'I don't know what he lives on,' I said.

'His wife inherited her parents' apartment in Munich. They lease it out and live on the income from it.'

'I was followed this morning, Werner,' I said. I drank the rest of my champagne. What I needed was something stronger.

He looked up sharply and raised his eyebrows. I told him about the bearded man and the way I'd been kidnapped and held in East Berlin.

'My God!' said Werner. He went white. 'And then they released you?'

'I wasn't really worried,' I told him untruthfully. 'It was obviously just to throw a scare into me.'

'Perhaps taking a job in Washington would be the best course.'

'You've never worked in an embassy,' I reminded him. 'Those people live in a fantasy world… Ritz crackers, white wine and randy wives. I had six months of that; never again.'

'Do you think it was Fiona's idea? What was behind it?'

'I just can't decide,' I said.

'A doctor and a nurse… pretending they had your son… too bizarre for Fiona. It smells like Moscow.'

'I'd prefer to think that.'

'You'll report it, of course,' said Werner.

'I don't come out of it too well, do I?'

'You must report it, Bernie.'

'How did they get to hear about the vacancies coming up in Washington?' I said.

'The word gets round quickly,' said Werner cautiously. He guessed what I was going to say.

'You know who automatically gets first notice of any changes in Washington, don't you?' I said.

Werner came closer to where I was standing and lowered his voice. 'You're not getting some sort of obsession about Bret Rensselaer are you?' he asked.

'Obsession?'

'You keep on about him. First it was those code names… about how no agent ever had two names. And you try to persuade me that there is still a KGB man in London Central.'

'I've told you no more than facts,' I said.

'No one can argue with facts, Bernie. But the Bret Rensselaer role you're trying to write into this script of yours is not something that has emerged from calm and rational reasoning; it's personal.'

'I don't give a damn about Bret,' I said.

'You know that's not true, Bernie,' said. Werner in a sweet and reasonable voice. 'You went round to Lange knowing that he hates Bret. You wanted to hear someone say that Bret was some kind of monster who deliberately wrecked the early networks. You knew what Lange was going to say before you went; we've both heard all that rigmarole from him a hundred times. If you're trying to put a noose round Bret's neck, you'll need something a damn sight more reliable than Lange's gossip or news about vacancies in Washington. You try and prove Bret a bad security risk and you're going to make a fool of yourself.'

'Why would I want to do that?' I protested.

'There was a time when you suspected he was having an affair with Fiona…'

'I was wrong,' I said quickly. Werner looked up; I'd said it too damned quickly. 'There was no substance in that,' I added, more calmly this time.

'You resent Bret. No matter how irrational that might be, you resent him.'

'Why should I?'

'I don't know. He's rich and charming and something of a ladies' man. I resent him too; he's too damned smooth, and he has a cruel streak in him. But keep your head, Bernie.'

'I'll keep my head.'

Werner was not convinced. 'Bret has everything going for him. Bret is an Anglophile: everything British is wonderful. The British like hearing that kind of praise – it's exactly what they believe – and so Bret is very popular. You won't find it easy to move against him.'

'I've already discovered that,' I said. 'For all Silas Gaunt's caustic remarks and Dicky Cruyer's bitter envy of him, neither of them would be happy to see Bret facing a board of enquiry.'

'Bret's an old-fashioned US gentleman – honest and brave.'

'Is that the way you see him?'

'It's the way he is, Bernie. He's not KGB material. Promise me you'll think about what I'm telling you, Bernie. I don't give a damn about Bret. It's you I'm thinking of. You know that, don't you?'

'Sure I do, Werner. Thanks. But I'm not gunning for Bret. I just want to talk with Stinnes and get a few ends tidied away.'

'Did you wonder if the Stinnes defection might be a KGB stunt?'

'Yes, lots of times, but he's given us some good ones; not wonderful, but good,' I said. 'And now it looks like the Miller woman was murdered. She was a long-term agent, Werner. Would they really kill one of their own just to make Stinnes look kosher?'

'We haven't found her body yet,' said Werner.

'Leaving it inside the ambulance would make it too easy for us,' I said. But Werner was right: until we had an identified corpse, there was always the chance that she was alive.

Then what about the chances of Brahms Four being a KGB plant?'

I thought about it before answering. 'I don't think so.'

But Werner noticed my hesitation and followed it up. 'Did von Munte really need to be brought out of the East? He was an old man and so was his wife. How long before he'd be old enough to make one of those permitted visits to the West?'

'Don't be stupid, Werner. Officials with his sort of confidential information are not permitted to come West on visits, even if they live to be a hundred years old.'

'But suppose von Munte was a plant? Sent to give us dud information. You said Silas Gaunt was difficult and protective when you tried to question him. Suppose London Debriefing Centre have already detected that he's a KGB plant. Suppose they've lodged him with Silas Gaunt to keep him on ice and make sure he doesn't do any damage.'

'That would require a faith in the brilliance of the London Debriefing Centre staff that I just can't muster,' I said.

'That's what I mean, Bernie. You're determined to see it the way you want it.'

8

Christmas was gone but, having been on duty, I had my Christmas leave to come. I took the children to the circus and to the theatre. We did the things they wanted to do. We inspected the model ships and real planes on the top floors of the Science Museum, the live reptiles in the Regent's Park zoo and the plaster dinosaur skeleton in the hall of the Natural History Museum. The children had seen it all before, over and over again, but they were creatures of habit and they chose the things they knew so well so that they could tell me about them, instead of me telling them. I understood this pleasure and shared it. The only thing that marred these delightful events was that Gloria had no leave days to enjoy and I missed her.

I took the children to see George Kosinski, their uncle and my brother-in-law. The place we visited was not one of his swanky motorcar showrooms but a dirty cobbled yard in Southwark. One-time marshland, the district was now a grimy collection of slums and sooty factories interspersed with ugly new office blocks as rent increases drive more and more companies south of the River Thames.

George Kosinski's repair yard was a derelict site; a place that had been hit by a German bomb in 1941 and never subsequently built upon. Next to the yard was a heavy and ornate block of Victorian flats that had become slums. Across the road, more recent municipal housing was even worse.

George's yard was protected by a high wall into which broken glass had been cemented to discourage uninvited callers. For those more difficult to discourage there were two guard dogs. Along the other side of the yard there was a railway viaduct. Two arches of the viaduct had been bricked up and converted to repair shops, but one section of the arched accommodation had been made into an office.

George was sitting behind a table. He was wearing his hat and overcoat, for the small electric fan-heater did little to warm the cold damp air. The ceiling curved over his head and nothing had been done to disguise or insulate the ancient brickwork of the arch. In a cardboard box in the corner there were empty beer and wine bottles, cigarette butts, broken glass and discarded Christmas decorations. Through the thin partition that separated this makeshift office from the workshop there came the sound of rock music from a transistor radio.