"Spy Hook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

17

There was plenty of work waiting for me in the office. At the top of the pile, flagged and beribboned, was a Ministry of Defence request for details of Semtex, a Czechoslovak explosive exported through the DDR and now being used in home made 'bean can grenades' and causing casualties in Northern Ireland. Under it there were some confidential questions about the Leipzig Trade Fair and – with only a number one priority – some supplements from the Minister that must be ready for parliamentary question time.

It was one of the natural laws of departmental life that the sort of files that Dicky chose to keep on his desk, while he worried about his career and vacillated about expedient courses of action, were always the ones that ultimately required the most urgent response from me when he finally dumped them on my desk. My work was not made easier by the cryptic thoughts and instructions that Dicky shared with me as each flat file was dropped into my tray.

'Just keep it warm until we hear who's going to be on the committee,' Dicky would say. Or, 'Tell the old bastard to get stuffed but keep him sweet'; 'This might work out if they find the right people but make sure it doesn't bounce back our way'; and his standard reaction: 'Find out what they really expect and maybe we'll be able to meet them halfway'. These were the sort of arcane instructions I was trying to implement on Tuesday while Dicky was gone to wherever he went when there was work in the offing. And Dicky wanted everything done by the end of the day.

By the time a debonair Frank Harrington looked into my little office and invited me to go for a quick lunch, I was glassy-eyed. 'You'll do yourself an injury if you try and work your way through this lot before going home,' said Frank, running the tip of an index finger across the cover of a fat file for which some unfortunate had analysed, in considerable detail, the various types of East European shops where only Western currency was accepted. Here were tables and estimates, comments and balance sheets, from Pewex in Poland, Tuwex in Czechoslovakia, Korekom in Bulgaria, compared point by point with Intershops in East Germany.

Without picking it up, Frank flicked open the file carefully so as not to get his hands dirty. 'Would you believe I saw this in the tray on the old man's desk on the day I got the Berlin job?'

'Of course I would,' I said.

'It's got fatter over the years, of course,' said Frank, who probably wanted to be congratulated on his phenomenal memory. He hooked his tightly rolled umbrella on the desk edge and then consulted his gold pocket watch as if to confirm that it was lunch time. 'Heave all this aside, Bernard. Let me buy you a pint of Guinness and a pork pie.' The illusion that Englishmen wanted a pub lunch every day was something that many expatriates cherished, so I smiled. Frank was looking very trim. He had been upstairs talking to the Deputy and was dressed in a three-piece grey worsted with gold watch-chain, wide-striped Jermyn Street shirt and a new Eton tie, of. which Frank seemed to have an inexhaustible supply.

My tie was plain and polyester, and my watch Japanese and plastic. I was weary and my ears were ringing with the sound of Dicky's voice. I'd been listening to the dictating machine, taking notes from a long rambling disquisition that Dicky had passed to me to 'get into shape'. It was going to be a long job. Dicky was not good at getting his arguments into proper order, and those passages where he was consistent and logical were riddled with inaccurate 'facts'. I pushed the work aside and said, 'What about next week, Frank? I'm in Berlin on Wednesday.'

Frank didn't leave. 'A very quick lunch, Bernard.'

I looked up to see him standing in the doorway with a forced smile on his face. It wasn't until then I realized how much such little things meant to him.

I knew of course that Frank had always looked upon me as a surrogate son. Several people had remarked on it, usually at times when I was being especially rude or making Frank's life difficult. Even Frank himself had more than once referred to some undefined responsibility he'd owed to my father. But Frank took it too seriously. More than once he'd risked his career to help me, and to tell the truth that made me uncomfortably indebted to him. Father-son relationships seldom run smoothly, and true to my role I'd taken considerably more from him than I ever gave, and I confess I resented being obliged to anyone, even Frank.

'You're right, Frank. To hell with it!' I took the tape cassette from the machine and locked it in my desk drawer. Maybe I should have sent it to the KGB to promote more confusion amongst the opposition. Frank reached for my coat.

