Читать книгу Charity - Len Deighton - Страница 9

The North Downs, Surrey, England

When someone asks you to make an objective decision that will affect their future, you can confidently assume that they have already decided upon the course they intend to follow. So when my father-in-law phoned to be sure that I would be with Fiona when she visited the children at the weekend, I sensed that there was something else on his mind and I wasn’t expecting to hear anything comforting.

But those vague forebodings had faded a little by the time I was with Fiona in her shiny new Jaguar. It was one of the perquisites of her new post. The Department frowned upon senior staff using foreign cars, and a Porsche like the one she’d previously owned would have earned a quiet rebuke.

Fiona was at her magnificent best. She liked driving. Her dark hair was shiny and loose and wavy, and she had let it grow, so that it almost touched her shoulders, and swung wide to frame her face as she turned to smile at me. Her relaxed grin, natural skin texture and rosy cheeks reminded me of the young girl with whom I’d fallen so desperately in love. There was nothing to reveal her long ordeal in East Germany or the demanding workload that she now took upon herself without respite.

Escaping from London’s seemingly interminable squalor, and its brooding suburbs, is not easy. The beguiling villages that once surrounded the capital had become small plastic versions of Times Square. Even the snow could not completely conceal their ugliness. But finally we reached some stretches of open countryside, and eventually the lovely old house where Mr and Mrs David Kimber-Hutchinson made a home for my children. Set in a particularly attractive part of southern England, the house was secluded. There were trees on every side: pines and firs mostly, evergreens that ensured that the scene changed little in winter or summer. The house was Jacobean but successive wealthy owners, and acclaimed architects, had done everything possible to obliterate the original structure. Since my last visit David had squeezed permission from the local bureaucrats to further deform the property with a six-car garage. The new building had a lacquered-brass weather-vane on its red plastic roof, and automatic doors at both ends, so that he could drive right through rather than face the hazards and inconvenience of backing out.

Fiona turned off the road and drove through the entrance where wrought-iron gates entwined the monogram of my in-laws. ‘What a horror,’ she said as she caught sight of the new garage. Perhaps she’d said it to forestall any rude reaction that might have been my first response. The concertina doors were pushed back far enough to reveal her father’s silver Rolls, and the black Range Rover that was her mother’s current car. Her mother got through a lot of cars because each time she dented one she ‘lost confidence in it’. This latest one had been chosen by David and, on his specific instructions, fitted with massive steel crash bars at front and rear. As if in tacit warning to other road users, it was painted with a livery of formalized flame patterns along its side.

Fiona gave a toot on the horn and parked outside, alongside a battered little Citroën with Paris licence plates and a ‘Teachers against the Bomb’ bumper sticker. We got out and went into the garage, which was wide enough to take half a dozen Rolls-Royces and still have room for workbench, sinks, neatly coiled hoses and an air compressor. I inspected David’s latest pride and joy, a 3-litre Bentley open tourer, one of those shiny green icons of the nineteen twenties. Vintage cars had become his passion since a series of bad falls, and a bitter dispute with the master of foxhounds, had stopped him chasing foxes.

Her father was standing at the workbench when we arrived. He waved her forward, using both hands upraised as if marshalling a Boeing into its slot. He was wearing dark blue coveralls of the sort that garage mechanics favour, but peeping from the collar there was a yellow cashmere rollneck.

‘You made good time, darling,’ he announced approvingly as Fiona scrambled from the driving seat and kissed him.

‘We were lucky with the traffic,’ said Fiona.

‘And Bernard … what have you done to your face, Bernard?’ He was sharp, I must say that for him. My face was only slightly swollen and had drawn little reaction from others.

‘I walked into a bird-cage.’

‘Bernard, you …’

Fiona interrupted whatever her father was about to say: ‘Bernard fell down the stairs … in Berlin. He cracked a rib. He’s not fully recovered.’

Fiona knew where I’d got the bruises of course. We’d not spoken of it but she must have read my brief report about the Polish fiasco and guessed the bits I left out.

‘Watch yourself, Bernard,’ said her father, looking from one to the other of us as if suspecting that the whole truth was being withheld. ‘You’re not a youngster any more.’ And then, more cheerfully: ‘I saw you looking at the Bentley. She’s one hundred per cent authentic; not a replica or made up from new parts.’

‘It’s cold, Daddy. Let’s go inside the house.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll show you later, Bernard. You can sit in her if you want.’ He led the way through a doorway that had been cut through a side wall of the original house to gain direct entrance from the garage.

