Rain lashed the cobblestones and it was bitterly cold. As usual. It always seemed to be cold and wet. Berlin, a city carved in half by suspicion, felt more suffocating than usual tonight. My name's Harry Sinclair, and my line of work is a little bit out of the usual run of your average greengrocer. Tonight's job was already making my palms sweat: join the Soviet Ambassador's gala, held at the stark Otto-Grotewohl-Straße Soviet embassy, swap a coded message hidden in a jewelled compact with a dud, and escape without a wrinkle on my Savile Row suit. Simple, they said.

The embassy loomed, a grey monolith against the bruised sky. As ugly a building as you could imagine on a wide street. My real invitation, using my identity as a trade attaché, courtesy of MI6's finest legend builders, felt like a flimsy shield against the KGB wolves patrolling the entrance. A woman, all scarlet lipstick and suspicion, took the card. Her eyes, hard chips of ice, lingered on me a beat too long. Maybe it was my general air of insouciance that piqued her interest or the way my suit jacket hung just a tad too loose, hiding the Walther PPK nestled against my armpit. Anyway, she let me through.

The ballroom was a glittering cage, a bad-taste display of wealth amidst the tawdry, spiritless Soviet breadlines and empty shops that characterised most of east Berlin. Grey-suited men talked loudly, Soviet and DDR officers in uniform puffed fine Cuban cigars and very nasty cigarettes. The conversations formed a low hum of self-satisfaction, greed and the occasional useful secret. Women, some adorned with enough purloined jewels to ransom a duke and some looking as though they needed a good dinner, flitted about like butterflies trapped in a spiderweb, which indeed is what they were. My target tonight was Nadia Petrova, the ambassador's glamorous niece. Amazingly, she was still unmarried in her early thirties. I remembered her as a nice woman. Nice in the way a fish-filleting knife can slide in so easily under your ribcage. Rumour had it she was now a KGB darling, but whatever the rumours said, she had a smile that could disarm a bomb and a mind sharper than an ice-pick. I liked her.

I spotted Nadia, a vision in emerald green, and her laughter like tinkling chandeliers in a breeze. A tall, blond man with a shark's grin materialised at her side. Dimitri Volkov, a rising star in the KGB, notorious for his charm and ruthlessness. The word was that he managed the local Stasi connection. A very nasty piece of decoration and he looked over at me and gave me that ‘agent’s once over’ like a hawk eyeing a stray cat.

“Mr. Sinclair, isn't it?" His voice was smooth as iced vodka, laced with a hint of strychnine. "I heard you were invited this evening. They tell me you’re now a trade attaché. How interesting. I wonder, what might be the little game of trade you wish to play tonight?”

"Just a fellow enjoying the festivities tonight,” I replied, wincing at the thought that my voice might sound a touch too nonchalant. His gaze flicked past me, searching for something or someone.

Nadia's eyes, the colour of a stormy sea, met mine. Something flickered there; a ghost of a memory from a past life, perhaps. We'd met a few times, of course, at the tail end of the war. That was a different time, a different game. We were almost on the same side then. But tonight, even though she held the keys to what I needed, we were almost enemies. Almost.

The band struck up a waltz. Some flat-faced Soviet escapee from a cold cave in the Ural Mountains, dressed in a very fine Colonel’s uniform, asked Nadia to dance and she was whirled away.

"Let's cut to the chase, Mr. Sinclair." Dimitri's voice was a low growl. “I know you're here for something more than caviar and canapés."

Before I could think of something to say, a commotion erupted directly behind Dimitri. A drunken colonel, a different colonel from the one waltzing Nadia, was berating a waiter for spilling borscht or something on his medals. I seized the moment and excused myself, slipping away from Volkov and through the throng.

I could feel the adrenaline pumping as I left the ballroom.

Nadia's dressing room was at the end of a short corridor. In moments I was in, the door shut behind me. The jewelled compact was nestled in red velvet on her vanity, a little piece of gilded foolishness. Just as I reached for it, the doorknob rattled. Nadia.

"No complications," I grunted, shoving the compact into my pocket. Time was a luxury I couldn't afford. I placed the dummy compact on the velvet on her dresser.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the doorknob rattled violently. Volkov. Before she could utter a word, I lunged past her, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I punched Dimitri hard in the solar plexus, a clichéd move, but still, always an effective way of shutting someone up for a while. I burst past him and out the door. I headed straight back to the ballroom.

The drunken colonel was now in Scene Two of his descent into farce; his face contorted in rage, and he was having an enormous shouting match with the same colonel Nadia had been dancing with. Chaos erupted as a tray of champagne glasses clattered to the floor. This piece of power drama was my only chance.

I bolted past startled guests, past the gorillas on the door and out onto the wide, open street. I ran like a madman for the nearest corner and then left up a much narrower side street, away from the street lighting and into an undeveloped bomb site. A figure materialised before me. It was Volkov, my limpet-like predator, closing in on his prey.

“In such a hurry, Mr. Sinclair?" He snarled, his icy blue eyes glinting with malice. Dammit, he didn’t even seem to be out of breath. “Did you find that little trinket you were looking for?"

“Trinket,” I said, feigning ignorance. It didn’t work.

“I would very much like it to be returned now,” said Volkov, pointing a pistol straight at me, “and then I will deal with the tricky problem of the Ambassador's niece, your little friend Nadia.”

“Very well,” I said, “but leave Nadia out of this; she is entirely innocent.”

"Oh, Mr. Sinclair, I have no doubt we will soon see how innocent she is,” he said.

At that moment, further down the street, a cat knocked a dustbin lid off with a loud clatter. Dimitri turned slightly towards the commotion and momentarily his pistol was not on me. It was a distraction of a fraction of a second, but a distraction none the less. I took my chance and kicked him hard. At the same time, I pulled out my Walther and shot him in the chest. And again, in the head.

I walked, as nonchalantly and as quickly as I could, back to Otto-Grotewohl-Straße. I could already hear the whistles of the volkspolizei bustling up the side street behind me, obviously drawn to the sound of gunshots. The body, once they found it, would hold their interest for a while. I caught a tram.