The ambassador went on watching him, his eyes narrowed now. I didn't know if he knew who Croder was, other than a key man in the Foreign Office. 'He didn't think there was time to get permission to do this thing?'

'Oh, he knew there was time. The boat was moving very slowly, and they were keeping track of it. We heard that.'

'Then why didn't he call up a superior officer?'

'I believe he thought they might deny him permission.' Croder spread his hands again, shrugging.

'I don't understand.'

Croder took a pace or two. 'There was once a wealthy widow who placed all her money in a phoney investment that looked highly attractive, and when she lost it all her accountant asked her why on earth she didn't consult him first. She said rather sheepishly she was pretty sure he wouldn't have let her do it.'

'My God. He was out to get that sub on his own initiative?'

'It's what we believed,' the CIA chief said reasonably, 'when the KAL plane was shot out of the sky. At first, anyway.'

Croder looked down at his shoes. 'It's what I still believe, despite a great deal of fanciful evidence to the contrary.'

The CIA chief glanced at him. 'You don't think there's any kind of connection?'

'Not in a sequential sense. I think it's a repetition of the same basic situation.'

'Okay,' Morrison said finally. 'I can report to my president, then, that the British government believes, on the evidence of this tape recording, that the Cetacea was attacked and sunk by a Soviet naval officer, without prior warning. Is that right?'

'Very nearly.' Croder. 'Those in the British government most able to analyse the raw intelligence data believe it, yes.'

'Bob?' The ambassador was looking at the CIA chief. 'That's your opinion too?'

'I guess it has to be.' He gave a shrug, tilting his head. 'In my field we tend to look for skeletons in all the cupboards, but in this case I think that's very simply what happened. A United States submarine was found too close to the Russian coast and they sank it. And we have the evidence on tape.'

There were five of us when we came into the street: Croder, Kinsley, the two boffins in their white lab coats and me. The political people stayed behind to go on with the meeting at a higher level, I suppose. But even if they'd left the building at the same time I think they would have been all right, unless they'd been too near the boffins as they climbed into their cars.

The blast tore the nearside door away and I didn't see anything more because I was spinning round and going down flat onto the pavement while the echo of the explosion started coming back from the houses and glass tinkled as the windows blew in. I wasn't close enough to feel anything more than the shock-wave, and as soon as the worst of the debris had come down I got onto my feet and turned round and took a look at the car. There wasn't anything we could do for the two men because they'd been inside when the thing had gone off, triggered by the ignition switch or a rocker mechanism or something like that.

I was a bit deafened but I could hear Croder asking if we were all right and Kinsley called out yes, then I went up the steps to the house to use a telephone as the last of the dead leaves came floating down in a moment of unnatural autumn.

The only clear thought in my head was that the actual target hadn't been the two boffins. It had been the tape, and now we'd have to start all over again.

'What?'

'How long have you slept?'

Kinsley was standing in the doorway looking down at me. I'd holed up in one of the soundproof cubicles where you can catch some sleep or just get away from the din outside when there's a big operation on and everyone's showing their nerves.

'An hour,' I told Kinsley.

'How are you feeling?' He looked very tight-faced, and kept prodding his fingers through his stiff black hair.

'I'm feeling all right.' I put my shoes on and got off the bunk, finding my jacket. 'Have you got something else for me?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'Moscow.'

'When?'

'Tonight.'

'What's happened?'

'They're on to Karasov.'

'The sleeper?'

'Yes. Someone found he'd made a copy of that tape.'

Everything became suddenly still.

'Was he blown?'

'No. He got out in time.'

'Where is he now?'

'God knows. But we've got to find him, before they do.'

'Yes, I see.'

Somewhere there was another man running.

'I'd say he's frightened.'

There were bits of white floating under the bridge. 'Doesn't he trust us?'

'I don't think it's a question of that.'

It could be ice, coming down-river. The air was freezing.

'You think he's been there too long?'

'As a sleeper?'

'Yes.'

'Possibly.' He stood with his hands in the pockets of his fleece-lined coat, looking down at the river.

I'd asked for Ferris but they said he was messing about in Hong Kong, helping to China watch. That didn't sound like Ferris.

I'd kicked up a stink, of course, but there wasn't enough time to make any changes: they'd put me onto the midnight flight after two hours' crammed briefing.

I didn't like their not giving me Ferris.

'What's that stuff?' Fane asked.

'I don't know. Probably ice.'

In a minute he said: 'You're not happy about me, are you?'

'I've no choice.'

'What are your objections, exactly?'

He was a shortish man, neatly dressed, with a clear white skin and perfectly regular features, the eyes level and the nose short and the mouth clear cut. There was nothing about him you could find interesting, or like, or dislike.

'I prefer working with people I know,' I said, 'that's all.' I looked up from the water to the gold domes of the Kremlin. 'With people who know me.'

'I'm told you're difficult,' Fane said. He took out a packet of cigarettes.

'Yes.'

'That won't worry me. The only thing that would worry me is your doing something stupid.' He offered me a cigarette but I shook my head.

'I've lasted a long time.'

The relationship between the shadow executive in the field and his local control is complicated. Fane was here to look after me, to do all the chores of booking me in at the hotel and seeing that I was comfortable and sniffing out the human environment — the other hotel guests, not the KGB: they were everywhere — and keeping me hi touch with what London wanted me to know at this phase, communicating through the embassy. In this sense he was a kind of aide-de-camp and I could tell him if I didn't like the fact that my room exposed me too much or that I wanted a European car, not a Moscwicz, that sort of thing.

On the other hand he was primarily concerned with my safety and with the onward movement of the mission, and if London had sudden and critical orders for me they'd go through Fane. In this sense he was my superior, and could move me around the board like a knight, confronting me with the opposition and telling me which squares I'd need to cross. That's how things are ideally, at the outset of a mission. Later things can change, and you can lose touch with your local control or get cut off from communication or find yourself blown in a blinding light without a chance in hell of ever seeing him again or getting his help. It doesn't happen often; it's happened only three times to me and twice I went to ground and holed up solo while my local control finally signalled London that I was probably dead.

'By all means,' Fane said, 'tell me how you like to work. I've had a brief picture from Control, of course, but I'd like it from the horse's mouth.'

'No backups, shields or low-echelon contacts.'

'Strictly solo.'

'That's right.'

A jet was sloping down the sky beyond the gold domes, lowering into Sheremetyevo, its strobes pricking the winter dark.