Frank always had a car and driver during his visits to London. It was one of the desirable perks of his job in Berlin. We went off to a 'small City wine bar'; but because this was Frank Harrington's idea, the bar was not in the City. It was south of the Thames in that borough of London which is enigmatically called the 'the Borough'. In a street of rundown Victorian houses off the Old Kent Road its entrance was a doorway marked only by a small polished brass plate of the sort that marks the offices of lawyers and dentists. A long underground corridor eventually opened upon a gloomy cellar with heavy pillars and low vaulting. The brickwork was painted a shiny bottle-green. Small blackboards were chalked with tempting vintage wines that were today available by the glass. A bar counter occupied most of one wall of the largest 'room' and in the adjoining areas spotlights picked out small tables where shrill businessmen drank their vintage clarets and ports, nibbled at their expensive cold snacks and tried to look like tycoons avoiding the TV crews while concluding multi-million dollar City deals.

'Like it?' said Frank proudly.

'Wonderful, Frank.'

'Charming little place, eh? And no chance of meeting any of our people here, that's what I like about it.' By 'our' people he meant important Whitehall bureaucrats. He was right.

An old man dressed in appropriate wine cellar style – white shirt, bow tie and long apron – showed us to places set ready at the counter. Frank was obviously known and welcomed there, and when I saw how much he spent on a bottle of Chateau Palmer 1966 I could understand why. But Frank's discursive survey of the wine list, and its extravagant outcome, was part of the paternal role he had to demonstrate.

With due ceremony the bottle was opened, the cork sniffed. Poured, swirled and tasted. Frank puckered his lips, bared his teeth and pronounced it 'drinkable'. We laughed.

It was another immutable aspect of Frank's character that, along with his superlative wine, he ate, without adverse comment, yellowing Stilton, a desiccated hunk of pork pie and squashy white bread.

I could see he had something to tell me, but I contributed my share of office small-talk and let him take his time. When he'd eaten his segment of pork pie – each mouthful spread with a large dollop of fierce English mustard – he poured a second glass of claret for both of us and said, 'That bloody Zena.' He said it quietly but with feeling. 'I could kill her.'

I looked at him with interest. In the past Frank had always indulged Zena. Infatuated was the only word for it. 'Is she all right?' I asked casually between pieces of pork pie. 'She was off to Frankfurt an der Oder, the last I heard of her. Werner was worried.'

He looked at me as if trying to decide how much I knew, and then said, 'She was running up and down on the Berlin-Warsaw express.'

'The "paradise train"? What for?' I asked but I'd already guessed the answer.

'Black market. You've been on that train: you know.'

Yes, I'd been on that train and I knew. Once over the Polish border it became an oriental bazaar. Black-market traders – and in the subtle nuances of East Bloc social life, brown – and grey-market traders too – moved from compartment to compartment buying and selling everything from Scotch whisky to Black amp; Decker power tools. I remember loud Polish voices and hands waving bundles of dollar bills and suitcases almost bursting with pop music records and cartons of Marlboro cigarettes. The 'paradise train' would provide plenty of opportunities to buy rare artefacts and manuscripts. 'What was Zena doing on the train?' I asked.

'They picked her up coming back… on the platform at Friedrichstrasse. It sounds as if they were tipped off.'

'Where is she now?'

'They let her go.'

'What did she have?'

'Old engravings. And an icon and a Bible. They confiscated everything and let her go.'

'She was lucky,' I said.

'She told them she'd happily take a receipt for only one item and they could divide the rest of it up between them.'

'I still say she was lucky. An offer like that to the wrong man and she'd end up with ten years for attempted bribery.'

Frank looked at me and said, 'She's a good judge of men, Bernard.'

There was no answer to that. I sipped the lovely Chateau Palmer and nodded. The wine was coming to life now, a wonderful combination of half-forgotten fragrances.

The anger that the memory of Zena had regenerated now subsided again. 'Silly little cow,' he said, with a measure of affection in his voice. He smiled. 'What about a pudding, Bernard? I believe they do a splendid apple crumble here.'

'No thanks, Frank. Just coffee.'

'Werner came to London. He went into the office on Friday and kicked up no end of fuss,' said Frank. 'I was in Berlin, of course. By the time the Deputy came through to me, I'd heard that Zena was safe at home. I was able to tell him that all was well. I came out of it smelling of roses.'

'I wasn't in London,' I said. 'I was in California.'

'I'll have a savoury: Angels on Horseback, they do it rather well here. Sure you won't have something?' When I shook my head he called to the waiter and ordered it. 'I must say, Sir Percy is doing a damned good job,' said Frank.

But I wasn't going to let him steer the conversation round to the Deputy's abilities or lack of them. 'Did you know that Bret is alive? I saw him in California.'

