'Keep them working until Bret is retired and Dicky is moved to another desk. Is that what they mean?'

'I daresay it's at the back of their minds. When the Brahms Four material stops, there'll be a big reshuffle. Someone will have to take the blame. Even if it's just a stroke of fate, they'll still want someone to take the blame.'

'I'm not convinced the Brahms Four stuff is so bloody earthshaking,' I said. 'Now and again he's given us some juicy items, but a lot of it is self-evident economic forecasts.'

'Well, Bret guards it with his life, so I don't suppose either of us has seen more than a fraction of the stuff he sends.'

'Even Bret admits that a lot of his messages are simply corroboration of intelligence we already have from other sources. From Brahms Four we usually have good notice of the Soviet grain deals, but often it arrives after we know the new shipping contracts the Russians have signed. The type of ships they charter always gives us clear notice of how much grain they'll buy from Argentina and how much they'll be shipping via the Gulf of Mexico. We didn't need Brahms Four telling us about the Moscow Narodny Bank buying Argentine peso futures. But what did he tell us about the Russian tanks going into Afghanistan? Not a damned whisper.'

'But, darling, you're so unreasonable. The Russians don't need any help from their state bank in order to invade Afghanistan. Brahms Four can only give us banking intelligence,'

'You think the Russians weren't pouring money into Kabul for weeks before the soldiers went in? You think they weren't buying intelligence and goodwill in Pakistan? And the sort of people you buy in that part of the world don't take Diners Club cards. The KGB must have used silver and gold coins in the sort of quantity that only a bank can supply.' They were placing boxes and rubber tyres on the floor for the next race.

'Is this Billy?' said Fiona. 'What's all that for?'

'Yes, this is Billy. He's in the obstacle race.' Obstacle race! Only a son of mine would choose that.

She said, 'Anyway, darling, you and I both know it doesn't matter how good the Brahms material is. That source of information, from somewhere in the Soviet-controlled banking world, is the sort of intelligence work that even a politician can understand. You can't explain to the Minister about electronic intelligence gathering, or show him pictures taken by spy satellites. It's too complicated, and he knows that all that technological hardware belongs to the Americans. But tell the Minister that we have a man inside the Moscow Narodny and on their Economic Intelligence Committee, and he'll get excited. Form a committee to process that intelligence, and the Minister can talk to the Americans on his own terms. We all know Bret has built an empire on the strength of the Brahms source, so don't start saying it's anything less than wonderful. Or you'll become very unpopular.'

'That would be a new experience for me.'

She smiled that sweet sort of smile that she used only when she was sure I'd ignore her advice, and said, 'I mean really unpopular.'

'I'll take a chance on that,' I said angrily. 'And if your friend Bret doesn't like my opinions, he can get stuffed.' I overreacted of course. She knew I was still suspicious of her relationship with Bret. It would have been far smarter just to make soft noises and let her think I suspected nothing.

Then I spotted Billy. I waved but he was too shy to wave back; he just smiled. He was marching round the gym with all the other juniors. I suppose even clumsy boys like Billy were allowed in the obstacle race.

It was a relay race and for some unexplained reason Billy was first in his team. He scrambled through two rubber tyres, zigzagged round a line of plastic cones, and then climbed on a box before beginning his final sprint back to his number 2. He skidded at speed and went full length. When he got up, his face was covered with blood, and blood was spattered on his white vest. His teammates were shouting at him and he wasn't quite sure which way he was facing. I knew the feeling very well.

'Oh, my God,' said Fiona.

I prevented her jumping down and running to him. 'It's just his nose,' I said.

'How do you know?' said Fiona.

'I just know,' I said. 'Leave him alone.'

18

Rolf Mauser always turned up where and when he was least expected. 'Where the hell have you sprung from?' I said, unhappy to be dragged out of bed by a phone call in the early hours of the morning. Unhappy too to be standing ankle-deep in litter, drinking foul-tasting coffee from a machine in London 's long-distance bus station at Victoria.

'I couldn't wait until morning, and I knew you lived nearby.' I'd known Rolf Mauser since I was a schoolboy and he was an unemployed onetime Wehrmacht captain who scratched a living from the Berlin black market and ran errands for my father. Now he was sixty-six years old but he'd not changed much since the last time we'd met, when he was working as a barman in Lisl Hennig's hotel.

'Your son Axel said you were in East Berlin.'

'In a manner of speaking, I still am,' said Rolf. 'They let us old people out nowadays, you know.'

'Yes, I know. Have you seen Axel? He worries about you, Rolf.'

'Rolf now, is it? I remember a time when I was called Herr Mauser.'

'I can remember a time when you were called Hauptmann Mauser,' I reminded him. It was my father who, noting that Mauser's promotion to captain had come only three weeks before the end of the war, had addressed him as Hauptmann Mauser. Rolf had glowed with pride.

'Hauptmann Mauser.' He smiled dutifully, the sort of smile that family groups provide for the amateur photographer. 'Yes, your father knew how to play on a young man's vanity.'

'Did he, Rolf?'

He heard the resentment in my voice and didn't reply. He looked round the bus station as if seeing it for the first time. He wore a brown leather overcoat of the sort that they sold on East Berlin 's Unter den Linden in the shops where only rich Western tourists could afford to buy. Like so many Germans, he liked his clothes tightly fitted. The belted overcoat on this big round-shouldered man, and the pointed nose that twitched each time he spoke, made him look like an affluent armadillo standing on its hind legs. His face was round and he had pale skin and tired eyes, the legacy of years of dark bars, late hours, tobacco smoke and alcohol. There was little sign now of that tough young artillery officer who won the oak leaves to his Knight's Cross at Vinnitsa on the River Bug in the Red Army's spring offensive of 1944.

'Going far, Rolf?'

'Did you bring everything?'

'You've got your goddamned nerve, Rolf.'

'You owe me a favour, Bernd.'

A bus arrived, the sound of its diesel engine amplified by the low entrance arch. It backed carefully into its designated position under the signs and half a dozen weary travellers scrambled down to get their luggage, yawning and scratching as if not yet fully awake. 'You'll be conspicuous in your loden hat and leather coat once you get into the British hinterland,' I told Mauser. He didn't react to this advice. The driver of the bus got out and wound the roller to change the destination plate to Cardiff.

'Give me the packet, Bernd. Save the lectures for young Werner.' He twitched his nose. 'Getting nervous about this sort of thing? I don't remember you getting nervous in the old days.'

'What the hell do you want with a gun, Rolf?' I felt like saying that I was only nervous because I didn't trust Rolf to know what he was doing with a gun. In the 'old days' Rolf had run messages and told stories of his exploits both in the war and after. God only knows what dark deeds he might once have committed. But for many years he'd done little more than hide letters and packets under his bar counter and give them to strangers who knew the right password.