Len Deighton - London Match

'I know that,' I said.

'You saw her today… yesterday, I mean. I saw her too. Fiona's changed, Bernie. She's one of them now. And she beat us at our own game. She's tough and she called the shots. She made fools of us all.'

'What do you mean?' I said. I was weary and irritable. I wasn't asking that Werner thank me for getting him out, but neither was I welcoming his criticism.

'So take Stinnes. Are you still going to tell me he's sick?'

I didn't reply.

'Because I saw him after he arrived over there. I saw him light up a big Havana and make some crack about how pretending to be off tobacco was the worst part of the job. He didn't avoid the physical because he was very sick; he avoided it because he didn't want us to know how strong he was.'

'I know,' I said, but Werner had to go on about it.

'That was just one small part of the deception plan. By letting us think he was sick, he avoided any risk of us giving him intensive interrogation. He was treated with silk gloves… '

'Kid gloves,' I corrected him.

'Just the way Fiona knew a sick man would be treated. She outwitted us at every turn. It's game, set and match to Fiona, Bernie. It's no good you trying to pick a quarrel with me – it's game, set and match to Fiona.'

'Don't keep saying the same thing over and over again,' I said.

'Don't keep saying the things you don't like to hear over and over again. That's what you mean, isn't it?'

'We came out of it intact,' I said. 'You're here, I'm here, and the Department is still putting our salaries into the bank…'

'Face the truth, Bernie. See how fast her success has come. Do you remember that night we waited at Checkpoint Charlie in my old Audi? Zena was away somewhere and you were sleeping on my sofa. We were expecting Brahms Four to try. Remember? That was only a year ago, Bernie, and that was well before Fiona went over there. Look what she's done since then. Brahms Four is retired, Bret's economic department is closed down. She's smeared you so cleverly that it will take you years to get in the clear again. Bret's been facing some sort of enquiry. Stinnes stirred up all kinds of trouble for us with MI5 so that it may take years before the bad feeling is gone. And they've done it all so cheaply. Fiona is as arrogant and successful as I've ever seen a KGB senior grade officer – and I've seen plenty – while Stinnes is repatriated and will obviously use the knowledge and experience he's acquired to stage more operations against us. Face the facts, Bernie.'

Werner turned the key and started the engine. It was a cold night and the car needed two or three tries before it came to life. He went down the slope and out past the gatekeeper. Berlin never goes to sleep and there was plenty of traffic on Grunewaldstrasse as we headed for his apartment in nearby Dahlem. He took it for granted that I would sleep on his sofa for what was left of the night, just as I took it for granted that Frank Harrington would phone me there to give me any instructions that came from London. It was like that with all of us. We all knew each other very well; too damned well at times. That's why, when we arrived outside his apartment and he switched off the engine, he said, 'Admit it.'

'Look at it another way,' I said. 'Fiona, one of the brightest and best-placed agents they've ever had, was flushed out and had to run for it so hurriedly that we lost little or no data. Brahms Four, a brave old man who for years supplied such good banking data and East Bloc forecasts that the Americans traded with us for it, was brought out safely… '

'Because you and I…' said Werner.

But I ploughed on. 'I survived their attempts to discredit me and even their loony hope that I'd run. I survived it so well that they had to rejig their resources to turn suspicion onto Bret. Okay, they were smart – I fell for it at first and so eventually did a lot of other people who had more data than I had and should have known better. But at the end of the road, Bret's reputation will have survived, and we proved flexible enough to bend the rules and even break them. The willingness to break rules now and again is what distinguishes free men from robots. And we spiked their guns, Werner. Forget game, set and match. We're not playing tennis; it's a rougher game than that, with more chances to cheat. We bluffed them; we bid a grand slam with a hand full of deuces and jokers, and we fooled them. They were relieved to get Stinnes back and they didn't even try to sustain the fiction that he was really enrolled.'

'Luckily for you,' said Werner.

'Luckily for both of us,' I said. 'Because if they'd stuck to their story that Stinnes was a traitor, I'd now be on a plane to London handcuffed to an Internal Security man and you'd still be on the wrong side of Charlie. Okay, there are wounds, and there will be scars, but it's not game, set and match to Fiona. It's not game, set and match to anyone. It never is.'

Werner opened the door and, as the light inside the car came on, I saw his weary smile. He wasn't convinced.

Len Deighton was born in London in 1929. He worked as a railway clerk before doing his National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.

After his discharge in 1949, he went to art school – first to the St Martin's School of Art, and then to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. It was while working as a waiter in the evenings that he developed an interest in cookery – a subject he was later to make his own in an animated strip for the Observer and in two cookery books. He worked for a while as an illustrator in New York and as art director of an advertising agency in London.

Deciding it was time to settle down, Deighton moved to the Dordogne where he started work on his first book, The Ipcress File. Published in 1962 , the book was an immediate and spectacular success. Since then he has published twenty books of fiction and non-fiction – including spy stories, and highly-researched war novels and histories – all of which have appeared to international acclaim.