'Yes, I know, Frank. I guess she gave you that box of papers that I came to Berlin to look at.'

'It was genuine,' said Frank.

'All too bloody genuine,' I agreed. 'It was straight from Moscow Centre. Top-grade stuff, carefully selected to make it look as if Giles Trent was their only man in London. Where did she get it from?'

'Zena knows a lot of people,' said Frank,

'She knows too many people, Frank. Too many of the wrong people.'

'It's better that we don't go into all that with Bret, and everyone at London Central.'

'Zena is obviously in on this racket that Brahms have been running.'

'It's possible,' said Frank. He finished his gin and licked his lips.

'It's not possible, Frank. It's all too bloody obvious. That girl's been making a fool of you. She's been in league with Werner and all the others all the time.'

'You're trying to tell me that your pal Werner was pimping for his own wife?' Frank's voice was harsh; he was determined to forgo his own illusions only by destroying mine too.

'I don't know,' I said. 'Perhaps the breakup with Werner came first. Then she found herself with something she could sell to the Brahms net and Werner was the only contact with them she had.'

'Sell what to the Brahms net?' Frank was uneasy now. He clipped and undipped the flap of his yellow tobacco pouch and studied the tobacco as if it was of great interest to him.

'Information, Frank.'

'You're not suggesting that I told her anything that could become critical?'

'We'd better find out, Frank,' I said. 'We'd better find out damned soon. We've got field agents who must be warned if Zena Volkmann has been providing your pillow talk to men who might wind up in Normannenstrasse.'

'Don't let's overreact,' said Frank. 'I get information from her; she gets none from me.'

'It won't seem like overreaction to me, Frank,' I said. 'Because I'm going to be there. I'm going to be on the wrong side of Charlie pulling your chestnuts out of the fire, and trying to dance quickly enough to keep the Stasis a jump or two behind me. So just to make sure Zena doesn't hear about my travel plans, I'm going to keep well clear of you and your extramarital activities, Frank.'

'Don't be a fool, Bernard. Do you think any of those clowns you drink with in Steglitz would know how to get you through the wire safely? Do you think any of those kids you were at school with know the town as well as I know it? I've spent most of my life reading about, looking at and talking to Berliners. I get my information from a million different sources and I study it. That's what I do all day long, Bernard. I know Berlin like a librarian knows his shelves of books, like a dentist knows a patient's mouth, like a ship's engineer knows the bits and pieces of his engine. I know every square inch of that stinking town, from palace to sewer.'

'You know the town, Frank. You know it better than anyone, I'll admit that.'

Frank looked at me quizzically. 'For God's sake!' he said suddenly. 'You're not saying you don't trust me.' He stood up to face me and banged his chest with a flattened hand. 'This is Frank Harrington you're talking to. I've known you since you were a tiny tot.'

'Let it go, Frank,' I said.

'I won't,' said Frank. 'I told your father I'd look after you. I told him that when you joined the Department, and I told him it at the very end. I said I'd look after you, and if you're going over the other side, you're going to do it my way.'

I'd never seen Frank get so emotional. 'Let me think about it,' I said.

Tm serious,' said Frank. 'You go my way or you're not going.' It was a way of avoiding it, and for a moment I felt like taking the opportunity. 'My way or I'll veto it.'

From the hall I could hear Dicky telling the electrician that he was charging too much to fix the bell. Then Dicky put his head round the door and borrowed a fiver from me. 'It's the black economy,' explained Dicky as he took the money. 'You can only get things done if you pay spot cash.'

'Okay, Frank,' I said when Dicky had gone. 'We'll do it your way.'

'Just you and me,' said Frank. 'I'll get you over there.' He didn't promise to get me back again, I noticed.

'Dicky is keeping everything very tight,' I said. 'Did he tell you that?'

Frank was examining his oilskin pouch again to see how much tobacco he had left. 'You can't go wrong that way,' he said.

'Not even Bret,' I said.

'It's coming from someone,' said Frank. 'It's coming from someone with really good access to material.'

I didn't say anything. Such a remark from Frank was lèse-majesté and I could think of nothing to reply.

I looked at the clock over the fireplace and wondered aloud if that was really the time. I told Frank to come and have dinner with us some time, and he promised to phone if he could fit it in. Then I shouted goodbye to Dicky, who was still on the phone explaining that Daphne's folio of breakfast-food roughs was vitally important. It was a contention that someone on the other end of the phone seemed to doubt.

Of the Departmental safe houses in which to meet Giles Trent I had chosen the betting shop in Kilburn High Road. The girl behind the counter nodded as I came in. I pushed past three men who were discussing the ancestry of a racehorse, and went through a door marked 'staff only' and upstairs to a small front room. Its window overlooked the wide pavement, where a number of secondhand bathtubs and sinks were displayed.

'You're always in time for the coffee,' said Trent. He was standing at a wooden bench. Upon it there was a bottle of Jersey milk, a catering-size tin of Sainsbury's powdered coffee and a bag of sugar from which the handle of a large spoon protruded. Trent was pouring boiling water from an electric kettle into a chipped cup with the name Tiny painted on it in nail varnish. 'No matter how long I wait for you, the moment I decide to make coffee, you arrive.'

'Something came up,' I said vaguely. For the first time I could see Trent as the handsome man who was so attractive to Tessa. He was tall, with a leonine head. His hair was long and wavy. It was not greying in that messy mousy way that most men's hair goes grey; it was streaked with silver, so that he looked like the sort of Italian film star who got cast opposite big-titled teenagers.

'I really don't think it's necessary for us to go through this amazing rigmarole of meeting here in this squalid room.' His voice was low and resonant.

'Which squalid room would you prefer?' I said, taking a cup from those arranged upside down on the draining board of the sink. I put boiling water, coffee powder, sugar and milk into it.

'My office is no distance from yours,' said Trent. 'I come across to that building several times a week in the normal course of my work. Why the devil should I be making myself conspicuous in this filthy betting shop in Kilburn?'

'The thing I don't like about powdered coffee,' I said, 'is the way it makes little islands of powder. They float. You get one of those in your mouth and it tastes horrible.'

'Did you hear what I said?'

'I didn't realize you wanted an answer,' I said. 'I thought you were just declaiming about the injustice of life.'

'If you put the coffee in first, then poured the hot water on it a little at a time, it would dissolve. Then you put the cold milk in.'

'I was never much good at cooking,' I said. 'First of all, you are not nearly as conspicuous going into a broken-down betting shop in Kilburn as you like to think. On race days, that shop downstairs is crowded with men in expensive suits who put more on a horse than you or I earn in a year. As to your point that it would be better security procedure for us to meet in my office or yours, I can only express surprise at your apparent naiveté.'