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Len Deighton - Funeral in Berlin

Secret File No. 1 FUNERAL IN BERLIN

The hero of Len Deighton's third thriller is the same unnamed, laconic anti-public-school secret agent from Burnley, Lanes, who appeared in Horse Under Water and The Ipcress File. His boss, Dawlish ('eyes like the far end of a tunnel'), still defends the secret department - W. O. O. C. (P) - against Whitehall's backbiting.

In Berlin, where neither side of the wall is safe, Colonel Stok of Red Army Security is prepared to sell to the West, for a price, an important Russian scientist. As part of his deal he sets up an elaborate mock funeral, revelling in the macabre trimmings. Our hero is to act as a receiver - and receives, at first, only the uncalled-for interference of the glamorous Samantha Steel, who even wears jewellery in the bath.

The very smell of Berlin permeates the pages of this book: not the tourist's city viewed from a sightseeing bus, but the city of middle-class sitting-rooms and espionage-brokers' offices.

ALLEN W. DULLES (then director C. I. A. ): 'You, Mr Chairman, may have seen some of my intelligence reports from time to time?'

MR KHRUSHCHEV: 'I believe we get the same reports - and probably from the same people?'

MR DULLES: 'Maybe we should pool our efforts?'

MR KHRUSHCHEV:'Yes. We should buy our intelligence data together and save money. We'd have to pay the people only once?'

News item, September 1959

'But what good came of it at last?' Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell' said he: -- 'But 'twas a famous victory?
SOUTHEY, After Blenheim

'If I am right the Germans will say I was a German and the French will say I was a Jew; if I am wrong the Germans will say I was a Jew and the French will say I was a German?
ALBERT EINSTEIN

Most of the people who engaged in this unsavoury work had very little interest in the cause which they were paid to promote. They did not take their parts too seriously, and one or the other would occasionally go over to the opposite side, for espionage is an international and artistic profession, in which opinions matter less than the art of perfidy.
DR R. LEWINSOHN, The Career of Sir Basil Zaharoff

Secret File No. 1 FUNERAL IN BERLIN

Players move alternately - only one at a time.




CHAPTER 1

Saturday, October 5th

IT was one of those artificially hot days that they used to call 'Indian summer'. It was no time to be paying a call to Bina Gardens, in south-west London, if there was a time for it.

Outside the house I sought there was a bright card tied to the railings with green twine. On it in large exact capitals was penned 'Lost - Siamese cat. Answers to the name Confucius. '

Answers what? I walked up the steps where the sun was warming up a pint of Jersey and a banana-flavour yoghurt. Tucked behind the bottles a Daily Mail peeped its headline 'Berlin a new crisis ?'. There were buttons on that doorpost like on a pearly king's hat but only one said 'James J. Hallam, F. R. S. A. ' in a flowing copperplate; that was the one I pressed.

'You haven't seen Confucius ?'