His eyes had not left Turner's damaged face.

'Illusions. Kings and queens. The Kennedys, de Gaulle, Napoleon. The Wittelsbachs, Potsdam. Not just a damn village any more. Hey, so what's this about the students rioting in England? What does the Queen think about that?

Don't you give them enough cash? Youth. Want to know something about youth? I'll tell you.' Turner was his only audience now. "'German youth is blaming its parents for starting the war." That's what you hear. Every day some crazy clever guy writes it in another newspaper. Want to hear the true story? They're blaming their parents for losing the damn war, not for starting it! "Hey! Where the hell's ourEmpire?" Same as the English I guess. It's the same horseshit. The same kids. They want God back.' He leaned across the table until his face was quite close to Turner's. 'Here. Maybe we could do a deal: we give you cash, you give us illusions. Trouble is, we tried that. We done that deal and you gave us a load of shit. You didn't deliver the illusions. That's what we don't like about the English any more. They don't know how to do a deal. The Fatherland wanted to marry the Motherland but you never showed up for the wedding.' He broke out in another peal of false laughter.

'Perhaps the time has now come tomake the union,' Bradfield suggested, smiling like a tired statesman.

Out of the corner of his eye, Turner saw two men, blond-faced, in dark suits and suede shoes, quietly take their places at an adjoining table. The waiter went to them quickly, sensing their profession. At the same moment a bevy of young journalists came in from the lobby. Some carried the day's newspapers; the headlines spoke of Brussels or Hagen. At their head Karl-Heinz Saab, father of them all, stared across at Bradfield in flatulent anxiety. Beyond the window, in a loveless patio, rows of empty plastic chairs were planted like artificial flowers in to the breaking concrete.

'Those are the real Nazis, that scum.' His voice pitched high enough for anyone to hear, Praschko indicated the journalists with a contemptuous wave of his fat hand. 'They put out their tongues and fart and think they've invented democracy. Where's that damn waiter: dead?'

'We're looking for Harting,' Bradfield said.

'Sure!' Praschko was used to crisis. His hand, drawing the napkin across his cracked lips, moved at the same steady pace. The eyes, yellow in their parched sockets, barely flickered as he continued to survey the two men.

'I haven't seen him around,' he continued, carelessly. 'Maybehe's in the gallery. You guys have a special box up there.' He put down the napkin. 'Maybe you ought to go look.'

'He's been missing since last Friday morning. He's been missing for a week.'

'Listen: Leo? That guy will always come back.' The waiter appeared. 'He's indestructible.'

'You're his friend,' Bradfield continued. 'Perhaps his only friend. We thought he might have consulted you.'

'What about?'

'Ah, that's the problem,' Bradfield said with a little smile. 'We thought he might have told you that.'

'He never found an English friend?' Praschko was looking from one to the other. 'Poor Leo.' There was an edge to his voice now.

'You occupied a special position in his life. After all, you did a great many things together. You shared a number of experiences. We felt that if he had needed advice, or money, or whatever else one needs at certain crises in one's life, he would instinctively seek you out. We thought he might even have come to you for protection.'

Praschko looked again at the cuts on Turner's face. 'Protection?' His lips barely parted as he spoke; it was as if he would prefer not to have known that he had spoken at all. 'You might as well protect a-' The moisture had risen suddenly on his brow. It seemed to come from outside, and to settle on him like steam. 'Go a way,' he said to the girl. Without a word she stood up, smiled distractedly at them all and sauntered out of the restaurant, while Turner, for a moment of irrelevant, light-headed joy, followed the provocative rotation of her departing hips; but Bradfield was already talking again.

'We haven't much time.' He was leaning forward and speaking very quickly. 'You were with him in Hamburg and Berlin. There are certain matters known perhaps only to the two of you. Do you follow me?'

Praschko waited.

'If you can help us to find him without fuss; if you know where he is and can reason with him; if there's anything you can do for the sake of an old friendship, I will undertake to be very gentle with him, and very discreet. I will keep your name out of it, and anyone else's as well.'

It was Turner's turn to wait now, as he stared from one to the other. Only the sweat betrayed Praschko; only the fountain pen betrayed Bradfield. He clenched it in his closed fist as he leaned across the table. Outside the window, Turner saw the grey columns waiting; in the corner, the moon men watched dully, eating rolls and butter.

'I'll send him to England; I'll get him out of Germany altogether if necessary. He has put himself in the wrong already; there is no question of re-employing him. He has done things - he has behaved in a way which puts him beyond our consideration; do you understand what I me an? Whatever knowledge he may have is the property of the Crown...' He sat back. 'We must find him before they do,' he said, and still Praschko watched him with his small hard eyes, saying nothing.

'I also appreciate,' Bradfield continued, 'that you have special interests which must be served.'

Praschko stirred a little. 'Go careful,' he said.

