11

WHEN THEY ARRIVED, it was a flat, grey, cold March day in Berlin, a city that had been comfortably in the mid-teens for most of the weekend. Suzy revealed an unlikely eye for luxury in the choice of a hotel overlooking the Tiergarten, with a giant wooden sculpture of a crocodile’s jaws in Reception, a nod to the proximity of Berlin’s zoo and perhaps the situation in which they were about to place themselves.

It was called Das Stue, meaning ‘living room’ in Danish, and beneath the grand split staircase in the entrance lobby, the reception area had been designed to capture the warmth and intimacy implicit in the hotel’s name. It was very Berlinerisch, from the doorman dressed in bowler hat and Dr. Martens to the inverted art-deco lights arranged in the shape of a grand piano hanging from the ceiling.

Kate was shown to her room on the fifth floor, which had a long balcony overlooking the treetops of the Tiergarten. She ordered tea and sat outside in her winter coat drinking it, then took herself across the road for a walk in the park as the light was beginning to fade. Berliners were hurrying home with hands thrust deep in pockets and hats pulled low to ward off the chill. And yet, the signs of spring were all around: the daffodils were coming into bloom, the lime blossom drifting on the evening wind.

There were joggers and cyclists, dog-walkers and lovers out for an evening stroll. And it was so quiet. Berlin was the only capital in Europe that could pass for a town or even a village, and Kate had always had a particular affection for it.

She walked as far as the Brandenburg Gate, where shoals of tourists were still being talked through the days when this monument to a nation’s bellicose past had stood just beyond the wall that had divided a city, a country and a continent. It occurred to Kate to wonder if it hadn’t all been a touch easier for her predecessors when the threat from the East could at least be contained in part behind that wall: the days before they could come and go at will in all places at all times, whether it be to murder former spies in Salisbury or attempt to rig elections across the democratic world.

It took longer than she’d anticipated to complete the circle back to the hotel, so she skipped a shower in favour of touching up her make-up, then headed down to join her colleagues in the bar.

Julie was curled up with her feet tucked beneath her on a long aubergine-coloured sofa, opposite doors open to an internal courtyard. It was cosy in there too, with a low ceiling and black-and-white photos on all the walls.

A girl was singing slow jazz to the accompaniment of a keyboard player. A couple at the next table seemed grateful for the excuse to avoid conversation, the woman deep in her phone. Beyond them, two young parents also watched the singer in silence, apparently oblivious to their young son playing a game on his iPad between them. In the courtyard, two girls chatted, feet beneath thick rugs and an empty champagne bottle upside down in the ice bucket beside them. Kate joined Suzy at the bar and asked her for a gin and light tonic, then returned to sit next to Julie. ‘Where is Danny?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know.’ It was standard practice for the covert surveillance teams to stay somewhere different for an operation such as this and to avoid communicating, except via the agreed method.

Suzy returned with their drinks. They listened to the singer for a while and Kate glanced about her once more. With its pastel rugs, parquet floor, the glass and chrome bar, this salon felt like a temple to modern Berlin: slick, stylish and low key, as if the city’s violent, tumultuous past had belonged to a different world entirely.

Half an hour later, they caught a cab to a restaurant called Borchardt, which Suzy insisted was a ‘Berlin institution’. It was a German twist on a French brasserie, with high ceilings, grand pillars, waiters dressed in black waistcoats and white shirts, and French café chairs and tables packed in close together, save for the upholstered maroon velvet booths along the far wall.

The waiter brought the menus and Kate glanced around her. It was the kind of place where people spend the evening watching everyone else – and eating Wiener Schnitzel, which seemed the main course of choice for every second table.

They ordered. Kate decided on Schnitzel – when in Rome – and gazed around the room again, as Suzy and Julie appeared to be getting along like a house on fire, until Suzy turned the conversation to the internal politics of their own organization and brought up Ian’s ill-disguised ambition to succeed Sir Alan as C. ‘Do you think he’ll get it?’ The question was directed at Julie.

‘I have no idea.’

‘But he wants it badly, right?’

‘I should think so. Wouldn’t you if you were in his shoes?’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s okay. A bit chippy sometimes.’

‘I heard he’s a bit of a player. On the romantic front, I mean.’ Kate watched Suzy’s expression. Either she was spectacularly ill-informed – since Julie’s affair with Ian was now pretty much common knowledge inside the building and probably beyond – or she was being provocative, malicious, or both.

Julie shrugged to indicate she had no idea, or did not want to be drawn. ‘I just need to go the Ladies,’ Suzy said.

Julie waited until she was out of earshot before she exploded. ‘What is she – fucking autistic?’

‘I don’t think she can possibly know. Even she isn’t that stupid.’

‘Everyone knows.’ It was said with a disconsolate shrug.

‘I’m not going to say I told you so.’

‘Good!’ Julie said. ‘What a mess. I should have listened to you. He proposed to me last night.’

‘What did you say?’

‘No! Of course! I told him I was not the marrying kind and never would be. He burst into tears and said he was heartbroken and he would now be on his own for the rest of his life and . . . Oh, my God, I thought he was never going to leave. He just cried and cried like a baby.’

‘That doesn’t really strike me as a normal kind of reaction.’

‘Well, I’m not normal, am I? Maybe I pushed him to it.’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘No. He was pathetic, rather than angry. But that always makes it worse.’ Julie nodded towards the Ladies in the corner. ‘What’s the deal with her? One minute she’s really engaging and good fun and the next she’s a monster.’

‘That might be a bit of an exaggeration.’

‘She told me she was investigating you.’ Kate frowned. ‘Yeah, exactly,’ Julie went on. ‘There’s nothing like actually announcing you’re the snake in the grass. She said she didn’t think Stuart was Viper and that she’d been given permission to open the investigation. She said she’d narrowed it down to a choice between you, me, Ian and Sir Alan. I replied that as career strategies went, I thought she was on to a guaranteed winner – all three of her bosses and one of her juniors. That should see her floating in the River Thames fairly soon.’

‘I think she might be getting carried away.’

‘She can really get in the way, that’s for sure.’

Suzy came back. They sat in awkward silence for a moment. ‘Have you been talking about me?’

‘Of course not,’ Julie said.

‘Is it true you’re having an affair with Ian Granger?’ Suzy asked.

Julie looked as if she’d been punched in the face.

Kate gasped. ‘I really don’t think—’

‘Given the work I need to do,’ Suzy said, ‘it would be better for me to know.’

‘This would be the investigation you’ve just been told to park by the leader of our organization?’ Kate asked.

‘It’s just that I heard he’d left his wife and was having a relationship with someone else in the organization. One of my colleagues thought it was Julie. I really feel that’s something I should be made aware of.’

‘Well, if you’re really desperate to know,’ Julie said, recovering some of her poise, if not shedding her anger, ‘then, yes, we had a brief affair. It was just sex. His marriage was breaking down anyway. He has now left his wife. We are not going to be together. Our relationship is over. Would you like to know what sexual positions we preferred?’ Suzy’s face was reddening. ‘Isn’t that the kind of information you find important at the Security Service?’

‘There’s no need to talk like that. It was a legitimate question.’

The food arrived, just in the nick of time, and conversation really flew along after that.

Kate was grateful to get back to her room. She brushed her teeth, took another double dose of zopiclone and crawled beneath the sheets. The last thing she recalled of that night was a message from Julie that said simply, What a bitch.