'Ask him,' said Werner sullenly. I had the feeling that he didn't want to be disillusioned about Frank's vendetta lest he have to face the fact that maybe Frank sacked him because he wasn't doing the job the way they wanted it done.

I raised my hands in supplication. 'I'll talk to him, Werner. But meanwhile you cut it out. Forget all this stuff about Frank persecuting you. Will you do that?'

'You don't understand,' said Werner.

I looked at the document case that I'd pretended was mine. 'And, just to satisfy my curiosity, what is in "my" case, Werner?'

He reached out to touch it, 'Would you believe nearly half a million Swiss francs in new paper?'

I looked at him but he didn't smile. 'Take care, Werner,' I said. Even when we'd been kids together, I never knew when he was fooling.

11

I remembered Frank Harrington's parties back in the days when my father took me along to the big house in Grunewald, wearing my first dinner jacket. Things had changed since then, but the house was still the same, and came complete with a gardener, cook, housekeeper, maid, and the valet who had been with Frank during the war.

I shared Frank's 'just wear anything, it's only potluck' evening with a dozen of Berlin 's richest and most influential citizens. At dinner I was placed next to a girl named Poppy, recently divorced from a man who owned two breweries and an aspirin factory. Around the table there was a man from the Bundesbank and his wife; a director of West Berlin's Deutsche Opera, accompanied by its most beautiful mezzo-soprano; a lady museum director said to be a world authority on ancient Mesopotamian pottery; a Berlin Polizeipräsidium official who was introduced simply as '… from Tempelhofer Damm'; and Joe Brody, a quietly spoken American who preferred to be described as an employee of Siemen's electrical factory. Frank Harrington's wife was there, a formidable lady of about sixty, with a toothy smile and the sort of compressed permanent wave that fitted like a rubber swimming hat. The Harringtons' son, a British Airways first officer on the Berlin route, was also present. He was an amiable young man with a thin blond moustache and a complexion so pink it looked as if his mother had scrubbed him clean before letting him come down to the dining room.

They were all dressed up to the nines, of course. The ladies wore long dresses and the mezzo-soprano had jewellery in her hair. The wife of the man from the central bank had diversified into gold and the lady museum director wore Pucci. The men were in dark suits with the sort of buttonhole ribbons and striped ties that provided all the information needed, to anyone entitled to know.

Over dinner the talk was of money and culture.

'There's seldom any friction between Frankfurt and Bonn,' said the man from the Bundesbank.

'Not while you are pouring your profits back to the government. Ten billion Deutschemark – is that what you're giving to the politicians again this year?' said Frank. Of course they must have guessed who Frank Harrington was, or had some idea of what he did for a living.

The Bundesbank man smiled but didn't confirm it.

The lady museum director joined in and said, 'Suppose you and Bonn both run short of money at the same time?'

'It's not the role of the Bundesbank to support the government, or to help with the economy, get back to full employment or balance trade. The Bundesbank's primary role is to keep monetary stability.'

'Maybe that's the way you see it,' said the mezzo-soprano, 'but it only requires a parliamentary majority in Bonn to make the role of the central bank anything the politicians want it to be.'

The Bundesbank official cut himself another chunk of the very smelly double-cream Limburger, and took a slice of black bread before answering. 'We're convinced that the independence of the Bundesbank is now regarded as a constitutional necessity. No government would affront public opinion by attempting to take us over by means of a parliamentary majority.'

Frank Harrington's son, who'd read history at Cambridge, said, 'Reichsbank officials were no doubt saying the same thing right up to the time that Hitler changed the law to let him print as much paper money as he needed.'

'As you do in Britain?' said the Bundesbank official politely.

Mrs Harrington hurriedly returned to the mezzo-soprano and said, 'What have you heard about the new Parsifal production?'

'Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit.' These words – 'You see, my son, time here turns into space' – provided Mrs Harrington, the mezzo-soprano and the ancient-pottery expert with an opportunity to pick the plot of Parsifal over for philosophical allusions and symbols. It was a rich source of material for after-dinner conversation, but I wearied of listening to it and found it more amusing to argue with Poppy about the relative merits of alcool blanc and whether poire, framboise, quetsche or mirabelle was the most delicious. It was an argument that dedicated experiment with Frank Harrington's sideboard array had left unresolved by the time Poppy got to her feet and said, 'The ladies are withdrawing. Come with me.'

The desire to flirt with her was all part of the doubts and fears I had about Fiona. I wanted to prove to myself that I could play the field too, and Poppy would have been an ideal conquest. But I was sober enough to realize that this was not the right time, and Frank Harrington's house was certainly not the place.

'Poppy dearest,' I said, my veins fired by a surfeit of mixed eaux de vie, 'you can't leave me now. I will never get to my feet unaided.' I pretended to be very drunk. The truth was that, like all field agents who'd survived, I'd forgotten what it was like to be truly drunk.

'Poire is the best,' she said, picking up the bottle. 'And a raspberry for you, my friend.' She banged the bottle of framboise onto the table in front of me.

She departed clutching the half-full bottle of pear spirit, her empty glass and discarded shoes to her bosom. I watched her regretfully. Poppy was my sort of woman. I drank two cups of black coffee and went across the room to corner Frank. 'I saw Werner last night,' I told him.

'Poor you,' said Frank. 'Let me top up your brandy if you are going to start on that one.' He stepped away far enough to get the brandy, but I put a hand over my glass. 'What an idiot I am,' said Frank. 'You're drinking that stuff the ladies are having.'

I ignored this barb and said, 'He thinks you've got it in for him.'

Frank poured some brandy for himself and furrowed his brow as if thinking hard. He put the bottle down on a side table before he answered. 'We have an instruction on his file. You know, Bernard, you've seen it.'

'Yes, I checked it out,' I said. 'It's been there five years. Isn't it time we let him try again?'

'Something not very sensitive, you mean. Umm.'

'He feels out of things.'

'And so he might,' said Frank. 'The Americans don't use him and he's never done anything much for anyone else here.'

I looked at Frank and nodded to let him know what a stupid answer that was: the Americans got copies of the sheet that said we were not using Werner. They would not use him without some very good reason. 'He thinks you have a personal grudge against him.'

'Did he say why?'

'He said he can't understand why.'

Frank looked round the room. The police official was talking to Poppy; he caught Frank's eye and smiled. Frank's son was listening to the mezzo-soprano, and Mrs Harrington was telling the maid – uniformed in the sort of white cap and apron that I'd seen otherwise only in old photos – to bring the semi-sweet champagne that would be so refreshing. Frank turned back to me as if regretting that nothing else demanded his immediate attention. 'Perhaps I should have told you about Werner before this,' he said. 'But I try to keep these things on a "need to know" basis.'