Spy Hook
Page 30
‘Whatever the real truth may be, you’ll never get a completely clean bill of health. Not after your wife defected. Surely you can see that.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Whether your alarming theory is right or whether it is wrong, the Department still can’t risk it, Bernard. There were voices who wanted you sacked within hours of her going. They get the wind up when you start nosing around. It scares them. You must see how difficult it is for them.’
I got to my feet. ‘Have you got any money, Frank?’
‘A thousand sterling. Will that be enough?’
‘I didn’t reckon on being an Orange File. I thought it really was some sort of mistake. Some over-zealous interpretation of the old man’s suggestion…’
‘It’s here in the desk.’ He found the money quickly, as he’d found the tumbler and the ice and the bottle of Laphroaig. I suppose he’d had everything ready. He walked with me to the front door and looked out into the Berlin night. Perhaps he was making sure there were no men on watch. ‘Take this scarf, Bernard. It’s bloody cold tonight.’ When I shook hands with him he said, ‘Good luck, Bernard,’ and was reluctant to release my hand. ‘What will you do now?’ he asked.
I looked at the skyline. Even from here I could see the glow from the floodlights that the DDR used to illuminate their Wall. I shrugged. I didn’t know. ‘I…I’m sorry…about the marks on the carpet.’ I nodded my thanks and turned away.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Frank. ‘As long as it’s not grease.’
About the Author
SPY HOOK
Len Deighton was born in 1929. He worked as a railway clerk before doing his National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.
After his discharge in 1949, he went to art school – first to the St Martin’s School of Art, and then to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. His mother was a professional cook and he grew up with an interest in cookery – a subject he was later to make his own in an animated strip for the Observer and in two cookery books. He worked for a while as an illustrator in New York and as art director of an advertising agency in London.
Deciding it was time to settle down, Deighton moved to the Dordogne where he started work on his first book, The Ipcress File. Published in 1962, the book was an immediate success.
Since then his work has gone from strength to strength, varying from espionage novels to war, general fiction and non-fiction. The BBC made Bomber into a day-long radio drama in ‘real time’. Deighton’s history of World War Two, Blood, Tears and Folly, was published to wide acclaim – Jack Higgins called it ‘an absolute landmark’.
As Max Hastings observed, Deighton captured a time and a mood – ‘To those of us who were in our twenties in the 1960s, his books seemed the coolest, funkiest, most sophisticated things we’d ever read’ – and his books have now deservedly become classics.
AUTHOR NOTE:
Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match together cover the period from spring 1983 until spring 1984.
Winter covers 1900 until 1945.
Spy Hook picks up the Bernard Samson story at the beginning of 1987 and Spy Line continues it into the summer of that same year.
Spy Sinker starts in September 1977 and ends in summer 1987. Faith picks up the story and continues it. The stories can be read in any order and each one is complete in itself.
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By Len Deighton
FICTION
The Ipcress File
Horse Under Water
Funeral in Berlin
Billion-Dollar Brain
An Expensive Place to Die
Only When I Larf
Bomber
Declarations of War
Close-Up
Spy Story
Yesterday’s Spy
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy
SS-GB
XPD
Goodbye Mickey Mouse
MAMista
City of Gold
Violent Ward
THE SAMSON SERIES
Berlin Game
Mexico Set
London Match
Winter: The Tragic Story of a Berlin Family 1899—1945
Spy Hook
Spy Line
Spy Sinker
Faith
Hope
Charity
NON-FICTION
Action Cook Book
Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain
Airshipwreck
French Cooking for Men
Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk
ABC of French Food
Blood, Tears and Folly
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
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This paperback edition 2010
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson Ltd 1988
Copyright © Len Deighton 1988
Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2010
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-39536-1
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