28

They locked me in an office of the police barracks. It had a barred window and a mortice lock; they figured I wasn't dangerous enough to need a prison cell. In a perverse way I resented that. And I resented the fact that Lenin sent the Saxon kid in to do the first interrogation. 'What's your name and who employs you?' – all that sort of crap. And always that accent. I kept trying to guess the exact location of his hometown, but it was a game he wouldn't join. I think he was from some little town in the German backwoods where Poland meets Czechoslovakia. But I got him off guard by talking about his accent and his family. And when I suddenly switched the topic of conversation to the fiasco at Müggelsee, he let slip that the Muntes had got away. I nodded and asked him for something to eat so quickly afterwards that I don't think he even noticed what he'd said.

After the Saxon kid had finished, they left a blank-faced young cop sitting in the office with me, but he wouldn't respond to my conversation. He didn't say anything, or even watch me, when I went to look out the window. We were on the top floor of what the international intelligence community calls 'Normannenstrasse', East Germany 's State Security Service block in Berlin-Lichtenberg.

From this side of the building I could look down on Frankfurterallee. This wide road is Berlin 's main highway eastwards and there was a steady stream of heavy traffic. The weather had turned colder now, and the only people on the street were clerical staff from the State Security Ministry filing down the steps into Magdalenenstrasse U-Bahn station at the end of the working day.

Lenin joined in the fun about midnight. They'd taken my wrist-watch, of course, along with my money, a packet of French cigarettes, and my Swiss Army knife, but I could hear a church or a municipal clock striking each hour. Lenin was amiable. He even laughed at a joke I made about the coffee. He was older than I had estimated: my age perhaps. No wonder that chase through the forest had made him puff. He wore a brown corduroy suit with button-down top pocket and braided edges to the lapels. I wonder if he'd designed it himself or had picked it up from some old village tailor in a remote part of Hungary or Rumania. He liked travelling; he told me that. Then he talked about old American films, the time he'd spent seconded to the security police in Cuba, and his love for English detective stories.

He brought out his tiny cheroots and offered me one; I declined. It was the standard interrogator's ploy.

'I can't smoke them,' I told him. 'They give me a sore throat.'

'Then I suggest that we both smoke the French cigarettes we took from you. Permit?'

I was in no position to object. 'Okay,' I said. He produced my half-empty packet of Gauloises from his coat and took one before sliding one across to me.

'I found those Western cigarettes on the U-Bahn train,' I said.

He smiled. 'That's what I wrote in the arrest report. You think I don't listen to what you say?' He threw his cigarette lighter to me. It was of Western origin, an expendable one with visible fuel supply. It was very low but it worked. 'Now we destroy the evidence by burning, you and me. Right?' He winked conspiratorially.

Lenin, who said his real name was Erich Stinnes, had an encyclopedic memory; he was able to recite endlessly the names of his favourite authors – for they were many and varied – and he seemed to know in bewildering detail every plot they'd written. But he spoke of the fictional characters as if they were alive. 'Do you think,' he asked me, 'that Sherlock Holmes, coming across a criminal of some foreign culture, would find detection more difficult? Is it perhaps true that he is effective only when working against a criminal who shares the creed of the English gentleman?'

'They're just stories,' I said. 'No one takes them seriously.'

'I take them seriously,' said Lenin. 'Holmes is my mentor.'

'Holmes doesn't exist. Holmes never did exist. It's just twaddle.'

'How can you be such a philistine,' said Lenin. 'In The Sign of Four, Holmes said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Such perception cannot be dismissed lightly.'

'But in A Study in Scarlet he said almost the opposite,' I argued. 'He said that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.'

'Ah, so you are a believer,' said Lenin. He puffed on the Gauloise. 'Anyway, I don't call that a contradiction.'

'Look, Erich,' I said. 'All I know about Sherlock bloody Holmes is the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'

Lenin waved a hand to silence me, sat back with hands placed fingertips together, and said, 'Yes, "Silver Blaze".' A frown came as he tried to remember the exact words: 'The dog did nothing in the night-tune. That was the curious incident.'

'Exactly, Erich, old pal,' I said. 'And, as one Sherlock Holmes fan to another, would you mind explaining to me the equally curious absence of any proper bloody attempt to interrogate me.'

Lenin smiled a tight-lipped little smile, like a parson hearing a risqué joke from a bishop. 'And that's just what I would say in your position, Englishman. I told my superior that a senior security man from London will wonder why we are not following the normal procedure. He will begin to hope that he'll get special treatment, I said. He'll think we don't want him to know our interrogation procedure. And he'll think that's because he's going home very soon. And once a prisoner starts thinking along those lines, he closes his mouth very tight. After that it can take weeks to get anything out of him.'

'And what did your superior say?' I asked.

'His exact words I am not permitted to reveal.' He shrugged apologetically. 'But as you can see for yourself, he paid no heed to my advice.'

'That I should be interrogated while still warm?'

He half closed his eyes and nodded; again it was the mannerism of a churchman. 'It's what should have been done, isn't it? But you can't tell these desk people anything.'

'I know,' I said.

'Yes. You know what it's like, and so do I,' he said. 'Both of us work the tough side of the business. I've been West a few times, just as you've come here. But who gets the promotions and the big wages – desk-bound Party bastards. How lucky you are not having the Party system working against you all the time.'

'We have got it,' I said. 'It's called Eton and Oxbridge.'

But Lenin was not to be stopped. 'Last year my son got marks that qualified him to go to university, but he lost the place to some kid with lower marks. When I complained, I was told that it was official policy to favour the children of working-class parents against those from the professional classes, in which they include me. Shit, I said, you victimize my son because his father was clever enough to pass his exams? What kind of workers' state is that?'

'Are you recording this conversation?'

'So they can put me into prison with you? Do you think I'm crazy?'

'I still want to know why I'm not being interrogated.'

'Tell me,' he said, suddenly leaning forward, drawing on his cigarette, and blowing smoke reflectively as he formed the question in his mind. 'How much per diem do you get?'

'I don't understand.'

'I'm not asking you what you do for a living,' he said. 'All I want to know is how much do they pay you for daily expenses when you are away from home.'

'One hundred and twelve pounds sterling per day for food and lodging. Then we get extra expenses, plus travel expenses.'

Lenin blew a jet of smoke in a gesture that displayed his indignation. 'And they won't even pay us a daily rate. The cashier's office insists upon us writing everything down. We have to account for every penny we've handled.'