I saw the Duchess. She was dressed as a witch, in a pointed hat and a long black gown with occult symbols on the skirt of it. That damned cat was with her despite the heavy rain, its eyes glowing angrily in the darkness. The Duchess was standing in front of the van and began making solemn gestures with her wand. A roll of thunder came in on cue.

'What's that old cow doing?' Teacher asked.

'I think she's casting a spell,' I replied.

'Jesus Christ!' said Teacher, aggravated beyond control. 'Has everyone gone insane?'

Before the Duchess had finished her incantation Harlequin stuck his painted face through the window of the van and said, Teacher is in charge. Remember that, Bernard.' I ignored him. He grabbed my shoulder and in the voice of an exasperated parent talking to a naughty child, he said, 'Look here, Bernard! Do you hear what I said?'

I looked at Dicky's elaborately made up face and his cold little eyes. Years and years of repressed resentment welled up in me. The way in which he'd been promoted over my head, the pompous things he said, his pretentious lifestyle, his readiness to cuckold poor old George and make jokes about it. Now emotion took precedence over common sense. Whatever the consequences, now was the time to react. I pulled my fist back and gave him a solid punch on the rouged nose. Not hard, but it was enough to send him reeling back into the roadway just as another car came past. With incredibly quick response the driver swerved with a sharp squeal of brakes and avoided him. I turned to see him through the window. Dicky still staggered back, hat askew, feet splayed wide apart. His arms were flailing to keep balance, but he fell backwards into the road and his big cocked hat came off.

'Go! Go! We'll sort it out at the checkpoint,' I yelled.

Teacher let in the clutch and there was a squeak of rubber and a sickening bump followed by a woman's scream. I knew immediately what had happened. That bloody cat 'Jackdaw' had gone under the van to shelter from the downpour. Now it was flattened under the rear wheels. We might have hit the Duchess too, but Teacher spun the wheel and narrowly missed her and we sped out into the traffic of the Ku-Damm.

The wet streets shone with the coloured light of the neon signs that summoned tourists to meet the junkies, winos and dropouts who had made the Europa Centre their home. 'Is she still in the back?' said Teacher as we passed the Gedächtniskirche, preserved to remind the nostalgia-prone that old Berlin had its fair share of ugly buildings. Even at this time of night there was plenty of traffic. Teacher gunned the motor a couple of times and after that the engine began firing more efficiently. I suppose the rain must have been afflicting it.

I'm here, darling,' said a voice from the back. 'I can guess who you are going to meet. If you dare to try throwing me out at the checkpoint I'll scream it aloud to the whole world. You wouldn't like that, would you?'

'No we wouldn't like that,' I said.

'This bloody heater's not working,' said Teacher and slapped it with his hairy hand.

'That's a damned convincing costume, Jeremy,' I said admiringly. Tessa giggled softly but Teacher didn't answer.

19

Traffic leaving West Berlin for the Autobahn to West Germany goes through the Border Control point at Drewitz in the south-west corner of the city.

The procedures are efficient and, for a car with Diplomatic plates, minimal. On the DDR side of the controls it is customary for the drivers and passengers of vehicles so marked to flatten their identity papers against the glass of the window, where they are examined by the flashlights of the communist officials who work with that studied slowness that in the West is usually the modus operandi of trade unionists in dispute.

Eventually the guards grudgingly waved us through. They gave no sign of noticing that one of us was a gorilla. Teacher tossed the diplomatic passports into the glove compartment and we began the long and monotonous journey to the West. In keeping with the DDR's siege mentality, there are no cafes or restaurants on this road. There's nowhere to savour those sixty-eight different flavours of icecream that punctuate long wide American freeways, none of the bifteck aux pommes frites avec Château Vinaigre that mark the expensive kilometres of France's autoroutes, not even the toxic waste and strong tea so readily available on Britain's motorways.

At first there was a great deal of traffic on the road. Lovers and husbands returning from blissful weekends passed each other on the way home. Trucks starting out at the stroke of midnight after the weekend embargo on heavy vehicles slowly and laboriously overtook other heavyweights. In the fast lane Germans roared past us at top speed, flashing their lights lest they be inconvenienced in their public demonstration of German mechanical superiority. 'Deutschland über alles,' said Teacher as one such Mercedes driver, who'd come tailgating close behind us, pointed his finger to his head as he overtook, and sprayed us with dirty water.

'Tessa's gone to sleep,' I said.

'Something good had to happen,' said Teacher. 'It's the law of averages.'

'Don't bet on it,' I said. The wipers squeaked and squealed at the rain. Teacher reached for the radio switch but seemed to have second thoughts about it.

We came up behind a line of heavy trucks, the wind whipping the covers of the rearmost vehicle, and stayed there for a bit. 'Keep awake. We'll check all the exits,' said Teacher. 'The message may have got it wrong.'

'No comment,' I said.

These East German Autobahnen were in poor condition. Little had been done on this stretch since it was first built in Hitler's time. Subsidence here and there had caused wide cracks, and hasty patches of shoddy maintenance had failed to cure the underlying fractures. All over Europe the motorways were poxed with signs, and littered with the equipment of construction gangs, as the Continent's roads succumbed to an arterio-sclerosis that had every sign of proving fatal.

There had been roadworks at several places along the route, but after the turn-off for Brandenburg – a town that forms the centre of a complex of lakes to the west of Berlin – the westbound side of the Autobahn was reduced to single-lane working. Teacher slowed as our headlights picked out the double row of plastic cones, some of them overturned by the gusts of wind that accompanied ceaseless heavy rain.

The road curved gently to the left and began a downward gradient. From here I saw ahead of us the ribbon of highway marked by pinpoints of light that climbed like a file of insects and disappeared suddenly over the distant hill only just visible against the purple horizon.

This section of the Autobahn was being widened. Lining the road were colossal machines: bulldozers and towering power shovels, spreaders, graders and rollers, the bizarre toys of a Gargantuan world.

'Look there!' I said as I spotted a car parked amongst the machines, its parking lights just visible through the downpour.

'That's them,' said Teacher, the relief audible in his voice. He swung the wheel. We bumped off the edge of the roadway and down on to the mud, picking the way carefully past metal drums, steel reinforcements, abandoned materials, broken wooden fencing and other undefinable debris. We were about fifty yards from the other car when Teacher judged us close enough. He stopped and turned off the engine: the lights died. The noise of the rainstorm was suddenly very loud. It was dark except when passing cars, coming round the curve, swept the site with their headlight beams. The light came swinging across it like the revolving rays of a lighthouse. There was no movement anywhere.

'Careful,' I said. 'When you open the door we'll be lit up by the interior light. We'll be sitting targets.' I slid into the back of the van, opened the suitcase and rummaged to find the ammunition and the pistol. I loaded it carefully. It wasn't the sort of thing you could tuck into the waistband of a pair of cheap trousers so I kept it in my hand.