It was a patronizing reproach, and the elder man's soft voice did not conceal the anger in him. 'I say he's the weak link in the chain, my friend.'

'Perhaps he is supposed to be just that,' said Stinnes complacently. 'One day maybe the Englishwoman will put you in charge of one of her crazy schemes, and then you'll be able to ignore orders and show everyone what a clever man you are in the field. But until that time you'll do things the way you're ordered to do them, no matter how stupid it all seems.' He got to his feet. 'I'll have a drink, even if you don't want one. Biedermann has good brandy.'

Stinnes passed below me out of sight and I heard him go into the study and pour drinks. When he returned he was carrying two glasses. 'It will calm you, Pavel. Have patience; it will work out all right. You can't rush these things. You'll have to get used to that. It's not like chasing Moscow dissidents.' He gave the elder man a glass and they both drank. 'French brandy. Schnapps and beer are not worth drinking unless they come from a refrigerator.' He drank. 'Ah, that's better. I'll be glad to be back in Berlin, if only for a brief spell.'

'I was in Berlin in 1953,' said the elder man. 'Did you know that?'

'So was I,' said Stinnes.

'In '53? Doing what?'

Stinnes chuckled. 'I was only ten years old. My father was a soldier. My mother was in the army too. We were all kept in the barracks during the disturbances.'

'Then you know nothing. I was in the thick of it. The bricklayers and builders working on those Stalinallee sites started all the trouble. It began as a protest against a ten per cent increase in work norms. They marched on the House of Ministries in Leipzigerstrasse and demanded to see the Party leader, Ulbricht.' He laughed. It was a low, manly laugh. 'But it was the poor old Mining Minister who was sent out to face them. I was twenty. I was with the Soviet Control Commission. My chief dressed me up like a German building worker and sent me out to mix with the mob. I was never so frightened in all my life.'

'With your accent you had every cause to be frightened,' said Stinnes.

His colleague was not amused. 'I kept my mouth shut; but I kept my ears open. That night the strikers marched across to the RIAS radio station in West Berlin and wanted their demands to be transmitted over the Western radio. Treacherous German swine.'

'What were their demands?' asked Stinnes.

'The usual: free and secret elections, cuts in the work norms, no punishment for the trouble-makers.' The older man drank some more. He was calmer now that he'd had a drink. 'I advised my people to bring our boys out to clear the streets the way we'd cleared them in 1945. I told them to announce an immediate curfew and give the army shoot-on-sight orders.

'But they didn't,' said Stinnes.

'I was only twenty years old. The men who'd fought in the war had no time for kids like me. The Control Commission was not taken seriously. So they sat up all night hoping that everything would be all right in the morning.'

'The disturbances spread next day.'

'By 11 a.m. on 17th June they were tearing the red flag down from the Brandenburg Gate and ransacking the Party offices.'

'But the army sat on it, didn't they?'

'Eventually they had to. There were strikes all over the country: Dresden, Leipzig, Jena and Gera, even in Rostock and the Baltic island of Rügen. It took a long time before things settled down. They should have acted immediately. Since then I've had no sympathy for people who tell me to have patience because everything will come out all right.'

'And that's what you'd like me to do now?' asked Stinnes mockingly. 'Bring our boys out to clear the streets the way we cleared them in 1945? Announce an immediate curfew and give the army shoot-on-sight orders?'

'You know what I mean.'

'You have no idea what this business is all about, Pavel. You've spent your career running typewriters; I've spent mine running people.'

'What do you mean?'

'You rush in like a rapist when we are in the middle of a seduction. Do you really think you can march agents up and down like Prussian infantry? Don't you understand that men such as Biedermann have to be romanced?'

'We should never use agents who are not politically dedicated to us,' said Pavel.

Stinnes went to the window and I could see him clearly in the moonlight as he looked at the sea. Outside, the wind was roaring through the trees and making thumping noises against the windows. Stinnes held his drink up high and swirled it round to see the expensive brandy cling to the glass. 'You've still got that passion that I once had,' said Stinnes. 'How do you hang on to all your illusions, Pavel?'

'You're a cynic,' said the elder man. 'I might as well ask how you continue doing your job without believing in it.'

'Believing?' said Stinnes, drinking some of the brandy and turning back to face his companion. 'Believing what? Believing in my job or believing in the socialist revolution?'

'You talk as if the two beliefs are incompatible.'

'Are they compatible? Can a "workers' and peasants' state" need so many secret policemen like us?'

'There is a threat from without,' said the elder man, using the standard Party cliché.

'Do you know what Brecht wrote after the 17th June uprising? Brecht I'm talking about, not some Western reactionary. Brecht wrote a poem called "The Solution". Did you ever read it?'

'I've no time for poetry.'

'Brecht asked, would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people, and vote itself another?'

'Do you know what people say of you in Moscow?' the older man asked. 'They say, is this man a Russian or is he a German?'

'And what do you say when people ask that question of you, Pavel?'

'I had never met you,' said the elder man, 'I knew you only by reputation.'

'And now? Now that you've met me?'

'You like speaking German so much that sometimes I think you've forgotten how to speak Russian.'

'I haven't forgotten my mother tongue, Pavel. But it is good for you to practise German. Even more you need Spanish, but your appalling Spanish hurts my ears,'

'You use your German name so much, I wonder if you are ashamed of your father's name.'

'I'm not ashamed, Pavel. Stinnes was my operational name and I have retained it. Many others have done the same.'

'You take a German wife and I wonder if Russian girls were not good enough for you.'

'I was on active service when I married, Pavel. There were no objections then as I remember.'

'And now I hear you talk of the June '53 uprising as if you sympathized with the German terrorists. What about our Russian boys whose blood was spilled restoring law and order?'

'My loyalty is not in question, Pavel. My record is better than yours, and you know that.'

'But you don't believe any more.'

'Perhaps I never did believe in the way that you believe,' said Stinnes. 'Perhaps that's the answer.'

'There's no half-way,' said the elder man. 'Either you accept the Party Congress and its interpretation of Marxist-Leninism or you are a heretic.'

'A heretic?' said Stinnes, feigning interest. 'Extra ecclesiam nulla salus; no salvation is possible outside the Church. Is that it, Pavel? Well, perhaps I am a heretic. And it's your misfortune that the Party prefers that, and so does the service. A heretic like me does not lose his faith.'

'You don't care about the struggle,' said the elder man. 'You can't even be bothered to search the house.'

'There's no car, and no boat at the dock. Do you think a man such as Biedermann would come on foot through the jungle that frightens you so much?'

'You knew he wouldn't be here.'

'He's a thousand miles away by now,' said Stinnes. 'He's rich. A man like that can go anywhere at a moment's notice. Perhaps you haven't been in the West long enough to understand how difficult that makes our job.'