‘That frost last night,’ he said as he opened the door into his carpeted drawing-room. ‘I think it may have killed the eucalyptus trees. I’ll be shattered if they go – after all the love and labour and money I’ve spent on them.’

‘Where’s Mummy?’

‘I have a tree expert coming this afternoon. They say he’s the man Prince Charles uses.’

‘Where’s Mummy?’

‘She’s resting. She gets up in the small hours and does all that yoga malarkey. Huh! And then she wonders why she gets tired.’

‘She says it’s doing her good,’ said Fiona.

‘Six o’clock is far too early. She runs the bath and that wakes me up,’ said David, ‘and then I sometimes have trouble getting off to sleep again.’ He slapped his hands together. ‘Now for elevenses, or would you prefer a real drink?’

‘It’s too early for me,’ said Fiona, ‘but I’m sure you can persuade Bernard to join you.’

‘No,’ I said. It was a culture trap. England’s holy ritual, of halting everything to sit down and drink sweet milky tea at eleven o’clock in the morning, would be marred by a dissenter guzzling booze, or even coffee.

‘I’ll order tea then,’ said David, picking up a phone and pressing a button to connect him to one of his many servants. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, and having elicited the name of a servant he instructed: ‘Tell cook: morning tea for three in the Persian room. My usual – toasted scones and all that. And take tea to Mrs Hutchinson: Earl Grey, no milk, no sugar. Ask her if she’s going to join us for lunch.’

‘How lovely to be home again,’ said Fiona. I know she only said it to appease her father, but it made me feel as if I’d never provided a proper home for her.

‘And you are not looking too well,’ her father told Fiona. Then realizing that such remarks can be interpreted as criticism added: ‘It’s that damned job of yours. Do you know what you could be earning in the City?’

‘I thought they were firing people by the hundred after the crash last year,’ she said.

‘I know people,’ said David, nodding significantly. ‘If you wanted a job in the City you’d be snapped up.’ He leaned towards her. ‘You should come to the health farm with us tomorrow. Five days of rest and exercise and light meals. It would make a new woman of you. And you would meet some very interesting people.’

‘I have too much urgent work to do,’ said Fiona.

‘Bring it with you; that’s what I do. I take a stack of work, and my tiny recording machine, and do it away from all the noise and commotion.’

‘I have a meeting in Rome.’

He shook his head. ‘The life you people lead. And who pays for it? The poor old taxpayer. Very well then, it’s your life.’

‘The children are still studying?’ Fiona asked him.

It was not just her way of changing the subject. She wanted me to hear the wonderful things her parents were doing for our children. On cue, her father described the highly paid tutors who came to the house to give my children additional lessons in mathematics and French grammar, so that they would do well in their exams, and be able to go to the sort of school that David went to.

When the tea-tray came, everything was placed on the table before Fiona. While she was pouring the tea David divested himself of his coveralls to reveal a canary-coloured cashmere sweater, beige corduroy trousers and tasselled loafers. He spread himself across a chintz-covered sofa and said: ‘Well, what have you done with poor little Kosinski?’

Since David was looking at me as he said it, I replied: ‘I haven’t seen him for ages.’

‘Come along! Come along!’ said David briskly. ‘You’ve locked him up somewhere and you’re giving him the third degree.’

‘Daddy. Please,’ said Fiona mildly while pouring my tea.

Pleased that his provocation had produced the expected note of exasperation from his daughter, he chuckled and said: ‘What are you squeezing out of the little bugger, huh? You can confide in me; I’m vetted.’

He wasn’t vetted, or in any way secure, and he was the last man I would entrust with a secret of any importance. So I smiled at him and told Fiona that I wanted just one sugar in my tea and yes, a toasted scone – no, no homemade strawberry jam – would be lovely and promised that it wouldn’t spoil my appetite for lunch.

‘I flew to Warsaw to see him,’ said David, flapping a monogrammed linen napkin and spreading it on his knee. ‘Just before Christmas; at five minutes’ notice. No end of bother getting a seat on the plane.’

‘Did you?’ I said, inserting a note of mild surprise in my answer, although I had been shown a surveillance photo of him and Kosinski there at that time.

‘He told me that Tessa was still alive.’

I watched Fiona’s reaction to this startling announcement; she just shook her head in denial and drank some tea.

