London Match. Len Deighton

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      She bent down to see better the level of the juice and ensure that we all got precisely the same amount. It was a legacy of the Prussian family background of which she was so proud, despite the fact that she’d never even seen the old family homeland. For Prussians like to think of themselves not only as the conscience of the world, but also its final judge and jury.

      ‘Don’t encourage him, Zena darling,’ said Werner. ‘That contrived Oscar Wilde-ish assertion is just Bernard’s way of annoying wives.’

      Zena didn’t let it go; she liked to argue with me. ‘Men change. It’s men who usually leave home and break up the marriage. And it’s because they change.’

      ‘Good juice,’ I said, sipping some.

      ‘Men go out to work. Men want promotion in their jobs and they aspire to the higher social class of their superiors. Then they feel their wives are inadequate and start looking for a wife who knows the manners and vocabulary of that class they want to join.’

      ‘You’re right,’ I admitted. ‘I meant that men don’t change in the way that their women want them to change.’

      She smiled. She knew that I was commenting on the way she had changed poor Werner from being an easygoing and somewhat bohemian character into a devoted and obedient husband. It was Zena who had stopped him smoking and made him diet enough to reduce his waistline. And it was Zena who approved everything he bought to wear, from swimming trunks to tuxedo. In this respect Zena regarded me as her opponent. I was the bad influence who could undo all her good work, and that was something Zena was determined to prevent.

      She climbed up onto the stool. She was so well proportioned that you only noticed how tiny she was when she did such things. She had long, dark hair and this morning she’d clipped it back into a ponytail that reached down to her shoulder blades. She was wearing a red cotton kimono with a wide black sash around her middle. She’d not missed any sleep that night and her eyes were bright and clear; she’d even found time enough to put on a touch of makeup. She didn’t need makeup – she was only twenty-two years old and there was no disputing her beauty – but the makeup was something from behind which she preferred to face the world.

      The coffee was very dark and strong. She liked it like that, but I poured a lot of milk into mine. The buzzer on the oven sounded and Zena went to get the warm rolls. She put them into a small basket with a red-checked cloth before offering them to us. ‘Brötchen,’ she said. Zena was born and brought up in Berlin, but she didn’t call the bread rolls Schrippe the way the rest of the population of Berlin did. Zena didn’t want to be identified with Berlin; she preferred keeping her options open.

      ‘Any butter?’ I said, breaking open the bread roll.

      ‘We don’t eat it,’ said Zena. ‘It’s bad for you.’

      ‘Give Bernie some of that new margarine,’ said Werner.

      ‘You should lose some weight,’ Zena told me. ‘I wouldn’t even be eating bread if I were you.’

      ‘There are all kinds of other things I do that you wouldn’t do if you were me,’ I said. The wasp settled in my hair and I brushed it away.

      She decided not to get into that one. She rolled up a newspaper and aimed some blows at the wasp. Then with unconcealed ill-humour she went to the refrigerator and brought me a plastic tub of margarine. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m catching the morning flight. I’ll get out of your way as soon as I’m shaved.’

      ‘No hurry,’ said Werner to smooth things over. He had already shaved, of course; Zena wouldn’t have let him have breakfast if he’d turned up unshaven. ‘So you got all your typing done last night,’ he said. ‘I should have stayed up and helped.’

      ‘It wasn’t necessary. I’ll have the translation done in London. I appreciate you and Zena giving me a place to sleep, to say nothing of the coffee last night and Zena’s great breakfast this morning.’

      I overdid the appreciation I suppose. I’m prone to do this when I’m nervous, and Zena was a great expert at making me nervous.

      ‘I was damned tired,’ said Werner.

      Zena shot me a glance, but when she spoke it was to Werner. ‘You were drunk,’ she said. ‘I thought you were supposed to be working last night.’

      ‘We were, darling,’ said Werner.

      ‘There wasn’t much drinking, Zena,’ I said.

      ‘Werner gets drunk on the smell of a barmaid’s apron,’ said Zena.

      Werner opened his mouth to object to this put-down. Then he realized that he could only challenge it by claiming to have drunk a great deal. He sipped some coffee instead.

      ‘I’ve seen her before,’ said Werner.

      ‘The woman?’

      ‘What’s her name?’

      ‘She says it’s Müller, but she was married to a man named Johnson at one time. Here? You’ve seen her here? She said she lives in England.’

      ‘She went to the school in Potsdam,’ said Werner. He smiled at my look of surprise. ‘I read your report when I got up this morning. You don’t mind, do you?’

      ‘Of course not. I wanted you to read it. There might be developments.’

      ‘Was this to do with Erich Stinnes?’ said Zena. She waved the wasp away from her head.

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was his information.’

      She nodded and poured herself more coffee. It was difficult to believe that not so long ago she’d been in love with Erich Stinnes. It was difficult to believe that she’d risked her life to protect him and that she was still having physiotherapy sessions because of injuries she’d suffered in his defence.

      But Zena was young; and romantic. For both of those reasons, her passions could be of short duration. And for both those reasons, it could well be that she had never been in love with him, but merely in love with the idea of herself in love.

      Werner seemed not to notice the mention of Erich Stinnes’s name. That was Werner’s way – honi soit qui mal y pense. Evil to him who evil thinks – that could well be Werner’s motto, for Werner was too generous and considerate to ever think the worst of anyone. And even when the worst was evident, Werner was ready to forgive. Zena’s flagrant love affair with Frank Harrington – the head of our Berlin Field Unit, the Berlin Resident – had made me angrier with her than Werner had been.

      Some people said that Werner was the sort of masochist who got a perverse pleasure from the knowledge that his wife had gone off to live with Frank, but I knew Werner too well to go in for that sort of instant psychology. Werner was a tough guy who played the game by his own rules. Maybe some of his rules were flexible, but God help anyone who overstepped the line that Werner drew. Werner was an Old Testament man, and his wrath and vengeance could be terrible. I know, and Werner knows I know. That’s what makes us so close that nothing can come between us, not even the cunning little Zena.

      ‘I’ve seen that Miller woman somewhere,’ said Werner. ‘I never forget a face.’ He watched the wasp. It was sleepy, crawling slowly up the wall. Werner reached СКАЧАТЬ