'Nothing is further from my mind than to interfere in the internal affairs of the Federal Republic. Your political ambitions, the future of your own party in relation to the Movement, these are matters far outside our sphere of interest. I am here to protect the alliance, not to sit in judgment over an ally.'

Quite suddenly, Praschko smiled.

'That's fine,' he said.

'Your own involvement with Harting twenty years ago, your association with certain British Government agencies-'

'Nobody knows about that,' Praschko said quickly. 'You go damn carefully about that.'

'I was going to make the very same point,' said Bradfield with a reciprocal smile of relief. 'I would not for a moment wish to have it said of the Embassy that we harbour resentments, persecute prominent German politicians, rake up old matters long dead; that we side with countries unsympathetic to the German cause in order to smear the Federal Republic. I am quite certain that in your own sphere, you would not like to have the same things said about yourself. I am pointing to an identity of interest.'

'Sure,' said Praschko. 'Sure.'His harrowed face remained inscrutable.

'We all have our villains. We must not let them come between us.'

'Jesus,' said Praschko with a sideways glance at the marks on Turner's face. 'We got some damn funny friends as well. Did Leo do that to you?'

'They're sitting in the corner,' Turner said. 'They did it. They're waiting to do it to him if they get a chance.'

'Okay,' said Praschko at last. 'I'll go a long with you. We had lunch together. I haven't seen him since. What does that ape want?'

'Bradfield,' Saab called across the room. 'How soon?'

'I told you, Karl- Heinz. We have no statement to make.'

'We just talked, that's all. I don't see him so often. He called me up: how about lunch some time? I said make it tomorrow.' He opened his palms to show there was nothing up his sleeve. 'What did you talk about?' Turner asked.

He shrugged to both of them. 'You know how it is with old friends. Leo's a nice guy, but - well, people change. Or may be we don't like to be reminded that they don't change. We talked about old times. Had a drink. You know the kind of thing.'

'Which old times? ' Turner persisted, and Praschko flared at him, very angry.

'Sure: England times. Shit times. You know why we went to England, me and Leo? We were kids. Know how we got there? His name began with an H, my name began with P. So I changed it to a B. Harting Leo, Braschko Harry. Those times. Lucky we weren't Weiss or Zachary, see: they were too low down. The English didn't like the second half of the alphabet. That's what we talked about: sent to Dover, free on board. Those damn times. The damn Farm School in Shepton Mallet, you know that shit place? Maybe they painted it by now. Maybe that old guy's dead who knocked the hell out of us for being German and said we got to thank the English we're alive. You know what we learnt in Shepton Mallet? Italian. From the prisoners of war. They were the only bastards we ever got to talk to!' He turned to Bradfield. 'Who is this Nazi anyway?' he demanded, and burst out laughing. 'Hey, am I crazy or something? I was having lunch with Leo.'

'And he talked about his difficulties, whatever they may be?' Bradfield asked.

'He wanted to know about the Statute,' Praschko replied, still smiling.

'The Statute of Limitations?'

'Sure. He wanted to know the law.' 'Applied to a particular case?' 'Should it have been?' 'I was asking you.' 'I thought may be you had a particular case in mind.'

'As a general matter of legal principle?' 'Sure.' 'What policy would be served by that , I wonder? It is not in the interests of any of us that the past be resurrected.'

'That's true, huh?'

'It's common sense,' Bradfield said shortly. 'Which I imagine carries more weight with you than any assurances I could give. What did he want to know?'

Praschko went very slowly now: 'He wanted to know the reason. He wanted to know the philosophy. So I told him: "It's not a new law, it's an old one. It's to make an end of things. Every country has a final court, a point you can't go beyond, okay? In Germany there has to be a final day as well." I spoke to him like he was a child -he's so damned innocent, do you know that? A monk. I said, "Look,you ride a bicycle without lights, okay? If nobody's found out after four months, you're in the clear. If it's manslaughter, then it's not four months but fifteen years; if it's murder, twenty years. If it's Nazi murder, longer still, because they gave it extra time. They waited a few years before they began to count to twenty. If they don't open a case, the offencelapses." I said to him: "Listen,they've fooled around with this thing till it damn near died. They amended it to please the Queen and they amended it to please themselves; first they dated it from forty-five, then from forty-nine and now already they've changed it again." ' Praschko opened his hands - 'Sothen he shouts at me, "What's so damn holy about twenty years?" "There's nothing holy about twenty years; there's nothing holy about any number of damn years. We grow old. We grow tired. We die." I told him that. I said to him: "I don't know what you've got in your fool head, but it's all crap. Everything's got to have an end. The moralists say it's a moral law, the apologists say it's expedient. Listen, I'm your friend and I'm telling you; Praschko says: it's a fact of life, so don't fool about with it." Then he got angry. You ever seen him angry?'