‘It was a ruse,’ I explained. ‘He probably believed it but it was just a cruel attempt to exploit him.’

‘And exploit me,’ added David. He accepted a buttered scone from Fiona and nibbled at it as he thought about his visit to his son-in-law.

‘Yes, and to exploit you,’ I agreed, although it was hard to imagine how even the wily tricksters of the Polish security service would find ingenuity enough for that. ‘Now he is working for us. I don’t know any more than that.’

‘Don’t know or won’t tell?’

Fiona got to her feet, looked at the ceiling as she listened, and said: ‘I believe the French lesson is ending.’

‘Yes,’ agreed David, after punching the air in order to expose his gold wrist-watch to view and see the time. ‘She doesn’t give us a minute of extra time. The French are all like that, aren’t they?’

Reluctant to censure French venality in such general terms, Fiona said: ‘I’ll just go and say hello to her, and ask her how they are coming along.’ Clever Fiona; she knew how to escape. It must have been something she learned while working with the KGB. Or with Dicky Cruyer.

‘Fifteen pounds an hour she costs me,’ David confided to me. ‘And she has the nerve to add on travelling expenses from London. The trouble is I can’t get anyone from the village. You need the authentic seizième arrondissement accent, don’t you, huh?’

I drank my tea until, from somewhere upstairs, I heard Fiona trying out her Paris slang on the lady teacher. She hit the spot judging from the sudden burst of hearty feminine laughter that followed the next exchange.

I faced David and ate my scone, smiling between bites. We both sat there for a long time, silent and alone, like a washed-out picnic party, under dripping trees, waiting for the thunder to stop.

Having finished my scone before my host I got up and went to the window. David came and stood alongside me. We watched Fiona tramping across the snowy garden. The teacher was with her, and hand-in-hand with the children they inspected the snowman. The snow had retreated to make icy-edged white islands into which the children deliberately walked. Billy – coming up to his fourteenth birthday – considered himself far too old to be building snowmen. He had supervised the building of this one on the pretext that it was done solely to entertain some local infants who had been at the house for a tea party the previous afternoon. But I could tell from the way they were acting that both Billy and his younger sister Sally were proud of their elaborate snow sculpture. It wouldn’t last much longer. A slight thaw had crippled it so that it had become a hunch-backed figure, glazed with the icy sheen that had formed upon it overnight.

‘Everybody respects her,’ said David.

‘Yes,’ I said. It was true that everyone respected Fiona, but how significant it was that her father should claim that. Even her mother and father didn’t really love her. Their love, such as could be spared, had been lavished on Tessa, the younger sister, the eternal baby. Fiona had too much dignity, too much achievement, too much of everything to need love in the way that most people need it.

My memory went back to the day that I first met Fiona’s parents, and to the briefing she provided for me as we drove down here to see them in my old Ferrari. It was my final outing in that lovely old lady. The car was already sold, the deal settled, and the first instalment of the money deposited in my bank. The money was needed to buy Fiona an engagement ring with a diamond of a dimension that her family would judge visible to the naked eye. Tell them you love me, she had advised. It’s what they will be waiting to hear. They think I need someone to love me. I told them that. I would have told them anyway. I did love and never stopped loving her.

‘You love her,’ said David, as if needing to hear me say it again. ‘You do: I know you do.’

‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘I love her very much.’

‘She bottles everything up inside,’ he said. ‘I wish I knew what went on inside her head.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Many people would have liked to know what went on inside Fiona’s head, including me. From what I knew, even the KGB agent – Kennedy – who had been assigned to seduce her, and monitor her thoughts, had failed. He’d fallen for her instead. The wounding fact was that Fiona had taken that sordid little adventure seriously. She’d fooled him of course. She hadn’t betrayed her role as a double-agent working for London because Fiona was Fiona – a woman who would no more reveal her innermost thoughts to her lover than she would to her father, her children or her husband.

I watched her with my children; this woman who had bowled me over and from whom I would never escape, this remote paragon, dedicated scholar and unfailing winner of every contest she entered. She might even emerge as the victor in the bitter contest for power in the Department. I suppose my feeling for her was founded upon respect as well as love. Too much respect and not enough love perhaps, for otherwise Gloria would never have turned my life upside down. Gloria was no fool but she was not wise; she was sizzling and street-smart and perceptive and desperately in love with me. I was torn in half: I found myself in love with two women. They were entirely different women but few people would find that an adequate explanation. I told myself it was wrong but it didn’t make the dilemma less excruciating.

