Praschko There is a tarmac driveway at the back of the Embassy. It leads from the eastern part of the perimeter northwards through a settlement of new villas too costly for British habitation. Each has a small garden of great value in terms of real estate, each is distinguished from its neighbour by those cautious architectural deviations which are the mark of modern conformity. If one house has a brick-built barbecue and a patio of reconstituted stone, the next will match it with an external wall of blue slate, or quarried rock daringly exposed. In summer, young wives sun themselves beside minuscule swimming-pools. In winter black poodles burrow in the snow; and every midday from Monday to Friday, black Mercedes bring the masters home for meals. The air smells all the time, if distantly, of coffee.

It was a cold grey morning still, but the earth was lit with the clarity which follows rain. They drove very slowly, with the windows right down. Passing a hospital, they entered a more sombre road where the older suburb had survived; behind shaggy conifers and blue-black laurel bushes, leaden spires which once had painted donnish dreams of Weimar stood like lances in a mouldering forest. Ahead of them rose the Bundestag, naked, comfortless and uncomforted; a vast motel mourned by its own flags and painted in yellowing milk. At its back, straddled by Kennedy's Bridge and bordered by Beethoven's hall,the brown Rhine pursued its uncertain cultural course.

Police were everywhere: seldom could a seat of democracy have been so well protected from its democrats. At the main entrance, a line of schoolchildren waited in a restless queue, and the police guarded them as if they were their own. A television team was setting up its arclights. In front of the camera a young man in a suit of mulberry corduroy thoughtlessly pirouetted, hand on hip, while a colleague measured his complexion; the police watched dangerously, bewildered by his freedom. Along the kerb, scrubbed as jurymen, their banners straight as Roman standards, the grey crowd obediently waited. The slogans had changed: German Unity First European Unity Second: This is a Proud Nation Too: Give us Back our Country First ! The police faced them in line abreast, controlling them as they controlled the children.

'I'll park down by the river,' Bradfield said. 'God knows what it will be like by the time we come out.'

'What's going on?'

'A debate. Amendments to the Emergency Legislation.'

'I thought they'd finished with that long ago.'

'In this place, nothing is resolved.'

Along the embankment as far as they could see on either side, grey detachments waited passively like unarmed soldiers. Make-shift banners declared their provenance: Kaiserslautern, Hanover, Dortmund, Kassel. They stood in perfect silence, waiting for the order to protest. Someone had brought a transistor radio and it blared very loud. They craned their necks for a sight of the white Jaguar.

Side by side they walked slowly back, up the hill, a way from the river. They passed a kiosk; it seemed to contain nothing but coloured photographs of Queen Soraya. Two columns of students made an avenue to the main entrance. Bradfield walked a head,stiff backed. At the door the guard objected to Turner and Bradfield argued with him shortly. The lobby was dreadfully warm and smelt of cigar; it was filled with the ringside murmur of dispute. Journalists, some with cameras, looked at Bradfield curiously and he shook his head and looked a way. In small groups, deputies talked quietly, vainly glancing all the time over one another's shoulders in search of someone more interesting. A familiar figure rose at them.

'The best piece! My very words. Bradfield, you are the best piece! You have come to see the end of democracy? You have come for the debate? My God, you are

so damn efficient over there! And the Secret Service is still with you? Mr Turner, you are loyal, I hope? My God, what the devil's happened to your face?' Receiving no answer he continued in a lower voice, furtively. 'Bradfield, I must speak to you. Something damned urgent, look here. I tried to get you at the Embassy but for Saab you are always out.'

'We have an appointment.'

'How long? Tell me how long. Sam Allerton wishes also; we wish together to have a discussion.'

He had bent his black head to Bradfield's ear. His neck was still grimy; he had not shaved.

'It's impossible to say.' 'Listen, I will wait for you. A most important matter. I will tell Allerton: we will wait for Bradfield. Deadlines, our newspapers: small fish. We must talk with Bradfield.'

'There's no comment, you know that. We issued our statement last night. I thought you had a copy. We accept the Chancellor's explanation. We look forward to seeing the German team back in Brussels within a few days.'

They descended the steps to the restaurant.

'Here he is. I'll do the talking. You're to leave him entirely to me.'

'I'll try.'

'You'll do better than that. You'll keep your mouth shut. He's a very slippery customer.'

Before anything else, Turner saw the cigar. It was very small and lay in the corner of his mouth like a black thermometer; and he knew it was also Dutch, and that Leo had been providing them for nothing.

