Sometimes I think he loved her because she was incapable of loving anyone. A friend of mine once explained the lifetime he'd given to the study of reptiles by saying that he was fascinated by their complete lack of any response to affection. And I think Werner's relationship with Zena was like that. She seemed to have no real feelings about anyone alive or dead. People were all the same for her, and she dealt with them by means of a curious highly developed sense of self-imposed and carefully apportioned 'justice' that some of her critics had called 'fascistic'.

But it was no use talking to Werner about Zena. For him she could do no wrong. I remember him falling in love with girls at school. His love was boundless; the respect he showed for them usually earned only their withering contempt, so that eventually Werner's ardour faded and died. So I thought it would be when Zena came along. But Zena wasn't so profligate with Werner's love. She welcomed his affection, she encouraged him and knew how to handle Werner so that she could do almost anything with him.

Werner picked at the fish mousse. It was dry and completely tasteless, only the creamy watercress sauce had any flavour. It was salty. 'Refrigerated and then warmed in a micro-wave,' said Werner knowledgeably. He pushed the mousse aside and started on the steak as I'd already done. 'It looks as if you liked the mousse,' he said accusingly.

'It was delicious,' I said. 'But I'm beginning to think that this is your well-done fillet.' By that time I'd already eaten some of his steak. Silently he passed the untouched underdone one to me and took what was left of the steak I'd half-eaten. 'Sorry, Werner,' I said.

'You eat everything,' he said. 'Even at school you ate everything.'

'You won't like the underdone one,' I told him, and offered it back to him.

He declined. 'I know,' he said.

To change the subject I said, 'How is the hotel?'

'It's going all right,' he said sharply. Then he added, 'Did I tell you that that damned woman Ingrid Winter insists on coming to Berlin?'

'She wants some things,' I said, keeping it vague.

'She wants to help,' said Werner as if it was the direst threat in his vocabulary.

'Tell her you don't need help.' It seemed simple enough.

'I can't stop her coming. She's Lisl's niece…'

'… and she has a claim on the house. Yes, you'd better be nice to her, Werner, or she could upset the whole apple-cart.'

'Just as long as she doesn't get in the way,' he said ominously. Werner was in a bad mood.

I decided I might as well face it. He wasn't going to simmer down. 'Are you going to tell me about Zena?' I said as casually as I could.

'Tell you what?'

'You're not worried about what could happen to her for knocking on the wrong door in Frankfurt an der Oder, Werner. Not Zena, she'd talk her way out of that one with a paper bag over her head.'

He looked at me with that impassive look I knew so well and then chewed a piece of steak before replying. 'I should have given you some red wine,' he said. 'I've got some for you.'

'Never mind the wine, What's the real story?'

He dabbed his lips with a dinner napkin and said, 'Zena's uncle has a wonderful collection of very old books and crucifixes, icons and things…' He looked at me. I stared back at him and said nothing. Werner amended it to, 'Maybe he buys them… I'm not sure.'

'And maybe he's not her uncle,' I suggested.

'Oh, I think he's her… Well, yes maybe an old friend. Yes, sometimes he buys these things from Poles who come into East Germany looking for work. Bibles mostly: seventeenth-century. He's an expert on early Christian art.'

'And Zena smuggles them back to the West, and they are sold in those elegant shops in Munich where orthodontists go to furnish their Schlosser.'

Werner wasn't listening. 'Zena doesn't understand how they work,' he said lugubriously.

'How who work?'

'The Stasi. If she goes calling, the way Frank has told her to, they'll just follow her day after day to see where she goes. But Zena won't realize that. The whole lot of them will go into the bag. They'll accuse her of stealing State art treasures or something.'

'The People's art treasures,' I corrected him. 'Yes, well they won't like the idea of her exporting antiques without a licence.' I tried to make it sound like a minor misdeed, a technical infraction of a customs regulation. 'But Frank wouldn't know anything about that, of course.'

Without answering Werner got up and went to the tiny kitchen. He came back with the half-empty bottle of Meursault and a wineglass for himself. He poured more wine for me and some for himself too and put the bottle on the table, having put a coaster into position for it. I watched him drink. He pulled a face like a small child asked to swallow some nasty medicine. Werner knew a lot about wine but he always treated it like sour grape juice. 'Suppose Frank knew all about Zena and the antique books?' Werner said slowly and carefully. 'After all, Frank is supposed to be running an intelligence service, isn't he?'

'Yes,' I said, ignoring the sarcasm.

'And suppose Frank had reason to believe that by delivering poor Zena to the Stasi he'd get them to lay off his Bizet people. Maybe let them get away?'

I said nothing. I sipped my wine and tried to conceal my thoughts. Then bloody good for Frank, I thought. But it all sounded highly unlikely. I suspected that Frank was still too fond of Zena to throw her to the wolves. But if he'd worked out some bizarre deal that got two or three of our people off the hook, in exchange for a ring of cheap crooks who were running a racket involving religious antiques, books, and God knows what else, stuff that might well have been stolen in the first place, then good for Frank. I would be all in favour of a deal like that. So I said nothing.

'Don't forget it's Zena,' said Werner.

No, don't forget it's Zena. That would make a swop like that a real public benefit. 'No,' I said. 'It's her I'm thinking about.'

'He's a bloody Judas,' said Werner. He drank some more wine but seemed no more happy with the taste of it than he was the first time.

'Have you got any reason to think so?' I asked.

'I feel it in my guts,' said Werner in a voice I didn't recognize.

'Frank wouldn't do a thing like that,' I said, more to calm Werner than because I completely believed it. Frank liked Zena but Frank could be ruthless: I knew it and so did Werner. And so, if she had any brains, did the wretched Zena.

'Yes, Frank would!' snapped Werner. 'It's just the sort of thing he would do. It's the sort of thing the English are notorious for. You know that.'

'Perfidious Albion?' I said.

He didn't think that was funny. He didn't answer or even look at me. He just sat there with his face tight, his eyes watery and his big hands clenched together so tightly that the knuckles whitened.

I'd never seen him in such a state before. Whether it was concern for Zena or a burning hatred for Frank, it was eating him up. I watched him biting his lip with rage and I worried about him. I'd seen men wound up this tight before; and I'd seen them snap. 'I'll see what I can do,' I said, but it was too late for such offers.

Through gritted teeth Werner said, 'First thing tomorrow morning I'm going to the office. I'll find the D-G and make him do something. Make him!'

'I wouldn't advise that, Werner,' I said anxiously. 'No, Werner, I really wouldn't.' The idea of this black-bearded Werner shouting and struggling in the lobby of London Central with the redoubtable Sergeant-Major Gaskell trying to subdue him, and the questions that would inevitably be directed at me in consequence, was something I didn't care to contemplate. I tipped the rest of the Meursault into my glass. It was warm; I suppose he'd not put the bottle back into the refrigerator. All in all, Thursday was not a good day.