'And her threats to kidnap the children?'

'There were no threats to kidnap the children. I was thinking back to the conversation. She offered to let things stay as they are for a year.'

He opened his eyes and stared at me. 'Providing Stinnes was left alone.'

'Okay, but it was all very negative, Werner, and Fiona is not negative. Normally I would have expected her to say what I must do and she'd say what she'd do in return. That's the sort of person she is; she makes deals. I think she wants us to enrol Stinnes. I think she'd like to get rid of him permanently. If she really wanted to stop us enrolling him she'd send him to some place where we couldn't get our hands on him.'

'And killing the boy, MacKenzie. How does that fit into the theory?'

'She had a witness with her all the time – the black girl – and there were others too. That's why she was talking in riddles. She didn't want to see me alone so there was no chance of them suspecting her of double-crossing them. I think the MacKenzie murder was a decision made by someone else; the back-up team. She'd have a backup team with her. You know how they work.'

Werner sat motionless for a moment as he thought about it. 'She's ruthless enough for it, Bernie.'

'Damn right she is,' I said.

He waited a moment. 'You still love her, don't you?'

'No, I don't.'

'Whatever you want to call it, something prevents you thinking about her clearly. If it came to the crunch, that something would prevent you doing what needed to be done. Maybe that wouldn't matter so much except that you are determined to believe that she feels the same way about you. Fiona is ruthless, Bernie. Totally dedicated to doing whatever the KGB want done. Face it, she'd eliminate MacKenzie without a qualm and, if it comes to it, she'll eliminate you.'

'You're an incurable romantic, Werner,' I said, making a joke of it, but the strength of his feelings had shaken me.

Now Werner had said what he thought about Fiona, he was embarrassed. We sat silent, both looking out of the window like strangers in a railway carriage. It was still raining. 'That Henry Tiptree,' said Werner eventually. 'What does he want?

'He doesn't like super-luxury hotels such as the Steigenberger, with private baths, and room service, disco and fancy food. He likes the real Berlin. He likes to rough it at Lisl's.'

'Crap,' said Werner.

'He tried to get me drunk the other night. He probably thought I was going to bare my soul to him. Why crap? I like Lisl's and so do you.'

Werner didn't bother to answer my question. We both knew that Henry Tiptree was not like us and was unlikely to share our tastes in anything from music and food to cars and women. 'He's spying on you,' said Werner. 'Frank Harrington's sent him to Lisl's to spy on you. It's obvious.'

'Don't be silly, Werner.' I laughed. It wasn't funny. I laughed just because I was sitting across the table from Werner, and Werner was sitting there safe and sound. I said, 'To hear you talk, Frank Harrington rules the world. Frank is only the Berlin Resident. All he's interested in is nursing the Berlin Field Unit along until he retires. He's not training his spies to chase me across the world from Mexico City to Tante Lisl's in order to get me drunk and see what secrets he can winkle out of me.'

'You always try to make me sound ridiculous.'

'Frank isn't out to get you. And he's not trying to get me either.'

'So who is this Henry Tiptree?'

'Just another graduate of the Foreign Office charm school,' I said. 'He's helping to write one of those reports about the Soviet arms build-up. You know the sort of thing; what are the political intentions and the economic consequences.'

'You don't believe any of that,' said Werner.

'I believe it. Why wouldn't I believe it? The department is buried under the weight of reports like that. Forests are set aside to provide the pulp for reports like that. Sometimes I think the entire staff of the Foreign Office does nothing else but concoct reports like that. Do you know, Werner, that in 1914 the Foreign Office staff numbered a hundred and seventy-six people in London plus four hundred and fifty in the diplomatic service overseas. Now that we've lost the empire they need six thousand officials plus nearly eight thousand locally engaged staff.'

Werner looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes. 'Take the Valium and lie down for a moment.'

That's nearly fourteen thousand people, Werner. Can you wonder why we have Henry Tiptrees swanning round the world looking for something to occupy them?'

'I don't like him,' said Werner. 'He's out to make trouble. You'll see.'

'I'll ask Frank who he is,' I offered. 'I'll have to make my peace with Frank. I'll need his help to keep London off my back.' I tried to make it sound easy, but in fact I dreaded all the departmental repercussions that would emerge when I surfaced again. And I was far from sure whether Frank would be able to help. Or whether he would want to help.

'Are you driving back to Berlin? I had to leave the car in the East, of course. I'll phone Zena and say I'll be back for dinner. Are you free for dinner?'

'Zena will want you all to herself, Werner.' Surely Frank Harrington would stand by me. He'd always helped in the past. We had a father-and-son relationship, with all the stormy encounters that that so often implies. But Frank would help. Within the department he was the only one I could always rely upon.

'Nonsense. We'll all have dinner,' said Werner. 'Zena likes entertaining.'

'I'm not too concerned about Tiptree,' I said. It wasn't true, of course. I was concerned about him. I was concerned about the whole bloody tangled mess I was in. And the fact that I'd denied my concern was enough to tell Werner of those fears. He stared at me; I suppose he was worried about me. I smiled at him and added, 'You only have to spend ten minutes with Tiptree to know he's a blundering amateur.' But was he really such a foolish amateur, I wondered. Or was he a very clever man who knew how to look like one?

'It's the amateurs who are most dangerous,' said Werner.

Zena Volkmann could be captivating when she was in the mood to play the gracious hostess. This evening she greeted us wearing tight-fitting grey pants with a matching shirt. And over this severe garb she'd put a loose silk sleeveless jacket that was striped with every colour in the rainbow. Her hair was up and coiled round her head in a style that required a long time at the hairdresser. She had used some eyeshadow and enough make-up to accentuate her cheekbones. She looked very pretty, but not like the average housewife welcoming her husband home for dinner, more like a girlfriend expecting to be taken out to an expensive night-spot. I delivered Werner to the apartment in Berlin-Dahlem ready to forget his invitation. But Zena said she'd prepared a meal for the three of us and insisted earnestly enough to convince me to stay, loudly enough for Werner to be proud of her warm hospitality.

She held his upper arms and kissed him carefully enough to preserve her lipstick and make-up and then straightened his tie and nicked dust from his jacket. Zena knew exactly how to handle him. She was an expert on how to handle men. I think she might even have been able to handle me if she'd put her mind to it but luckily I was not a part of her planned future.

She asked Werner's advice about everything she didn't care about, and she enlisted his aid whenever there was a chance for her to play the helpless woman. He was called to the kitchen to open a tin and to get hot pans from the oven. Werner was the only one who could open a bottle of wine and decant it. Werner was asked to peer at the quiche and sniff at the roast chicken and pronounce it cooked. But since virtually all the food had come prepared by the Paul Bocuse counter of the Ka De We food department, probably the greatest array of food on sale anywhere in the world, Zena's precautions seemed somewhat overwrought. Yet Werner obviously revelled in them.