'Are you expecting a rush on tables?'

Konrad smiled and rubbed his chin. I suppose his unshaven face itched. 'Papa likes to know.'

'I'll eat the Pinkel and kale if that's on the menu today.'

'It's always on the menu; Papa eats it. A man in this village makes the Pinkel sausage. He makes Brägenwurst and Kochwurst too. Pinkel is a Lüneburg sausage. But people come from Lüneburg, even from Hamburg, to buy them in the village. My mother prepares it with the kale. Papa says cook can't do it properly.' Having heard my lunch order he didn't depart. He was looking at me, the expression on his face a mixture of curiosity and nervousness. 'I think your friend is coming,' he said.

I draped my wet trousers over the central-heating radiator. 'And some smoked eel too; a small portion as a starter. Why do you think my friend is coming?'

'Mother will press the wet trousers if you wish.' I gave them to him. 'Because there was a phone call from Schwanheide. A taxi is bringing someone here.'

'A taxi?'

'It is a frontier crossing point,' explained Konrad, in case I didn't know.

'My friend would not phone to say he was coming.'

Konrad smiled. 'The taxi drivers phone. If they bring someone here, and a room is rented, they get money from my father.'

Schwanheide was a road crossing point not far away, where the frontier runs due north, away from the river Elbe. I gave the boy my trousers. 'You'd better make that two lots of Pinkel and kale,' I said.

Werner arrived in time for lunch. The dining room was a comfortable place to be on such a damp, chilly day. There was a log fire, smoke-blackened beams, polished brass and red-checked tablecloths. I felt at home there because I'd found the same bogus interior everywhere from Dublin to Warsaw and a thousand places in between, with unashamed copies in Tokyo and Los Angeles. They came from the sort of artistic designer who paints robins on Christmas cards.

'How did it go?' I asked. Werner shrugged. He would tell me in his own good time. He always had to get his thoughts in order. He ordered a tankard of Pilsener. Werner never seemed to require a strong drink no matter what happened to him, and he still hadn't finished his beer by the time the smoked eel and black bread arrived. 'Was there any trouble?'

'No real trouble,' said Werner. The rain helped.'

'Good.'

'It rained all night,' said Werner. 'It was about three o'clock in the morning when I came through Potsdam…'

'What the hell were you doing in Potsdam, Werner? That's to hell and gone.'

'There were road repairs. I was diverted. When I came through Potsdam it was pouring with rain. There was not a soul to be seen anywhere; not one car. Not even a police car or an army truck until I got to the centre of town; Friedrich Ebert Strasse… Do you know Potsdam?'

'I know where Friedrich Ebert Strasse is,' I said. 'The intelligence report I showed you said that there has lately been a traffic cheeky, at the Nauener Tor after dark.'

'You read all that stuff, do you?' said Werner admiringly. 'I don't know how you find time enough.'

'I hope you read it too.'

'I did. But I remembered too late. There was a checkpoint there last night. At least there was an army truck and two men inside it. They were smoking. I only saw them because of the glow of their cigarettes.'

'Were your papers okay? How did you account for being over there? That's a different jurisdiction.'

'Yes, it's Bezirk Potsdam,' said Werner. 'But I would have talked my way out of trouble. The diversion signs are not illuminated. I should think a lot of people get lost trying to find their way back to the autobahn. But the rain was very heavy and those policemen decided not to get wet. I slowed down and almost stopped, to show I was law-abiding. The driver just wound down the window of the truck and waved me through.'

'It didn't use to be like that, did it, Werner? There was a time when everyone over there did everything by the book. No more, no less; always by the book. Even in hotels the staff would refuse tips or gifts. Now it's all changed. Now no one believes in the socialist revolution, they just believe in Westmarks.'

'These were probably conscripts,' said Werner, 'counting out their eighteen months of compulsory service. Maybe even Kampfgruppen.'

'Kampfgruppen are keen,' I said. 'Unpaid volunteers, they would have been all over you.'

'Not any longer,' said Werner. 'They can't get enough volunteers. The factories pressure people to join nowadays. They make it a condition of being promoted to foreman or supervisor. The Kampfgruppen have gone very slack.'

'Well, that suits me,' I said. 'And when you were coming through Potsdam with papers that say you have limited movement in the immediate vicinity of Berlin, I suppose that's all right with you too.'

'It's not just the East,' said Werner defensively. He regarded any criticism of Germans and Germany as a personal attack upon him. Sometimes I wondered how he reconciled this patriotism with wanting to work for London Central. 'It's the same everywhere: bribery and corruption. Twenty or more years ago, when we first got involved in this business, people stole secrets because they were politically committed or patriotic. Moscow's payments out were always piddling little amounts, paid to give Moscow a tighter grip on agents who would willingly have worked for nothing. How many people are like that nowadays? Not many. Now both sides have to pay dearly for their espionage. Half the people who bring us material would sell to the highest bidder.'

'That's what capitalism is all about, Werner.' I said it to needle him.

'I'd hate to be like you,' said Werner. 'If I really believed that I wouldn't want to work for London.'

'Have you ever thought about your obsession with working for the department?' I asked him. 'You're making enough money; you've got Zena. What the hell are you doing schlepping around in Potsdam in the middle of the night?'

'It's what I've done since I was a kid. I'm good at it, aren't I?'

'You're better at it than I am; that's what you want to prove, isn't it, Werner?' He shrugged as if he'd never thought about it before. I said, 'You want to prove that you could do my job without tarnishing yourself the way that I tarnish myself.'

'If you're talking about the hippies on the beach…'

'Okay, Werner. Here we go. Tell me about the hippies on the beach. I knew we'd have to talk about it sooner or later.'

'You should have reported your suspicions to the police,' said Werner primly.

'I was in the middle of doing a job, Werner. I was in a foreign country. The job I do is not strictly legal. I can't afford the luxury of a clear conscience.'

'Then what about the house in Bosham?' said Werner.

'I do things my way, Werner.'

'You started this argument,' said Werner. 'I have never criticized you. It's your conscience that's troubling you.'

'There are times when I could kill you, Werner,' I said.

Werner smiled smugly, then we both looked round at the sound of laughter. A party of people were coming into the dining room for lunch. It was a birthday lunch given for a bucolic sixty-year-old. He'd been celebrating before their arrival, to judge by the way he blundered against the table and knocked over a chair before getting settled. There were a dozen people in the party, all of them over fifty and some nearer seventy. The men were in Sunday suits and the women had tightly waved hair and old-fashioned hats. Twelve lunches: I suppose that's why the kitchen wanted my order in advance. 'Two more Pilsener,' Werner called to Konrad. 'And my friend will have a schnapps with his.'

'Just to clean the fish from my fingers,' I said. The boy smiled. It was an old German custom to offer schnapps with the eel and use the final drain of it to clean the fingers. But like lots of old German customs it was now conveniently discontinued.