Charity

Charity
Len Deighton

Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the final novel in the classic spy trilogy, FAITH, HOPE and CHARITYBernard continues to chip away at the mystery of his sister-in-law Tessa Kosinski’s death in Berlin on the crucial night when his wife Fiona was brought out of the East. Fighting to uncover the truth, he must also confront the key relationships in his own life: Fiona is still far from stable now that she has returned to work, and their children remain in the clutches of his wealthy and manipulative father-in-law. Meanwhile, Werner Volkmann, Bernard’s friend since childhood, is reluctant to get involved in Bernard’s crusade.A wonderful depiction both of covert operations and office politics, Charity is packed with action, incident and intrigue, bringing to a triumphant conclusion a series of ten novels that represents one of the great acheivements of modern English fiction.This reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and a brand new introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.

Cover designer’s note

Some years ago, on visiting the Vienna office of famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, I was intrigued by the assortment of names on the building’s bell-push directory. Each button would lead to a separate encounter, a different life story. My photograph of this now serves as a further ominous device for this trilogy.

Readers will note that Bernard’s name appears in the third panel; is Bernard the “third man” in the story, an unreliable narrator who is more implicated in the shady doings and subterfuge than he has let on? Perhaps the third position equates to the third part of the third trilogy; after all, at crux of the whole series stands Bernard. Or perhaps it best suited the design. I shall leave it to you to decide.

Inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. This time it was from listening to a line from the lyrics of “These Foolish Things”, written Eric Maschwitz, a former colleague from my days in television (and no stranger to spy-craft himself): “A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces…” This brought to mind the idea of a lipstick-tipped East German cigarette overhanging an ashtray containing a cigarette lighter displaying the ever-present KGB badge.

At the heart of every one of the nine books in this triple trilogy is Bernard Samson, so I wanted to come up with a neat way of visually linking them all. When the reader has collected all nine books and displays them together in sequential order, the books’ spines will spell out Samson’s name in the form of a blackmail note made up of airline baggage tags. The tags were drawn from my personal collection, and perhaps Bernard’s too, and are colourful testimony to thousands of air miles spent travelling the world.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

Len Deighton

Charity

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.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1996

CHARITY. Copyright © Len Deighton 1996.

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011

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

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007395767

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780007395804

Version: 2018-09-14

Contents

Cover designer’s note

Title Page (#u51a179b7-7c05-53db-a9d9-19527a1d1e4e)

Copyright

Introduction

1

A bloated vampire moon drained all life and colour from…

2

‘That bloody man Kohl,’ said Frank Harrington, speaking with uncustomary…

3

When someone asks you to make an objective decision that…

4

‘Now that Bernard has finally joined us,’ proclaimed Dicky Cruyer…

5

I resented being sent to London Debriefing Centre to squeeze…

6

‘Who is it? Bernard? Good! Put your skates on and…

7

Cindy Prettyman had grown older; we all had. The amusing,…

8

Tegel, West Berlin’s third airport, was built in a hurry.

9

It was a strange place to find the grievously sick…