Berlin Game

'I wasn't there,' I said.

'You asked the office to book you there. You said it's the best hotel in Berlin. You said I could leave a message there.'

'I stayed with Werner. He's got a spare room now that his wife's gone.'

'And shared all those women of his?' said Fiona. She laughed again. 'Is it all part of a plan to make me jealous?'

I leaned over and kissed her. 'I've missed you, darling. I really have. Is Billy okay?'

'Billy's fine. But that damned man at the garage gave me a bill for sixty pounds!'

'For what?'

'He's written it all down. I told him you'd see about it.'

'But he let you have the car?'

'I had to collect Billy from school. He knew that before he did the service on it. So I shouted at him and he let me take it.'

'You're a wonderful wife,' I said. I undressed and went into the bathroom to wash and to brush my teeth.

'And it went well?' she called.

I looked at myself in the long mirror. It was just as well that I was tall, for I was getting fatter, and that Berlin beer hadn't helped matters. 'I did what I was told,' I said, and finished brushing my teeth.

'Not you, darling,' said Fiona. I switched on the Water-Pik and above its chugging sound I heard her add, 'You never do what you are told, you know that.'

I went back into the bedroom. She'd combed her hair and smoothed the sheet on my side of the bed. She'd put my pyjamas on the pillow. They consisted of a plain red jacket and paisley-pattern trousers. 'Are these mine?'

'The laundry didn't come back this week. I phoned them. The driver is ill… so what can you say?'

'I didn't check into the Berlin office at all, if that's what's eating you,' I admitted. They're all young kids in there, don't know their arse from a hole in the ground. I feel safer with one of the old-timers like Werner.'

'Suppose something happened? Suppose there was trouble and the duty officer didn't even know you were in Berlin? Can't you see how silly it is not to give them some sort of perfunctory call?'

'I don't know any of those Olympia Stadion people any more, darling. It's all changed since Frank Harrington took over. They are youngsters, kids with no field experience and lots and lots of theories from the training school.'

'But your man turned up?'

'No.'

'You spent three days there for nothing?'

'I suppose I did.'

'They'll send you in to get him. You realize that, don't you?'

I got into bed. 'Nonsense. They'll use one of the West Berlin people.'

'It's the oldest trick in the book, darling. They send you over there to wait… for all you know, he wasn't even in contact. Now you'll go back and report a failed contact and you'll be the one they send in to get him. My God, Bernie, you are a fool at times.'

I hadn't looked at it like that, but there was more than a grain of truth in Fiona's cynical viewpoint. 'Well, they can find someone else,' I said angrily. 'Let one of the local people go over to get him. My face is too well known there.'

'They'll say they're all kids without experience, just what you yourself said.'

'It's Brahms Four,' I told her.

'Brahms – those network names sound so ridiculous. I liked it better when they had codewords like Trojan, Wellington and Claret.'

The way she said it was annoying. 'The postwar network names are specially chosen to have no identifiable nationality,' I said. 'And the number four man in the Brahms network once saved my life. He's the one who got me out of Weimar.'

'He's the one who is kept so damned secret. Yes, I know. Why do you think they sent you? And now do you see why they are going to make you go in and get him?' Beside the bed, my photo stared back at me from its silver frame. Bernard Samson, a serious young man with baby face, wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses looked nothing like the wrinkled old fool I shaved every morning.

'I was in a spot. He could have kept going. He didn't have to come back all the way to Weimar.' I settled into my pillow. 'How long ago was that – eighteen years, maybe twenty?'

'Go to sleep,' said Fiona. 'I'll phone the office in the morning and say you are not well. It will give you time to think.'

'You should see the pile of work on my desk.'

'I took Billy and Sally to the Greek restaurant for his birthday. The waiters sang happy birthday and cheered him when he blew the candles out. It was sweet of them. I wish you'd been there.'

'I won't go. I'll tell the old man in the morning. I can't do that kind of thing any more.'

'And there was a phone call from Mr Moore at the bank. He wants to talk with you. He said there's no hurry.'

'And we both know what that means,' I said. 'It means phone me back immediately or else!' I was close to her now and I could smell perfume. Had she put it on just for me, I wondered.

'Harry Moore isn't like that. At Christmas we were nearly seven hundred overdrawn, and when we saw him at my sister's party he said not to worry.'

'Brahms Four took me to the house of a man named Busch – Karl Busch – who had this empty room in Weimar…'It was all coming back to me. 'We stayed there three days and afterwards Karl Busch went back there. They took Busch up to the security barracks in Leipzig. He was never seen again.'

'You're senior staff now, darling,' she said sleepily. 'You don't have to go anywhere you don't want to.'

'I phoned you last night,' I said. 'It was two o'clock in the morning but there was no reply.'

'I was here, asleep,' she said. She was awake and alert now. I could tell by the tone of her voice.

'I let it ring for ages,' I said. 'I tried twice. Finally I got the operator to dial it.'

'Then it must be the damned phone acting up again. I tried to phone here for Nanny yesterday afternoon and there was no reply. I'll tell the engineers tomorrow.'

3

Richard Cruyer was the German Stations Controller, the man to whom I reported. He was younger than I was by two years and his apologies for this fact gave him opportunities for reminding himself of his fast promotion in a service that was not noted for its fast promotions.

Dicky Cruyer had curly hair and liked to wear open-neck shirts and faded jeans, and be the Wunderkind amongst all the dark suits and Eton ties. But under all the trendy jargon and casual airs, he was the most pompous stuffed shirt in the whole Department.

'They think it's a cushy number in here, Bernard,' he said while stirring his coffee. 'They don't realize the way I have the Deputy Controller (Europe) breathing down my neck and endless meetings with every damned committee in the building.'

Even Cruyer's complaints were contrived to show the world how important he was. But he smiled to let me know how well he endured his troubles. He had his coffee served in a fine Spode china cup and saucer, and he stirred it with a silver spoon. On the mahogany tray there was another Spode cup and saucer, a matching sugar bowl, and a silver creamer fashioned in the shape of a cow. It was a valuable antique – Dicky had told me that many times – and at night it was locked in the secure filing cabinet, together with the log and the current carbons of the mail. 'They think it's all lunches at the Mirabelle and a fine with the boss.'

Dicky always said fine rather than brandy or cognac. Fiona told me he'd been saying it ever since he was president of the Oxford University Food and Wine Society as an undergraduate. Dicky's image as a gourmet was not easy to reconcile with his figure, for he was a thin man, with thin arms, thin legs and thin bony hands and fingers, with one of which he continually touched his thin bloodless lips. It was a nervous gesture, provoked, said some people, by the hostility around him. This was nonsense of course, but I did dislike the little creep, I will admit that.