'Bret?' He looked at me full in the eye. 'Yes, the old man told me… a couple of days ago.'

'Were you surprised?'

'I was damned annoyed,' said Frank. 'The old man had actually heard me say that Bret was dead and had never contradicted me or confided the truth of the matter.'

'Why?'

'God knows. The old man can be a bit childish at times. He just laughed and said Bret deserved a bit of peace. And yet it was the old man who told me Bret was dead. It was a little supper party at the Kempi; there were other people present: outsiders. I couldn't pursue it. Perhaps I should have done.'

'But why say he was dead? What was it all about?'

'You saw him: I didn't. What did Bret tell you?'

'I didn't ask him why he wasn't dead,' I replied woodenly.

Frank preferred to see it as a harmless subterfuge. 'Bret was at death's door. What difference did it make? Perhaps it was better security to say he was dead.'

'But you don't know of any special reason?'

'No, I don't Bernard.' He drank some more wine, studied its colour and gave it great attention.

I said, 'Posh Harry button-holed me over there.' Frank raised an eyebrow. 'He wanted to tell me that, whatever Bret was doing, Washington like it.'

'Well, Posh Harry would know. He's landed a cushy job,' said Frank. 'They use him like an errand boy but his starting salary is more like a king's ransom.'

'Sounds just like my job,' I said, 'apart from the salary.'

'Why did Posh Harry button-hole you?'

'He said I was asking too many questions.'

'Mistaken identity. That doesn't sound at all like you,' said Frank with his laborious sense of humour. 'Questions about Bret?'

'Fiona was involved. Some kind of financial bore-hole. A lot of money. Prettyman was a signatory… probably a go-between for Central Funding.'

'You're not still going around saying Prettyman was murdered, are you? I looked at the homicide figures for Washington – it's horrific – and I know the Deputy arranged for the FBI to take a special look at the Prettyman killing. There's nothing to support the idea of it being anything but the casual sort of murder that muggers commit over there. A miserable business, but nothing there to justify any further investigation.'

'It seemed like a chance to find out more about Fiona.'

'I thought we'd found out all there was to find out about Fiona.'

'Her motives. Her accomplices and so on.'

'I'd imagine the Department followed up every lead, Bernard. For months afterwards they were sniffing around everyone who'd even heard of Fiona.'

'Even you?'

'No one is above suspicion in that sort of inquiry, Bernard. I would have thought you'd know that better than anyone. The D-G had the Minister breathing down his neck for week after week. I think that was what made the old man ill.'

'Is the D-G really ill?' I said. 'Or is it just a stunt so he can retire early or do something else?' Frank and the old man had been together during the war, they were close friends.

'Sir Henry's not around very much is he? They're probably letting him work out the contract for the sake of his pension. But I can't see him taking up the reins again.'

'Will Sir Percy take over?'

'No one knows at present. They say the PM is very keen to have someone from outside… putting one of the younger Law Lords into the driver's seat might ease the pressure on her to have a Parliamentary Committee sitting in judgment on everything we do.'

Frank's 'Angels on Horseback' arrived; a couple of cooked oysters wrapped in fried bacon and balanced on a triangle of warm toast. Frank liked savouries. At his dinner parties he stubbornly kept to the Victorian tradition of serving such salty, fiery tidbits after the dessert. 'Clears a chap's palate for the port,' he'd explained to me more than once. Now he ate it with a relish that he'd not shown for anything else except the claret, and said nothing until it was finished and the plate removed.

Then he wiped his lips with one of the huge linen napkins and said, 'You're miffed aren't you, Bernard?'

'Miffed?'

Frank grinned. 'You're put out. Don't pretend you're not.'

'Why would I be?' I insisted.

'I'm not such an old fool,' said Frank. 'You're remembering that recently I said Sir Henry hadn't been to Berlin for many years. Now I've told you that he was at the Kempi hosting a supper party and your ears are flapping. Right, Bernard?'

'It's not important,' I said.

'Exactly. The "need to know" principle: the only people told the secrets are those who need to know. Not those who simply want to find out.' He lifted the wine bottle to pour more but the waiter had done it already. The bottle was empty. 'A dead soldier!' said Frank holding the bottle aloft. 'And dead men tell no tales, eh? So what about a glass of Madeira?'

'No more for me, Frank,' I said, 'or I'll fall asleep over my desk.'

'Quite right. What was I saying? Yes, need to know.'

