task was to bring Fiona across the wire as quickly and quietly as possible. But you fixed it so your farewell performance out on that Autobahn was like the last act of Hamlet. You shoot two bystanders, and your own sister-in-law gets killed in the crossfire.’ He glanced at my wife Fiona, who was still recovering from seeing her sister Tessa killed. ‘Don’t expect London Central to be waiting for you with a gold medal, Bernard.’
He’d bent the facts but what was the use of arguing? He was in one of his bellicose moods, and I knew them well. Bret Rensselaer was a slim American who’d aged like a rare wine: growing thinner, more elegant, more subtle and more complex with every year that passed. He looked at me as if expecting some hot-tempered reaction to his words. Getting none, he looked at my wife. She was older too, but no less serene and beautiful. With that face, her wide cheekbones, flawless complexion and luminous eyes, she held me in thrall as she always had done. You might have thought that she was completely recovered from her ordeal in Germany. She was gazing at me with love and devotion and there was no sign she’d heard Bret.
Sending me to do this job in Magdeburg was not Bret’s idea. I’d caught sight of the signal he sent to London Central telling them that I was no longer suited to field work, particularly in East Germany. He’d asked them to chain me to a desk until pension time rolled round. It sounded considerate, but I wasn’t pleased. I needed to do something that would put me back in Operations; that was my only chance of being promoted and getting a senior staff position in London. Unless my position improved I would wind up with a premature retirement and a pension that wouldn’t pay for a cardboard box to live in.
I nodded. Bret always observed the niceties of hospitality. He had driven us to Los Angeles airport through a winter rainstorm to say goodbye. They could watch me climb on to the plane bound for Berlin, and my assignment. Then he would put Fiona on the direct flight to London. The Wall was still there and people were getting killed while climbing over it. Now Bret was just repeating all the things he’d told me a thousand times before, the way people do when they are saying goodbye at airports.
‘Keep the faith,’ said Bret, and in response to my blank look he added: ‘I’m not talking about timetables or statistics or training manuals. Faith. It’s not in here.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘It’s in here.’ Gently he thumped his heart with a flattened palm so that the signet ring glittered on his beautifully manicured hand, and a gold watch peeped out from behind a starched linen cuff.
‘Yes, I see. Not a headache; more like indigestion,’ I said. Fiona watched us and smiled.
‘They are calling the flight,’ said Bret.
‘Take care, darling,’ she said. I took Fiona in my arms and we kissed decorously, but then I felt a sudden pain as she bit my lip. I gave a little yelp and stepped back from her. She smiled again. Bret looked anxiously from me to Fiona and then back at me again, trying to decide whether he should smile or say something. I rubbed my lip. Bret concluded that perhaps it was none of his business after all, and from his raincoat pocket he brought a shiny red paper bag and gave it to me. It was secured with matching ribbon tied in a fancy gift-wrap bow. The package was slightly limp; like a paperback book.
‘Read that,’ said Bret, picking up my carry-on bag and shepherding me towards the gate where the other passengers were standing in line. It seemed as if it would be a full load today; there were women with crying babies and long-haired kids with earrings, well-used backpacks and the sort of embroidered jackets that you can buy in Nepal. Fiona followed, observing the people crowding round us with that detached amusement with which she cruised through life. With one phone call Bret could have arranged for us to use any of the VIP lounges on the airport, but the Department’s guidelines said that agents travelling on duty kept to a low profile, and so that’s what Bret did. That’s why he’d left his driver behind at the house and taken the wheel of the Accord. Like other Americans before him, he had exaggerated respect for what the people in London thought was the right way to do things. We reached the gate. I couldn’t go through until he handed over my carry-on bag.
‘Maybe all this hurry-hurry from London will work out for the best, Bernard. Your few days chasing around East Germany will give Fiona a chance to get your London apartment ready. She wants to do that for you. She wants to settle down and start all over again.’ He looked at her and waited until she nodded agreement.
Only Bret would have the chutzpah to explain my wife to me while she was standing beside him. ‘Yes, Bret,’ I said. There was no sense in telling him he was out of line. Another few minutes and I’d be rid of him for ever.
‘And don’t go chasing after Werner Volkmann.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Don’t give me that glib no-of-course-not routine. I mean it. Whatever Werner did to them, London Central hate him with a passion beyond compare.’
‘Yes, you told me that.’
‘You can’t afford to step out of line, Bernard. If someone spots you having a cup of coffee with your old buddy Werner, everyone in London will be saying you are part of a conspiracy or something. God knows what he did to them but they hate him.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to find him,’ I said.
‘That’s never stopped you before.’ Bret paused and looked at his watch. ‘Be a model employee. Put your faith in the Department, Bernard. Swallow your pride and tug your forelock. Now that London Central’s funds are being so severely cut, they are looking for an excuse to fire people instead of retire them. No one’s job is safe.’
‘I’ve got it all, Bret,’ I said, and tried to prise my bag away from him.
He smiled and moistened his lips, as if trying to resist giving me any more advice and reminders. ‘I hear Tante Lisl has had a check-up. If she’s going to have a hip replacement, or whatever it is, trying to save a few bucks on it is dumb.’
That was his way of saying that he’d pay old Frau Hennig’s doctor’s bills. I knew Bret well. We’d had our ups and downs, especially when I thought he was chasing Fiona, but I’d got to know him better during my long stay in California. As far as I could tell, Bret wasn’t a double-crosser. He didn’t lie or cheat or steal except when ordered to do so, and that put him into a very tiny minority of the people I worked with. He handed over my bag and we shook hands. We were out of earshot of Fiona and anyone else.
‘This Russkie who’s asking for you, Bernard,’ he whispered. ‘He says he owes you a favour, a big favour.’
‘So you said.’
‘VERDI: that’s his codename of course.’ I nodded solemnly. I’m glad Bret told me that or I might have arrived expecting an aria from La Traviata. ‘A colonel,’ he coaxed me. ‘His father was a junior lieutenant with one of the first Red Army units to enter Berlin in April ’45 and stayed there to become a staff officer at Red Army headquarters, on long-term political assignment at Berlin-Karlshorst. Dad married a pretty German fräulein, and VERDI grew up more German than Russian … so the KGB grabbed him. Now he’s a colonel and wants a deal.’ Having gabbled his way through this description he paused. ‘And you still can’t guess who he might be?’ Bret looked at me. Surely he knew I wasn’t going to start that kind of game; it would open a can of worms that I wanted to keep tightly shut.
‘Do you have any idea how many hustlers out there answer that kind of description?’ I said. ‘They all have stories like that. Seems like those first few Ivans into town fathered half the population of the city.’
‘That’s right. Play it close to the chest,’ said Bret. ‘That’s always been your way, hasn’t it?’ He so wanted to be in London, and be a part of it again, that he actually envied me. It was almost laughable. Poor old Bret was past it; even his friends said that.
‘And your girlfriend,’ whispered Bret. ‘Gloria. Make sure that’s all over and done with.’ His voice was edged with the indignant anger that we all feel for other men’s philandering. ‘Try to hang on to both of them and you’ll lose Fiona and the children. And maybe your job too.’
I