He looked as if he had been editing a newspaper half the night. He appeared from the door leading to the shopping arcade, and he walked with his hands in his pockets and his jacket pulled a way from his shirt, bumping in to the tales and apologising to no one. He was a big dirty man with grizzly hair cut short and a wide chest that spread to a wider stomach. His spectacles were tipped back over his brow like goggles. A girl followed him, carrying a briefcase. She was an expressionless, listless girl, either very bored or very chaste; her hair was black and abundant.

'Soup,' he shouted across the room, as he shook their hands. 'Bring some soup. And something for her.' The waiter was listening to the news on the wireless, but when he saw Praschko he switched it low and sauntered over, prepared to oblige. Praschko's braces had brass teeth which held doggedly to the grimy wiastband of his trousers.

'You been working too? She doesn't understand anything,' he explained to them. 'Not in any damn language. Nicht wahr, Schatz ? You are as stupid as a sheep. What's the problem?' His English was fluent, and whatever accent he possessed was heavily camouflaged by the American intonation. 'You Ambassador these days?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Who's this guy?'

'Visiting.'

Praschko looked at Turner very carefully and then at Bradfield, then at Turner again.

'Some girl get angry with you?'

Only his eyes moved. His shoulders had risen a little in to his neck, and there was a tautening, an instinctive alertness in his manner. His left hand settled on Bradfield's forearm.

'That's nice ,' he said. 'That'sfine. I like a change. I like new people.' His voice was on a single plane; heavy by short; a conspirator's voice, held down by the experience of saying things which should not be overheard.

'What you guys come for? Praschko's personal opinion? The voice of the opposition?' He explained to Turner: 'When you got a coalitoin, the opposition's a damn exclusive club.' He laughed very loud, sharing the joke with Bradfield.

The waiter brought a goulash soup. Cautiously, with small, nervous movements of his butcher's hand, he began feeling for the meat.

'What you come for? Hey, may be you want to send a telegram to the Queen?' He grinned. 'Amessage from her old subject? OK So send her a telegram. What the hell does she care what Praschko says? What does anyone care? I'm an old whore' - this too for Turner - 'they tell you that? I been English, I been German, I been damn nearly American. I been in this bordello longer than all the other whores. That's why no one wants me any more. I been had all ways. Did they tell you that? Left, Right and Centre.'

'Which way have they got you now?' Turner asked.

His eyes still upon Turner's battered face, Praschko lifted his hand and rubbed the tip of his finger against his thumb. 'Know what counts in politics?

Cash. Selling. Everything else is a load of crap. Treaties, policies, alliances: crap... Maybe I should have stayed a Marxist. So now they've walked out of Brussels. That's sad. Sure, that's very sad. You haven't got anyone to talk to any more.'

He broke a roll in two and dipped one half in to the soup. 'You tell the Queen that Praschko says the English are lousy, lying hypocrites. Your wife okay?'

'Well, thank you.'

'It's a long time since I got to dinner up there. Still live in that ghetto, do you? Nice place.

Never mind. Nobody likes me for too long. That's why I change parties,' he explained to Turner. 'I used to think I was a Romantic, always looking for the blue flower. Now I think I just get bored. Same with friends, same with women, same with God. They're all true. They all cheat you. They're all bastards. Jesus. Know another thing: I like new friends better than old ones. Hey, I got a new wife: what do you think of her?' He held up the girl's chin and adjusted her face a little to show her to the best advantage and the girl smiled and patted his hand. 'I'm amazing. There was a time,' he continued before either of them could make an appropriate comment, 'there was a time when I would have laid down on my fat belly to get the lousy English in to Europe. Now you're crying on the doorstep and I don't care.' He shook his head. 'I'm truly amazing. Still, that's history I guess. Or may be that's just me. Maybe I'm only interested in power: may be I loved you because you were strong and now I hate you because you're nothing. They killed a boy last night, you hear? In Hagen. It's on the radio.'

He drank a Steinhager from the tray. The mat stuck to the stem of the glass. He tore it off. 'One boy. One old man. One crazy woman librarian. Okay, so it's a football team; but it isn't Armageddon.'

Through the window, the long grey columns waited on the esplanade. Praschko waved a hand round the room. 'Look at this crap. Paper. Paper democracy, paper politicians, paper eagles, paper soldiers, paper deputies. Doll's house democracy; every time Karfeld sneezes, we wet our pants. Know why? Because he comes so damn near the truth.'

'Are you in favour of him then? Is that it?' Turner asked, ignoring Bradfield's angry glance.

Praschko finished his soup, his eyes on Turner all the time. 'Theworld gets younger every day,' he said. 'Okay, so Karfeld's a load of crap. Okay. We've got rich, see, boy? We've eaten and drunk, built houses, bought cars, paid taxes, gone to church, made babies. Now we want something real . Know what this is, boy?'