'Has he got children?'

'A grown-up son.'

'He knew what you were getting at?'

'Perhaps he wasn't sure at first, but I persisted and Zena helped. I know she said she wouldn't help, Bernie, but she did help.'

'What did she do?'

'She told him that a little money solves all kinds of problems. Zena said that friends of hers had gone to live in England and loved every minute of it. She told him that everyone likes living in England. These friends of hers had a big house in Hampshire with a huge garden. And they had a language teacher to help them with their English. She told him that these were all problems that could be solved if there was help and money available.'

'He must have been getting the message by that time,' I said.

'Yes, he became cautious,' said Werner. 'I suppose he was frightened in case I was trying to make a fool of him.'

'And?'

'I had to make it a little more specific. I said that this friend of mine could always arrange a job in England for anyone with experience of security work. He'd just come down here for a couple of weeks' holiday in Mexico after travelling through the US, recruiting security experts for a very big British corporation, a company that did work for the British government. The pay is very good, I told him, with a long contract optional both sides.'

'I wish you really did have a friend like that, Werner,' I said. 'I'd want to meet him myself. How did Stinnes react?'

'What's he going to say, Bernie? I mean, what would you or I say, in his place, faced with the same proposition?'

'He said maybe?'

'He said yes… or as near as he dared go to yes. But he's frightened it's a trap. Anyone would be frightened of its being a trap. He said he wanted more details, and a chance to think about it. He'd have to meet the man doing the recruiting. I said I was just a go-between of course…'

'And he believed you are just the go-between?'

'I suppose so,' said Werner. He picked up the orchid and examined it as if seeing one for the first time. 'You can't grow orchids in Mexico City, but here in Cuernavaca they flourish. No one knows why. Maybe it's the smog.'

'Don't just suppose so, Werner.' He made me angry when he avoided important questions by changing the subject of conversation. 'I wasn't kidding last night… what I said to Zena. I wasn't kidding about them getting rough.'

'He believed me,' said Werner in a tone that indicated that he was just trying to calm me down.

'Stinnes is no amateur,' I said. 'He's the one they assigned to me when I was arrested over there. He had me taken to the Normannenstrasse building and sat with me half the night, discussing the more subtle aspects of Sherlock Holmes and laughing and smoking and making it clear that if he was in charge of things they'd be kicking shit out of me.'

'We've both seen a lot of KGB specimens like Erich Stinnes,' said Werner. 'He's affable enough over a stein of beer but in other circumstances he could be a nasty piece of work. And not to be trusted, Bernie. I kept my distance from him. I'm no hero, you know that.'

'Was there anyone with him?'

'An older man – fifty or so – built like a tank, cropped hair, can't seem to speak any language without a strong Russian accent.'

'Sounds like the one who went with him to the Biedermann house. Pavel, he called him. I told you what they said, didn't I?'

'I guessed it was him. Luckily Pavel isn't really fluent in German, especially when Stinnes and I got going. Stinnes got rid of him as soon as he realized the drift my conversation was taking. I thought that might have been a good sign.'

'I can use all the good signs we can get, Werner.' I drank some coffee. 'It's all right telling him about language lessons in Hampshire, but he knows the real score would be him sitting in some lousy little safe house blowing KGB networks. And drinking half a bottle of Scotch every night in an effort to forget what damage he's doing to his own people, and that he's going to have to start doing it all over again next morning. Hey, don't look so worried, Werner.'

He looked at me, biting his lip. 'He knows you're here, Bernie, I'm sure he does.' There was a note of anxiety now. 'He asked if I knew an Englishman who was a friend of Paul Biedermann. I said Paul knew lots of Englishmen. He said yes, but this one knew all the Biedermann family and had done for years.'

'That description fits lots of people,' I said.

'But it doesn't fit anyone else who's in Mexico City,' said Werner. 'I think Stinnes knows you're here. And if he knows you're here, that's bad.'

'Why is it bad?' I said, although I knew what he was going to say. I'd known Werner so long that our minds ran on the same tracks.

'Because it sounds like he got it from Paul Biedermann.'

'Maybe,' I said.

'If Stinnes was worried about Biedermann, the way he sounded worried from that conversation you overheard, then he's likely to put him through the wringer. You know, and I know, that Biedermann couldn't take much punishment before he started to recount everything he knows, plus a few things he only guesses at.'

'So what could Biedermann tell them? That I sell secondhand Ferraris that keep breaking down?'

'You're smiling. But Biedermann could tell them quite a lot. He could tell them about you working for the SIS. He could tell them about Frank Harrington in Berlin and the people Frank sees.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Werner. The KGB know all about Frank Harrington. He's been "Berlin Resident" for a long time, and he was no stranger to Berlin before he took the job. As for knowing who I work for, we were discussing rates of pay that night Stinnes had me in Normannenstrasse.'

'I think he wants to talk to you, Bernie. He did everything except spell out your name.'

'Eventually he'll have to see me. And he'll recognize me. Then he'll telex Moscow and have them send a computer print-out of whatever they know about me. That's the way it is, Werner. There's nothing we can do about that.'

'I don't like it, Bernie.'

'So what am I going to do – glue on a false beard and put a stone in my shoe to make me limp?'

'Let Dicky do it.'

'Dicky? Are you joking? Dicky enrol Stinnes? Stinnes would run a mile.'

'He'll probably run a mile when you try,' said Werner. 'But Dicky has no record of work as a field agent. It's very unlikely that they'd do anything really nasty to Dicky.'

*Well, that's another reason,' I said.

'It's not something to joke about, Bernie. I know you were painting a rosy picture for Zena yesterday. And I appreciate you trying to set her mind at rest. But we both know that the best way to prevent an enrolment is to kill the enroller… and we both know that Moscow shares that feeling.'

'Did you fix a time and place?'

'I still don't like it, Bernie.'

'What can happen? I tell him how lovely it is living in Hampshire. And he tells me to get stuffed.'

Music started from the big patio below our balcony. Some of the hotel staff were erecting a stage, arranging folding chairs and decorating the columns with coloured lanterns in preparation for the concert I'd seen advertised in the lobby. Sitting under the tall, spiky palmetto trees on the far side of the patio were six men and a flashy-looking girl. One of the men was strumming a guitar and tuning it. The girl was smiling and humming the tune, but the other men sat very still and completely impassive, as the natives of very hot countries learn to do.

Werner followed the direction of my gaze and leaned over to see what was happening. The man strumming the guitar picked out a melody everyone in Mexico knows, and quietly sang:

Life is worth nothing, life is worth nothing,

It always starts with crying and with crying ends.

And that's why, in this world, life is worth nothing.