Len Deighton - Berlin Game

The little house that the Muntes owned was more restrained. Painted dark green, to blend with the surroundings, its wooden window shutters bore old-fashioned flower designs. On the side of it there was a tiny lean-to greenhouse with pots of herbs, boxes of lettuce plants and some carnations, all crowded together to catch the sunshine. The garden too was more in keeping with the elderly couple; everything neat and tidy, like an illustration from a gardening manual.

'Why did you tell him to say he wasn't feeling well?' she asked. Mrs Munte was a severe-looking woman, in a black dress with a white lacy collar. Her hair was drawn back tight into a bun and her face had the high cheekbones and narrowed eyes that marked the German communities of the Baltic States. Blue eyes and reddish-flaxen hair are common in Estonia. 'Why did you?' It was an inscrutable face but it was calm too, the sort of face that, apart from a few wrinkles and spots, remains unchanged from early teens to old age.

'So that no one will be surprised when he's away from the office for a couple of days.'

'I wish we had stayed at the apartment in Erkner. Here we have no TV. I get so bored here.'

'Your neighbour is sunning himself. Why don't you spend half an hour outside?' The owner of the Schloss next door had stretched a blanket on his minuscule lawn. Now he was applying lotion to his bare chest and searching the sky for dark clouds, a wary frown upon his face.

'No. He'll chatter to me,' said Mrs Munte. 'He's a retired bus driver. He's on his own. Once he starts talking, you can't stop him. He grows tulips. I hate tulips, don't you? They look like plastic.' She was standing at the tiny window looking out at her rhododendrons and roses. 'Walter has worked so hard on his flowers. He'll miss them when we're somewhere else.'

'There'll be other roses and rhododendrons,' I said.

'Even this morning he went out to spray the roses. I said it was silly but he insisted on doing it.'

'They need it at this time of the year,' I said. 'Mine have got black spots.'

'Will you go with us?'

'I follow on.'

'You've done this sort of thing before, I suppose?'

'You'll be quite safe, Frau von Munte. It's uncomfortable but not dangerous.'

'Of course you'd say that,' she said peevishly. 'It's your job to encourage us.'

'By the time Dr von Munte gets back here, it will be time to think about leaving.'

'Why do you make him come all the way back here before we leave? Why couldn't we meet him in town?'

'It's the way it's been planned,' I said.

She looked at me and shook her head. 'It's so that you can look at those papers he's bringing you. It's to give you a chance to cancel everything. Walter told me what you said.'

'Why not read your book?' I said. It was an anthology called More Short Stories from Poland . Twice or three times she'd started to read it and then put it down. Her mind was on other things. I said, 'There is nothing to be gained from letting these thoughts go round and round in your mind.'

'How do I know my husband isn't already on his way?'

'To the West?'

'Yes. How do I know he's not already on his way?'

'He wouldn't go anywhere without you, Frau von Munte.'

'Perhaps that disappointed you,' she said. There was a hard note of satisfaction in her voice. 'You wanted Walter to go on his own, didn't you?'

'No,' I said.

'Oh, yes, you did. You made the arrangements for just one person. You were going to leave me here.'

'Is that what Dr von Munte told you?'

'He confides in me. That is what our marriage has always been.'

'What else has he confided to you?' I asked. I smiled to soften my question.

'I know what he's gone back to his office for, if that's what you mean.'

Tell me, then.'

'A paper of some kind, handwritten by a communist agent. Someone very highly placed in the London intelligence service.'

I didn't deny that she was right.

'Yes,' she said. 'And you'll recognize the handwriting and you'll know who it is.'

'I hope so,' I said.

'But what will you do then, I wonder. Will you reveal who it is or will you use it for your own purposes?'

'Why do you say that?'

'It's obvious to me,' she said. 'If you wanted only to reveal the truth, you could have had the papers sent to London. But you want to look at them. You want to be the one who has the power.'

'Would you make some more coffee, please?'

'My husband is too nice,' she said. 'He'd never use the sort of power he has to advance himself. He does what he does because of his beliefs.' I nodded. She went to a tiny sink, which could be closed inside the cupboard when not in use, filled the electric kettle and switched it on. 'We bought this Laube during the war, Walter said the bombs were less dangerous in the soft earth. We grew potatoes, leeks and onions. There was no electricity then, of course, and we had to go a long walk to get drinking water.' She talked compulsively, her arms akimbo as she stared at the kettle. I noticed her small red hands and her red bony elbows as she rubbed her arms as if she felt cold. She had concealed her nervousness until now, but it is often accompanied by such bodily chills. She waited until the kettle came to the full boil before pouring the water into the pot. 'Do you have a wife?' she asked. She'd put a felt cover on the coffee pot and now she clasped it with her open hands to feel the warmth of it. 'Does she sit at home all day getting bored?'

'She goes to work,' I explained. 'She works with me.'

'Is that how you met? I met Walter at the big house his parents had near Bernau. They are an old important family, you know.'

'I met your husband's father once,' I said. 'He was a remarkable old man. I was only a small child, but he spoke to me as an equal. And a few days later, he sent me a leather-bound copy of Die schöne Müllerin . It had come from his library, and had his name embossed in gold on the cover and an engraved bookplate inside. My father told me that only a dozen books from his library had survived the war. I have it still.'

'You lived in Berlin as a child. That explains your perfect Berlin accent.' She seemed more relaxed now that she knew I'd met old von Munte. 'Hundreds of local people went to the old gentleman's funeral. They had it out there at the house where all the rest of the family had been buried. My father was a country physician. He attended the old man right until the end. What did your father do for a living?'

'He started out as a clerk. In the thirties he was unemployed for a long time. Then he went into the Army. The war began and he became an officer. After the war he stayed in the Army.'

'I'm Walter's second wife, of course. Ida was killed in one of the very first air raids.' She poured coffee for us. 'Do you have children?'

'Two: a boy and a girl.'

'It's Ida's child, of course – the one he wants to see.' She pushed the large cup of black coffee across the table to me in a gesture that contained an element of rejection.

'In São Paulo?'

'There's only the one child. That's why Walter dotes on him so much. I hope and pray he is not disappointed.'

'Disappointed how?'

'It's such a long time,' she said as if on that account the chances of the two men disappointing each other were self-evident.

'He's sure to be grateful,' I said. 'Walter has given him so much.'

'He's given his son everything,' she said. 'He's given him every penny he's earned from you. He's given him the life that was rightfully mine.' She drank some coffee. Her words were bitter but her face was calm.

'And now his son will be able to thank you both.'

'We'll be strangers to him. His son won't want the burden of looking after us. And Walter has no chance of earning any more.'