‘That cloud base: it never gets really light these days,’ said David, turning away from the window and sitting down. ‘I hate winter. I wanted to get away to somewhere warm but there are things here that I must do myself. You can’t trust anyone to do their job properly.’

I chose a chair and sat down opposite him. It was a lovely room, the sort of comfortable family retreat that is only found in England and its country houses. So far this room had escaped the ‘face-lifts’ that David had inflicted on so much of the house. The furniture was a hodgepodge of styles; a mixture of the priceless and the worthless. The Dutch marquetry cabinet, and the collection of Lalique glass displayed inside it, would have fetched a fortune at auction. Next to it there were two battered sofas that had only sentimental value. A lovely William and Mary marquetry mirror reflected an ancient stained and frayed oriental carpet. The log fire made crackling sounds and spat a few sparks over the brass fire-irons. The yellow light of the flames made patterns on the ceiling and lit up David’s face. ‘He tried to murder me, you know,’ he said, and turned to look out of the window as if his mind was entirely given to his family in the garden. ‘George,’ he added eventually.

‘George?’ I didn’t know what to say. Finally I stammered: ‘Why would he do that? He’s family.’

David looked at me as if declining to respond to a particularly offensive joke. ‘It makes me wonder what really happened to Tessa.’ He went and stood by the window, his hands on his hips.

‘George didn’t kill your daughter, David. If that’s what you are driving at.’

‘Then why try to poison me?’

Again I was speechless for a moment. ‘Why do you think?’ I countered.

‘Always the police detective, aren’t you, Bernard?’ He said it with a good-natured grunt, but I knew he had long since categorized me as a government snooper. He said society was rife with prying petty officials who were taking over our lives. Sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t right. Not about me, but about the others.

I made a reckless guess: ‘Because you suspected him? Because you accused him of being a party to his wife’s death?’

‘Very good, Bernard.’ He said it gravely but with discernible admiration. ‘You’re very close. Go to the top of the class.’

‘And how did George react?’

‘React?’ A short sharp bitter laugh. ‘I just told you; he tried to kill me.’

‘I see.’ I was determined not to ask him how. I could see he was bursting to tell me.

‘That’s one of my walking-sticks,’ he said suddenly. Following his gaze I saw that out on the snowy lawn Billy was patching up the snowman with fresh snow and had removed the snowman’s walking-stick while doing it. I wondered if David was going to lay claim to the snowman’s hat too. ‘I didn’t know they wanted my stick for that damned snowman.’

Billy and Sally patted more snow on to the snowman’s belly. I suppose the thaw had slimmed it down a little.

Turning back to me, David said: ‘In Poland, I complained of a headache and George gave me some white pills. Pills from a Polish package. I didn’t use them of course.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

‘I’m not a bloody fool. All written in Polish. Who knows what kind of muck they take … even their genuine aspirin … I’d sooner suffer the headache.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I brought them back with me. Not the packet, he’d thrown that away; or so he said.’

‘Back to England?’

‘See that little cherry tree? I buried Felix, our old tom-cat, under it. The poor old sod died from one of those tablets. I didn’t tell my lady wife, of course. And I don’t want Fiona to know.’

‘You think the tablet did it?’

‘Three tablets. Crushed up in warm milk.’

‘Did the cat eat them willingly, or did you dose it?’

‘What are you getting at?’ he said indignantly. ‘I didn’t choke the cat, if that’s what you mean. I was dosing farm animals before you were born.’ I’d forgotten how highly he cherished his credentials as a country gentleman.

‘If it was a very old cat …’

‘I don’t want you discussing this with my daughter or with anyone else,’ he ordered.

‘Was this what you wanted to ask me?’ I said. ‘The dead cat and whether to report it?’

‘It was one of the things,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘I wanted to ask you to take a note of it off the record. But since then I have decided that it’s better all forgotten. I don’t want you to repeat it to anyone.’

‘No,’ I said, although such a stricture hardly conformed to the way in which he identified me with the powers of government. I recognized this ‘confidential anecdote’ about his son-in-law’s homicidal inclinations as something he wanted me to take back to work and discuss with Dicky and the others. In fact I saw this little cameo as David’s way of hitting his son-in-law with yet another unanswerable question, while keeping himself out of it. The only hard fact I could infer from it was that David and George had fallen out. I wondered why.

‘Forget it,’ said David. ‘I said nothing, do you hear me?’

