“No, really.” He put down his tumbler, picked up the hammer, and hefted it meaningfully for a moment before tossing it onto the sofa. “I think bashing her brains in would make me feel so much better. I don’t know how else a man is supposed to heal after something happens to him like that.”

“In this particular case, getting away alive is the best revenge, don’t you think?”

“Says you. Me, I think I’d prefer to bash in her brains. But slowly, you know. I’d like to take the time to enjoy it. One blow a minute.”

“You’re just saying that. And you think it will be sweet. But take it from one who knows. It isn’t. It never is.”

“What are you? Hamlet? Look, Gunther, don’t try to handle me. I know what I want, okay?”

“Then it’s just as well she’s not here, I guess.”

“It makes no difference,” he said. “One day I will catch up with her and I’ll pay her back.”

“You mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. She’ll walk into a hotel room and I’ll be there, waiting behind the door, with a garrote in my hand.”

I shrugged. “Have it your own way.”

“You really don’t feel the same? She betrayed you. She played you like a hand of cards. Believe me, if anyone should want to kill her, it’s you, Gunther.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“As a matter of interest, what were your orders, Hennig? Just to help discredit Roger Hollis, I suppose.”

“That’s right. It was a good operation, too. And it would have worked but for Anne French. She’s got a mad streak, don’t you think? Either that or the woman is made of steel. Probably both.”

“Of course, it’s perfectly conceivable that it wasn’t Anne who betrayed you, but Mielke and Wolf. That the whole operation was really meant to put Roger Hollis back in good odor with his Whitehall masters. That she was told to do it from the outset.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you? I’m afraid I’ve formed the opinion that she was always meant to betray your operation. Yes, from the very beginning. That those were General Wolf’s orders. I’m afraid I really didn’t buy all that stuff about falling out of love with the Communist Party. It would certainly explain why Wolf picked her and not someone with family back in the GDR, who could be threatened with reprisal. No one like that would ever have done what she did.”

But Hennig wasn’t having any of it. I didn’t blame him; it sounded madly convoluted to me, too. Just madly convoluted enough to be the kind of thing that people in the secret services might actually think of.