'You were telling me not to put my nose into matters not my concern.'

'Not at all. I was simply explaining to you the policy of the Department. I heard that you were on another of your crusades. I'm just trying to convince you that there's nothing personal about it. Any extra-curricular activities of that sort, by any employee, worries Internal Security.'

'Thanks.'

'You're not still trying to find a mole?' He smiled again. Frank had a resolute faith in his superiors, providing they had attended the right schools, or done well in the army. For him any such suspicions were genuinely comical.

'No, Frank. No, I'm not.'

I'm on your side, Bernard.'

'I know you are, Frank.'

'But you do have enemies – or perhaps more accurately rivals – and I don't want them to be given an excuse to clobber you.'

'Yes.'

'You're what…'he paused no more than a moment, 'forty-four last birthday.' So Frank even had my birthdays registered in his memory.

I grunted an affirmative.

'With those two lovely kids you should be thinking more about your career, not seeing how many different ways you can upset the chaps on the top floor.' Another pause while that sank in. 'That's just a word to the wise, Bernard.' He dropped his napkin on the table and got to his feet to show me that his little lecture was at an end.

'Okay, Frank,' I said. 'Strictly need to know, from now onwards and for ever more.'

'That's a sensible fellow,' said Frank. 'Think of the children, Bernard. They rely on you now that Fiona's gone.'

'I know they do, Frank.'

I hadn't promised Frank Harrington anything I hadn't already promised myself. It seemed as if everyone in the Western world was keen to tell me that Bret Rensselaer was clean-cut, upright and true, It would have been stupid in the light of so many reassurances to continue poking and probing into the work he was doing before my wife Fiona defected.

That afternoon I went back to work with renewed vigour. By Thursday my desk – despite a second onslaught from Dicky's out-tray – was virtually clear. To celebrate my new freedom from extra-curricular detective work I took Gloria and the children for a weekend in the country. It was the new girl's first weekend off, having worked for us for no less than six days. We started early Saturday morning. In a ten-acre field near Bath we visited a 'Steam Engine Rally', a collection of ancient steam-powered machines: harvesters, roundabouts, tractors and rollers. All working. The children adored every moment of it. Gloria seemed to become even younger and more beautiful. Despite the constant presence of the children she kept saying how wonderful it was to have me to herself. I think it was the first time that all four of us discovered that we were a family, a happy family. Even twelve-year-old Sally, who'd hitherto shown a certain reserve about Gloria, now embraced her in a way I'd almost stopped hoping for. Billy – usually so prosaic and self-contained – took Gloria for a walk and told her the story of his life, and gave her a few hints and tips on handling the new girl's 'ratty' moods, which seemed to be frequent and varied. I was not optimistic about the girl. Doris, I now realized, wasn't so bad after all.

On Saturday evening we found Everton, a pretty little village. We had dinner in the hotel. It was a long drive back to London, so on impulse we stayed there overnight. Gloria with feminine foresight had put some overnight things, including the children's toothbrushes and pyjamas – and even the spare elastic bands Billy had to put on his wired teeth – into a bag in the back of the car. I remembered that weekend for ever afterwards. Gloria's future education was not discussed. On Sunday morning we all went for a walk across the fields without seeing another soul. We followed a stream that was filled with fish and ended up in a tiny riverside pub decorated with photos, theatre programmes, playbills and other mementoes of Maria Callas. We drank a bottle of Pol Roger. Billy got very muddy and Sally picked flowers. Gloria told me that it could be like this for ever and ever, and I allowed myself to believe her.

The children were growing up so fast that I could hardly reconcile this tall young fellow walking alongside me with the child that Billy had been only a few months ago. 'Girls don't understand about moving,' he said, as if continuing a conversation we'd already started, although in fact we'd been giving all our attention to the prospect of scrambling across a stream.

'Sally you mean?'

'Yes, she had these special friends at her school in Marylebone.'

'More special than your friends?' I said.

'It's all right now. She likes it at the new place. Girls only want to talk about clothes,' said Billy, 'so it hardly matters where she is.'

'And what about you?'

I'm going to join the Vintage Car Club.'

I concealed my surprise. 'Are you old enough? Don't you have to have a car?'

'They will probably let me help… fixing the engines and pumping up the tyres.' He looked at me. 'I like our new house, Dad. So does Sally. So don't worry about us.'

