'Hello, Bernd,' said the woman. 'I knew you'd come.'

'Good,' I said. She hadn't known I was coming of course; it was a way of saying that she only saw me when trout de was in the offing. At first I thought it was Theo's mother-in-law who had answered the door, but she'd died two years before. It was Theo's wife; poor little Bettina, she'd aged so much and was wearing her mother-in-law's red spotted dress. I hadn't recognized her. Now I leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks.

'I thought, they'd send you, Bernd,' she said without enthusiasm.

'Yes,' I said, and followed her into the gloomy living room where two children were sprawled on a threadbare oriental carpet, constructing angel's wings from colored paper. It was the sort of gesture to religion that the regime discouraged, but Theo Forster had never been an ardent believer; his churchgoing was only done to please his wife. There were many such lukewarm worshippers in the networks that London had formed and coordinated, but streetwise cynics like Theo were needed in the mix.

'Theo,' she announced. 'It's Bernd come to see you.'

Theo was propped up in a bed in the comer in the living room. It was not a good sign, for he had never been strong. The walls of the apartment were thin and from the next room there came the sounds of conversation and Bing Crosby singing. There must have been a dozen people in that tiny apartment; talking without being overheard was difficult.

'I knew you'd come, Bernd. I told Betti you would. This is Uncle Bernd,' Theo called out to the children, who looked up, nodded at me politely and went back to their wings.

Theo Forster, number four of the DELIUS group, had been at school with me. He'd been a boisterous young teenager in those days, the classroom clown with a pointed nose, a gnomish face and remarkable facility for advanced mathematics. Theo's father had been good at mathematics too. He'd been an artillery sergeant who'd served under an artful old war hero named Rolf Mauser, and was with him at Vinnitsa on the Bug that fateful day in 1944 when Mauser earned his Knight's Cross. In postwar Berlin, Rolf Mauser did secret tasks for my father. Inevitably young Theo came to know what I did for a living. We'd kept in touch from time to time. Now so many years later, when the DELIUS network went on the blink, he was the most obvious person for me to contact. I loved him dearly, but Theo would never make a good field agent; he was too principled, too honest, too sensitive.

'How are you feeling, Theo?'

'I'll be all right by Christmas, Bernd.'

It was disconcerting to deal with any of these Church groups. They'd been organized, and encouraged, during my wife's pretended defection to the DDR. Such people weren't at all like field agents or trained spies. Such well-meaning amateurs were armed and equipped to fight the good fight against sin and the devil, rather than against a pitiless communist regime. Many of them were brave beyond measure, but it was difficult to make them see the dangers they faced. They were in every respect a Volkssturm — a 'Dad's Army' — and had to be treated like those well-meaning civilian soldiers.

'Take off your coat, Bernd.' The room was dimly lit, but as my eyes became accustomed to it I could see Theo's waxy face beaming at me. His pale complexion and sparse eyebrows gave emphasis to those dark staring sorrowful eyes. Looking around I recognized the heavy Biedermeier wardrobe and armchair that had come from his parents' Berlin apartment. They looked out of place here amid the cheap unpainted wooden chairs and table that were the standard products of DDR factories.

'The doctor says I'll be out of bed in time for Christmas Eve,' he said as briskly as he could manage. 'I get these attacks from time to time. I might look like death but I will soon be back at the factory.' He grinned, his face impish, looking very like the teenager I remembered.

'That's great, Theo,' I said. I'd often passed the Stern bicycle factory where Theo worked as an electrician. The blackened brick buildings on the railway siding dated back to the Kaiser's days. But the newer prefabricated sheds where Theo worked were cold and draughty, so that in winter the workers wrapped up in coats and sweaters. There was a constant haze of dirt in the air for miles around, while into the nearby river the factory poured a filthy torrent of brown pollution. It was no place for a sick man.

'Is this official?' He asked anxiously.

'No, not official. I was passing. I brought you a packet of coffee,' I said. 'Are you allowed coffee?'

'Now and again. Betti loves it. She's a wonderful woman, Bernd.' He looked at his watch, looked at me and then at his watch again.

'I know she is,' I said.

'I do a good deal of thinking when I'm dozing here and Betti is at work. I was remembering you the other day. What was the name of that teacher who always gave you such a rough time?'

'I forget.' It seemed as if whenever I met someone I'd been at school with, they wanted to commiserate with me about that bad-tempered bastard.

'He never gave you a minute's peace, Bernd.'

'His brother, or his best buddy or someone, had been killed in Normandy,' I said.

'His son,' supplied Theo. 'Shot dead while trying to surrender; that's what someone told me. Do you think it was true?'

'Maybe. I don't know. He was a Nazi. Remember when he looked in your desk and found your collection of Nazi badges and medals? He took them away to look at them, then he gave them back and never reported you.'

'You hated him.'

'At the time I did,' I conceded. 'But when I thought about it afterwards I saw that it was his endless bullying that made me do so well at lessons. Being top of the class was the only way I could get back at him.'

'And he was the reason why you were so popular,' said Theo.

'He was? How do you make that out?'

'Didn't you ever see that, Bernd? The more he bullied you, the more the rest of us kids wanted to be decent to you.'

'And I thought it was my English charm.'

'And your charm, yes.' He managed to produce a laugh.

'Why are you looking at your watch? Are you expecting a visitor?'

'No,' said Theo.

I moved a tray containing a soup bowl and a plate with some dry biscuits, so that I could sit down at the little chair at his bedside.

Theo said, 'Remember that morning he came into the classroom with the wooden pencils?'

'No.'

'One by one he snapped them in half and gave the pieces out to us. Pencils are like earthworms, he said. Break one in half and it becomes two pencils.'

'There weren't enough pencils for us to have one each.'

I know, but it was a good joke,' said Theo.

'Tell me about the DELIUS net,' I said.

He looked at the children and said, 'Go and have your supper. Opa is in the other room waiting for you.' As the kids departed, a skinny cat went slinking after them. Theo said, 'You say this visit's not official?' I shook my head. 'Better if your people stay out of this,' he said. 'It's a local matter for us to solve our own way. That damned pastor is "an unofficial collaborator.''

An unofficial collaborator was the Stasi description for people the rest of the world called secret informants or snitches. 'Surely not,' I said.

'It's the only explanation.'

'I was with him after a job I did in Magdeburg. The pastor sheltered me after a shooting fiasco in the KGB compound. He knew Fiona when she was in Berlin; he knew she was working for London.'

'Did he tell you that?' said Theo mildly.

'Yes, when I was here before he told me that.'

'He's clever isn't he?'

'It was some sort, of trap for me?'

'He never knew Fiona was working for London. It's what he's been told since she escaped. I doubt if he ever met her.'