‘It’s just a family matter,’ I said, but my grim little joke went unnoticed. He was still standing in the window, and now he turned his head to look out at the garden again. Fiona and the children were heading back. Seeing David profiled, and in conjunction with the snowman at the bottom of the lawn, I wondered if the children had intended it to be a caricature of their grandfather. Now that the belly had been restored and the shoulders built up a little it had something of David’s build, and that old hat and walking-stick provided the finishing touches. It was something of a surprise to find that my little children were now judging the world around them with such keen eyes. I would have to watch myself.

‘They’re growing up,’ said David.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

He didn’t respond. I suppose he knew how I felt. It wasn’t that I liked them less as grown-ups than as children. It was simply that I liked myself so much more when I was being a childlike Dad with them, an equal, a playmate, occupying the whole of their horizon. Now they were concerned with their friends and their school, and I couldn’t get used to being such a small part of their lives.

‘I’ve got two suitcases belonging to that friend of yours.’ David meant Gloria of course. ‘When she brought the children over here to us, she left two suitcases with their clothes and toys and things. Expensive-looking cases. I don’t know where to contact her, apart from the office, and I know you people don’t like personal phone calls to your place of work. I thought perhaps you would be able to take them and give them back to her.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t go to the London office, I work in Berlin nowadays.’

‘I didn’t want to ask Fiona.’

He displayed characteristic delicacy in not wanting to ask Fiona about the whereabouts of my one-time mistress. He didn’t really care of course. The question about the suitcases that Gloria had left with him was just a warning shot across my bows. Now he got on to more important matters.

‘She’s still not well.’ He was looking at Fiona and the kids.

‘She’s tired,’ I said. ‘She works too hard.’

‘I’m not talking about being tired,’ said David. ‘We all work too hard. My goodness …’ He gave a short laugh. ‘…I’d hate to show you my appointments diary for next week. As I keep telling those trade union buggers, if I worked a forty-hour week I’d be finished by lunchtime Tuesday. I haven’t got even a lunch slot to spare for at least six weeks.’

‘Poor you,’ I said.

‘My little girl is sick.’ I’d never heard him speak of Fiona like that; his voice was strained and his manner intense. ‘It’s no good the pair of you telling each other that she’s just tired and that a relaxing holiday and a regime of vitamin tablets are going to make her fit and well again.’

‘No?’

‘No. Tonight we have a few people coming to dinner. One of the guests is a top Harley Street man, a psychiatrist. Not a psychologist, a psychiatrist. That means he’s a qualified medical man too.’

‘Does it?’ I said. ‘I must try and remember that.’

‘You’d do well to,’ he said gruffly, suspecting that I was being sarcastic but not quite certain. He moved away from the window and said: ‘He agrees with me; Fiona will never be fit enough to take charge of the children again. You know that, don’t you, Bernard?’

‘Has he examined Fiona?’

‘Of course not. But he’s met her several times. Fiona thinks he’s just a drinking chum of mine.’

‘But he’s been spying on her.’

‘I’m only saying this for your sake, and for the sake of Fiona and your wonderful children.’

‘David. If this is a prelude to your trying to get legal custody of the children, forget it.’

He sighed and pulled a long face. ‘She’s sick. Fiona is slowly coming round to face that truth, Bernard. I wish you would face it too. You could help me and help her.’

‘Don’t try any of your legal tricks with me, David.’ I was angry, and not as careful as I might have been.

With an insolent calm he said: ‘Dr Howard has already said he’d support me. And I play golf with a top-rate barrister. He says I would easily get custody if it came to it.’

‘It would break Fiona’s heart,’ I said, trying a different angle.

‘I don’t think so, Bernard. I think without the children to worry about she’d be relieved of a mighty weight.’

‘No.’

‘Why do you think she’s been putting it off so long? Having the children back with her, I mean. She could have come down here as soon as she returned from California. She could have taken the children up to the apartment in Mayfair – there are spare bedrooms, aren’t there? – and made all the necessary arrangements to send them to school and so on. So why didn’t she do that?’ There was a long pause. ‘Tell me, Bernard.’

‘She knew how much you both liked having the children with you,’ I said. ‘She did it for you.’

‘Rather than for you,’ he said, not bothering much to conceal his glee at my answer. ‘I would have thought that you would have liked having the children with you, and that she would have liked having the children with her.’

‘She loves being with them. Look at her now.’