'I'll go first,' I said and I took his arm and swung him across the water. He was heavy, damned heavy. I would never carry him on my shoulder again.

Now it was Billy's turn to extend a hand to me. And when I'd negotiated the steep muddy bank he said, 'I saw Grandpa the other day.'

'Grandpa?'

'He's got a new car, a Bentley turbo, dark blue. He came to the school.'

'You spoke to him?'

'He drove us home.'

'I thought nanny met you.'

'She came too.'

'I should have taken you to see him,' I said.

'He said we could have a holiday with him. He's going to Turkey. He might drive there: drive all the way.'

'Grandpa? You're not making this up, Billy?'

'Could we go. Daddy? Perhaps in the Bentley.'

'Did you tell Auntie Gloria about this?'

Billy looked contrite. He stared down at his muddy shoes and spoke quietly. 'She said I wasn't to tell you. She said you'd worry.'

'No, it's all right, Billy. I'll have to see about it. Maybe I'll talk to Grandpa.'

'Thank you, Daddy. Thank you, thank you!' Billy hugged me and said, 'Do you think Grandpa would let me sit up front?'

'Turkey is a long way away,' I said.

'There's Sally and Auntie Gloria,' he shouted. 'They must have found a way across the stream.'

So it had started. If it was simply a matter of going on holiday, why hadn't Fiona's father come to me and asked? Turkey: the USSR just a stone's throw away. The idea of my children being there with my meddlesome father-in-law filled me with dread.

Billy's little story cast a grey shadow across our idyll, but it was that bloody old fool Dodo who caused all the trouble to start again for me. At our first meeting in France I'd seen him as an amiable eccentric, a cultured old man who occasionally took too much to drink. Now I was to encounter the malicious, self-aggrandizing belligerent old drunk that was really him.

Although it was never confirmed, I have no doubt that Gloria's mother had spoken on the phone with him and poured her heart out about being neglected and lonely. Gloria said that in some unspecified time in the distant past the old man had always been fond of her mother. Dodo however told everyone he met in London that he was 'on business'. Whatever the reason, Dodo suddenly appeared in London, dressed up in an old but beautifully cut Glen Urquhart suit, and for the first week he was staying in the Ritz; a room with a view across the park.

He had contacts of course. Not only expatriate Hungarians and the people he'd known during his time in Vienna, but 'departmental' people too. For Dodo had been one of Lange's 'Prussians' and for some people that was commendation beyond compare. He'd also played some unrevealed part in the Budapest network of which Gloria's father had been a member before escaping across the border. And Dodo was a man who could be relied upon to keep in touch, so 'old pals' from the Treasury and the Foreign Office took Dodo to lunch at the Reform and the Travellers.

He liked to go to parties. He went to embassy parties, show-biz parties, 'society' parties and literary parties. How much time he spent with Gloria's parents, and whether they talked about me, and speculated upon the work I did, was never established. But by the time I encountered him again, Dodo was disturbingly well informed about me.

Dodo's invitation to have drinks with 'friends of mine – Thursday 6-8pm or as long as people stay…'at a smart address in Chapel Street near Eaton Square was scribbled on Ritz notepaper and arrived in the post on Wednesday morning. It was not adequate preparation for what we met there. We arrived at a small town house typical of London South West One. Outside in the street there were expensive motorcars, and a formally dressed butler opened the door. Many of the guests were in evening clothes and the women in long dresses. There was the sound of live music and loud laughter. Gloria cursed under her breath, for she was wearing a tweed suit that had been relegated to her working day, and she'd not had time to fix her hair.

The whole house was given over to the party and there were guests in every room. In the first room we entered there was a young man in evening clothes and two girls in party dresses seemingly engrossed in a large illustrated book. We left them to their reading and went to the next room, where two men were dispensing drinks from behind a trestle table. 'Hungarian wines,' said the barman when I asked what they were. 'Only Hungarian wines.' I took the biggest measure and, with drinks in hand, we went upstairs in search of the gypsy band. 'It's a zimbalon,' said Gloria when she heard the strings. 'Hungarian music. Wherever would Dodo find someone to play a zimbalon?'

'Now's your chance to ask him,' I said.

Dodo was coming down the upper stairs with a drink in his hand and a happy smile on his face. His hair had been neatly trimmed but the dinner suit he wore had seen better days and with it he was wearing blue suede shoes with odd laces and red socks. He grinned even more as he caught sight of us. He was not the sort of man who felt disadvantaged by old clothes. On the contrary, he seemed to like old garments as he liked old books and old wines, and he paid no regard to Gloria's distress at feeling so inappropriately dressed.

