'I know. Everyone here was angry. It was my fault. The local Bezpieca people did everything to retrieve it and then went to London after it. I was deeply indebted to them after that. They said I must come here, to my brother's house, and wait.'

'Wait?' I said. 'Wait for what? They sent you here to wait for Tessa? Alive? How could you have swallowed that fairy story?'

'She's alive and she's pregnant,' said George, as if this disclosure would catch me off-guard.

'She's dead,' I told him.

'No. Next week they said.'

'Because they will invent an emergency. And they will tell you she died in childbirth. Then they will foist off a look-alike body for the burial. And they'll bring you a smiling baby they will persuade you is yours. The baby will be Polish and they will have locked you up really tight. That's their plan, George.'

'You can't leave anything alone, can you Bernard?'

'Don't tell me you never had the thought of such a deception cross your mind?'

'Next week we'll see.'

'You think you're a big-shot, George, but for the people you deal with here you are a nothing. The first stage of grief is denial. But now it's time to move on.'

He sank down into a chair. 'Our delightful father-in-law said more or less the same thing. He doesn't believe Tessa is still alive. I'm the only one who believes it. I persuaded the old pig to come out here to Warsaw. One of the Polish security men went all through the postmortem and photos of the dissected body with him. I couldn't bear to look at any of it but they say it's clearly not Tessa; it was a Stasi lieutenant — a woman — who was there on the Autobahn that night.'

'But father-in-law still thinks his daughter is dead?'

'He's stubborn,' said George. 'He said I'd ruined his holiday in the Caribbean, and that I should refund his air-fare out here. It was a joke of course; but you know his jokes, don't you?'

'He's realistic,' I said. 'I saw the same post-mortem material; they brought it to London and then killed the man who delivered it so we couldn't interrogate him. I have the same junk in a file at the office. It's phoney, George. I'm sorry to say it but it's an example of the trouble they take faking their disinformation evidence, and getting rid of anyone who knows the truth. Tessa is dead.'

George picked up my map, got up and went to the window to study it by daylight. 'So this region was part of Hitler's wartime headquarters? Where did you get this map?' He took off his glasses and peered at it closely. 'Look at the size of the place . . .' The map was a photocopy of a wartime German one. It showed all the wooden buildings, bunkers, roads, checkpoints, and the railway line and the sidings and the train stations and the airstrips, that comprised the Wolfschanze. 'They tried to put a bomb under him, didn't they? Somewhere out there in the forest there's a rotting splinter of that wooden hut . . . Have you seen all that broken concrete and the half-buried steps and ventilation shafts . . .? Dig out the earth from those collapsed tunnels and we'd find the maps and operations rooms and maybe the dead generals too.'

'I don't think so, George. Generals are smart; they pack up and go away long before the enemy arrives.'

'And that's what I should do? Is that what you mean?'

'There's still enough time to get you out of here. But if you stay, you'll lose British nationality and my people will do nothing for fear of creating a diplomatic brawl.'

'In London they'll put me on trial for spying.'

'Not if you come clean with them.'

'But you said they knew . . . Weren't you sent after me because I'd been an agent for the Bezpieca?'

'That was just one of my hunches, George.'

'Not really an agent. I could explain to your people . . . I wouldn't have endangered any of you, Bernard.'

'That's good to know, George.'

'You don't understand.'

'I understand, George. They've made a fool of you. These people — Bezpieca, Stasi, KGB — they all work hand in glove. Their latest gimmick is to tell you Tessa is still alive. Have they threatened to betray you to the British? Well they like stick and carrot; it's the way their minds work. But you have nothing to be afraid of, have you?'

'It's all my own fault.'

'Come home, George. Come and tell us all you know. You're a Londoner; you're not Polish. Forget all this crap they've been feeding you.'

'Stefan says . . .'

'Stefan made his own pact with the devil. His wife is a part of the regime. But you are still free to choose.'

There was a long silence while he refolded the map with exaggerated care. 'They arrested Uncle Nico. Stefan did nothing to stop them. Nico is in a camp in the south. He took that damned biography of Bishop Stanislaus to a publisher. It was read by an army censor, and they said it was treason.'

'I thought it was about a bishop who lived in the eleventh century,' I said. Poor Uncle Nico. Even the best of the army's detention camps provided rigorous conditions for young fit men. He was unlikely to survive a harsh winter there.

'That's right; Stanislaus the Bishop of Cracow, our patron saint. He excommunicated the tyrant Boleslaw II and the brutal knights that were at his court . . . Boleslaw had him executed, or did it personally if you want Uncle Nico's version. The execution of the Bishop brought a curse upon the royal line. Church versus State. You see how dangerous that could be?'

'I can see the regime wouldn't take to it as a story-line.'

'Uncle Nico let me read the typescript. It was a thinly veiled attack on the present regime. Cleverly done but too long, and too boring, I would have thought. There were sly little touches, and contemporary parallels. And the death of Father Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984, which has been blamed on the Bezpieca, was artfully worked into it. But the book needed editing and a lot of work.'

'What are you, a literary critic?' I scoffed. 'Why didn't you warn the old man what he was getting into?'

'How could I guess he'd have the nerve to take that bundle of scribble to a publisher? He'd been rewriting it for years and years. It was nowhere near fit to publish.' Again George paused, thinking about the old man, and perhaps remembering everything the old man had risked for the two boys. I didn't break into his thoughts. 'If you think you can get me out of this, Bernard, get me out of it without trouble coming to me, and I'll do whatever you say.'

I plunged right in. 'There's an airstrip, part of the old Wolfschanze complex. It's just over five miles from here. There's a small plane coming from Sweden tonight. It's a tight fit but the pilot is a mercenary; and he only gets paid if he gets us out. I know him; he's been into worse landing places.'

'It sounds risky.'

'I went there yesterday. At. one end the trees have all grown taller, but the other end is a lake. There will be space enough. It is sheltered from the snow and most of the vegetation is dead.'

'An airstrip? In the forest?'

'The Wolfschanze had several strips; this one is the best-preserved. If the Luftwaffe could land a big Junkers there, it's big enough for my man. And in this sort of cold weather he doesn't have to worry about nosing over in the mud.'

'What if the weather closes in?'

'He'll try again tomorrow, and again the next night. He'll want his money: I know these bush pilots. Cloud and mist doesn't stop them. He'll come in using braille.'

He turned away. 'And you are sure she's . . .'

'Dead? Yes. I was there, George. I saw it.'

'What are you looking at?' he asked, noticing me glance at the snowy scene through the window.

'Tonight when we leave they will follow us,' I told him.

'Is there someone out there now?' said George.

'Yes, they're out there somewhere, and when we leave they'll be close behind us.'