'Who do you work for?' I asked him.

He didn't say anything and I realized he wasn't feeling too happy about this because he shouldn't have' let it happen. He'd got into the place from the kitchen window-there was mud on the floor by the fridge — and the first thing he'd done was to prepare an exit on the other side of the house and he'd been too close to the front door to get the gun out in time when I'd opened it. This was the third since last July: it's almost routine and we just phone the Bureau for someone to come round and clean the place up. Accounts get terribly fussed because we always insist on reasonably decent furniture and of course they have to replace it, but it's mostly drawers and in my case the Chinese lacquered cabinet in the study because it looks as if it ought to have a lot of secret panels so they always rip it to bits, and the best of luck.

'Who do you work for?'

I put some pressure on and he began going white.

They're going to get in, whatever we do, and we're damned if we're going to have two-inch-diameter steel bars at all the windows and electronic alarms everywhere because in between missions we like living in a fairly civilized way. Of course we never keep anything useful in our flats or wherever we live, but they can never be certain about that and I suppose it's tempting.

'Who do you work for?' I said it in Russian and Yugoslavian as well, just in case there was any connection with Zarkovic. He still didn't say anything and it annoyed me and I used quite a lot of pressure and he gave a reflex jerk and passed out for sixty seconds.

We don't often bother the Bureau, except to clean up and take the broken stuff away for replacement. The Bureau has been established ten years or so and in the early days we used to report a break-in by phone right away and they'd send a whole team along and if we'd caught anyone they'd take him back for interrogation because we were very keen to build up files on anything we could get our hands on; but these types never turned out to be interesting: they mostly second assistant economic attaches or local characters making a bit on the side while they're out on parole. At this level the major international networks leave each other alone and it works perfectly well: otherwise we'd never get any work done. We know all the restaurants and girl friends' flats where.we can drop on any number of lower-rankers in the opposition field but there wouldn't be any point; they don't know enough to warrant the trouble and they'd only start tagging us everywhere and trying to get us into a corner and the whole thing would grind to a halt.

On an active mission it's totally different.

Some of his colour was coming back.

I lifted 'his eyelids. He wasn't ready yet.

Give him five minutes, then I'd have to get someone to take him away and leave him outside a police station because I wanted to put most of the stuff in my suitcase into a laundry bag for picking up, and find some clean shirts. If Egerton was sitting in at Signals it was because he was expecting something to break and he hadn't put me on immediate call just for a laugh.

'Right, I want some answers now.'

We're all of us sensitive to our own peculiar points and I shifted about and got him interested at last, giving him slow periodic stimulation just this side of syncope, 'Who are you working for?'

'I don't know.'

A certain amount of writhing about, but it looked like transfer: I was offering physiological fear rather than actual pain and he was worried about what I was going to do next, 'Who pays you?'

'Nobody. I come to steal,' Slav accent.

I thought the quickest way would be to take him into a steady pressure-reaction rhythm, and within fifteen seconds he couldn't stand it any more because his nerves were having to deal with repetition, the equivalent of the aural situation where a loud and monotonous noise begins driving you up the wall.

'Tony.'

'What?'

'Tony pays me,'

'When?'

He didn't say anything so I tried again and succeeded, 'Monday,' he said on his breath.

'Monday nights?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'In pub.'

'Which pub?'

'Beefeater Arms, the one — '

'All right.' I knew which one.

He was losing colour again so I gave him a rest.

'Is that where you give your information?'

'No.'

'Where do you give your information?'

'I leave in library.'

'Come on then, I want the details. Don't keep stopping.'

'In library, between page ninety and ninety-one of Economic Lexington.' He began sweating a little,

'Lexicon?'

'Yes, is-'

'What time?'

'Five minutes till hour, when I have information.'

That meant they must have someone in place: one of those earnest little librarians with ginger' hair and rimless glasses and a portrait of Lenin pasted behind the Landseer in their room at the boarding-house.

'What do you do if you have some urgent information?'

'I already tell you that.'

'Come on.'

His leg jerked and he took a few seconds to get his breath.

'When urgent information, I telephone number in Kensington and wait under tree in Park, where — '

'All right, that's all I want.'

I'd found a packet of Gauloises when I'd searched him for spare ammunition, and I got it out and put a cigarette between 'his Lips and lit it for him. 'Just sit still for a minute or two and you'll be all right.'

I went into the sitting-room and my study: there was nothing out of place and this agreed with my theory that he'd come straight from the kitchen to prepare an emergency exit in the hall when I'd opened the door. But I checked the upper floor just in case and found it in order. When I came down the stairs he was standing in a shadowed corner of the hall with his gun trained on me.

'Come on,' I said, 'I'm going to drop you home.'

'Where is safe?'

'What?'

'Where is safe?' He jerked the gun.

It's all spelt out laboriously for these local domestics in the little maroon booklet they issue at the Embassy: Al-ways look for the wall-safe be-fore any-thing else, and that sort of thing. There's a translation into their idea of English and we keep a copy in the Caff to read to each other when we feel like a giggle.

'Don't muck about,' I said, but he kept on his Al Capone expression and wouldn't budge so I went right up to him and panicked him into pulling the trigger and he heard the click and 'his face went blank, like a baby's when you take away the bottle. 'Now you've got the message,' I said. 'Listen, I'm going to take you home — you can't walk there in all that rain.' It was pouring again, with big drops coming through the half-open door.

He was all right after that, and followed me down the steps and into the car and sat there in a despondent hump. I started up and got the wipers going and undipped the mike.

Fox mobile.

They said okay and I put the mike back and got past a bus that was sending up a filthy stern-wave. It wasn't far, but before we got there he keeled over and came to rest with his head against the door. I don't know exactly what happened: probably delayed reaction to the whole thing. I left him like that till we pulled up outside No. 13 Kensington Palace Gardens. There were a couple of men at the doors but they didn't come out and I didn't blame them in this downpour. I got him in a fireman's lift and took him up the steps and propped him there and went back to the car already half soaked. They were coming out to take a look at him as I drove away.

We don't normally deliver Ruskies back to their Embassy but I suppose I was sorry for this one and felt a bit guilty. But until he'd given me the typical pattern of operation (pubs and libraries and trees in the Park) I hadn't been sure he wasn't a Yugoslav with some conceivable connection with Milos Zarkovic and I couldn't just let it go.