'If all they wanted to do is return Tessa's body to him, they could just push it across Potsdamerplatz on a mortuary trolley.'

'What's Dicky Cruyer's theory?'

'Dicky doesn't have theories; he just gives orders.'

'Yes, he's the Europe supremo in London nowadays isn't he?'

'There is a rumor to that effect,' I said.

'Will you go back?'

'To Poland? Not if I can avoid it. Not at this time of year.' Werner smiled as if I'd aniused him. 'They'll ask you, Bernie. You can bet a million dollars to an old shirt button that they'll send you back there.'

'What makes you so sure?'

'George Kosinski's behavior worries them. You worry them. Sending you there with a direct order to bring George back will put you both on the line.'

'Is that the way you see it?'

'It's the way London will see it.'

'For London read Dicky?'

'No, not Dicky. You have nothing to fear from Dicky; he's too lazy, too concerned with his ambitions to spend much time planning your downfall. It's the back-room boys and the D-G. It's Uncle Silas talking to Frank Harrington. It's Bret and . . . the others.'

'Were you going to say Fiona?'

'No, no, no,' said Werner, rather too emphatically to be convincing. 'She's one hundred percent on your side. She loves you, Bernie.'

'You said that with wholehearted conviction, Werner.'

He rubbed his face reflectively. I shouldn't tell you this, Bernie, but I was Fiona's case officer while she was working for the Stasi.'

'You were?' I took a grip on the chair so as not to fall to the floor with surprise. I was told that Bret Rensselaer was Fiona's case officer.'

'It depends what you call being a case officer,' said Werner. 'Can you imagine Bret going across to the other side? Bret couldn't find his way to Fernsehturm without a guide dog.' Since East Berlin's TV tower was 365 meters tall this verdict was quite a slur on Bret's sense of direction.

So Werner had been Fiona's contact all that time? The Department, had painted Werner the deepest shade of black while using him as a key figure in one of the most risky, delicate and vital tasks they'd ever under- taken. 'Jesus Christ, Werner. You. Fiona's case officer?' I wasn't going to tell you. Not ever. You'll keep it to yourself, won't you? I thought perhaps Fiona would have confided in you, but I should have known better. She's amazing isn't she?'

'Amazing,' I agreed.

'I saw tier in some of the worst times,' said Werner, his hand shielding his eyes as if he was seeing the past all over again. 'She was suicidal at times. More than once I thought we'd have to grab her and run with her.'

'Was there a contingency plan for that?'

'No. No contingency plan. London said any emergency preparations would mean telling more people . . . and endangering her.'

'Oh, yes. Good old London Central. They wouldn't want to endanger her.'

'Endanger her more,' explained Werner, who could sometimes become surprisingly defensive about the callous antics of London Central. 'How is Fiona? How is she now?'

'Since we are exchanging confidences,' I said, 'I think she's slowly coming unglued.'

'Everyone says she's fit and well and fully recovered.'

'You asked me what I thought,' I said. 'I don't enjoy saying it. The others only see her when she is putting on a show; I see her at, home when her defenses are down. I see her as she really is.'

'Yes, I asked you,' said Werner.

'It's largely the fact that she's in such a vulnerable condition that gives me the strength to go on.'

'With the marriage?'

'Don't get me wrong; I love her. I love her to distraction but I no longer find it easy to live with her. Does that sound crazy?'

'How could I find that crazy? Do you think it's easy living with Zena? She's a spiteful egoistical nagger. And anyway I have always wanted to have a family. And Zena is determined not to have kids. But I love her; I can't bear the idea of someone else being with her. When I'm not with her I think of her a the time.'

Werner had never bared his heart like this to me. I didn't know how to react to his confession. I looked away. I looked at the cupboard behind the bar where the booze was locked.

'You're lucky,' said Werner. 'Fiona never goes out of her way to give you a bad time, does she?'

'No,' I admitted.

'You say she's not well. How can I doubt it? That night when we pulled Fiona out . . . that night of the shooting on the Autobahn. She was ill then — she was ill a long time before that. Fiona should have been hospitalized.'

'That night — before we flew to California — she saw a doctor and the shrink too.'

'Department people; ordered to put an okay rubber stamp on her and send her off for debriefing.'

'I suppose so.'

'What about you, Bernie? Maybe you should have seen the shrink too.'

'Me? There's nothing wrong with me, Werner.' It came out too quickly and Werner noticed that. 'You shot two men that night, Bernie. What do you know about them?'

'Two hoodlums. One of them was Stinnes, the one we chased around Mexico; a hard-line Party man with a lot of deaths on his conscience if the Me has got it right.'

'And the other man?'

'His side-kick?'

'His name was Harry Kennedy,' said Werner. 'Canadian, someone said, but that may have been a cover. He was a doctor of medicine working in London. Then he wangled some temporary job here at the Charité in Berlin. Ardent lefty. Party member from a long time back.'

I could tell from Werner's voice that more was coming and that it was not going to be something to celebrate. But Werner was not enjoying being the bearer of bad tidings; his face had become as hard as stone and almost as gray. He wet his lips. 'Go on, Werner,' I said.

'Kennedy was assigned to monitor Fiona.'

'For the Stasi?'

'And for Moscow. He made regular visits to East Berlin to see her. The Charité was just a cover. He met her in London first. They saw a lot of each other.'

'Were they . . . ?'

'Yes, Bernie, they were.'

At that moment I saw Werner's face vividly. I saw the set of his mouth and that black moustache, the narrowed eyes and the bushy hair in which for the first time I saw strands of gray. But his words were not so clear: they rattled around in my head like loose marbles in an old tin can, and made as much sense. Yes, they were. Yes, they were. Yes, they were. What did Werner mean? I remembered shooting that man on the Autobahn. It was one of those few times when it's necessary to waste an unsuspecting sitting target. No one likes that kind of 'execution hit,' but it was in the line of duty. Once done I had never brooded about it.

'I almost went along there unarmed,' I told Werner. He nodded. By a bizarre stroke of fate I was carrying that night a massive Webley revolver that I'd found amongst my Dad's old possessions in a suitcase at Lisl's. My father's army-issue handgun! I had rested the gun when I fired it, and in my mind's eye I could recall my target. He was still and unsuspecting. This unknown man, this Dr. Kennedy, this lover of my wife as I now know him to be, took my first shot in the chest. It must have punctured the heart. His heart: how well I had chosen my point of aim. That sort of slow heavy round, fired by an expert gunman, picks a man up, carries him along with its force and dumps him on the ground a lifeless bundle of rags. And I was an expert gunman.

'There was a lot of shooting,' I said. 'That fellow Teacher was there with a 9mm, and that American bastard brought along a pump-handle shotgun.'

'There was a lot of shooting. We'll never be sure exactly what happened,' said Werner. He got up, went to the bar and poured large measures of malt whiskey into two of Lisl's best cut-glass tumblers. Lisl allowed him to have the key of the cupboard because he was so damned abstemious. I downed the whiskey he gave me in one gulp. I felt it blazing a trail through my insides.