He'd already had a few drinks, and wasted little time on greetings before telling us about some of the distinguished guests. 'The chap you saw me with on the stairs is the power behind the scenes with Lufthansa. He used to have a room across the hall from me when I lived in that dreadful flea-pit in Kohlmarkt. Now of course it's one of the most fashionable streets in Vienna.' Dodo led us into the room where the gypsy band was playing. It was dark, with only candle-light flickering on the faces of the musicians and revealing the rapt expressions on the shadowed faces of the audience.

'Were they playing czardas?' Gloria said with such urgency that I suddenly saw a new aspect of her revealed.

'Of course, darling Zu,' said Uncle Dodo.

'How clever you are,' she told him, all worries about her clothes and hair forgotten. She gave him a sudden kiss and said something in Hungarian. He laughed. I felt excluded.

'Are you from Budapest?' I asked him, more to make conversation than because I truly wanted to know.

'All Hungarians are from Budapest,' he said.

Gloria said, 'Yes, we all love Budapest.' She looked at Dodo and reflectively said, 'You're right: all Hungarians feel at home in Budapest.'

'Even you gypsies,' said Uncle Dodo as the slow gypsy music started again, and Gloria began to sway with its rhythm.

'Did Zu ever tell you your fortune?' he asked me.

'No,' I said.

'With the tarot cards?'

'No, Dodo,' said Gloria. 'Sometimes it's better not to know what the cards say.' The subject was closed.

'Have you eaten?' he asked.

When told we hadn't he took us down to the kitchen, where two frantic cooks were slaving to produce a tableful of exotic dishes. Gloria and Dodo vied to name for me the different dishes, and disputed the authentic recipes for them. I tried everything. Veal strips in sour cream, garlicky stewed beef cubes with rich red paprika. There were breadcrumbed fried chicken pieces, boiled pork with horseradish and river fish flavoured with garlic and ginger. It was not the food I'd ever encountered in modern Hungary, a country where cooks render meat stew completely tasteless and measure each portion with government-issued 100-gram ladles.

'So you like Hungarian food, eh?' said Dodo. The only really good meal I'd eaten there was at a big country house near Lake Balaton. The food from Kafer in Munich, smuggled over the border. My host was a black-market dealer who had a security colonel as the guest of honour. But when Dodo said, as everyone has to say, that the Hungarians eat damned well nowadays and that Budapest is fast becoming a place for gourmets to journey to, I nodded and smiled and gobbled my food and said yes it was.

After eating we wandered off to find a place where we could sit down in comfort. The rooms had emptied as the gypsy band drew many of the guests upstairs. In the corner of this room there was a large table with posters and brochures advertising a new book called The Wonderful World of Hungarian Cooking. I realized that the egregious Dodo had simply helped us to gatecrash a particularly lavish publication party. He saw me looking at the display and he smiled without offering any explanation. He was like that.

A waiter, in a smart white jacket and gold shoulder loops, came over to us and offered coffee and small jam-filled pancakes. Dodo declined the food so that he could go on with his stories about his youth in Vienna. 'The landlady – as mean and venal as only Viennese landladies can be – had a Schiele charcoal portrait hanging in her kitchen. Her kitchen! She'd wrung it from the poor devil for some insignificantly small debt. She didn't even appreciate her good fortune. The old cow! She'd rather have a coloured one, she kept saying. Well, all those coloured Schiele pictures had the coloured wash applied long after the drawing was complete. Anyone with any taste at all would have preferred this delicate charcoal portrait… a young woman. It might have been Schiele's wife Edith. That would have made it more valuable of course.' I tried not to listen to him. Another waiter looked into the room. Dodo hurriedly downed the rest of his whisky and waved an arm for more without even looking to see if the waiter had noticed. Those were the days!' said Dodo and sat back red-faced and breathing heavily. It wasn't clear whether he was referring to Schiele's times in Vienna, or his own. I didn't ask. There were not many respites from Dodo's remorseless chatter and I was beginning to get a headache.

But there was little chance of him remaining quiet for more than a moment or two. In record time a double Scotch arrived and Dodo was off on another story.

