‘You must be making a pot of money,’ said Werner. ‘Two of you senior staff, with you on field allowances … But Fiona has money of her own, doesn’t she? Isn’t her father some kind of tycoon? Couldn’t he find a nice soft job for you in his office? Better than sitting out here freezing to death in a Berlin side street.’
‘He’s not going to come,’ I said after watching the barrier descend again and the border guard go back into his hut. The windscreen had misted over again so that the lights of the checkpoint became a fairyland of bright blobs.
Werner didn’t answer. I had not confided to him anything about what we were doing in his car at Checkpoint Charlie, with a tape recorder wired into the car battery and a mike taped behind the sun visor and a borrowed revolver making an uncomfortable bulge under my arm. After a few minutes he reached forward and wiped a clear spot again. ‘The office doesn’t know you’re using me,’ he said.
He was hoping like hell I’d say Berlin Station had forgiven him for his past failings. ‘They wouldn’t mind too much,’ I lied.
‘They have a long memory,’ complained Werner.
‘Give them time,’ I said. The truth was that Werner was on the computer as ‘non-critical employment only’, a classification that prevented anyone employing him at all. In this job everything was ‘critical’.
‘They didn’t okay me, then?’ Werner said, suddenly guessing at the truth: that I’d come into town without even telling Berlin Station that I’d arrived.
‘What do you care?’ I said. ‘You’re making good money, aren’t you?’
‘I could be useful to them, and the Department could help me more. I told you all that.’
‘I’ll talk to the people in London,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Werner was unmoved by my promise. ‘They’ll just refer it to the Berlin office, and you know what the answer will be.’
‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘Is she a Berliner?’
‘She’s only twenty-two,’ said Werner wistfully. ‘The family was from East Prussia …’ He reached inside his coat as if searching for cigarettes, but he knew I wouldn’t permit it – cigarettes and lighters are too damned conspicuous after dark – and he closed his coat again. ‘You probably saw her photo on the sideboard – a small, very pretty girl with long black hair.’
‘So that’s her,’ I said, although in fact I’d not noticed the photo. At least I’d changed the subject. I didn’t want Werner quizzing me about the office. He should have known better than that.
Poor Werner. Why does the betrayed husband always cut such a ridiculous figure? Why isn’t the unfaithful partner the comical one? It was all so unfair; no wonder Werner pretended his wife was visiting relatives. He was staring ahead, his big black eyebrows lowered as he concentrated on the checkpoint. ‘I hope he wasn’t trying to come through with forged papers. They put everything under the ultraviolet lights nowadays, and they change the markings every week. Even the Americans have given up using forged papers – it’s suicide.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ I told him. ‘My job is just to pick him up and debrief him before the office sends him to wherever he has to go.’
Werner turned his head; the bushy black hair and dark skin made his white teeth flash like a toothpaste commercial. ‘London wouldn’t send you over here for that kind of circus, Bernie. For that kind of task they send office boys, people like me.’
‘We’ll go and get something to eat and drink, Werner,’ I said. ‘Do you know some quiet restaurant where they have sausage and potatoes and good Berlin beer?’
‘I know just the place, Bernie. Straight up Friedrichstrasse, under the railway bridge at the S-Bahn station and it’s on the left. On the bank of the Spree: Weinrestaurant Ganymed.’
‘Very funny,’ I said. Between us and the Ganymed there was a wall, machine guns, barbed wire, and two battalions of gun-toting bureaucrats. ‘Turn this jalopy round and let’s get out of here.’
He switched on the ignition and started up. ‘I’m happier with her away,’ he said. ‘Who wants to have a woman waiting at home to ask you where you’ve been and why you’re back so late?’
‘You’re right, Werner,’ I said.
‘She’s too young for me. I should never have married her.’ He waited a moment while the heater cleared the glass a little. ‘Try again tomorrow, then?’
‘No further contact, Werner. This was the last try for him. I’m going back to London tomorrow. I’ll be sleeping in my own bed.’
‘Your wife … Fiona. She was nice to me that time when I had to work inside for a couple of months.’
‘I remember that,’ I said. Werner had been thrown out of a window by two East German agents he’d discovered in his apartment. His leg was broken in three places and it took ages for him to recover fully.
‘And you tell Mr Gaunt I remember him. He’s long ago retired, I know, but I suppose you still see him from time to time. You tell him any time he wants another bet on what the Ivans are up to, he calls me up first.’
‘I’ll see him next weekend,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell him that.’
‘I thought you must have missed the plane,’ said my wife as she switched on the bedside light. She’d not yet got to sleep; her long hair was hardly disarranged and the frilly nightdress was not rumpled. She’d gone to bed early by the look of it. There was a lighted cigarette on the ashtray. She must have been lying there in the dark, smoking and thinking about her work. On the side table there were thick volumes from the office library and a thin blue Report from the Select Committee on Science and Technology, with notebook and pencil and the necessary supply of Benson & Hedges cigarettes, a considerable number of which were now only butts packed tightly in the big cut-glass ashtray she’d brought from the sitting room. She lived a different sort of life when I was away; now it was like going into a different house and a different bedroom, to a different woman.
‘Some bloody strike at the airport,’ I explained. There was a tumbler containing whisky balanced on the clock-radio. I sipped it; the ice cubes had long since melted to make a warm weak mixture. It was typical of her to prepare a treat so carefully – with linen napkin, stirrer and some cheese straws – and then forget about it.
‘London Airport?’ She noticed her half-smoked cigarette and stubbed it out and waved away the smoke.
‘Where else do they go on strike every day?’ I said irritably.
‘There was nothing about it on the news.’
‘Strikes are not news any more,’ I said. She obviously thought that I had not come directly from the airport, and her failure to commiserate with me over three wasted hours there did not improve my bad temper.
‘Did it go all right?’
‘Werner sends his best wishes. He told me that story about your Uncle Silas betting him fifty marks about the building of the Wall.’
‘Not again,’ said Fiona. ‘Is he ever going to forget that bloody bet?’
‘He likes you,’ I said. ‘He sent his best wishes.’ It wasn’t exactly true, but I wanted her to like him as I did. ‘And his wife has left him.’
‘Poor Werner,’ she said. Fiona was very beautiful, especially when she smiled that sort of smile that women save for men who have lost their woman. ‘Did she go off with another man?’
‘No,’ I said