' "Bernard Samson wouldn't work for the Russians," I said. "I know him well enough to know that, and if the people he works for can't see that they must be stupid." ' George scratched his neck as he decided how to go on with his story. ' "Well, his wife worked for them," said Harry, "and if he's not working for them too, the Russians are not going to leave him alone either." "What do you mean?" I asked Posh Harry. "That's the bind he's in," said Posh Harry, "that's why he needs help. Either the Brits will jail him for thirty years or the Russians will send a hit team to waste him." ' George put his glasses on again and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.

'Posh Harry earns a living selling stories like that, George. It's good dramatic stuff, isn't it? It's like the films on TV.'

'Not when you know one of the cast,' said George. Another train rolled slowly across the viaduct, its noise enough to prevent any conversation. 'Bloody trains,' said George after the sound had died away. 'We had trains making that kind of a racket right alongside the house where I grew up. I swore I'd never have to endure that kind of thing again once I made enough money… and here I am.' He looked round his squalid little office as if seeing it through the eyes of a visitor. 'Funny, isn't it?'

'Let's go and look at my car,' I suggested again.

'Bernard,' said George, fixing me with a serious stare. 'Do you know a man named Richard Cruyer?'

'Yes,' I said, vaguely enough to suddenly deny it if that became necessary.

'You work with him, don't you?'

I tried to remember if George and Tessa had ever had dinner at my home with the Cruyers as fellow guests. 'Yes, I work with him. Why?'

'Tessa has had to see him a couple of times. She says it was in connection with this children's charity she's doing so much work for.'

'I see,' I said, although I didn't see. I'd never heard Tessa mention any sort of charity she was doing any work for and I couldn't imagine what role Dicky Cruyer would play in any charity that wasn't devoting its energies to his own well-being.

'I can't help being suspicious, Bernard. I've forgiven her and removed from my mind a lot of the bad feeling that was poisoning our relationship. But I still get suspicious, Bernard. I'm only human.'

'And what do you want to know?' I asked, although what he wanted to know was only too evident. He wanted to know if Dicky Cruyer was the sort of man who would have an affair with Tessa. And the only truthful answer was an unequivocal 'Yes'.

'What's going on. I want to know what's going on.'

'Have you asked Tessa?'

'It would mean a flare-up, Bernard. It would destroy all the work we've both done trying to put the marriage together. But I've got to know. It's racking me; I'm desperate. Will you find out for me? Please?'

'I'll do what I can, George,' I promised.

9

I identified with Stinnes. He was a cold fish and yet I thought of him as someone like myself. His father had been a Russian soldier with the occupation forces in Berlin and he'd been brought up like a German, just as I had. And I felt close to him because of the way our paths had overlapped since that day he had me arrested in East Berlin. I'd talked him into coming over to us; I'd reassured him about his treatment, and I'd personally escorted him to London from Mexico City. I respected his professionalism, and that coloured all my thoughts and my actions. But I didn't really like him, and that affected my judgement too. I couldn't completely understand the undoubted success he enjoyed with women. What the devil did they see in him? Women were always attracted by purposeful masculine strength, organizing ability, and the sort of self-confidence that leaves everything unsaid. Stinnes had all that in abundance. But there were none of the other things one usually saw in womanizers: no fun, no flamboyance, no amusing storks, none of the gesturing or physical movements by which women so often remember the ones they had once loved. He had none of those warm human characteristics that make a love affair so easy to get into and so hard to escape, no self-mockery, no admitted failings; just the cold eyes, calculating mind and inscrutable face. He seemed especially cold-blooded about the work he did. Perhaps that was something to do with it. For the womanizer is destructive, the rock upon which desperate women dash themselves to pieces.

But there was no denying the dynamic energy that was evident in that seemingly inert body. Stinnes had an actor's skill, an almost hypnotic will that is turned on like a laser beam. Such heartless dedication is to be seen in the great Hollywood stars, in certain very idealistic politicians, and even more often as a brutal streak in comedians who frighten their audience into laughing at their inadequate jokes.

I didn't feel like that about Bret Rensselaer, who was an entirely different personality. Bret wasn't the hard-eyed pro that Stinnes was. Quite apart from his inadequate German, Bret could never have been a field agent; he would never have been able to endure the squalor and discomfort. And Bret could never have been a good field agent for the same reason that so many other Americans failed in that role: Bret liked to be seen. Bret was a social animal who wanted to be noticed. The self-effacing furtiveness that all Europeans have been taught, in a society still essentially feudal, does not come readily to Americans.

Bret seemed to have had endless women since his wife left him, but his ability to charm was easy to understand, even for those who were impervious to it. Despite his age, he was physically attractive, and he was generous with money and was amusing company. He liked food and wine, music and movies. And he did all those things that rich people always know how to do: he could ski and shoot and sail and ride a horse; and get served in crowded restaurants. I'd had my share of differences with Bret; I'd suffered his insulting outbursts and grudgingly admired his stubbornness, but he was not a heartless apparatchik. If you got him at the right moment, he could be informal and approachable in a way that none of the other senior staff were. Most important of all, Bret had the uniquely American talent of flexibility, the willingness to try anything likely to get the job done. Yet Bret got jobs done, and for that I gave him due credit; it was on that account that I trod warily when I first began to wonder about his loyalties.

Bret Rensselaer had the jutting chin and the rugged ageless features of a strip-cartoon hero. Like most Americans Bret was concerned with his weight and his health and his clothes to an extent that his English colleagues regarded as unacceptably foreign. The public-school senior staff at London Central spent just as much money on their Savile Row suits and handmade shirts and Jermyn Street shoes, but they wore them with a careless scruffiness that was a vital part of their snobbery. A real English gentleman never tries; that was the article of faith. And Bret Rensselaer tried. But Bret had a family that went back as far as the Revolutionary War, and what's more, Bret had money, lots of it. And with any kind of snob, money is the trump card if you play it right.

Bret was already in his office when I arrived. He always started work very early – that was another of his American characteristics. His early arrival and punctuality at meetings were universally admired, though I can't say he started a trend. This morning a meeting had been arranged between me, Dicky Cruyer, Morgan – the D-G's stooge – and Bret Rensselaer in Bret's office. But when I arrived on time – growing up in Germany produces in people a quite unnatural determination to be punctual – Morgan was not there and Dicky had not even arrived in his office, let alone in Bret's office.