Spy Hook by Len Deighton Page B

Frank knew a thing or two about the good life. I didn't ask after his wife. She spent most of the time at their house in England nowadays. She had never liked Berlin, and rumours said there had been a row when Frank accepted the invitation to stay on past his official retirement date.
    He'd read the interim report in his bath, he told me. We knew that it had been roughly cobbled together in London and we both knew it was just a lengthy way of saying nothing at all. He flicked through it very quickly again and said, 'Does Dicky want me to deposit someone in there?'
    'He's going to great pains not to say so,' I said.
    'I'll do anything for the poor bastards who are in trouble,' he said. 'But this is Berlin. I can't think of anyone here who could go to Frankfurt an der bloody Oder and do anything to help them.' He touched his blunt military moustache. It was going very grey.
    'They don't like to sit in London doing nothing,' I said.
    'How do they think I like it?' said Frank. Just for a moment his face and his voice revealed the strain of the job. I suppose there were plenty of agents being picked up all the time but it was only when there was monitored Soviet radio traffic about them that London got interested and concerned. 'The army got wind of it,' said Frank. 'They're keen to try their hand.'
    He must have seen my face go white, and my teeth clench, or whatever happened when I became so terrified that I wanted to scream. 'The army?' I said, holding tight to my drink and keeping my voice under control.
    'The Brigadier was reminding me about the Military Mission staff we have with the Russian army headquarters. They are able to move about a little more freely nowadays.'
    'What else did your Brigadier say?'
    'He was quoting the behaviour of these GRU bastards our chaps have to put up with at Bunde. Counting those with the French army at Baden-Baden, and those with the Yanks, there are about fifty Soviet Military Mission staffers. GRU agents every one, and many of them with scientific training. They wear leather jackets over their uniforms and deliberately muddy their car registration plates so they're not recognized while they go pushing their way into, and photographing, everything that interests them.' He grinned.' "What about tit for tat?" that's what the Brigadier says.'
    'You didn't tell your army pal about Bizet?'
    'I'm not senile, Bernard.'
    'The idea of some keen young subaltern sniffing around in Frankfurt an der Oder is enough to give me a nightmare.'
    'I shouldn't have mentioned it.'
    'You said the army had wind of it,' I reminded him.
    'Did I? I should have said that the army know we have a crisis of some sort.' He looked at me and added, 'They have a good radio monitoring service, Bernard.'
    'For listening to Russian army signals.'
    'Along the border, that is true. But here in Berlin – right in the middle of the DDR – they hear all the domestic stuff. They monitor GRU and KGB traffic; they like to know what's going on. I would never object to that, Bernard. In an outpost like this, the army need to keep a finger on the pulse.'
    'Maybe I will have something stronger,' I said. But at that moment Frank's German maid came in to say dinner was served.
    I pushed all my worries, about what Frank might have said to his army cronies, to the back of my mind. We sat in the grand dining room, just me and Frank at one end of the long polished table. He'd had someone decant a bottle of really good claret: the empty bottle was on the sideboard. It was something of an honour. Frank kept his best wines for people either important enough to merit them, or choosy enough to notice. He poured some for me to taste when the egg and bacon tart arrived. The portions were very small. I suspected that the cook was trying to eke out Frank's meal and make enough for me. Frank seemed not to notice. He wanted to hear all the latest gossip from the Department, and I told him how the Deputy was slowly but surely changing the Department to his