He was well oiled by the time the coffee waiter returned with offers of second helpings, and Dodo's cheerfulness had turned to his own jocular sort of sarcasm that was edged with hostility. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. 'We know – those of us who have had the honour to work for Her Majesty's Government in positions of trust and danger – that fortune favours the brave. Right, Bernard right?'

He'd made similar remarks earlier in the evening and now I decided not to let it go. I'm not sure I know what you mean,' I said. Gloria glanced at him and at me, having heard the irritation in my voice.

'A field agent who is smart doesn't get paid off with an MBE and a big thank you. A clever field agent knows he can get a sackful of gold sovereigns and knows there are more where they came from. See what I mean?'

'No,' I said.

He hit my shoulder again in a gesture that he probably thought fraternal. 'And so he should be. I'm not against that. Let the people at the sharp end make a bit of money. It's only right and fair.'

'Do you mean Daddy?' Gloria asked. Her voice too had a note of warning, had he been sober enough to heed it.

He made a hissing sound and said, 'Darling, what your dear father was paid – and what I got – was chicken feed compared with what those in the know can tuck away. If you haven't discovered that by now, Bernard will fill in the details.'

'I never met any rich field agents,' I said.

'Really, darling, no?' A slowly expanding artful grin illuminated his whole face.

'What do you mean?' I asked him.

'If you want to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about then so be it.' He drank his whisky, spilling some down his chin, and turned his head away.

'You'd better tell me,' I said.

'Damn it!' Big smile. 'You and that wife of yours.'

'Me and that wife of mine… what?'

'Come along, darling.' A knowing grin. Tour wife was in Operations, right? She was a trustee for some kind of "sinking fund". She disappeared and so did all the money. Don't tell me that you didn't get your hands on a few pounds, or that some of it wasn't put away in the children's names somewhere.'

'Uncle Dodo, that's enough,' said Gloria sharply.

'Let him go on,' I said. 'I want to hear more.'

Like a cunning little animal his eyes went from one to the other of us. 'Berlin, the Ku-Damm,' he said meaningfully.

'What about it?'

'Schneider, von Schild und Weber.'

'It sounds like a bank,' I said.

'It is a bank,' said Dodo with great satisfaction, as if his argument was already won. 'It is a bank.'

'So what?'

'You want me to go on, darling?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Weber – grandson of the original partner – handles special financial matters for the British government. That's where your money came from.' He recited it as if I was trying to make a fool of him.

'Money? What money? And how did I get it?' I asked, convinced now that he was crazy, as well as drunk.

'You're a signatory to the account.'

'Rubbish.'

'It's a fact, and easily proved or disproved.' The waiter came and put a small plate of chocolate mints on the table. Dodo didn't offer them round, he peeled the wrapping from one, inspected it and popped it into his mouth.

'Who told you all this?' I said.

Still chewing the mint, Dodo said, 'I've known young Weber for years. When I was pensioned off from the Department, it was Weber's father who arranged everything for me.'

I looked at him, trying to see into his mind. He chewed at the mint and stared at me with unseeing eyes.

'You're always in Berlin, darling. Go to the Ku-Damm and have a word with Weber.'

'Maybe I shall.'

'The money is sure to be held in short-term bonds. It's the way they do it. A dozen or more signatories to the account – no less! – but there have to be two different signatures. You and your wife, for instance.'

'A dozen signatories?'

'Don't pretend to be so naive, darling. That's a common device, we all know that.' The malevolence was unbridled now.

'Bogus names?' said Gloria.

'No need to use bogus names. Use real names. It disguises the purpose of the fund, and can give an account a bit of class if someone came snooping around. Providing the signatories don't find out about it.'

'Perhaps that's how Bernard's name got there,' said Gloria softly. She obviously believed Dodo's story.

Dodo's beady eyes were almost hypnotic. There was something frightening about him: a whiff of evil. 'If you never got your hands on any of that loot, you've really been swindled darling.' He laughed softly enough to show that it wasn't a possibility he would spare much time pondering. Then he looked at Gloria, inviting her to join in the fun. When she looked away he picked up his drink and swilled down a good mouthful of it. 'Must go,' he said. 'Must go.'

I didn't get up. I let the old fool heave himself to his feet and stagger off in the direction of the door. Gloria and I sat together in silence for a few minutes. Finally, in what was doubtless an attempt to pacify me about Dodo's offensiveness, she said, 'He was in a funny mood tonight.'

'And I needed a good laugh,' I said.