'What really happened?' she said one night as we were standing there looking at the view and listening to the ocean.

'They got you out,' I said. 'That's what happened.'

'What was Tessa doing there? That's what I can't understand. What was Tessa doing there, Bernard?'

'I told you,' I said. 'She was having an affair with Dicky. She thought it would be fun, I suppose.'

'I loved you so much when I married you, Bernard. I loved you because you were the only man I'd ever met who had a real respect for the truth. You never lied to me, Bernard. I wanted my children to be like you.'

I was holding her hand, staring into the darkness and trying to recognize the distant coastline.

She said, 'You wouldn't be working against me, would you, Bernard? You wouldn't do that?'

'What do you mean?'

'They haven't even told George that Tessa is dead.'

'Why not?'

'Poor George. He'd never do harm to anyone.'

'Why haven't they told him?'

She turned to look at me. 'He's been sworn to secrecy and told that Tessa went to Berlin with you and that you've run away together… run away somewhere where no one can find you.'

'So that's the story,' I said. It fitted so neatly: the hotel room that Dicky had shared with Tessa was registered in my name.

'They want Moscow to believe that Tessa is alive. The story is that it was me who was killed at the Brandenburg exit.'

'The burning car. Yes, that would be it.'

'Could they get away with such a deception, Bernard?'

'There was trade in heroin. Could Erich Stinnes have been involved?'

'Erich? No!'

'A lot of people think he was,' I persisted. 'And he was working for the Department. Do you see how he could have been set up?'

'Stop worrying about Erich.'

'Who says I'm worrying about him?'

'You identify with him…the way he grew up in Berlin with a father in the army… you identify with him.'

I didn't deny it: she knew. I suppose I'd been shouting in my sleep. I'd had a couple of nightmares. I killed him.'

'It's all over, darling. Stop torturing yourself. Why was Tessa there? That's what I want to find out.'

'Tessa was an addict, you know.'

"That's what Bret said.'

'That might have been the reason she went to Berlin. There was a man named Thurkettle who probably supplied her. I think he might have cut off her supply to make her follow him there. There were a lot of people involved. A scapegoat was needed. You can bet the official explanation is that you were bringing it in.'

'That I was bringing it? Heroin? Whose explanation? East or West?'

'Everyone. It was a chance to close the file,' I said.

'How far would the Department go with that?'

'This is an unprecedented situation. We can't be guided by past examples.'

'Uncle Silas knew what I was really doing.'

'Yes, I know, I talked to him. Uncle Silas said they needed six months with Moscow still believing you remained loyal. They'll be using all the material that they were frightened of using before in case you were compromised.'

'You're saying someone deliberately planned it so that Tessa would die?'

'I don't know.' My answer came too pat and she thought I was not telling her all I knew. 'I really don't know, Fi.'

She put her arm round me. 'I have no one to trust any more. Sometimes that frightens me.'

'I understand.'

'Was it like that for you?'

'Sometimes.'

'Who would plan such a terrible thing?'

'Perhaps I've got it all wrong,' I said.

'Bret?'

'I wouldn't start going through the possibilities. Probably it was a mixture of planning and opportunity. Maybe it's nothing like that. As I say: maybe I've got it all wrong.'

'I suppose Tessa did look like me. Daddy always said so.'

'I have no evidence one way or the other,' I said. 'The most important thing is to give Bret the sort of answers he wants. We have to get out of here. The children need us.'

'I abandoned them,' said Fiona. 'They must hate me.'

'Of course they don't.'

'Why wasn't it me? Tessa so loved life, and you and the children can manage without me. Why wasn't it me?'

'You've got to start again, Fi,' I said.

'I didn't even recognize her,' said Fiona. 'I left her there in the mud.'

I could hear the ocean but I couldn't see anything there but darkness. I said, 'Why don't we see if Bret would let the children come here for the final three or four weeks?'

'Bret says we'll be here for a long time,' she said casually, as if she didn't care.

I shivered. I was right. We were imprisoned here. Maybe for years. Maybe indefinitely. I knew of defectors, needing protection, who were tucked away out of sight for a decade or more. 'Tell Bret you insist upon seeing the children,' I suggested.

She didn't reply immediately, and when she did her voice was listless. 'I love the children and I desperately want to see them, but not here.'

'Whatever you say, Fi.'

'I need time, Bernard. I'll be that lucky joyful girl you married, and the good times will come round again. We'll live happily ever after. But I need time.'

From the Pacific Ocean there came that smell of salt and putrefaction that is called fresh air. The sky was very dark that night: no stars, no glimmer of moonlight. Evens the lights along the waterfront were being extinguished.

Len Deighton

Len Deighton was born in London in 1929. He worked as a railway clerk before doing his National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.

After his discharge in 1949, he went to art school – first to the St Martin's School of Art, and then to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. It was while working as a waiter in the evenings that he developed an interest in cookery – a subject he was later to make his own in an animated strip for the Observer and in two cookery books. He worked for a while as an illustrator in New York and as art director of an advertising agency in London.

Deciding it was time to settle down, Deighton moved to the Dordogne where he started work on his first book, The Ipcress File. Published in 1962, the book was an immediate and spectacular success. Since then he has published twenty books of fiction and non-fiction – including spy stories, and highly-researched war novels and histories – all of which have appeared to international acclaim.