'You won't go after him?' she said.

'Of course not.'

I could see she was trying to think of some conclusive arguments that would persuade me not to try to extricate the kid from the mess he would undoubtedly get into over there in Allenstein. She knew the Stasi arrest teams were already in position, no doubt sitting patiently and twiddling their handcuffs. 'Herr Harrington will place the blame to me,' Lida said. 'He'll say I should have stopped you.'

'If you send for a doctor, Lida, your job is on the line.'

'I won't send for a doctor, Herr Samson.' When Lida had gone, something Fiona had said on the phone came back to me. She'd said that Frank Harrington's family liked to get together. It suddenly brought to mind the moment when Stefan Kosinski had leapt out of the bathroom. He'd said the Kosinski family kept together, or liked to keep together, or something of that sort. I'd let it pass at the time, but looking back on it I could see what he meant. Was he perhaps referring to a Kosinski family tomb to which the mortal remains of George Kosinski would be consigned? I'd seen no family tomb, neither had it ever been mentioned. Was the family tomb the answer to why George Kosinski had gone back to Poland? Poles liked to be buried in their homeland; there was no doubt about that. Was he going to die there? Or was it about burying his wife Tessa in Polish soil?

With these fuzzy thoughts in my mind I dozed a few minutes more. Then I climbed out of bed and dressed myself very slowly. I felt dizzy and nauseated but I was sure that moving about and working would be rehabilitating. I steadied myself with one hand while getting my shoes on, and made sure my wallet and keys were in my pockets. When finally I was ready to face the world I went out through my little bedroom door, locked it and then turned round. The act of turning was all that was needed to bring on a sudden attack of dizziness, and I crumpled at the knees and fell down the short steep flight of stairs. I heard a blood-curdling scream which I belatedly recognized was my own, then I landed at the bottom with a crash. I couldn't move. I was upside down on the narrow staircase with my legs twisted behind me. My face and arm hurt very much. I tried to reach out a hand, but that increased the pain and I blacked out.

When I came round again I was back in bed and some moonfaced fellow was rubbing alcohol on my bare arm. He then proceeded to take a sample of my blood.

'Hold still, Mr. Samson. This won't take a moment.'

'Are you Dr. Litzmann?' I asked him.

'Alas no. My name is Picard; I'm English. Major Picard; Royal Army Medical Corps.' I recognized him as one of Frank's drinking pals: Major 'Picky' Picard, the oldest surviving member of the British garrison. The plummy British accent, florid complexion, hair brushed tight against his head, loud and lumpy tweed suit with a battery of pens and pencils protruding from his waistcoat pocket, all contributed an element of the self-parodying Englishness to which the long-term exile sometimes resorts. Army, yes. The brisk manner of his professional attention was frequently found among doc- tors who bad learned their trade tending battle casualties.

'Did Lisl send for you?' I said suspiciously.

'I'm the departmental medical man for Mr. Harrington,' he said reassuringly, while devoting his attentions to the little red worm of blood that he'd just taken from my arm. 'I'm army: I'm vetted. I do all the medical checks for you people.'

'I'm not sick,' I said.

'You've got to rest, Mr. Samson. No bones broken but you will be nothing but bruises by morning,' he said, not without a certain relish.

'I've got work that must be done.' I eased back the bed cover as if to jump out of bed. He didn't stop me; I suppose he knew that I hadn't enough strength to blow my own nose.

'Work to be done, but not by you,' he said, rummaging through his case where I could see a large selection of nasty shiny implements. 'You're a civvie,' he said as if I might have forgotten that. 'I can put you into the Steglitz Clinic or I can let you rest here. Take your choice but there must be no question of your getting out of bed . . . not for three or four days. You've had a bad fall. As soon as you are fit enough I shall send you off for a couple of routine tests and a head scan. We mustn't take chances.'

'I'll stay in bed,' I said.

'That would be the best,' he said, and smiled as if accepting my word of honor. But really his smile was on account of the fact that he was filling his syringe. The next moment, with the merest prick of pain, he pumped enough dope into my arm to float me to the moon and have me doing my one-small-step-for-man routine, without a space-suit.

'Did Lida send for you?' I asked him while the room was going soft.

'No,' he said.

'Then who did?'

'Everyone has your best interests at heart, Mr. Samson.'

'I know. I want to send my benefactor a box of chocolates COD.'

'Mr Volkmann might like that,' said the doctor, 'but his wife tells me he's on a strict diet at present.'

As my head sank back into the pillow I noticed that the sheets and bedding had all been changed. Looking around the room I could see in the corner of it my sheets and blankets, soiled by vomit, squashed into a black plastic rubbish bag. 'That bloody Werner,' I said sleepily. 'I'll kill him.' I looked up at the doctor. He was watching me with that dispassionate expression with which zookeepers observe restless apes. I knew he'd given me a very generous dose of painkiller; that too was a characteristic of the army medicos.

'Yes, kill him,' said the doctor calmly. He pretended to look at my hand while taking my pulse in that furtive way that doctors always do, knowing that pulse-taking is something that will make the pulse-rate quicken. 'When you are stronger perhaps. I'm going to prescribe some pills for you. They are just aspirin, vitamin C and glucose, but in winter they sometimes help.'

I looked at him suspecting that he was feeding me sleeping pills or some other sort of dope. 'What do you think is wrong with me, Doctor?'

'Apart from your fall down the stairs, nothing serious. Debilitating but not serious. I think you must have picked up the virus that has been affecting the young women in the cashier's office. The newspapers are calling it Chinese 'flu.'

11

West Berlin.

What Lisl called 'the flashy new American hotel' was really three Berlin town houses tastefully converted into unobtrusive 'residential apartments.' It was the sort of place that rich American businessmen liked. The apartments were no larger than suites, but for men passing through, an apartment number and a street address looked better on the personal notepaper that was supplied to every guest. And each apartment had a study equipped with fax and a photocopier and multiple phone lines and modem plugs. Laptops for rent: call reception.

Gloria was booked into apartment number seven on the third floor. It came complete with antique German-style furniture, colorful drawings of somewhat unlikely traditional costumes from Sachsen and Baden-Württemberg, a bowl of fresh fruit that looked like a Dutch still-life painting, an ornate china dish in which four Niederegger marzipan chocolates were arranged around a miniature room-service menu, and a tall Rosenthal vase holding ten fresh pink long-stem roses. The elaborately painted doors of the armoire were opened to reveal a giant-screen TV complete with VCR and a selection of Hollywood films on video. Through the paneled connecting door I could see the adjoining bedroom, where soft indirect lights shone upon the silk bed cover and oriental carpet.

'Will you have dinner with me, Gloria?' I said it hurriedly as if indifferent to her answer.