Berlin Game

Weekends with Uncle Silas always followed the same pattern: an informal Saturday lunch, a game of billiards or bridge until teatime, and a dress-up dinner. There were fourteen people for dinner that Saturday evening: us, the Cruyers, Rensselaer and his girlfriend, Fiona's sister Tessa – her husband away – to partner Uncle Silas, an American couple named Johnson, who were in England buying antique furniture for their shop in Philadelphia, a young trendy architect, who converted cottages into 'dream houses' and was making enough money at it to support a noisy new wife and a noisy old Ferrari, and a red-nosed local farmer, who spoke only twice the whole evening, and then only to ask his frizzy-haired wife to pass the wine.

'It was all right for you,' said Fiona petulantly when we were in the little garret room preparing for bed that night. 'I was sitting next to Dicky Cruyer. He only wants to talk about that beastly boat. He's going to France in it next month, he says.'

'Dicky doesn't know a mainsail from a marlinspike. He'll kill himself.'

'Don't say that, darling,' said Fiona. 'My sister Tessa is going too. And so is Ricky, that gorgeous young architect, and Colette, his amusing wife.' There was a touch of acid in her voice; she wasn't too keen on them. And she was still angry at being shut out of our conference in the billiards room.

'It must be a bloody big boat,' I said.

'It will sleep six… eight if you're all very friendly, Daphne told me. She's not going. She gets seasick.'

I looked at her quizzically. 'Is your sister having an affair with Dicky Cruyer?'

'How clever you are,' said Fiona in a voice from which any trace of admiration had been carefully eliminated. 'But you are behind the times, darling. She's fallen for someone much older, she told me.'

'She's a bitch.'

'Most men find her attractive,' said Fiona. For some reason Fiona got a secret satisfaction from hearing me condemn her sister, and was keen to provoke more of the same.

'I thought she was reconciled with her own husband.'

'It was a trial,' said Fiona.

'I'll bet it was,' I agreed. 'Especially for George.'

'You were sitting next to the antique lady – was she amusing?'

'A lady in the antique business.' I corrected her description, and she smiled. 'She told me to beware of dressers, they are likely to have modern tops and antique bottoms.'

'How bizarre!' said Fiona. She giggled. 'Where can I find one?'

'Right here,' I said, and jumped into bed with her. 'Give me that damned hot-water bottle.'

'There's no hot-water bottle. That's me! Oh, your hands are freezing.'

I was awakened by one of the farm dogs barking, and then from somewhere across the river there came the echoing response of some other dog on some other farm. I opened my eyes to see the time and found the bedside light on. It was four o'clock in the morning. Fiona was in her dressing gown drinking tea. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

'It was the dog.'

'I can never sleep properly away from home. I went downstairs and made tea. I brought up an extra cup – would you like some?'

'Just half a cup. Have you been awake long?'

'I thought I heard someone go downstairs. It's a creepy old house, isn't it? There's a biscuit if you want it.' I took just the tea and sipped some. Fiona said, 'Did you promise to go? Berlin – did you promise?' It was as if she felt my decision would reveal how important she was to me compared with my job.

I shook my head.

'But that's what your billiards game was all about? I guessed so. Silas was so adamant about not having any of us in there. Sometimes I wonder if he realizes that I'm senior staff now.'

They're all worried about the Brahms Four business.'

'But why send you? What reason did they give?'

'Who else could go? Silas?' I told her the essence of the conversation that had taken place in the billiards room. The dogs began barking again. From downstairs I heard a door closing and then Silas trying to quieten the dogs. His voice was hoarse and he spoke to them in the same way he spoke to Billy and Sally.

'I saw the memo that Rensselaer sent to the D-G,' Fiona said, speaking more quietly now as if frightened that we might be overheard. 'Five pages. I took it back to my office and read it through.' I looked at her in surprise. Fiona was not the sort of person who disobeyed the regulations so flagrantly. 'I had to know,' she added.

I drank my tea and said nothing. I wasn't even sure I wanted to know what Rensselaer and Dicky Cruyer had in store for me.

'Brahms Four might have gone crazy,' she said finally. 'Bret and Dicky both suggest that as a real possibility.' She waited while the words took effect. 'They think he might have had some kind of mental breakdown. That's why they are worried. There's simply no telling what he might do.'

'Is that what it said in the memo?' I laughed. 'That's just Bret and Dicky covering their asses.'

'Dicky suggested that they let some high-powered medical people attempt a diagnosis on the basis of Brahms Four's reports but Bret squashed that.'

'It sounds just like one of Cruyer's bright ideas,' I said. 'Let the headshrinkers into a meeting and we'll be the front page of next week's Sunday newspapers' review section, complete with misquotes, misspellings and bits written "by our own correspondents". Thank Christ Bret killed that one. What form does the Brahms Four madness take?'

'The usual sort of paranoia: enemies round every corner, no one he can trust. Can he have a full list of everyone with access to his reports? Do we know there are top-level leaks of everything he sends us? The usual sort of loony stuff that people imagine when they're going round the bend.'

I nodded. Fiona didn't have the faintest idea of what an agent's life was like. Dicky and Bret had no idea either. None of these desk bastards knew. My father used to say, 'Eternal paranoia is the price of liberty. Vigilance is not enough.'

'Maybe Brahms Four is right,' I said. 'Maybe there are enemies round every corner over there.' I remembered Cruyer telling me the way the Department helped Brahms Four to ingratiate himself with the regime. He must have made a lot of enemies. 'Maybe he's not so loony.'

'And top-level security leaks too?' Fiona said.

'It wouldn't be the first time, would it?'

'Brahms Four asked for you. Did they tell you that?'

'No.' I concealed my surprise. So that was at the back of all their anxiety in the billiards room.

'He doesn't want any more contact with his regular Control. He's told them he'll deal with no one but you.'

'I'll bet that finally convinced the D-G that he was crazy.' I put the empty teacup on the side table and switched out my bedside light. 'I've got to get some sleep,' I told her. 'I wish I could manage on five hours a night like you, but I need a lot of sack time.'

'You won't go, will you? Promise you won't.'

I grunted and buried my face in the pillow. I always sleep face downwards; it stays dark longer that way.

5

On Monday afternoon I was in Bret Rensselaer's office. It was on the top floor not far from the suite the D-G occupied. All the top-floor offices were decorated to the personal taste of the occupants; it was one of the perks of seniority. Bret's room was 'modern', with glass and chrome and grey carpet. It was hard, austere and colourless, a habitat just right for Bret, with his dark worsted Savile Row suit and the crisp white shirt and club tie, and his fair hair that was going white, and the smile that seemed shy and fleeting but was really the reflex action that marked his indifference.

The nod, the smile, and the finger pointed at the black leather chesterfield did not interrupt the conversation he was having on his white phone. I sat down and waited for him to finish telling a caller that there was no chance of them meeting for lunch that day, next day, or any day in the future.