Len Deighton - London Match

'You should have bid a grand slam,' said Herr Koch sarcastically. He was smarting at having his ace trumped.

'The people are priced according to their worth,' said Lisl, continuing with the conversation as if to appease Koch.

'A university don can cost us up to two hundred thousand Deutschemark,' said Koch. 'A skilled worker about thirty thousand.'

'How do you know all this?' I asked him.

'It was in the Hamburger Abendblatt ,' said Lisl. 'I lent it to him.'

'The government of the Democratic Republic have a bank account in Frankfurt,' said Koch, without acknowledging the loan of Lisl's Hamburg newspaper. 'Prisoners are delivered two weeks after payment is received. It is a slave trade.' Then Lisl led a heart from the dummy hand so she could trump it. My hearts were useless now that Lisl had none. You can only fight in the currency that your opponent shares. I played my jack of hearts.

'Play your ace, Bernard,' she urged. She knew my ace was useless too. Lisl laughed. She loved to win at cards.

Lisl led a small trump and lost the trick to Herr Koch.

'You lost that one,' I said. I couldn't resist it.

Herr Koch said, 'She doesn't care. The dummy has no trumps.'

'You'll never teach him bridge,' said Lisl. 'I've been trying to explain it to him since he was ten years old.'

But Koch persisted. 'She brought out a trump from you and a trump from me.'

'But she lost the trick,' I said. 'You won it with your jack.'

'She removed the potential dangers.' Koch turned over the cards of the trick and showed me the ten and the jack which we'd played. 'Now she knows that you have no trumps and she'll slaughter you whatever you play.'

'Let him play his way,' said Lisl ruthlessly. 'He's not subtle enough for bridge.'

'Don't be fooled by him,' said Herr Koch, talking to Lisl as if I wasn't present. 'The English are all subtle, and this one is subtle in the most dangerous way.'

'And which is that?' said Lisl. She could have simply laid her hand full of trumps on the table and we would have conceded all the remaining tricks to her, but she wouldn't deprive herself of the pleasure of winning the game one trick at a time.

'He doesn't mind us thinking he is a fool. That is Bernard's greatest strength; it always has been.'

'I will never understand the English,' said Lisl. She trumped, picked up the trick, smiled, and led again. Having said she didn't understand the English, she proceeded to explain the English to us. That was berlinerisch too; the people of Berlin are reluctant to admit to ignorance of any kind. 'If an Englishman says there's no hurry, that means it must be done immediately. If he says he doesn't mind, it means he minds very much. If he leaves any decision to you by saying "If you like" or "When you like", be on your guard – he means that he's made his requirements clear, and he expects them to be precisely met.'

'Are you going to let this slander go unchallenged, Bernard?' said Koch. He liked a tittle controversy, providing he could be the referee.

I smiled. I'd heard it all before.

'Then what of us Germans?' persisted Koch. 'Are we so easygoing? Tell me, Bernard, I want your opinion.'

'A German has no greys,' I said, and immediately regretted embarking on such a discussion.

'No greys? What does this mean?' said Koch.

'In Germany two cars collide; one driver is guilty and therefore the other is innocent. Everything is black or white for a German. The weather is good or the weather is bad, a man is sick or he is well, a restaurant is good or it is terrible. At the concert they cheer or they boo.'

'And Werner,' said Koch. 'Is he a man without greys?'

The question was directed at me, but Lisl had to answer. 'Werner is an Englishman,' she said.

It was not true, of course; it was an example of Lisl's impetuous delight in shocking and provoking. Werner was about as un-English as any German could be, and no one knew that better than Lisl.

'You brought him up,' I said. 'How could Werner be English?'

'In spirit,' said Lisl.

'He adored your father,' said Herr Koch, more in order to reconcile the difference of opinion than because it was true.

'He admired him,' I said. 'It's not quite the same thing.'

'It was your mother who first took a liking to Werner,' said Lisl. 'I remember your father complaining that Werner was always upstairs playing with you and making a noise. But your mother encouraged him.'

'She knew you had the hotel to run,' I said. 'You had enough to do without looking after Werner.'

'One day I'll go to England and see her again. She always sends a card at Christmas. Perhaps next year I'll go and see her.'

'She has a spare room,' I said. But I knew in fact that neither Lisl nor my mother would endure the rigours of the aeroplane journey. Only the very fit could cope with the airlines. Lisl had not yet forgotten her uncomfortable trip to Munich five years ago.

'Your father was so formal with little Werner. He always spoke to him as to a grown man.'

'My father spoke to everyone in exactly the same way,' I said. 'It was one of the things I most liked about him.'

'Werner couldn't get over it. "The Herr Oberst shook hands with me, Tante Lisl!" It would have been unthinkable for a Wehrmacht colonel to shake hands and talk so solemnly with a small child. You're not listening, Bernard.'

No, I wasn't listening any longer. I'd expected both of them to say I was German, but such an idea had never entered their heads. I was devastated by the rejection so implied. This was where I'd grown up. If I wasn't German in spirit, then what was I? Why didn't they both acknowledge the truth? Berlin was my town. London was a place my English friends lived and where my children were born, but this was where I belonged. I was happy sitting here in Lisl's shabby back room with old Herr Koch. This was the only place I could really call home.

The phone rang. I was sure it was Posh Harry. Lisl was shuffling the cards and Herr Koch was calculating the scores for the hundredth time. The phone rang unanswered several times, then stopped. 'Are you expecting a phone call, Bernard?' enquired Lisl, looking at me closely.

'Possibly,' I said.

'Klara answers if I don't pick it up. It's probably a wrong number. We get a lot of wrong numbers lately.'

What if Posh Harry's approach was rejected? I would be in a very difficult position. Even if Bret Rensselaer was innocent, that didn't prove that the rest of my theory was correct. Stinnes might be genuine. It was then that I began to worry that Stinnes might not be informed about the whole structure of Moscow 's plot to discredit Bret Rensselaer. Suppose Stinnes was a kamikaze sent to blow London Central into fragments but had never been told the details of what he was doing? Stinnes was the sort of man who would sacrifice himself for something in which he truly believed. But what did he truly believe? That was the question that had to be answered.

And what would I do in Fiona's position? She was holding all the cards; all she had to do was sacrifice Stinnes. Would she believe that I'd tumbled to their game? Yes, probably. But would she believe that I could convince London Central of the real truth? No, probably not. Bret Rensselaer was the element that would decide the way Fiona jumped. I hoped Posh Harry got that bit of the story right. Maybe Fiona wouldn't believe that I could persuade the fumbling bureaucrats that Stinnes was making a fool of them; but Bret and I together – she'd possibly believe that the two of us combined could do it. Bret and I combined could do anything, in Fiona's opinion. I suppose the kind of man she really wanted was some incongruous and impossible combination of the two of us.

'Drinkies?' said Lisl in what she imagined was English. Without waiting for a reply she poured sherry for all of us. I didn't like sherry, especially the dark sweet variety that Lisl preferred, but I'd been pretending to like it for so long that I didn't have the courage to ask for something else.