Frank nodded without looking up at me. 'I thought you'd say that. You'd have to say that, Bernard. Whatever it was like, you'd have to say it was rubbish.'

'Can I buy you a drink?' I said.

'I'd better get back to the office and put that stuff into the shredder.'

'Okay,' I said. He'd guessed that London wanted it destroyed. Frank knew how their minds worked. Maybe he'd been here too long.

'You'll be wanting to go round town and see some of your playmates, I suppose.'

'Not me, Frank.'

He smiled and puffed his pipe. 'You were always like that, Bernard. You never could bear letting anyone know what you were up to.' It was just the sort of thing I remember him saying to me when I was a child. 'Well, I'll look forward to seeing you for dinner tomorrow night. Just wear anything, it's only potluck.'

After he'd left, I went to my suitcase to get a fresh shirt. A folded piece of envelope, used as a bookmark, had fallen out of the street guide Frank had returned to me. It was addressed to Frau Harrington, but the address was no more than a postbox number followed by a post code. It was a damned weird way to get a letter to Frank's wife. I put it into my wallet.

The Russians got the State Opera, the Royal Palace, the government buildings and some of the worst slums; the Western Powers got the Zoo, the parks, the department stores, the nightclubs and the villas of the rich in Grunewald. And spiked through both sectors, like a skewer through a shish kebab, there is the East-West Axis.

The Bendlerblock, from where the High Command sent the German Army to conquer Europe, has now been converted to offices for a cosmetic manufacturer. The Bendlerstrasse has been renamed. Nothing here is what it seems, and that appeals to me. The Anhalter Bahnhof, a yellow brick façade with three great doors, was once the station for the luxury express trains to Vienna and all of southeast Germany. It is no longer a busy terminus. The great edifice stands upon a piece of waste ground long since abandoned to weeds and wild flowers. Werner Volkmann chose it as a meeting place as he had sometimes done before. It was usually a sign that he was feeling especially paranoid. He was carrying a small document case and wearing a big black overcoat with an astrakhan collar. On someone else it might have suggested an impresario or a nobleman, but it simply made Werner look like someone who bought his clothes at the flea market in the disused S-Bahn station on Tauentzienstrasse.

It was getting dark. Werner stopped and looked up the street. From over the high graffito-covered wall there was the reflected glare of bluish-green light that in any other city would have marked the position of a large stadium lit for an evening's football. But beyond this wall there was the large open space of the Potsdamerplatz. Once the busiest traffic intersection in Europe, it had now become a brightly lit Todesstreifen, a death strip, silent and still, with a maze of barbed wire, mines and fixed guns.

Werner loitered on the corner for a moment, turning to watch a dozen or more youngsters as they passed him and continued towards Hallesches Tor. They were attired in a weird combination of clothes: tight leotards, high boots and Afghan coats on the girls; studded leather sleeveless jackets and Afrika Korps caps on the men. Some of them had their hair dyed in streaks of primary colours. Werner was no more surprised by this sample of Berlin youth than I was. Berlin residents are exempt from military service, and there is a tendency among the young to celebrate it. But Werner continued to watch them, and waited, still staring, until a yellow double-decker bus stopped and took aboard everyone waiting at the bus stop. Only then did he feel safe. He turned abruptly and crossed the street at the traffic lights. I followed as if to catch the green.

He went into Café Leuschner and, after putting his hat on the rack, chose a seat at the rear. His document case he placed carefully on the seat next to him. I waved as if catching sight of him for the first time and went over to his table. Werner called to the waiter for two coffees. I sat down with a sigh. Werner had arrived late, an unforgivable sin in my business.

'It was one of Frank Harrington's people,' said Werner. 'I had to be sure I'd got rid of him.'

'Why would Frank have someone following you?'

' London has been kicking Frank's ass,' said Werner. 'There is talk of replacing him immediately.'

'What have you got to do with that? Why follow you?'

'Is there some kind of leak in London?' said Werner. Knowing it was unlikely that I'd answer him, he said, 'It's only fair you tell me. You ask me to go over the wire for you, it's only fair you tell me what's going on in London.'

'No leak,' I said. I might have added that no one had yet asked him to go 'over the wire' and that his regular visits to the East were a damned good reason for him knowing as little as possible about what was happening in London.

'And the money? Will London help me with the bank?'

'No money either,' I said.

Werner hunched lower over the table and nodded sorrowfully. I looked round the café. It was a roomy place, its gilt-framed mirrors supported by plaster cherubs and its plastic-topped tables fashioned to look like marble. There was a fine old counter that ran the whole length of the room. I'd known it when the Leuschners' father was serving behind it. Berlin kids could get genuine American ice cream here until Leuschner's daughter married her soldier and went to live in Arkansas.

The coffee arrived: two small electroplated pots, together with tiny jugs of cream, sugar wrapped in coloured paper advertising tea, and the usual floral cups and saucers. Floral-patterned cups and saucers: they reminded me of my childhood breakfasts when my father used to correct my mother's inadequate German.' "Es geht um die Wurst",' "It depends on the sausage", means "Everything depends on it". But "Mir ist alles Wurst", or "It's all sausage to me", means "I really don't care".' My mother just smiled and poured more coffee into the floral-patterned cups. She had intended to say that there might not be enough sausage for all of us that evening. But my father was inclined to make everything more complicated than it need be. That too was a characteristic of the self-made man.

I said, 'Why did we go through all that business of meeting without being observed? I could just have met you in here.'

'And then we would have both been sitting here with Frank's watcher.'

'Have it your way, Werner,' I said.

'Frank Harrington is worried,' said Werner.

'What about?' I said, no longer entirely concealing my irritation. 'I thought Frank wouldn't let you near his office.'

Werner smiled one of the special oriental smiles that he thought made him appear inscrutable. 'I don't have to go into the office to hear the latest news from there. Frank is getting a lot of trouble from London. Rumours say there's a leak. Frank is frightened he'll be the scapegoat. He's frightened they'll get rid of him and find some way of not paying his pension.'

'Balls!'

'If Frank was recalled, do you think the Berlin office would start to use me again?'

'There is no leak of information.'

'Good,' said Werner, looking at me and nodding. There was nothing quite so disconcerting as Werner trying to be sincere. 'Max Binder went back. He had a wife and three kids, and he couldn't get a job. Finally he went back to the East.'

Max Binder was at school with us, a studious kid who sang the solo part in 'Silent Night' every Christmas and had a secret hoard of forbidden Nazi badges that we all coveted. I'd always liked him. 'Max is one of the best,' I said. 'His wife was from the East, wasn't she?'

'They got one of those "wedding cake" apartments on Stalinallee.' Werner still called the street by its old name. 'Nowadays people realize that those apartments are not so bad. At least they have high ceilings and lots of cupboards and storage space. The new places out at Marzahn are really jammed tight together. They've got families of four living in the space of Max's broom cupboard.'