Free London Match by Len Deighton Page A

carefully measured portion. 'It's not supposed to be good for you. The doctor cut me down to one bottle per month last year.' He drank. 'This year he told me to cut it out altogether.'
    'Then you are disobeying orders,' said von Munte.
    'I got myself another doctor,' said Silas. 'We live in a capitalist society over here, Walter. I can afford to get myself a doctor who says it's okay to smoke and drink.' He laughed and sipped a little more of his, Madeira. 'Cossart 1926, bottled fifty years later. Not the finest Madeira I've ever encountered, but not at all bad, eh?' He didn't wait for our response, but selected a cigar from the box he'd brought under his arm. 'Try that,' he said, offering the cigar to me. 'That's an Upmann grand corona, one of the best cigars you can smoke and just right for this time of day. Walter, what about one of those petits that you enjoyed last night?'
    'Alas,' said von Munte, holding up his hand to decline. 'I cannot afford your doctor. I must keep to one a week.'
    I lit the cigar Silas had given me. It was typical of him that he had to select what he thought suitable for us. He had well-defined ideas about what everyone should have and what they shouldn't have. For anyone who called him a 'fascist' - and there were plenty who did -he had the perfect response: scars from Gestapo bullets.
    'What do you want to ask me, Bernard?' said von Munte.
    I got the cigar going and then I said, 'Ever hear of martello , harry , jake , see-saw or IRONFOOT?' I'd put in a few extra names as a means of control.
    'What kind of names are these?' said von Munte. 'People?'
    'Agents. Code names. Russian agents operating out of the United Kingdom.'
    'Recently?'
    'It looks as if one of them was used by my wife.'
    'Yes, recently. I see.' Von Munte sipped his port. He was old-fashioned enough to be embarrassed at the mention of my wife and her spying. He shifted his weight on the wicker seat and the movement produced a loud creaking sound.
    'Did you ever come across those names?' I asked.
    'It was not the policy to let my people have access to such secrets as the code names of agents.'
    'Not even source names?' I persisted. 'These are probably not agent names; they're the code names used in messages and for distribution. No real risk there, and the material from any one source keeps its name until identified and measured and pronounced upon. That's the KGB system and our system too.'
    I glanced round at Silas. He was examining one of his plants, his head turned away as if he weren't listening. But he was listening all right; listening and remembering every last syllable of what was being said. I knew him of old.
    'Source names. Yes, martello sounds familiar,' said von Munte. 'Perhaps the others too, I can't remember.'
    'Two names used by one agent at the same time ,' I said.
    'That would be unprecedented,' said von Munte. He was loosening up now. 'Two names, no. How would we ever keep track of our material?'
    'That's what I thought,' I said.
    This was from the woman arrested in Berlin?' said Silas suddenly. He dropped the pretence of looking at his plants. 'I heard about that.' Silas always knew what was happening. In earlier days, while the D-G had been settling in, he'd even asked Silas to monitor some of the operations. Nowadays Silas and the D-G kept in touch. It would be foolish of me to imagine that this conversation would not get back to the Department.
    'Yes, the woman in Berlin,' I said.
    Walter von Munte touched his stiff white collar. 'I was never allowed to know any secrets. They gave me only what they thought I should have.'
    I said, 'Like Silas distributing his food and cigars, you mean?' I kept wishing that Silas would depart and leave me and von Munte to have the conversation I wanted. But that was not Silas's way. Information was his stock in trade, it always had been, and he knew how to use it to his own advantage. That's why he'd survived so long in the Department.
    'Not as generously as Silas,' said von