Fiona asked, 'So what am I supposed to say now?'

'Don't you see, Fi, it means the D-G was keeping everything outside the office.'

'It's a bit of a leap in the dark, isn't it, darling?'

'Meetings with Uncle Silas, for instance.'

'You can't be sure.'

'Of course I can't be sure, but Harry hinted. Uncle Silas and the D-G hatched it up together. I'd love to hear what they said about Tessa.'

'I wish you'd drop it all, Bernard. Tessa's dead. You know how much I'd like to see her given a decent burial, but that doesn't mean I want to turn the Department upside down. I'm worn down with it. Perhaps it would be better to let her rest.'

Well, well. This was quite a change of heart from the woman who conspired to send Timmermann to investigate her sister's death on a freelance basis. I said, 'Suppose that the plan was to kill Tessa? Would you still prefer to let it go?'

Fiona was good at controlling her feelings. Perhaps our marriage would have benefited from her being less good at it. 'You always go off at a tangent, darling. How does this connect up? What has it got to do with George going to Poland?'

'It's a part of the same business, it's got to be.'

'George went willingly, didn't he? You're not going to tell me they drugged him and rolled him in a carpet or something?' Since working in the East, Fiona had become less condemnatory about our enemies, or perhaps more realistic would be a fairer way of describing it.

'I don't know. Yes, he went willingly. George employed that fellow Timmermann. Timmermann was killed and then George goes away, covering his sudden disappearance by making sure Ursi, his housekeeper girl, wasn't too alarmed.'

Fiona stroked the arm of her fur coat while she thought about it.

I said, 'Those Stasi hoodlums took Tessa's engagement ring to Switzerland to show it to George.'

'What?' She almost jumped out of her skin. 'How do you know?'

'I went to the jeweler in Zurich. George took the ring there for cleaning. I saw it; a heart-shaped diamond with four small diamonds. It was Tessa's engagement ring all right.'

'Why would George take it to be cleaned?'

'You know how distrustful George can be. I think it was a way to find out whether it was a paste copy without actually asking them.'

'But it's real?'

'It's real.'

'I won't tell Dicky or anyone about your thinking George is alive. At least for the time being. After all, it's only your theory, it's not as if you're withholding evidence.'

'No,' I said. Fiona had now assuaged her middleclass anxieties of being disloyal to the Crown. 'There's no hard evidence; it is just my theory. If I persuaded Dicky to say George is alive, and then suddenly the body arrived, Dicky would have something to complain about.'

'Very well, darling. But I want you to be honest with me in future. You're awfully secretive, Bernard, and that's putting a terrible strain on your career, and on this marriage too.'

'Yes,' I said, and drank some whiskey and smiled at her. This was not the time to remind her that she had plotted and planned her defection to the East for years, and never included me in the secret. But that if I wait forty-eight hours before telling her that Dicky's wide-eyed acceptance of George's fake death is just one more example of his stupidity, I get scolded for marital infidelity.

Perhaps Fiona guessed what I was thinking, for she avoided my eyes and turned away. 'I'll have a biscuit,' she said, and reached into the kitchen drawer for a packet of oatmeal cookies that are there for Mrs. Dias's sole use, and are replenished faithfully. I didn't know Fiona was hooked on them too. 'Fancy one?'

'No.' We sat there for a long time, each thinking our own thoughts until I said, 'Remember Cindy Prettyman?'

'Of course. Was she in Warsaw?'

'Not her. Last I heard, she had a cushy job in Brussels with lots of money and lovely tax-free allowances and lots of good restaurants. Or perhaps it was Strasbourg; some kind of European Community pen pusher's racket anyway.'

'Lucky her. She was the first person I showed my engagement ring to.'

'That's a long time ago.'

'I was so proud. I told her, Bernard sold his Ferrari to buy my ring.'

'You didn't tell her it was up on blocks and needed a new transmission?'

She smiled. It was a joke. That old Ferrari could make a little black smoke when it was in a bad mood. And it stalled to show how much it didn't like being slowed up in heavy traffic. But it could still do its stuff when I sold it. When I saw it drive off, with its new owner at the wheel, there were tears in my eyes.

I said, 'Cindy came to me with a story that Jim Prettyman was embezzling millions from the Department.'

'He was,' said Fiona. 'It was the funding for my operation in the East. Jim Prettyman was on the Special Operations Committee. He was named as the account holder along with Bret Rensselaer, who arranged the chain of payment from Central Funding through a few brokers to a West Berlin bank Bret's family are associated with.'

'Could Cindy's lovely job have been arranged just to stop her prying further into the money setup?'

'I would imagine so,' said Fiona, clearly untroubled by the ethics of such a recourse. 'Having someone like Cindy trumpeting our fiscal secrets up and down Whitehall would have brought disaster.'

'She came to me ready to blow the whistle on what sounded like a big embezzlement. She thought it was some kind of KGB slush fund. She'd been notified that Jim had just been killed in a parking lot in Washington D.C. and the Department said she wasn't entitled to the pension because he'd married again.'

'Jim married again? I didn't know,' said Fiona.

'And it was a Mexican divorce. But Jim wasn't dead, he was put on the back burner. Eventually the Department paid both widows rather than let Jim's bogus death come under scrutiny.' I looked at Fiona. She nodded. She knew this already. How many more dark secrets were inside her head? 'So Cindy was right?' I said. 'There was an illegal transfer?'

'It was fundamental to placing me in the DDR. I had to get the Church people over there organized and motivated. They are not all selfless dedicated people with money of their own. You know that-, you're the field agent.'

'You don't have to be defensive, Fi. You did a great job.'

'Five point seven million pounds sterling. It will work, Bernard. A bargain. They'll topple the regime eventually but they need time.'

'And then Jim suddenly came back to life and visited us in California,' I reminded her. 'I wonder if the Department asked Cindy for her money back.'

'It wouldn't be a lump sum,' said Fiona, as if she had already found out what happens to those widowed in the service of their country. 'Is there a connection? A connection with Tessa's death?'

'Cindy clammed up suddenly. The Europe job came through and she didn't want to continue the crusade she'd started. Crusade . . . I mean she'd really built up a head of steam when I saw her. This is Tessa country. There must be more behind it.'

'Are you going to find her?'

'Cindy? No,' I said. 'I've other things to do right now. And if Dicky is going to be sick in bed, suffering from Polish plague or something, there will be all his work piling up on my desk.'

'The funny thing is that Daphne thought he'd be away in Poland at least another week. She arranged for the builders to come in and fix the damp in the attic and refurbish both bathrooms. It will be hell for Dicky. He won't even have a loo, to himself '

'I must drop in and say hello,' I said. 'I love hammering. I hope they all have transistor radios.'

'You are going to find Cindy aren't you? I can always tell when you are lying to me.' She said it in a genial way, as if my lies pleased her; or perhaps it was always being able to catch me out in my lies that gave her that satisfied look.