'But you saw her again?' said Mrs Munte.

I had a date with her the very next evening. And I wanted to be able to say I had a job for her. It was an attractive idea to have her in the same office with me. Bret Rensselaer didn't much like the idea of taking on someone we hadn't properly vetted, but when we found out that she was related to Silas Gaunt – who'd become something of a legend in the Department – he gave me a grudging okay. At first it was conditional on her working only out of my office, and not having access to the really sensitive material or any contact with our Berlin people. But in a few years, hard work and long hours gave her a series of promotions that put her in line for an Operations desk.

'I got her a job,' I said.

'Perhaps it was the job, rather than you, she was after,' said Mrs Munte, tilting her head on one side to show me it was not a serious suggestion.

'Perhaps it was,' I said.

I was watching two men at the far end of the narrow lane that led up from the Buchholz church. They were both in civilian clothes, but unmistakably Stasis. It was government policy that the secret police never wore beards or moustaches, and dressed in plain clothes of a type that made them immediately recognizable to every East German who saw them. Everyone except the most naive realized that there were other plainclothes policemen who weren't so easy to spot, but where the hell were they? Frau von Munte,' I said matter of factly, 'there are a couple of policemen coming up the lane checking each of the houses in turn.' I kept watching them. Now I could see that there were two more men – one in police uniform – and, behind them, a black Volvo negotiating the narrow lane with great care. Beyond that came a minibus with a light fixed to the roof. 'Four policemen,' I said. 'Perhaps more.'

She came over to the window, but had the good sense to stand well back from it. 'What kind of policemen?' she asked.

'The kind who get Volvos,' I said. With the scarcity of any sort of hard currency, only senior ranks or special squads could get an imported car.

'What do we do?' She gave no sign of fear. Married to a spy for a couple of decades, I suppose she'd lived through this nightmare times without number.

'Get two boxes of those seedlings from the greenhouse,' I said. 'I'll just look round in here before we leave.'

'Where are we going?'

'Back to my car.'

'We'll have to go past them.'

'They'll see us whichever way we go. Better to brazen it out.'

She put on an absurd fez-like felt hat and fastened it into her hair with ferocious-looking hatpins. She looked round the room. There were obviously many things she'd planned to take with her, but she grabbed only a fur coat from a box under the bed and put it on. She went out to the greenhouse, came back, and handed me a box of seedlings and kept one for herself. As we went out, I smiled to the neighbour stretched out on a blanket in front of his castle. He shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Closing the little garden gate carefully after Mrs Munte, I followed her down the lane towards the policemen.

They were working systematically, a two-man team on each side of the lane. One man to go into the garden and knock at the door, the other to watch the back. The driver of the car would be ready to take a potshot at anyone trying to run for it. In the back of the Volvo there was another man. It was Lenin, the senior officer of the team that had arrested Rolf Mauser. He was sprawled across the back seat ticking off names and addresses from papers on a clipboard.

'Who are you, where are you going?' said one of the policemen as we got near. It was the young Saxon conscript again. He'd been given the job of plodding along the lane to hold back the bushes that might scratch the paintwork of the car.

'None of your business, young man,' said Mrs Munte. She made an incongruous figure, standing there in the sunshine holding the plants and wearing her fur coat and Kaffeeklatsch hat.

'Do you live here?' He moved out to block the path. I noticed that the flap of his pistol holster was undone. His arms were folded across his body, a gesture that policemen like to think looks friendly.

'Live here?' said Mrs Munte. 'What do you think we are, squatters?'

Even the policemen smiled. Whatever Mrs Munte looked like, she could not be mistaken for one of the dirty long-haired squatters seen so frequently on TV news from the West Sector. 'Do you know anyone here named Munte?'

'I don't know any of these people,' she said disdainfully. 'I come to this dreadful place only to buy things I can't get elsewhere. My son is helping me with these carnations. It's his day off and he's brought his car here. Ten marks for these few seedlings. It's disgraceful. You should be concerning yourself with the profiteers that are flourishing here.'

'We are,' said the policeman. He still smiled but didn't move.

She leaned close to him. 'What are you doing?' she whispered loudly. 'Is it wife swoppers you are after? Or have the whores moved in here again?'

He grinned and stood aside. 'You're too young to know about that kind of thing, Mutti,' he said. He turned round and watched us as we staggered along with the boxes of plants. 'Make way for the busy gardeners,' he called to the policemen behind him. And they stood aside too. The man in the back of the Volvo stared at his papers and said nothing. He probably thought our papers had been checked.

27

My box of carnation plants was heavy enough to make me sweat by the time we got to the church at Buchholz, but Mrs Munte was not complaining. Perhaps she was much stronger than she looked. Or perhaps she'd chosen a lighter one for herself.

Buchholz marks the end of the number 49 tram route. In the cobbled village square were the bicycles of commuters who lived beyond the terminus. There were hundreds of them, racked, stacked, hanging and piled; the narrow pathways that gave access to them made an intricate maze. Within this maze a man was standing. He had a newspaper in his hands and he was reading from it in a preoccupied way that permitted him to glance round him, and to look down the street as if waiting for the tram to arrive. It was Werner Volkmann; there was no mistaking the big bearlike torso and short legs, and the hat that was planted right on top of his large head.

He gave no sign of seeing me, but I knew he'd chosen that spot so he could keep the car in his line of vision. I unlocked the doors and put the plants in the boot and Mrs Munte in the back seat. Only then – when Mrs Munte was shut in the car and couldn't hear us – did Werner cross the road to talk to me.

'I thought you'd be across the other side of town,' I said quietly, stifling the impulse to scream at him.

'It's probably okay,' said Werner. He turned to look up the street. There was a police car outside the post office, but the driver was showing no interest in us. He was talking to a cop in one of the long white coats that only traffic police wear. 'Four plainclothes cops visited your man's office this morning. It was nothing more than a few polite inquiries, but it scared hell out of him.'

'The same team who arrested Rolf Mauser are now raking through the Lauben and asking if anyone knows him.'

'I know. I saw them arrive.'

'Thanks, Werner.'

'No sense in me rushing in there to get arrested with you,' said Werner defensively. 'I can be more help to you free.'

'So where is he?'

'Brahms Four? He left his office soon after arriving at work. He came into the street holding a small attaché case and wearing a pained look. I didn't know what to do – no phone here to reach you. So I had one of my people grab him. I stayed clear. He doesn't know me. I didn't want him to see the warehouse, so I had someone drive him out to Müggelsee. The truck will go separately. Then I came up here to ask you whether we should still go ahead.'