London Match (61 page)

Werner turned the key and started the engine. It was a cold night and the car needed two or three tries before it came to life. He went down the slope and out past the gatekeeper. Berlin never goes to sleep and there was plenty of traffic on Grunewaldstrasse as we headed for his apartment in nearby Dahlem. He took it for granted that I would sleep on his sofa for what was left of the night, just as I took it for granted that Frank Harrington would phone me there to give me any instructions that came from London. It was like that with all of us. We all knew each other very well; too damned well at times. That's why, when we arrived outside his apartment and he switched off the engine, he said, 'Admit it.'

'Look at it another way,' I said. 'Fiona, one of the brightest and best-placed agents they've ever had, was flushed out and had to run for it so hurriedly that we lost little or no data. Brahms Four, a brave old man who for years supplied such good banking data and East Bloc forecasts that the Americans traded with us for it, was brought out safely . . . '

'Because you and I . . .' said Werner.

But I ploughed on. 'I survived their attempts to discredit me and even their loony hope that I'd run. I survived it so well that they had to rejig their resources to turn suspicion onto Bret. Okay, they were smart — I fell for it at first and so eventually did a lot of other people who had more data than I had and should have known better. But at the end of the road, Bret's reputation will have survived, and we proved flexible enough to bend the rules and even break them. The willingness to break rules now and again is what distinguishes free men from robots. And we spiked their guns, Werner. Forget game, set and match. We're not playing tennis; it's a rougher game than that, with more chances to cheat. We bluffed them; we bid a grand slam with a hand full of deuces and jokers, and we fooled them. They were relieved to get Stinnes back and they didn't even try to sustain the fiction that he was really enrolled.'

'Luckily for you,' said Werner.

'Luckily for both of us,' I said. 'Because if they'd stuck to their story that Stinnes was a traitor, I'd now be on a plane to London handcuffed to an Internal Security man and you'd still be on the wrong side of Charlie. Okay, there are wounds, and there will be scars, but it's not game, set and match to Fiona. It's not game, set and match to anyone. It never is.'

Werner opened the door and, as the light inside the car came on, I saw his weary smile. He wasn't convinced.