‘No, Bernard. You can’t get round me with that one. She likes coming down here to see the children. She’s pleased to see them so happy and doing well at school. But she doesn’t want to take on the responsibility and the time-consuming drudgery of being a Mum again. She can’t take it on. She’s mentally not capable.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m surprised to hear you say that. According to what Fiona tells me you yourself have said all these things to her …’ He waved a hand at my protest. ‘Not in as many words, but you’ve said it in one way or another. You’ve told her repeatedly that she’s trying to avoid having the children back home again.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I never said anything like that.’

He smiled. He knew I was lying.

David’s dinner party seemed as if it was going to last all night. He was wearing his new dinner suit with satin lapels, and his patent Gucci loafers with red silk socks that matched his pocket handkerchief, and he was in the mood for telling long stories about his club and his golf tournaments and his vintage Bentley. The guests were David’s friends: men who spent their working week in St James’s clubs and City bars but made money just the same. How they did it mystified me; it wasn’t a product of their charm.

By the time the dinner guests had departed, and the family had exchanged goodnights and gone upstairs to bed, I was pretty well beat, but I felt compelled to put a direct question to Fiona. Casually, while undressing, I said: ‘When do you plan to have the children living with us, darling?’

She was sitting at the dressing-table in her nightdress and brushing her hair. She always brushed her hair night and morning, I think it was something that they’d made her do at boarding school. Looking in the mirror to see me she said: ‘I knew you were going to ask me that.’

‘Did you?’

‘I could see it coming ever since we arrived here.’

‘And when do you think?’

‘Please, darling. The children’s future is hardly something to be settled at this time of night, when both of us are worn out.’

‘You can’t keep on avoiding it, Fi.’

‘I’m not avoiding it,’ she said, her voice raised a tone or so. ‘But this is not the time or the place, surely you can see that.’

It was obviously going to cause an argument if I pursued it further. I was angry. I washed and cleaned my teeth and went to bed without speaking to her other than a brusque goodnight.

‘Goodnight, darling,’ she said happily as I switched out the light. I shut my reddened eyes and knew no more until Fiona was hammering at me and shouting something I couldn’t comprehend.

‘What?’

‘The window! Someone is trying to force their way in!’

I jumped out of bed but I knew it was nothing. I was getting used to Fiona’s disturbed sleep. I went to the window, opened it and looked out. I froze in the cold country air. ‘Nothing here.’

‘It must have been the wind,’ said Fiona. She was fully awake now. And contrite. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ She got out of bed and came to the window with a dispirited weariness that made me feel very sorry for her.

‘There’s nothing there,’ I said, and gave her a hug.

‘I think I must have eaten something that upset me.’

‘Yes,’ I said. She always blamed such awakenings on indigestion. She always said she couldn’t remember anything of the dream itself. So now I no longer asked her about them. Instead I played along with her explanations. I said: ‘The fennel sauce on the fish, it was very creamy.’

‘That must have been it,’ she said.

‘You’ve been working too hard. You should slow down a little.’

‘I can’t.’ She sank down at the dressing-table and brushed her hair in a mood of sad introspection. ‘I’m directly involved in all the exchanges between Bonn and the DDR. Enormous sums of money are being given to them. I wonder how much of it is being pocketed by Honecker and Co, and how much gets through. Sometimes I worry about it. And they become more and more demanding.’

I watched her. The doctor had given her some tablets. She said they were no more than pep pills – ‘a tonic’. She had them on the dressing-table and now she took two pills and drank some water to swallow them. She did it automatically. She always had the tablets with her. I had a feeling that she took them whenever she felt low, and that meant frequently. I said: ‘How do you pay them?’

‘Depends. It falls into four categories: Western currency payments to the East German State, Western currency payments to private individuals, trade credits guaranteed by Bonn, and a hotchpotch of trade deals that wouldn’t be done except that we – or more frequently Bonn – push them along. I don’t have much to do with that end of it. We are only really interested in the money that goes to the Church.’

‘Is the Department involved in any of the money transfers?’

‘It’s complicated. Our contact is a man named Stoppl. He’s a founder of “the Protestant Church in Socialism”, a committee of East German churchmen who negotiate with their regime’s leaders and do deals. Some deals involve the Western Churches too – there is a Church trust which arranges the money – or sometimes Bonn. All of these deals are very secret, things are done but never revealed. Sometimes we have Honecker and Stoppl negotiating one-to-one, out at Honecker’s Berlin home on the Wandlitzsee.’