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trouble and you need time to get him out of jail. I’m sure the local staff will brief you on what’s left. And don’t forget, if we don’t hear from you, the assumption is everything’s fine. My sense of upstairs is that that’s the way they want it. Our real interests with Germany are pursued elsewhere.” Krauthilda paused to view him through her great spectacles. “Okay? All set? Well, gotta go.” As she got up, Hanbury saw slim hips pushing out against a tight skirt which fell in straight lines to the ankles. Krauthilda grabbed a fierce briefcase – out of proportion to her slender figure – and lugged it out. At the door she turned. “By the way, where
did
you acquire German? It was on the piece of paper I saw, but no mention of how you learned it.” Hanbury shrugged. “What’s the best place to learn a language?” he asked, also rising.
    This broke the ice. She laughed with unexpected earthiness. Her red mouth spread wide. “I get the picture, Mr. Hanbury. My taste runs towards Italian. Enjoy!” With trim hips swinging, and the huge case forcing her to walk lopsided, Krauthilda swept away.
    Hanbury watched her go and knew then who had drawn the obscene wallpecker hieroglyph on the Berlin file. Emboldened by the way she drew (and walked), he scribbled a note suggesting she drop by Berlin if ever she was in the neighbourhood. He signed it, playfully adding a replica of her bird, and placed it in the centre of the cluttered desk. Krauthilda’s conclusion about the place where Hanbury learnedGerman was perceptive. Had she probed, she would have found that he lived in Berlin in the late sixties, attending the Goethe Institute for one year and going to lectures the next at the Free University. He would gladly have revealed other experiences: being temporarily arrested as a bystander at a student demonstration, and being shadowed by the Stasi during visits he made to East Berlin. Had someone asked about this when he joined the Service, he would willingly have written a long essay on his stay. But, like Krauthilda, the Service hadn’t inquired, and he hadn’t bothered to volunteer the information. That’s how these two years in his late youth – formative for him, but insignificant for his employer – were accounted for in his personnel file by two vague words:
travelling overseas
. His Berlin experiences had no paper trail which meant, officially, they did not exist.
    Some months after his deputy’s departure, Heywood was himself transferred from the Disarmament Priory – to Investitures – where he indulged in his boundless curiosity for the unseen particulars of other people’s lives. In the first few weeks he went on a binge, snuffling through documents every day, his large frame hulking over the cabinets like a bear going through offal. Hanbury’s file intrigued the new Investitures priest as much as the others. Questions still nagged him. Did Hanbury get the nod because he spoke the language? Had he been tested and, if so, what was the result? Desiring answers Heywood repeatedly went back to the confidential records room.
    Hanbury’s short memorandum to Investitures, setting out his reasons for the assignment, was there. Next to Hanbury’s claim that he spoke German was an annotation. Painfully small writing in the margin in red ink said:
Language capability not essential. Nothing speaks for this request. Refusal strongly recommended.
Heywood recognized thetroubled scrawl as the sour cleric’s whom he sent packing the day he became Investitures priest. Beneath the cleric’s scribble, in neat printing from an expensive fountain pen in a radiantly happy, mind-expanding, almost transcendental blue that ran down the margin and continued along the bottom of the page before petering out, was a detailed presentation of the pros and cons of assigning Hanbury to Berlin, written by Elmer Borowski, then