'You know what, I do for a living?' I said, more to confirm that his memory was functioning than because I had doubt of it.

'Yes, I do. I know your name, your wife and your job.'

'I've come to tell you that it's all over: kaputtmacht,' I said. 'You've come to a standstill.' I was being provocative of course, I wanted to see how he would react. He looked at me, used a forefinger to push his glasses a fraction up on his nose, but gave no sign of having heard or understood. 'This network is blown,' I said. 'DELIUS is coughing blood. The network can't be salvaged.'

'We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble.' He paused and looked at me. 'Jeremiah.'

'Yes, I know,' I said. 'I'm talking about the network. It's blown and you blew it. You know my name and my job. Well I don't know your name — not your real name — but I do know your part-time job. You report, to the Stasi.'

'You've been listening to gossip. Village gossip is the worst kind,' he told me with an indulgent smile.

'I came over here to pick up the pieces, but I don't see how it can be put together again.'

'Like Humpty-Dumpty?'

'Yes, like Humpty-Dumpty. You've had a long run, but nothing lasts forever.' I waited for him to respond but he stood very still, his eyes staring at me, his expression calm. He showed no sign of wanting to argue or explain. For 'an unofficial collaborator' I found his coldness disconcerting. Informers usually lived on their nerves and were easy to jolt. 'I've been authorized to offer you a deal,' I said after a long pause.

'Oh? What kind of a deal would that be?'

'Everyone goes into the bag eventually,' I said. 'For every agent' who is good at what he does . . . who pushes opportunities to extremes and consistently takes chances, being exposed is the inevitable career climax.'

'Being a pastor is not a career; it is a vocation,' he said, as if determined to bluff his way out of it.

I continued my spiel. 'But a career's climax doesn't have to be a career's end.'

'I can't believe you are serious. Are you saying what you seem to be saying?'

'Think what we could do. London would put the network together again. We'd reassemble it to be even better — more productive — than before. You'd go on reporting to Normannenstrasse as usual. And drawing your pay from them.'

The pastor scratched his cheek with a fingernail and said, 'The Gospel of St. Matthew tells us that no man can serve two masters without coming to hate the one, and love the other.'

'I thought that was putting the finger on materialism and spirituality,' I said. 'Isn't that the passage that Matthew continues, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon"?'

'You have an enviable memory.'

'It's a part of the job,' I said. 'So what's your answer? London or Berlin?'

'I thought I'd given you my answer.'

'Not quite. You haven't told me which is God, and which is mammon.'

'You come here to my country, and you threaten me as if I was in your country.' His voice was still calm but he was hardening and that was good. This was the nearest he'd come to bluster, but I could see now that I'd had it all wrong. He wasn't an unofficial collaborator; this man had the resilience of a trained and experienced Stasi man.

I said, 'You understand what I'm offering, don't you? You see the alternatives?'

'Why don't you make them clearer?'

'I can't make it much clearer,' I said. 'You know as well as I do that if you don't cooperate, London will have to eliminate you. They can't permit you to walk away.'

'Eliminate me,' he said, repeating my word 'ausschalten', and making a movement with his fingers as if operating a light switch. 'Is this your idea? To give me a chance to join you in spying against my own people?'

'No,' I said. 'They wouldn't listen to me. I wanted to waste you, without the option.'

He responded with a grim smile. He was annoyed with himself for being stampeded into discussing a deal. The face remained as calm as ever, but there was suppressed anger to be seen around his mouth. 'You shit-head!' he said softly. 'I'll show you how we do the switching off — of filth like you.'

We had both started off this conversation with the wrong idea. It was nothing but good luck that had made my error of judgment work, while his misfired. Now, from his back pocket, he took a pigskin wallet. From a compartment in it he produced a sheet of paper and placed it on the table in front of me. I recognized what it was before he flattened it out for me to read. It was crudely printed on coarse yellowing paper. Constant folding had worn the paper so that it had almost separated into four quarters. It was a Stasi warrant. In the bottom corner there was a solemn man holding a numbered board up to the camera's lens. The text identified him as a captain employed by the Ministry of Security and enjoined all comers to help and assist him.

'I've seen one before,' I said, pushing the paper back towards him.

'I'm sure you have.'

'Think it over,' I said, getting to my feet. This was the dangerous moment; the time when he was deciding whether to arrest me, kill me, or keep me warm as some kind of insurance policy for his old age.

He smirked. It was a stand-off; the knowing smile was his acknowledgement of that fact, just as my telling him to think it over was my way of admitting as much. 'How would we make contact?' he said. 'Is there a code? . . . I mean in the event that I thought it over, and wanted to do a deal?'

'Usual network procedure. Ask for a dozen gold sovereigns in any context, and I'll come and see you.'

'Not thirty?' He looked at his watch. Everyone I talked to kept looking at their watches; it was beginning to give me a complex.

I buttoned up my coat and picked up my battered felt hat. I wondered if he would phone to have me stopped at the checkpoint. I was pleased that I had taken the extra precaution of changing transport and identity in Berlin.

'I have sick parishioners to comfort,' said the pastor as he struggled into a heavy overcoat and put on a woolen hat. 'I do my rounds every night, like a shepherd.'

'Or maybe like a jailer?' I said.

'I used to ask myself that question sometimes.'

'And?'

'In the end I decided there is no difference.' His voice was firmer now. He had called my bluff and ended up master. For the next few hours — while I was in the DDR — I was a card in his hand and he could play me any way he liked. I opened the door. 'Good night, Herr Samson,' he said. 'May the Lord protect you.'

I grunted a goodnight.

I'd parked in the school alley across the road but the pastor's car — a Trabant even older than mine — was sheltered in the nearby barn. It took me a few minutes to scrape the frost from my glass but the pastor had had the foresight to protect his windshield with newspaper. Now he removed it and jumped into his car to watch me as I made repeated attempts to start up. He was going to see me off before he left; he didn't want me following him.

Finally the loud rattle of my engine came, provoking a clatter of wings from the nearby trees as alarmed birds climbed sleepily into the night sky. I let in the clutch and moved forward cautiously, glancing in the mirror as I carefully negotiated the narrow stone entrance that bridged the ditch.

Reflected in the driving mirror I saw the pastor's Trabant. As I watched, it lit up inside, as if he was testing a powerful flashlight. In its bright interior I could see his scowling face, his spectacle lenses flashing like silver dollars. Later I realized that this preliminary glow was some kind of misfire. Immediately the first blaze of light was overcome by a brighter one that transformed the car's glasswork into sheets of polished silver. Fragments of flying glass caught the light of the explosion and enclosed the car in what was, for one brief instant, a great globe of glittering mirrors. Then it all fell to the ground and disappeared like snowflakes. By the time the force of the explosion came, I was through the entrance gate and on to the road. The blast almost rolled my car into the ditch, and the sound hit my eardrums like a thunderclap. The echoes of the explosion rolled across the yard and were replaced by a low hoarse roaring sound as the pastor's Trabbie became a sizzling furnace.