'Yes, I see.'

Then why don't you bloody well ask me?

I edged the door of the phone-box open a fraction to let some of the stink out. The sirens were louder suddenly. I could still see the flamelight against a white building, with the rain tinged red.

'What about Brekhov?' Kinsley asked.

'He's dead.'

Every muscle in my body slackened like a broken spring and I was leaning against the side, of the box. The first need of grief is to talk about it and if you don't think we ever have time to grieve for strangers in this trade it's just that you don't understand that there aren't any strangers, really, out there on the brink.

'You're sure?'

'What?'

'You're sure he's dead?'

'Jesus Christ, d'you think I'd have left him there?'

I dropped the phone back on the hook and slumped harder against the glass panels of the box and squeezed my eyes shut arid thought it wasn't going to be any good if I let a thing like this upset me when I ought to be moving on. Two hours into the mission and you're into a KGB trap and out of it again with a dead courier, big deal, a lot of jobs go like that, you should be used to it by now.

Maybe it was because I'd had to watch him go, without being able to do anything about it. He'd tried twice to correct his line when he'd swerved to avoid the truck but the roadway was too wet and he was half aquaplaning with the front end and he couldn't bring his speed down because he was trying to get the rear wheels to drive him straight. The headlights in my mirror seemed as if they were being flashed on and off and I couldn't understand why the driver of the BMW was doing that until I realized he'd made his skid-U-turn too fast and was swinging from side to side, out of control.

The truck loomed through the rain-haze and slammed past me as I saw the Mercedes reach the end of its run, hitting the corner of a red brick wall and swinging hard round and smashing against the side of the building with all four wheels off the ground and the suspension whipping as the rear tank split and caught a spark and the whole place was suddenly a sheet of flame.

I got the wheel hard over and slammed sideways into some iron railings and ricocheted with the seat-belt cutting diagonally across my ribs; then sound and movement stopped except for the hiss of the rain and I was running for the Mercedes, Most of the fuel had been hurled rearwards but there were flames all round the car and I dragged the door open to get Brekhov out before the upholstery caught, but he was twisted sideways against the seat squab with his head at the wrong angle and I just ripped at his shirt and felt for the sticking-plaster and found it and tugged at it but couldn't break it because there were several layers round his body, so I broke a sliver of glass from the smashed driving window and used it for cutting until the small thin rectangular pack was free; then I got clear with the flames catching my clothes and the heat blinding me until I got out of range, rolling over and over in the puddles and beating at my legs till the flames were out and I started running.

There were some shots: the BMW had finished up on its side but one of the men was climbing out and using his gun. The police siren was very loud now and I broke through a hedge and kept to the cover of a row of trees until I could settle into a steady run. The shooting had stopped but I couldn't go back to the SSL: he'd be waiting for me to do that. I gave it a couple of miles before I slowed and started looking for a phone-box.

Slumped inside it, I looked down at the puddle that had formed from my soaked clothes, watching a dead match that was floating on it, until my senses got back into focus and I picked up the phone again and got the embassy.

'I was cut off from London.'

When Kinsley came on the linked radio line I just told him I'd be getting onto the first available plane.

'Do you need help of any kind?'

'No.'

A huge fire engine was thundering past as I left the phone-box, and I looked back once at the light of the flames, faint now in the distance, while in my mind the echoes of steadily running footsteps died away.

'Come in.'

He stood aside for me.

There were six men in the room and none of them looked at me. This was Room 382 at No. 24 South Eaton Place, the office of the Chief of Political Liaison Section, the cover tide for the head of the CIA station in London.

Kinsley didn't introduce me. It was the same situation as the Downing Street thing and I assumed it was the quickest way of getting strict-hush information to me: briefing would have taken much longer. I was still wearing the cheap denim slacks and polo sweater I'd bought in Berlin: my own clothes had been soaked and the trouser legs charred by the fire and I wouldn't have got near a plane before the KGB surveillance team there put two and two together. The report on the Brekhov incident would have reached their local network in a matter of minutes.

'Have a chair,' Kinsley said.

Croder was here, glancing over me with a faint light of approval in his eyes. I don't suppose he was terribly pleased that I'd let the opposition spring a trap and get the courier killed but the main thing appeared to be that the product was here in this room, presumably intact.

The US ambassador was here, brooding massively near the desk: I'd seen him at Downing Street. I didn't know who the others were but obviously one of them was the head of the CIA over here and the two odd-looking types must be the technicians looking after the tape-deck and the sound spectrograph on the desk. They were fiddling with it while Croder talked quietly to the CIA chief and Ambassador Morrison stared at his large veined hands. I remembered he'd had a nephew on board the submarine.

'Sorry about Brekhov,' Kinsley murmured. 'Are you okay now?'

'Everything's relative.' They think you only bring back physical scars.

He watched me with his unsurprisable eyes. 'We may be sending you out again.'

Croder had warned me about that. Whoever we send out to meet Brekhov, it would be logical to think that there will indeed be more for him to do, a very great deal more.

'All right,' I told Kinsley. My eyes were still sore from the heat of the fire and my hair still smelled of smoke and I kept on seeing Brekhov with his head like that. But given enough incentive I'd feel mission-ready again.

'We're not sure yet,' Kinsley said, 'when we-' then he broke off as one of the technicians started talking.

'What we're going to hear is the actual tape recorded at the time of the incident. Then we'll listen to a tape taken from the file on routine audio-surveillance in the Murmansk area.' He wiped his thin red nose and looked at Croder.

'Very good.'

I turned my chair round the other way and leaned my arms on its back; I hadn't slept on the flight out to Berlin or the flight home and there was the whole night still heavy on me.

The man slipped the tape into the deck and set it to play. There was silence for five or six seconds and then some kind of background interference; then two voices began speaking in Russian, in between intervals of what sounded like grid hum.

I have a weak signal on No. 12.

The technician spoke in the intervals. 'That's one of their sonobuoy monitoring stations.'

And we have another signal on No.. 3. Stronger.

Canyon triangulate?

The background hummed.

Yes. We have a velocity of 15 knots. The position is 17-E on the east grid.

'They'll be watching these readings on a computer screen,' the technician said, and wiped his nose again. It had been freezing outside when I'd got here.

It's moving out of range on No. 12. The course is 119 degrees.

How close is it to my No. 4 battery?