"Why do we have such an urge to do something we know we mustn't?" she asked suddenly.

"It's our friend the id. Wants to drive wild, hates the brakes. But keep them on. If it gets difficult, talk to a tape and then burn it. Or talk to Jurgen. But don't talk to strangers any more. You don't know where they'll go when they leave here. If it's straight to the CIA Office or some anti-Nazi organisation Phoenix won't stage any more accidents – they'll be up here within the hour and you can't rely on Jurgen because he's not bullet-proof."

I moved for the door and the wolfhound was on its feet.

"Should I leave Berlin?" she asked wearily.

"It would be safer."

She opened the door for me. Our eyes met and I saw the struggle she was putting up for her pride's sake. She lost.

"You're… not with CIA, or anyone?"

I said no. "But I could be. Don't forget it. Don't pick up strangers. You never know where they've been."

The street was icy after the close heat of the flat and I walked quickly. Snow got into the sides of my shoes and my breath clouded against my face. I thought about her all the time, and believed that what I had done was right. If there were any doubts they were automatically dismissed when, somewhere along the Unter den Eichen, I knew that I was being followed.

Austrian Union: 293. Plus 1¼

BMB Rubber: 106. Plus 1.

Bertram-Rand: 995¾ Minus 5¼.

Cinati: 185½. Plus 1½

Crowther Development: 344. Plus 6¼

D. R. Mining: 73. Minus 2.

Just before the corner of the Unter den Eichen and the Albricht-strasse I had walked at the same gait but with longer strides so that the spurt didn't show. The first cover down the Albricht-strasse was a parked beer-truck and I stood against its offside and used the long-stemmed driving-mirror to watch the corner. When he was past the truck, hurrying now, I crossed the street and bought an evening edition of Die Leute and carried it half-opened to alter the image. After a while he tracked back and I watched him take quick checks before trying the bar, the pharmacy and the newsagent's where I'd bought the paper.

He was worried now and stood on the pavement stamping his feet as if they were cold. It was frustration. Then he got going again and we rounded the whole of the Steglitz block before he gave up and made for a beer-house in the Schoneberg area. I held off for fifteen minutes but he never looked at his watch and no one turned up so I went in and sat down at his table and said:

"If I see you again I'll put such a blast through to Local that you'll end up washing the stairs."

He looked even younger than he was. He wouldn't even trust himself to speak until my beer came because he was so frustrated. Then he said:

"You know what happened to KLJ."

"It isn't going to happen to me."

"He was a damned good man." It sounded even more emphatic in German. He was angry about that death. His name was Hengel and I'd recognised him when I sat down.

His photograph, marked with the key-letter for Totally Reliable, had been in the memorandum. Pol had said:

"There are two people you can trust. An American, Frank Brand, and a young German, Lanz Hengel."

Before I'd recognised him I'd thought he was one of the adverse party and that Phoenix – if that was how they still styled their group – had set him to watch contacts of the Lindt girl. It would have tied in.

"Yes," I said, "he was a damned good man. But he was using cover and it didn't save him."

He said with a seething anger: "I was his cover."

"I know. Don't fret. That day in Dallas there were sixty Federal agents manning the inner ring."

"I was specially picked." He wasn't interested in Dallas.

"Then you're slipping." I'd had enough self-pity from the Lindt girl. "Five minutes' tag and I flushed you."

Polsknika A: 775. Plus 5.

Portuguese Canning: 389. Plus 2¼.

Py-Sulpha: 452. Minus 10.

Coming up.

I'd asked Hengel: "Whose orders, to cover me?"

"I had no orders."

At least he was honest. "What's your current term in this field?"

"Two years."

He volunteered nothing, but just sat biting his lip. He had a good face but there was no guile in him. He lacked the element most necessary to his needs: slyness. I wondered why they'd picked him to cover KLJ.

"You'll find plenty of games to play in two years, Hengel, but don't play any on my pitch. I told Pol no cover. It was called off as from last midnight."

If he had put up any argument I would have embarrassed him with a few facts. Where had he picked me up? He would know the address of my hotel but he hadn't picked me up from there or I would have sensed him. He couldn't have known I was going to the Neustadthalle because it was a last-minute decision: until I had Bourse clearance on Pol's photograph I wouldn't do anything active, so the Neustadthalle was a good passive search area for spending the day. He hadn't picked me up there, because I would have sensed him, and anyway he would have talked now about the crush attempt, especially as he was so desperate to cover me in the hope of saving my life and atone for the loss of KLJ. He'd never seen the crush attempt. He couldn't have known I went to the Lindt girl's flat or that I could be picked up from there when I left. There was only one answer: he's seen me, by chance, about half-way along the Unter den Eichen, or one of the staff had seen me and told him and he'd started out on his own initiative. Local Control Berlin has two rooms, each with two windows, on the ninth floor of the corner building at Unter den Eichen and Rhoner-allee, with front access through the passage at the side of the hat shop. The view of both streets is excellent and a lookout is normally stationed to make sure that any staff coming in has not been tagged to base by an adverse party. The lookout has a pair of Zeiss close-focus square 15's and can see the hairs on a fly at fifty yards. As one of the only three agents operating (in my case technically) from this base I couldn't go down either of these streets without being seen. It had been half-way down the den Eichen that I had sensed the tag.

Hengel hadn't only lost me within five minutes but had picked me up by sheer chance, and he knew it. If I told him that I knew it too he'd draw blood from his lip. If I told him he'd missed by ninety minutes an attempt on the life he was so eager to safeguard he'd bust a gut.

So I had just finished my beer and left him.

Back at the hotel I had some food and went up to tune-in to Eurosound. The Bourse was being read now. My signal was just coming up.

Quota Freight Tenders: 878¼. Plus 2½.

RhoneElectric: 626

1 switched off.

The ‘Communication Post and Bourse’ system is limited but foolproof. One of our cipher staff dreamed it up himself. It is relatively safe to entrust a signal to the ordinary postal services, and in the Federal Republic as safe as anywhere in the world. The agent doesn't stamp his letters because it might not be easy at any given moment (when leaving a theatre, for instance) to find a stamp. More important, an unstamped letter is virtually registered, since it must be handed personally to the addressee by the postman in order to collect the fee and tax. Thus, even if an agent is carrying a vital document and suspects he is being followed by an adverse party who might intend capturing the document at gun-point at the first chance, he can get rid of it readily at the nearest postbox and ensure its safety. We have a man at Eurosound to collect. Radio Eurosound is a perfectly genuine broadcasting station operating under the combined auspices of NATO and the Benelux Industrial Commune, and carries light music, U.S., British and French newscasts, and commercial programmes.