He shot me a glance to see if I was being sardonic. 'I appreciate it,' he said. 'You're probably right.' He drank some of his gin and pulled a face as if he hated the taste. 'Frank lives in style, doesn't he? I was out at his country place last month. What a magnificent house. And he's got all the expense of living in Berlin as well.'

Two houses in Berlin, I felt tempted to say, but I sipped my drink and smiled.

Dicky Cruyer ran a finger along the waist of his white denim jeans until he felt the designer's leather label on his back pocket. Thus reassured, he said, 'The Harringtons are treated like local gentry in that village, you know. They have his wife presenting prizes at the village fete, judging at the gymkhana, and tasting the sponge cakes at the village hall. No wonder he wants to retire, with all that waiting for him. Have you been there?'

'Well, I've known him a long time,' I said, although why the hell I should find myself apologizing to Dicky for the fact that I'd been a regular guest at Frank's house ever since I was a small child, I don't know.

'Yes, I forget. He was a friend of your father's. Frank brought you into the service, didn't he?'

'In a way,' I said.

'The D-G recruited me,' said Dicky. My heart sank as he settled down into his Charles Eames leather armchair and rested his head back; it was usually the sign of Cruyer in reminiscent mood. 'He wasn't D-G then, of course, he was a tutor – not my tutor, thank God – and he buttonholed me in the college library one afternoon. We got to talking about Fiona. Your wife,' he added, just in case I'd forgotten her name. 'He asked me what I thought about the crowd she was running around with. I told him they were absolute dross. They were too! Trotskyites and Marxists and Maoists who could only argue in slogans and couldn't answer any political argument without checking back with Party headquarters to see what the official line was at that moment. Of course, it was years afterwards that I discovered Fiona was in the Department. Then of course I realized that she must have been mixing with that Marxist crowd on the D-G's orders all that time ago. What a fool she must have thought me. But I've always wondered why the D-G didn't drop a hint of what was really the score. Did you know Fiona infiltrated the Marxists when she was still only a kid?'

'Thanks for the drink, Dicky,' I said, draining my glass and deliberately putting it on his polished rosewood desk top. He jumped out of his chair, grabbed the glass and polished energetically at the place where it had stood. It never failed as a way of getting him back to earth from his long discursive monologues, but one day he was sure to tumble to it.

Having polished the desk with his handkerchief, and peered at the surface long enough to satisfy himself that it had been restored to its former lustre, he turned back to me. 'Yes, of course, I mustn't keep you. You haven't seen much of the family for the last few days. Still, you like Berlin. I've heard you say so.'

'Yes, I like it.'

'I can't think what you see in it. A filthy place bombed to nothing in the war. The few decent buildings that survived were in the Russian Sector and they got bulldozed to fill the city with all those ghastly workers' tenements.'

'That's about right,' I admitted. 'But it's got something. And Berliners are the most wonderful people in the world.'

Cruyer smiled. 'I never realized that you had a romantic streak in you, Bernard. Is that what made the exquisite and unobtainable Fiona fall in love with you?'

'It wasn't for my money or social position,' I said.

Cruyer took my empty glass, the bottle caps and the paper napkin I'd left unused and put them on to a plastic tray for the cleaners to remove. 'Could Giles Trent be connected to our problems with the Brahms net?'

'I've been wondering that myself,' I said.

'Are you going to see them?'

'Probably.'

'I'd hate Trent to get wind of your intention,' said Cruyer quietly.

'He's a Balliol man, Dicky,' I said.

'He could inadvertently pass it to his Control. Then you might find a hot reception waiting for you.' He finished his drink, wiped his lips and put his empty glass with the other debris on the tray.

'And Bret would lose his precious source,' I said.

'Don't let's worry about that,' said Cruyer. 'That's strictly Bret's problem.'

I collected Fiona from her sister's house that evening. She'd left a message asking me to take the car there, so she could bring back a folding bed that she'd lent to Tessa at a time when she'd decided to sleep apart from George. The bed had never been put to use. I always suspected that Tessa had used its presence as a threat. She was like that.

Tessa had prepared dinner. It was the sort of nouvelle cuisine extravaganza that Uncle Silas had been complaining of. A thin slice of veal with two tiny puddles of brightly coloured sauces, peas arranged inside a scooped-out tomato, and a few wafers of carrot with a mint leaf draped over them. Tessa had learned to prepare it at a cookery school in Hampstead.

'It's delicious,' said Fiona.

'He was yummy,' said Tessa when she'd finished eating. She never seemed to need more than a spoonful of food at any meal. Nouvelle cuisine was invented for people like Tessa, who just wanted to go through the pretence of eating a meal for the sake of the social benefits. 'He had these wonderful dark eyes that could see right through your clothes, and when he was demonstrating the cooking he'd put his arm round you and take your hands. "Like zis, like zis, " he used to say. He was Spanish, I think, but he liked to pretend he was French of course.'

Fiona said, 'Tessa has cooked the most wonderful things for me while you were away.'

'Like zis?' I asked.

'And meals for the children,' said Fiona hurriedly, hoping to appeal to my feelings of obligation. 'She has given me a gallon of minestrone for the freezer. It will be so useful, Tess darling, and the children just love soup.'

'And how was Berlin?' said Tessa. She smiled. We understood each other. She knew I didn't like the tiny ladies' snack she'd prepared, or her supposed antics with the Spanish cookery teacher, but she didn't give a damn. Fiona was the peacemaker, and it amused Tessa to see her sister intercede.

' Berlin was wonderful,' I said with spurious enthusiasm.

'German food is more robust than French food,' said Tessa. 'Like German women, I suppose.' It was directed at me and more specifically at the buxom German girl I was with when Tessa first met me, back before I married Fiona.

'You know that German proverb: one is what one eats,' I said.

'Feast on cabbage and what do you become?' said Tessa.

'A butterfly?' I said.

'And if you eat dumplings?'

'At least you are no longer hungry,' I said.

'Give him some more meat,' Fiona told her sister, 'or he'll be bad-tempered all evening.'

When Tessa returned from the kitchen with my second helping of dinner, the plate no longer exhibited the finer points of la nouvelle cuisine. There was a chunky piece of veal and a large spoonful of odd-shaped carrot pieces that showed how tricky it was to slice thin even slices. There was only one kind of sauce this time, and it was poured over the meat. 'Where's the mint leaf?' I said. Tessa aimed a playful blow at the place between my shoulders, and it landed with enough force to make me cough.

'Did you notice anything different in the hall?' Tessa asked Fiona while I was wolfing the food.

'Yes,' said Fiona. 'The lovely little table, I was going to ask you about it.'

'Giles Trent. He's selling some things that used to belong to his grandmother. He needs the extra room and he has other things for sale. Anyone who could find space enough for a dining table… Oh, Fiona, it's such a beautiful mahogany table, with eight chairs. I'd sell my soul for it but it would never fit here and this table belonged to George's mother. I dare not say I'd like to replace it.'