus, I know guys in your position who'd be trying to pin it on their wife.'

Frank Harrington laughed and so did Brody.

The next morning, I had breakfast with Lisl. We sat in the room she called her study. It had a tiny balcony that looked out on the traffic of Kantstrasse.

It was a wonderful room and I remembered it from the time I was small, and permitted inside when my father came to settle his monthly account. Apart from the walls covered with small framed photos, there were a thousand other wonders for a child's eye. There were small tables littered with ivory snuffboxes, a brass ashtray fashioned from a section of World War I shell-casing, the words a present from lemberg hammered into the brass, and Russian buttons soldered round its edge. There were two fans, open to reveal Japanese landscapes', a small china zeppelin with berlin-staaken on its side; opera glasses made of yellowing ivory; and a silver carriage clock that didn't work. Most dazzling of all to the small boy I once was, a Prussian medal awarded to Lisl's grandfather, a magnificent piece of military jewellery suitably mounted on faded red velvet in a silver frame which Lisl's maids kept gleaming bright.

Breakfast was set on a small table against the window, which was open enough to move the lace curtain but not enough to move the starched linen table cloth. Lisl was seated in the high dining chair from which she could get up without assistance. I arrived exactly on time; I knew that nothing dooms a meeting with a German more completely than tardiness. ' Mein Liebchen ,' said Lisl. 'Give me a kiss. I can't jump up and down – it's this damned arthritis.'

I bent over and kissed her, careful to avoid the heavily applied rouge, powder and lipstick. I wondered how early she must have risen to have prepared her hair and makeup. 'Don't ever change it,' I said. 'Your glamorous room is still as enchanting as ever.'

She smiled. 'Nein, nein .' That ummistakable Berlin accent: ny-yen, ny-yen. I knew I was home when I heard it.

'It's still the same as when my father was alive,' I said.

She liked to be complimented on the room. 'It's still exactly as it was when my father was alive,' she said. She looked round to be sure she was telling the truth. 'For a few years, we had a photo of the Führer over the fireplace – a signed photo – but it was a relief to put Kaiser Wilhelm back there.'

'Even if it's not signed,' I said.

'Naughty!' Lisl admonished, but she permitted herself a small smile. 'So, your work is complete and now you go home to your gorgeous wife and your dear children. When are you going to bring them to see me, darling?'

'Soon,' I said, helping myself to coffee.

'It had better be,' she said, and chuckled. 'Or your Tante Lisl will be pushing up the daisies.' She tore a piece from her bread roll and said, 'Werner says we Germans have too many words for death. Is that true?'

'In English we say "dead shot", "dead letter", a "dead fire", "dead calm", and so on. German is more precise, and has a different word for each meaning.'

'Werner says the Germans have a thousand different words for death, just as the Eskimos are said to have so many different words for snow. And the Jews have so many different words for idiot.'

'Do they?'

' "Schmo", "schlemiel", "schnook", "schmuck".' She laughed.

'Do you see a lot of Werner?'

'He's a good boy. I get lonely now I'm unable to get about on my feet, and Werner pops in to see me whenever he's passing. He's about the same age as you, you know.'

'He's a bit older, but we were in the same class at school.'

'I remember the night he was born. It was the 1st of March 1943. It was a bad air raid – fires in Bachstrasse and the Sigismundhof. Unter den Linden suffered and the passage through to the Friedrichstrassse was ruined. There were unexploded bombs in the grounds of the Italian Embassy and the house of the Richthofen family. A bomb stopped the church clock on Ku-Damn and it's stayed at seven-thirty ever since. Sometimes I say to him, 'You stopped that clock the night you were born.' Werner's mother was the cook for us. She lived with her husband in an attic just four doors along from here. I went and got her just before her contractions began. Werner was born in this house, did you know that? Of course you did. I must have told you a thousand times.'