Len Deighton - Berlin Game

'Bernard?' said Rensselaer, looking at me.

'That it all came through Giles Trent's office?'

Rensselaer nodded. 'Exactly,' he said. 'Every document that was in that bundle of material leaked to the Russians had, at some stage or other, passed through Trent 's hands.'

'Well, let me hang this one on you,' I said. 'A few years ago – I have the dates and details – the Berlin office made an intercept that was reported back to Karlshorst within three days. Giles Trent was on duty there that night.'

'Then why the hell wasn't that on his file?' said Cruyer. I noticed that he was wearing a gold medallion inside his dark blue silk shirt. It went with his white denim trousers.

'He was completely cleared,' I said. ' Berlin decided who was responsible and took all necessary action.'

'But you don't believe it,' said Rensselaer.

I raised my hands in the sort of shrug of resignation that would have been over the top for a road-show actor's Shylock.

'But he was in the building?' said Rensselaer.

'He was on duty,' I said, avoiding the question. 'And he did handle everything that arrived in Berlin last week.'

'What do you think, Dicky?' said Rensselaer.

'Perhaps we're being too sophisticated,' said Dicky. 'Perhaps we've got a very straightforward case of Trent selling us out, but we insist upon looking for something else.' He smiled. 'Sometimes life is simple. Sometimes things are what they appear to be.' It was a cry from the heart.

I didn't say anything and neither did Rensselaer. He glanced at my face and didn't ask me what I thought. I guess I'm not as inscrutable as Cruyer.

When Rensselaer had finished with us, Dicky Cruyer invited me into his office. It was the sort of invitation I could decline at my peril, as Dicky's voice made clear, but I looked at my watch for long enough to make him open the drinks cabinet.

'All right,' he said as he put a big gin and tonic into my hand. 'What the hell is this all about?'

'Where do you want to begin?' I asked, and looked at my watch again. My difficulty in dealing with the stubborn and intractable mind of Bret Rensselaer was compounded by the myopic confusion that Dicky Cruyer brought to every meeting.

'Are you now trying to say that Giles Trent is innocent?' he said petulantly.

'No,' I said. I drank some of the very weak mixture while Cruyer was fishing around in his glass to scoop a fragment of tonic-bottle label from where it was floating among the ice cubes.

'So he is guilty?'

'Probably,' I said.

'Then I fail to understand why you and Bret were going through that rigmarole just now.'

'Can I help myself to a bit more gin?'

Cruyer nodded, and watched to see how much of it I poured. 'So why don't we just pull Trent in, and have done with it?'

'Bret wants to play him. Bret wants to find out what the Russkies want out of him.'

'Want out of him!' said Cruyer scornfully. 'Great Scott! They've been running him for all that time, and now Bret wants to give them more time… How long before Bret is going to be quite sure what they want?' He looked up at me and said, They want to know what we do, say and think up here on the top floor. That's what they want.'

'Well, that's not so worrying. You could get everything important that is done, said or thought up here written on the back of a postage stamp, and still have room for the Lord's Prayer.'

'Never mind the wisecracks,' said Cruyer. He was right about Trent. There would be only one use for an agent who was so close to us; they'd use him to provide 'a commentary'. ' Trent 's a Balliol man, like me,' said Dicky suddenly.

'Are you boasting, confessing or complaining?' I asked.

Dicky smiled that little smile with which all Balliol men like him confront the envy of lesser mortals. 'I'm simply pointing out that he's no fool. He'll guess what's going on.'

' Trent 's no longer doing any harm,' I said. 'He's been debriefed and now we might as well play him for as long as we can.'

'I don't go along with all this damned double-agent, triple-agent, quadruple-agent stuff. You get to a point where no one knows what the hell is going on any more.'

'You mean it's confusing,' I said.

'Of course it's confusing!' said Cruyer loudly. ' Trent will soon have got to the point where he doesn't know which side he's working for.'

'As long as we know, it's all right,' I said. 'We're making sure that Trent only gets to hear the things we want Moscow to hear.'

Dicky Cruyer didn't resent my talking to him as if he were an eight-year-old; he appreciated it. 'Okay, I understand that,' he said. 'But what about this new leak in Berlin?'

'It's not a new leak. It's an incident dating from years ago.'

'But newly discovered.'

'No. Frank knew about it at the time. It's new only to us, and that only because he didn't think it was worth passing back here.'

'Are you covering for someone?' said Cruyer. However numb his brain, his antennae were alive and well.

'No.'

'Are you covering for Frank, or for one of your old Berlin schoolmates?'

'Let it go, Dicky,' I advised. 'It's for background information only. Frank Harrington has closed the file on this one. You go digging it all up again and someone is going to say you are vindictive.'

'Vindictive! My God, I ask for a few details about a security leak in Berlin and you start telling me I'm vindictive.'

'I said you'll run the risk of being accused of it. And Frank sees the D-G socially whenever he's in town. Frank is near enough to retirement to scream bloody murder if you do anything to make ripples on his pond.' Cruyer's face went a shade paler under his tan and I knew I'd touched a nerve. 'Do what you like,' I added. 'It's just a word to the wise, Dicky.'

He shot me a glance to see if I was being sardonic. 'I appreciate it,' he said. 'You're probably right.' He drank some of his gin and pulled a face as if he hated the taste. 'Frank lives in style, doesn't he? I was out at his country place last month. What a magnificent house. And he's got all the expense of living in Berlin as well.'

Two houses in Berlin, I felt tempted to say, but I sipped my drink and smiled.

Dicky Cruyer ran a finger along the waist of his white denim jeans until he felt the designer's leather label on his back pocket. Thus reassured, he said, 'The Harringtons are treated like local gentry in that village, you know. They have his wife presenting prizes at the village fete, judging at the gymkhana, and tasting the sponge cakes at the village hall. No wonder he wants to retire, with all that waiting for him. Have you been there?'

'Well, I've known him a long time,' I said, although why the hell I should find myself apologizing to Dicky for the fact that I'd been a regular guest at Frank's house ever since I was a small child, I don't know.

'Yes, I forget. He was a friend of your father's. Frank brought you into the service, didn't he?'

'In a way,' I said.

'The D-G recruited me,' said Dicky. My heart sank as he settled down into his Charles Eames leather armchair and rested his head back; it was usually the sign of Cruyer in reminiscent mood. 'He wasn't D-G then, of course, he was a tutor – not my tutor, thank God – and he buttonholed me in the college library one afternoon. We got to talking about Fiona. Your wife,' he added, just in case I'd forgotten her name. 'He asked me what I thought about the crowd she was running around with. I told him they were absolute dross. They were too! Trotskyites and Marxists and Maoists who could only argue in slogans and couldn't answer any political argument without checking back with Party headquarters to see what the official line was at that moment. Of course, it was years afterwards that I discovered Fiona was in the Department. Then of course I realized that she must have been mixing with that Marxist crowd on the D-G's orders all that time ago. What a fool she must have thought me. But I've always wondered why the D-G didn't drop a hint of what was really the score. Did you know Fiona infiltrated the Marxists when she was still only a kid?'