I was sitting at the bar of the departure lounge in London airport — flights were delayed — when an Englishman of about 40 with a drained, travelled face appeared beside me and ordered himself a large Scotch, neat, no ice. Spotty fawn raincoat, scuffed suede shoes, a bronzed, beat-up face, dog-tired, dark Celtic eyes. Officer-class, as we used to say in those days, and a soldier’s back despite the hunched shoulders. It wasn’t till he came to pay for his Scotch that I knew I’d found him. He dug a hand in his raincoat pocket, slammed a bunch of loose change on the counter, and barked “help yourself” like a challenge at the barman. The coins were in half-a-dozen different European currencies: French francs, Deutschmarks, Lire, whatever. Far too many. The barman thought of quarrelling, then changed his mind, in my opinion wisely, and instead set to work quietly sorting his way through the coins until he had what he needed. By the time he’d finished, my sharer had drunk off his Scotch in a couple of gulps and without a word swung away, leaving the change on the counter. And for all I shall ever know, he was just a weary travelling salesman down on his luck. But for me he was Alec Leamas, a burnt-out British Intelligence agent who had just seen the last of his East German spies shot down at the newly erected Berlin Wall.