'Giles Trent?' I said. 'Is he selling up?'

'He's working with you now, isn't he?' said Tessa. 'He told me he has talked with you and everything is going to be all right. I'm so pleased.'

'What else is he selling?'

'Only furniture. He won't part with any of his pictures. I wish he'd decide to let me have one of those little Rembrandt etchings. I'd love one.'

'Would George agree?' asked Fiona.

'I'd give it to George for his birthday,' said Tessa. 'There's nothing a man can do if you buy something you want and say "Happy birthday" when he first sees it.'

'You're quite unscrupulous,' said Fiona without bothering to conceal her admiration.

'I'd go carefully on Rembrandt etchings,' I told her. 'There are lots of plates around, and the dealers just print a few off from time to time, and ease them into the market through suckers like Giles Trent.'

'Are they allowed to do that?' Tessa asked.

'What's to stop them?' I said. 'It's not forgery or faking.'

'But that's like printing money,' said Fiona.

'It's better,' I said. 'It's like using your husband's money and saying 'Happy birthday'.'

'Have you had enough veal?' said Tessa.

'It was delicious,' I said. 'What's for dessert – Chinese gooseberries?'

Tess wants to watch the repeat of " Dallas " on TV tonight. We'd best be getting that bed downstairs and go home,' said Fiona.

'It's not heavy,' said Tessa. 'George carried it all by himself, and he's not very strong.'

I had the folding bed tied onto the roof rack of the car and we were on our way home by the time Tessa sat down to watch TV. 'Drive carefully,' said Fiona as we turned out of the entrance to the big apartment block where George and Tessa lived and saw the beginning of the snow. 'It's so good to have you home again, darling. I do miss you horribly when you're away.' There was an intimacy in the dark interior of the car and it was heightened by the bad weather outside.

'I miss you too,' I said.

'But it all went smoothly in Berlin?'

'No problems,' I said. 'Snow in April… my God!'

'But nothing to clear poor Giles?'

'Looks like he's even deeper in, I'm afraid.'

'I wish Tessa wouldn't keep seeing him. But there's nothing serious between them. You know that, don't you?'

'Why would he be selling his furniture?' I said.

'Antiques and furniture have been getting good prices lately. It's the recession, I suppose. People want to put their money into things that will ride with inflation.'

'Sounds like a good reason for hanging onto them,' I said. 'And if he must sell them, why not send them to a saleroom? Why sell them piece by piece?'

'Is there tax to be paid on such things? Is that what you mean?'

'The etchings are small. The lithographs can be rolled up,' I said. 'But the furniture is bulky and heavy.'

'Bernard! You don't think Giles would be idiot enough to run for it?'

'It crossed my mind,' I said.

'He'd be a fool. And could you imagine poor old Giles in Moscow, lining up to collect his vodka ration?'

'Stranger things have happened, darling. Surprises never end in this business.'

I turned onto Finchley Road and headed south. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way, couples who'd had an evening on the town and were now heading for their homes in the northern suburbs. The snow was melting as it touched the ground but the air was full of it, like a TV picture when an electric mixer is working. The flakes drifted past the neon signs and glaring shopwindows like coloured confetti. A few dabbed against the windscreen and clung for a moment before melting.

'I was talking to Frank about the old days,' I said. 'He told me about the time in 1978 when the Baader-Meinhof gang were in the news.'

'I remember,' said Fiona. 'Someone got the idea that there was to be a second kidnap attempt. I was quite nervous, I hadn't seen one of those security alerts before. I was expecting something awful to happen.'

'There was a radio intercept from Karlshorst. Something about an airport in Czechoslovakia.'

'That's right. I handled it. Frank was in one of his schoolmaster moods. He told me all about the intercept service, and how to recognize the different sorts of Russian Army signals traffic by the last but one group in the message.'

'Frank never passed that intercept back to London,' I said.

'That's very likely,' said Fiona. 'He always said that the job of the Berlin Resident is to ensure that London is not buried under an avalanche of unimportant material. Getting intelligence is easy, Frank said, but sorting it out is what matters.' She shivered and tried to turn up the heater of the car, but it was already fully on. 'Why? Is Frank having second thoughts? It's a long time ago – too late now for second thoughts.'

I wondered if she was thinking of other things; too late perhaps to be having second thoughts about a marriage. 'Look at that,' I said. A white Jaguar had skidded on the wet road and mounted the pavement so that its rear had swung round and into a shop window. There was glass all over the pavement, white like snow, and a woman with blood on her hands and her face. The driver was blowing into a plastic bag held by a blank-faced policeman.

'I'm glad I didn't take the Porsche over to Tessa's tonight. You don't stand a chance with the police if they find you behind the wheel of a red Porsche. When are you getting the new Volvo?'

'The dealer keeps saying next week. He's hoping my nerve will break and I'll take that station wagon he's trying to get rid of.'

'Go to some other dealer.'

'He's giving me a good trade-in price on this jalopy.'

'Why not have the station wagon, then?'

'Too expensive.'

'Let me give you the difference in price. Your birthday is coining up soon.'

'I'd rather not, darling. But thanks all the same.'

'It would be awfully useful for moving beds,' she said.

'I'm not going to give your father the satisfaction of using any of his money.'

'He'll never know.'

'But I will know, and I'm the one who told him where to put his dowry.'

'Where to put my dowry, darling.'

'I love you, Fiona,' I said, 'even if you do forget my birthday.'

She put her fingertips to her lips and touched my cheek. 'Where were you that night in 1978?' she said. 'Why weren't you at my side?'

'I was in Gdansk, involved in that meeting with the shipyard workers who never turned up. It was all a KGB entrapment. Remember?'

'I must have repressed the memory of it. Yes, Gdansk, of course. I was so worried,'

'So was I. My career has been one fiasco after another, from that time to this.'

'But you have always got out safely.'

'That's more than I can say for a lot of the others who were with me. We were in good shape in 1978 but there's not much left now.'

'You were always away on some job or other. I hated being in Berlin on my own. I hated the dark streets and the narrow alleys. I don't know what I would have done without dear old Giles to take me home each night and cheer me up with phone calls and books about Germany that he thought I should read to improve myself. Dear old Giles. That's why I feel so sorry for him now he's in trouble.'

'He took you home?'

'It didn't matter what time I finished work – even in the middle of the night when the panic was on – Giles would come up to Operations and have a cigarette and a laugh and take me home.'

I carried on driving, swearing at someone who overtook us and splashed filth on the windscreen, and only after a few minutes' pause did I say, 'Didn't Giles work over in the other building? I thought he'd need a red pass to come up to Operations.'

'Officially he did. But at the end of each shift – unless one of the panjandrums from London was there – people from the annex used to come into the main building. There was no hot water in the annex, and most of us felt we needed to wash and change after eight hours in that place.'