Werner looked at me, wondering how much he was permitted to say. Knowing that he'd tell her anyway, I said, 'This is a regular publication; it is published every month. Copies go to the commanders of certain KGB units throughout the German Democratic Republic. You see that number at the top; this is number fifteen of what is probably a total of not more than one hundred. It's secret. London like to have copies of them if they can get them. I doubt if we've got a complete collection of them on our files, although perhaps the CIA have. The Americans like to have everything complete – the complete works of Shakespeare, a complete dinner service of Meissen, a complete set of lenses for the Olympus camera, and garages crammed with copies of the National Geographic going back for twenty-five years.'

'And?' said Zena.

I shrugged. 'It's secret, but it's not interesting.'

'To you. It's not interesting to you, that's what you mean.'

'It's not interesting to anyone except archive librarians.'

I watched Werner getting out of the sofa. It was a very low sofa and getting out of it was no easy thing to do, I noticed that Zena never sat in it; she kneeled on it so that she could swing her legs down to the floor and get to her feet with comparative ease.

'I found it in the car,' said Zena. 'I guessed the stamp meant secret.'

'You should have left it where it was,' said Werner. 'Think what might have happened if they'd searched the car as you went through the crossing point.'

'Nothing would have happened,' said Zena. 'It wasn't my car. It was an official car, wasn't it?'

'They're not interested in such subtle distinctions over there,' said Werner. 'If the border guards had found that document in the car they would have arrested you and the driver.'

'You worry too much,' said Zena.

Werner tossed the document pages on to the table. 'It was a mad thing to do, Zena. Leave that sort of risk to the people who get paid for it.'

'People like you and Bernie, you mean?'

'Bernie would never carry a paper like that through a checkpoint,' said Werner. 'Neither would I. Neither would anyone who knew what the consequences might be.'

She had been expecting unstinting praise. Now, like a small child, she bit her red lips and sulked.

I said, 'Even if the Vopos had done nothing to you, do you realize what would happen to Stinnes if they knew he'd been careless enough to leave papers in his car when it came into West Berlin? Even a KGB officer couldn't talk his way out of that one.'

She looked at me evenly. There was no expression on her face, but I had the feeling that her reply was calculated. 'I wouldn't cry for him,' she said.

Was this callous rejection of Stinnes just something she said to please Werner, I wondered. I watched Werner's reaction. But he smiled sadly. 'Do you want this stuff, Bernie?' he asked, picking up the papers.

'I don't want it,' I said. It was an understatement. I didn't want to hear about Zena's crazy capers. She didn't understand what kind of dangers she was playing with, and she didn't want to know.

It was only when Werner had gone into his study that Zena realized what he intended. But by that time we could hear the whine of the shredder as Werner destroyed the pages.

'Why?' said Zena angrily. 'Those papers were valuable. They were mine.'

'The papers weren't yours,' I said. 'You stole them.'

Werner returned and said, 'It's better that they disappear. Whatever we did with them could lead to trouble for someone. If Stinnes suspects you've taken them he'll think we put you up to it. It might be enough to make him back out of the deal.'

'We could have sold them to London,' said Zena.

'London wouldn't be keen to have papers that were so casually come by,' I explained. 'They'd wonder if they were genuine, or planted to fool them. Then they'd start asking questions about you and Stinnes and so on. We don't want a lot of London desk men prying into what we're doing. It's difficult enough to do the job as it is.'

'We could have sold them to Frank Harrington,' said Zena. Her voice had lost some of its assertion now.

'I'm trying to keep Frank Harrington at arm's length,' I said. 'If Stinnes is serious we'll do the enrolment from Mexico. If we do it from here, Frank will want to mastermind it.'

'Frank's too idle,' said Zena.

'Not for this one,' I said. 'I think Frank has already begun to see the extent of London's interest. I think Frank will want to get into the act. This would be a feather in his cap – something good for him to retire on.'

'And Mexico City is a long way from London,' said Werner. 'Less chance of having London Central breathing down your neck if you are in Mexico. I know how your mind works, Bernie.'

I smiled but said nothing. He was right, I wanted to keep London Central as far away as possible. I still felt like a mouse in a maze; every turn brought me to another blank wall. It was difficult enough to deal with the KGB but now I was fighting London Central too and Fiona was thrown into the puzzle to make things even more bewildering. And what was going to be waiting at the end of the maze – a nasty trap like the one that I'd sent MacKenzie to walk into?

'I still say we should have sold the papers to Frank,' said Zena.

Werner said, 'It might have proved dangerous. And the truth is, Zena darling, that we can't be absolutely sure that Stinnes didn't leave it there for you to find. If it all turned out that way, I wouldn't want you to be the person who took them to Frank.'

She smiled. She didn't believe that Stinnes had left the papers in the car to trick her. Zena had difficulty in believing that any man could trick her. Perhaps her time with Werner had lulled her into a false sense of security.

18

I'd known Frank Harrington for a lifetime; not his lifetime, of course, but mine. So when the car collected me from Lisl's the next morning I was not surprised that it took me to Frank Harrington's house rather than to the SIS offices at the Olympic Stadium. For when Frank said 'the office' he meant the stadium that Hitler had built for the 1936 Games. But 'my office' meant the room he used as a study in the large mansion out at Grunewald that was always at the disposal of the 'Berlin Resident' and that Frank had occupied for two long stints. It was a wonderful house which had been built for a relative of a banker named Bleichroder, who'd extended to Bismarck the necessary credit for waging the Franco-Prussian War. The garden was extensive, and there were enough trees to give the impression of being deep in the German countryside.

I was marched into the room by Frank's valet, Tarrant, a sturdy old man who'd been with Frank since the war. Frank was behind his desk, brandishing important-looking papers. He looked up at me under his eyebrows, as a commanding officer looks at a recruit who has misbehaved.

Frank was wearing a dark-grey three-piece suit, a starched white shirt and a tightly knotted Eton school tie. Frank's 'colonel of the regiment' act was not confined to his deportment. It was particularly evident in this study. There was rattan furniture and a buttoned leather bench that was so old and worn that the leather had gone almost white in places. There was a superb camphor-wood military chest, and on it an ancient typewriter that should have been in a museum. Behind him on the wall there was a large formal portrait of the Queen. It was all like a stage set for a play about the last days of the British Raj. This impression of being in an Indian army bungalow was heightened by the way in which a hundred shafts of daylight came into Frank's dark study. The louvred window shutters were closed as a precaution against sophisticated microphones that could pick up vibrations from window panes, but the slats of Berlin daylight that patterned the carpet might have come from some pitiless Punjab sun.