Len Deighton, London Match - literature save 2

'I'll phone Werner,' I said.'By all means. But you'll have to go, Bernard. You are the person the BfV knows.I can't get all the paperwork done to authorize someone else to work with them.''I see,' I said. That was the real reason, of course. Dicky was determined that hewould not go back into the office for a couple of hours of paperwork and phoning.'And who else could I send? Tell me who could go and see to it.''From what you say, it's only going to be a matter of identifying a corpse.''And who else can do that?''Any of the BfV men who were in the arrest team.''That would look very good on the documentation, wouldn't it,' said Dicky withheavy irony. 'We have to rely on a foreign police service for our certified identification.Even Coordination would query that one.''If it's a corpse, Dicky, let it stay in the icebox until after the holiday.'There was a deep sigh from the other end. 'You can wriggle and wriggle, Bernard,but you're on this hook and you know it. I'm sorry to wreck your cosy little Christmas,but it's nothing of my doing. You have to go and that's that. The ticket is arranged, andcash and so on will be sent round by security messenger tomorrow morning.''Okay,' I said.'Daphne and I will be pleased to entertain the children round here, you know.Gloria can come round too, if she'd like that.''Thanks, Dicky,' I said. 'I'll think about it.''She'll be safe with me, Bernard,' said Dicky, and did nothing to disguise thesmirk with which he said it. He'd always lusted after Gloria. I knew it and he knew Iknew it. I think Daphne, his wife, knew it too. I hung up the phone without sayinggoodbye.And so it was that, on Christmas Eve, when Gloria was with my children,preparing them for early bed so that Santa Claus could operate undisturbed, I wasstanding watching the Berlin police trying to winch a wrecked car out of the water. Itwasn't exactly the Hohen-zollern Canal. Dicky had got that wrong; it was Hakenfelde,that industrialized section of the bank of the Havel River not far from where theHohenzollern joins it.Here the Havel widens to become a lake. It was so cold that the police doctorinsisted the frogmen must have a couple of hours' rest to thaw out. The police inspectorhad argued about it, but in the end the doctor's opinion prevailed. Now the boatcontaining the frogmen had disappeared into the gloom and I was left with only thepolice inspector for company. The two policemen left to guard the scene had gone behindthe generator truck, the noise of which never ceased. The police electricians had put floodlamps along the wharf to make light for the winch crew, so that the whole place was litwith the bright artificiality of a film set.I stepped through the broken railing at the place where the car had gone into thewater. Looking down over the edge of the jetty I could just make out the wobblingoutline of the car under the dark oily surface. The winch, and two steadying cables, heldit suspended there. For the time being, the car had won the battle. One steel cable hadbroken, and the first attempts to lift the car had ripped its rear off. That was the troublewith cars, said the inspector - they filled with water, and water weighs a ton per cubic