'Uncle Dodo, that's enough,' said Gloria sharply.

'Let him go on,' I said. 'I want to hear more.'

Like a cunning little animal his eyes went from one to the other of us. 'Berlin, the Ku-Damm,' he said meaningfully.

'What about it?'

'Schneider, von Schild und Weber.'

'It sounds like a bank,' I said.

'It is a bank,' said Dodo with great satisfaction, as if his argument was already won. 'It is a bank.'

'So what?'

'You want me to go on, darling?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Weber – grandson of the original partner – handles special financial matters for the British government. That's where your money came from.' He recited it as if I was trying to make a fool of him.

'Money? What money? And how did I get it?' I asked, convinced now that he was crazy, as well as drunk.

'You're a signatory to the account.'

'Rubbish.'

'It's a fact, and easily proved or disproved.' The waiter came and put a small plate of chocolate mints on the table. Dodo didn't offer them round, he peeled the wrapping from one, inspected it and popped it into his mouth.

'Who told you all this?' I said.

Still chewing the mint, Dodo said, 'I've known young Weber for years. When I was pensioned off from the Department, it was Weber's father who arranged everything for me.'

I looked at him, trying to see into his mind. He chewed at the mint and stared at me with unseeing eyes.

'You're always in Berlin, darling. Go to the Ku-Damm and have a word with Weber.'

'Maybe I shall.'

'The money is sure to be held in short-term bonds. It's the way they do it. A dozen or more signatories to the account – no less! – but there have to be two different signatures. You and your wife, for instance.'

'A dozen signatories?'

'Don't pretend to be so naive, darling. That's a common device, we all know that.' The malevolence was unbridled now.

'Bogus names?' said Gloria.

'No need to use bogus names. Use real names. It disguises the purpose of the fund, and can give an account a bit of class if someone came snooping around. Providing the signatories don't find out about it.'

'Perhaps that's how Bernard's name got there,' said Gloria softly. She obviously believed Dodo's story.

Dodo's beady eyes were almost hypnotic. There was something frightening about him: a whiff of evil. 'If you never got your hands on any of that loot, you've really been swindled darling.' He laughed softly enough to show that it wasn't a possibility he would spare much time pondering. Then he looked at Gloria, inviting her to join in the fun. When she looked away he picked up his drink and swilled down a good mouthful of it. 'Must go,' he said. 'Must go.'

I didn't get up. I let the old fool heave himself to his feet and stagger off in the direction of the door. Gloria and I sat together in silence for a few minutes. Finally, in what was doubtless an attempt to pacify me about Dodo's offensiveness, she said, 'He was in a funny mood tonight.'

'And I needed a good laugh,' I said.

It was the day before I was due to pay my regular visit to Berlin that Werner phoned and asked me if I was coming with only hand baggage. I was. Such visits required only a document case big enough to hold pyjamas and shaving gear.

'Could you bring a parcel for me? I wouldn't ask you but Ingrid needs it urgently.'

'Ingrid?' I said. 'Who's Ingrid?'

'Ingrid Winter. Lisl's niece. She's helping me in the hotel.'

'Oh, is she?'

'It will be heavy,' he said apologetically. 'It's curtain material from Peter Jones, the department store in Sloane Square. Ingrid says she can't get the patterns she wants anywhere in Berlin.'

'Okay, Werner. I said okay.'

'Wait till you see the hotel. Almost everything is changed, Bernie. You'll never recognize the place.'

Oh, my God! I thought. 'And how is Lisl taking to all the changes?'

'Lisl?' said Werner as if having difficulty in remembering who Lisl was. 'Lisl loves the changes. Lisl says it's wonderful.'

'She does?'

'We wouldn't do anything Lisl didn't like, Bernie. You know that. It's Lisl we're doing it for isn't it?'

'And Lisl likes it?'

'Of course she does. I've just told you she does.'

'See you tomorrow, Werner.'

'And it's bulky too.'

'Stop worrying, Werner. I said I'll bring it.'

'If the customs want to charge: pay. Ingrid wants to get the curtain people started on the work.'

'Okay.'

'You'll stay the night? Here? We have room.'

'Thanks Werner. Yes, I'd like that.'

'Ingrid cooks a great Hoppel-Poppel.'

'I haven't eaten Hoppel-Poppel in twenty years,' I said. 'Not a real one.'

'With fresh herbs,' said Werner, 'that's the secret. Fresh eggs and fresh herbs.'

'Sounds like Ingrid is not getting in the way,' I said. 'Oh, no,' said Werner. 'She's not getting in the way at all.'

I cursed Werner, Ingrid and the roll of curtain material before I got to Berlin-Tegel. The customs man watched me struggling with it and just grinned. In Berlin even the customs men are human.

Werner struggled to get it into the back seat of his brand-new silver 7 series BMW, and even then the end of the roll of cloth protruded through the open window. 'This isn't you, Werner,' I said as he roared off into the traffic with an insolent skill that I never knew he had. 'This flashy new fashionable car with the big engine. It's not you, Werner.'

'I've changed, Bernie,' he said.

'Because of running the hotel?'

'That's right. Because I'm running the hotel,' and he smiled at some secret joke as he went weaving through the fast-moving traffic that fills West Berlin at this time of the morning. The heater was on, there were grey clouds overhead and it was beginning to rain. Berliners were still wrapped up in their heavy clothes. Spring doesn't hurry on its way to Berlin.

He dropped me at Frank Harrington's office. Once there I started to earn my pay. Frank, and a couple of his senior people, plodded with me through the latest London directives. Every few minutes there would be some expletive or a sharp intake of breath as I revealed a particularly impractical or ill-advised notion that had sprung from London Central's committees. I was only there to take the brunt of the Field Office objections, and everyone present recognized that as my role. So I smiled and shrugged and wriggled and prevaricated as they hit me over the head with their reasoned objections. And eventually the game ended and, our role-playing abandoned, I was allowed to resume the more comfortable persona of Bernard Samson, former Berlin Field Unit agent.

It was six-thirty by the time I finished work. The rain had come and gone but there was still a drizzle. The offices had emptied and the streets were crowded. Like rivers of flame the flashing signs made brightly coloured reflections in the wet streets. The car took me to Lisl Hennig's hotel. As I got out of it I stood in the rain and examined the facade apprehensively, but whatever changes Werner had wrought they were not to be seen from the street. This was the same old house that I'd known all my life. They were all the same, these Ku-Damm houses near the Zoo. They were built at the turn of the century by speculative builders for nouveau riche businessmen, and the adornments of bearded gods and buxom nymphs were chosen from catalogues by those who wanted to customize their homes. Some of them were grotesquely overdone.

Since then the Red Army's artillery, and the Anglo-American bombing fleets, had added further distinguishing features to all the buildings of Berlin, so that Lisl's house was scarred and chipped with a pox of splinter damage. The fighting done, the roof had been renewed and the decorated window surrounds of the upper storey had been shoddily and hastily patched up. Real repairs were forty years overdue.