Len Deighton - Berlin Game

As I hurried along the woodland path towards the lake, I could hear a curious noise. It was the regular roaring sound that waves make as they are sucked back through the pebbles on a long stony beach. It got louder as I approached the open-air restaurant, but that did not prepare me for the scene I found there.

The indoor restaurant was closed on weekdays, but there were hundreds of men milling around the lakeside Biergarten in inebriated confusion. They were mostly young workers dressed in bright shuts and denim pants, but some wore pyjamas and some had Arab headdress, and many of them had brought the black top hat that is traditional for Himmelfahrt. I could see no women, just men. There were long lines of them waiting at a serving hatch marked ' Getr änke ' and an equally long line at a hatch marked ' Kaffee ', where only beer, in half-litre plastic cups, was being served. Tables were crammed with dozens and dozens of empty plastic cups stacked together, and there were more empties scattered in the flower beds and lined up along the low dividing walls.

' Heiliger bim-bam! '' said a drunk behind me, as surprised as I was at the sight.

The roars of sound were coming from the throats of the men as they watched a rubber ball being kicked high into the air. It went up over their heads and cut an arc in the blue sky before coming down to meet yet another skilfully placed boot that sent it back up again.

It took me a few minutes to spot Munte. By some miracle he'd found a chair and was sitting at a table at the edge of the lake where it was a little less crowded. He seemed to be the only person drinking coffee. I sat down on the low wall next to him. There were no other chairs in sight; prudent staff had no doubt removed them from the danger zone. 'Time to go,' I said. 'Your wife is here. Everything is okay.'

'I got it for you,' he said.

'Thanks,' I said. 'I knew you would.'

'Half the clerks in my department have taken the day off too. I had no trouble walking into the chiefs office, finding the file and helping myself.'

'I'm told you had a visit from the police.'

The office had a visit from the police,' he corrected me. 'I left before they found me.'

'They came out to Buchholz,' I said.

'I was trying to think of some way of warning you when a man came up to me in the street and brought me here.' He reached into his pocket and produced a brown envelope. He put it on the table. I left it there for a moment. 'Aren't you going to open it and look inside?' he asked.

'No,' I said. Not far away from us, a six-piece wind band had assembled. Now they were making all those sounds musicians have to make before playing music.

'You want to see the writing. You want to see who is the traitor in London Central.'

'I know who it is,' I said.

'You've guessed, you mean.'

'I know. I've always known.'

'I risked my freedom to get it this morning,' he said.

'I'm sorry,' I said. I picked up the envelope and toyed with it as I reasoned out what to do. Finally I handed it back to him. 'Take it to London,' I said. 'Give it to Richard Cruyer – he's a slim fellow with curly hair and chewed fingernails – make sure no one else gets it. Now we must go. The police seem to have traced us here. They're the same ones who went to Buchholz.'

'My wife – is she safe?' He got to his feet in alarm. As he did so, the wind band began playing a drinking song.

'Yes, I told you. But we must hurry.' I could see them arriving now. I could see Lenin, with his long brown leather overcoat and his little beard. He was wearing a brown leather cap too, and metal-rimmed glasses. His face was hard and his eyes were hidden behind the bright reflections of his lenses. Alongside him was the young Saxon conscript, white-faced and anxious, like a child lost in a big crowd. It was unusual to have a conscript in such a team. His father's influence must be considerable, I thought. The four policemen had stopped suddenly at the end of path, surprised, just as I had been upon first catching sight of the multitude.

The band music was loud. Too loud to make conversation easy. I grabbed Munte's arm and moved him hurriedly into a crowd of men who had linked arms and were trying to dance together. One of them – a muscular fellow with a curly moustache – was wearing striped pyjamas over his clothes. He grabbed Munte and said, ' Komm , Vater. Tanzen .'

'I'm not your father,' I heard Munte say as I stood on tiptoe to see the policemen. They had not moved. They remained on the far side of the beer garden, bewildered at the task of finding anyone in such a crowd. Lenin tapped one of the older men and sent him down the line of men waiting to buy beer. He sent the fourth man back along the path; no doubt he was going to bring more men from the minibus.

For the second time, Munte disengaged his arm from that of the man in pyjamas. ' Ich bin vaterlos ,' said the man sorrowfully. The 'fatherless' man pretended to cry. His friends laughed and swayed in time with the om-pah-pah music. I grabbed Munte and pushed through the dancers. Looking back, I caught sight of the leather-capped Lenin, who was clambering onto a tub of flowers to see over the heads of the crowd. Around him the dancing had stopped and the football went rolling down the steps unheeded.

'Walk that way, through the trees,' I told Munte. 'You'll meet a broad-shouldered man, about my age, wearing a coat with an astrakhan collar. In any case, keep going along the road until you see a very big truck with a bright yellow tarpaulin marked "Underberg". Stop the truck and get in. Your wife will be there already.'

'What about you?'

'I'll try to delay the police.'

'That's dangerous, Bernd.'

'Get going.'

'Thank you, Bernd,' said the old man soberly. We both knew that, after Weimar, it was what I had to do for him.

'Walk, not run,' I called as he ambled away. His dark suit ensured that he would soon be swallowed up by the gloom of the forest.

I pushed my way along to the edge of the lake. A number of men had walked out on the little pier and climbed into a small sailing boat. Now someone was trying to untie the mooring ropes, but it was proving difficult for the maladroit drunk. One of the restaurant staff was shouting at the men, but they paid no heed.

A very loud cheer brought my attention round to the beer garden again. Three young drunks were walking along the top of a low wall. Each carried a pitcher of beer and wore a black top hat, and each was otherwise naked. Every few paces they stopped, bowed deeply to acknowledge the applause, and then drank from the jugs.

Lenin had his three cohorts at his side as he elbowed his way through the muttering crowd of holiday makers, their exuberance stifled by his presence. Thinking the policemen were there to check absentees from work, and were about to arrest the streakers, the onlookers were resentful. Intoxication emboldened them enough to show their resentment. There were catcalls. The four policemen were jostled and pushed. They were confronted by a particularly big opponent, a bearded man in sweat shirt and jeans, who seemed determined to bar their way. But they were trained to deal with such situations. Like all cops, they knew that quick action, with a nicely judged degree of violence, is what crowd control depends upon. One of the uniformed cops felled the bearded man with a blow of his truncheon. Lenin blew three blasts on his whistle – to suggest that many more policemen were on call – and they plunged on through a crowd which parted to make way for them.

By now Munte was a hundred yards or more into the forest and out of sight, but Lenin had obviously spotted him for, once through the thickest part of the crush of men, he began running.