Len Deighton - Berlin Game

'Looks like he's even deeper in, I'm afraid.'

'I wish Tessa wouldn't keep seeing him. But there's nothing serious between them. You know that, don't you?'

'Why would he be selling his furniture?' I said.

'Antiques and furniture have been getting good prices lately. It's the recession, I suppose. People want to put their money into things that will ride with inflation.'

'Sounds like a good reason for hanging onto them,' I said. 'And if he must sell them, why not send them to a saleroom? Why sell them piece by piece?'

'Is there tax to be paid on such things? Is that what you mean?'

'The etchings are small. The lithographs can be rolled up,' I said. 'But the furniture is bulky and heavy.'

'Bernard! You don't think Giles would be idiot enough to run for it?'

'It crossed my mind,' I said.

'He'd be a fool. And could you imagine poor old Giles in Moscow, lining up to collect his vodka ration?'

'Stranger things have happened, darling. Surprises never end in this business.'

I turned onto Finchley Road and headed south. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way, couples who'd had an evening on the town and were now heading for their homes in the northern suburbs. The snow was melting as it touched the ground but the air was full of it, like a TV picture when an electric mixer is working. The flakes drifted past the neon signs and glaring shopwindows like coloured confetti. A few dabbed against the windscreen and clung for a moment before melting.

'I was talking to Frank about the old days,' I said. 'He told me about the time in 1978 when the Baader-Meinhof gang were in the news.'

'I remember,' said Fiona. 'Someone got the idea that there was to be a second kidnap attempt. I was quite nervous, I hadn't seen one of those security alerts before. I was expecting something awful to happen.'

'There was a radio intercept from Karlshorst. Something about an airport in Czechoslovakia.'

'That's right. I handled it. Frank was in one of his schoolmaster moods. He told me all about the intercept service, and how to recognize the different sorts of Russian Army signals traffic by the last but one group in the message.'

'Frank never passed that intercept back to London,' I said.

'That's very likely,' said Fiona. 'He always said that the job of the Berlin Resident is to ensure that London is not buried under an avalanche of unimportant material. Getting intelligence is easy, Frank said, but sorting it out is what matters.' She shivered and tried to turn up the heater of the car, but it was already fully on. 'Why? Is Frank having second thoughts? It's a long time ago – too late now for second thoughts.'

I wondered if she was thinking of other things; too late perhaps to be having second thoughts about a marriage. 'Look at that,' I said. A white Jaguar had skidded on the wet road and mounted the pavement so that its rear had swung round and into a shop window. There was glass all over the pavement, white like snow, and a woman with blood on her hands and her face. The driver was blowing into a plastic bag held by a blank-faced policeman.

'I'm glad I didn't take the Porsche over to Tessa's tonight. You don't stand a chance with the police if they find you behind the wheel of a red Porsche. When are you getting the new Volvo?'

'The dealer keeps saying next week. He's hoping my nerve will break and I'll take that station wagon he's trying to get rid of.'

'Go to some other dealer.'

'He's giving me a good trade-in price on this jalopy.'

'Why not have the station wagon, then?'

'Too expensive.'

'Let me give you the difference in price. Your birthday is coining up soon.'

'I'd rather not, darling. But thanks all the same.'

'It would be awfully useful for moving beds,' she said.

'I'm not going to give your father the satisfaction of using any of his money.'

'He'll never know.'

'But I will know, and I'm the one who told him where to put his dowry.'

'Where to put my dowry, darling.'

'I love you, Fiona,' I said, 'even if you do forget my birthday.'

She put her fingertips to her lips and touched my cheek. 'Where were you that night in 1978?' she said. 'Why weren't you at my side?'

'I was in Gdansk, involved in that meeting with the shipyard workers who never turned up. It was all a KGB entrapment. Remember?'

'I must have repressed the memory of it. Yes, Gdansk, of course. I was so worried,'

'So was I. My career has been one fiasco after another, from that time to this.'

'But you have always got out safely.'

'That's more than I can say for a lot of the others who were with me. We were in good shape in 1978 but there's not much left now.'

'You were always away on some job or other. I hated being in Berlin on my own. I hated the dark streets and the narrow alleys. I don't know what I would have done without dear old Giles to take me home each night and cheer me up with phone calls and books about Germany that he thought I should read to improve myself. Dear old Giles. That's why I feel so sorry for him now he's in trouble.'

'He took you home?'

'It didn't matter what time I finished work – even in the middle of the night when the panic was on – Giles would come up to Operations and have a cigarette and a laugh and take me home.'

I carried on driving, swearing at someone who overtook us and splashed filth on the windscreen, and only after a few minutes' pause did I say, 'Didn't Giles work over in the other building? I thought he'd need a red pass to come up to Operations.'

'Officially he did. But at the end of each shift – unless one of the panjandrums from London was there – people from the annex used to come into the main building. There was no hot water in the annex, and most of us felt we needed to wash and change after eight hours in that place.'

'But there was an inquiry. A man named Joe Brody questioned everyone about a leak that night.'

'Well, what are you supposed to say, darling? Do you think anyone is going to let Frank down? I mean, are you going to say that people from the annex come up and steal paper and pencils and take their girlfriends up to that sitting room on the top floor?'

'Well, I didn't know all that was going on.'

'Girls talk together, darling. Especially when there are just a few girls in a foreign town. And working in an office with the most disreputable lot of men.' She squeezed my arm.

'So everyone told lies to Joe Brody? Giles Trent did have access to the signals?'

'Brody is an American, darling. You can't let the old country down, can you?'

'Frank would throw a fit if he knew,' I said. It was appalling to think of all Frank's regulations, memoranda and complicated routines being flouted by everyone even when he was there in the office. In those days I'd spent most of my working hours off on the sort of assignment that the more artful executives avoid by pleading their German isn't fluent enough. Clever Dicky, stupid Bernard.

'Frank is just a selfish pig,' said Fiona. 'He likes the money and the prestige but he hates the actual work. What Frank likes is playing host to the jet set while the taxpayer gets the bill.'

'There has to be a certain amount of that,' I said. 'Sometimes I think the D-G only keeps Frank over there to pick up all the gossip. The D-G loves gossip. But Frank understands what is gossip and what is important. Frank has got a talent for anticipating trouble long before it arrives. I could give you a dozen examples of him pulling the coals out of the fire, acting only on gossip and those hunches he has.'

'Who will get Berlin when Frank retires?'

'Don't ask me,' I said. 'I suppose they will go to that computer and see if they can find someone who hates Berlin as much as Frank does, who wastes money as extravagantly as Frank does, who speaks that same Kaiserliche German that Frank does, and who looks like an Englishman on a package tour, as Frank manages to look.'