'I'm watching the bottom line, Silas.'

'Good. And what did you conclude about this fellow in Mexico City, Bret? Animal, vegetable or mineral?' Silas bent over and fingered the spinach like a child dabbling a hand in the water.

'That's what I want to talk about. He's real enough; a forty-year-old KGB major of considerable experience.' Bret put on the speed-cop style glasses that he used when reading, and, reaching inside the stained waterproof that Silas had loaned him, he produced a concertina of computer printout. 'No need to tell you that our records don't normally extend down to KGB majors, but this fellow has a high profile so we know something of his background.' Bret looked down and read from the paperwork. 'Sadoff. Uses the name Stinnes. Born 1943. Regular officer as father. Raised in Berlin. Assigned to KGB, Section 44, the Religious Affairs Bureau. With Security Police in Cuba…'

'For God's sake, Bret. I can read all that piffle for myself. I'm asking you who he is.'

'And whether he really wants to come over to us. Yes, of course you're asking that, but it's too early yet.' He passed the computer printout to Silas, who held it without looking at it.

'What does Cruyer say about him?'

'I'm not sure that Cruyer has actually seen him yet.'

'Then what the devil are those two idiots doing out there?'

'You'll be pleased to hear that it was Samson who saw Stinnes.'

'And?'

'This one is worth having, Silas. We could get a lot out of him if he's properly handled. But we must go very slowly. For safety's sake we must assume he is approaching us under orders from Moscow.'

Silas sniffed and handed the printout back unread. A corpulent pirate, scruffy in that self-assured manner that is often the style of such establishment figures, he shuffled along the line of tall stakes up which the broad beans had grown. Long since shunned by the kitchen there were, amongst the leaves, a few beans that had grown huge and pale. He plucked one and broke the pod open to get the seeds inside. He ate one. When he turned round to Bret he said, 'So: two possibilities. Either he will go back to Moscow and tell them what he discovered, or he is genuine and will do as we say.'

'Yes, Silas.'

'Then why don't we play the same game? Let's welcome the fellow. Give him money and show him our secrets. What?'

'I'm not sure I follow you, Silas.'

'Abduct the bastard. Moscow screams in anger. We offer Stinnes a chance to go back and work for us. He goes back there.'

'And they execute him,' said Bret.

'Not if we abduct him. He is blameless.'

'Moscow might not see it that way.'

'Don't break my heart; this is a little KGB shit.'

'I suppose so, yes.'

'Romance him, turn him round, and send him back to Moscow. Who cares if he betrays us, or betrays them… You don't see it?'

'I'm not sure I do,' said Bret.

'Damn it, Bret. He finds us in total disarray after the loss of Mrs Samson. We're distraught. We give him a briefing designed to limit the damage we've suffered from her defection. He goes back believing that. Who cares which side he thinks he's working for? Even if they execute him, they'll squeeze him first. Come to think of it, that would suit us best.'

'It's brilliant, Silas.'

'Well, don't sound so bloody woeful.'

'It will require a lot of preparation.' Bret was beginning to discover that a secret operation shared only between himself, the Director and Silas Gaunt meant that he himself did virtually all the hard work. 'It will be a very time-consuming and difficult job.'

'Look at it as a wonderful opportunity,' said Silas. The one thing we must be sure about is that this KGB fellow doesn't cotton on to Sinker. I don't want him to even get a hint that our strategy is now directed towards the economy.'

'Is that what it's directed at?'

'Don't be bitter, Bret. You've got just about everything you've asked for. We can't go one hundred per cent manpower and economy: the military and political considerations are still valid.'

'It's a matter of definition, Silas. Rearmament can be described in economic terms or political ones without bending the figures.'

Silas took another bean from its pod and examined it. 'We'll huff and we'll puff and we'll blow their Wall down.' He offered Bret a bean. Bret didn't want one.

'I'm not the big bad wolf,' said Bret.

14

East Berlin. September 1983.

Fiona Samson was surprised when her secretary, Hubert Renn, invited her to his birthday party and she spent an hour or so thinking about it. She knew that Germans liked to celebrate birthdays, but now that she had got to know him better she had found him to be a pugnaciously independent personality, so set in his ways that it was hard to imagine him going to the trouble of arranging a birthday party, let alone one to which his superior was to be invited.

Fiona had come to terms with him but she knew that Renn did not easily adapt to taking orders from a young person or from a woman, let alone a young foreign woman. But Renn was German and he did not make his feelings evident in any way that would affect his work.

And there was the problem of what present to give him, and what to wear. The first was quickly solved by a visit to the valuta shop where Fiona, as a privilege that went with her job, was permitted to spend a proportion of her salary on goods of Western manufacture. She bought a Black and Decker electric drill, always one of the most sought-after imports in a country where repairs and construction were constant problems. She wrapped it carefully and added a fancy bow.

What to wear was not so easily decided. She wondered what sort of event it was to be. Would it be a small informal dinner, or a big family gathering, or a smart affair with dancing to live music? She rummaged through the clothes she'd brought with her – all of them selected for banality of design and sombre colours – and decided upon a short afternoon dress she'd bought long ago at Liberty in Regent Street: narrow stripes of black and crimson with pleated skirt and high buttoned collar. She had bought it for a holiday with Bernard and the children. They had stayed at a farm in western Scotland and it had rained almost every day. She had brought the dress home again still unworn. She looked at herself in the mirror and decided that, now she had at last discovered a reasonably good hairdresser, it would do.

The dinner party, for such it turned out to be, was given in a private room in an elaborate sports club complex near Grünau. Although she could have asked for the use of a car, Fiona went on the S-Bahn to Grünau Station, and then caught a street-car.

Here in this attractive suburb southeast of the city, the River Spree has become the Dahme and there is extensive forest on both banks. The club's main entrance, around which the new premises had been built, dated from the 1936 Olympics. Along this 2,000 metres of swastika-bedecked Berlin river, thirty thousand spectators had seen the amazing triumphs of physically perfect German youth using radically new designs of lightweight sculls and shells. Hitler's Olympics were transmitted on the world's first public TV service and Leni Riefenstahl made her world-acclaimed film Olympiad. The golden successes resulting from selection, dedicated training and German technology – and the way in which the propaganda machine used them – provided the Third Reich with a political triumph. The 1936 Olympics afforded a glimpse of the Nazi war machine in mufti. It had been, in all its aspects, a taste of things to come.

Fiona was in the lobby looking at the Tenth Olympiad photos, and some of the old awards, displayed in a big glass case, when Hubert Renn saw her. She offered him her best wishes and he bowed. 'Are you interested in sport, Frau Direktor?'