He broke off.

The siren was close, howling past the front of the building. I didn't see the vehicle but a rectangular blob of white passed across the ceiling as the reflection came through the window. The siren was dying away but not into the distance: I thought the vehicle had pulled up near the West Wing.

It wouldn't be police. They had their own police here and they wouldn't use their sirens, 'Is that a fire engine?'

'Huh? No.'

Ryan got up and looked out of the window. In a moment he turned back with a slight shrug. 'Anyway, why should I bore you with my favourite bete noire! I lose a dozen friends a day!' His laugh seemed slightly forced. 'Have you met Bob Finberg before, Mr Wexford?'

'No.'

'You'll like him — he's a really great guy, I've known him for years. You'll find him a little reserved, maybe, if this is the first time you've met. Later on, you'll find he can relax with the best of us.'

There were voices outside the room and I could hear someone's footsteps across the marble, running. Somewhere a metal door slammed.

'Excuse me a minute,' said Ryan and went out, shutting the door.

He was absent for seventeen minutes. I think he'd forgotten me, and had then remembered. When he came into the room his face was white and he spoke haltingly.

'I regret to say your meeting with Robert Finberg is unavoidably cancelled.'

The street was quiet.

Four blacks were standing under the lamp at the nearest intersection, three men and a woman, talking. One swung a guitar case, laughing sometimes, stepping forward again, turning his head to look along the street, talking again, 21:15.

They stood there for another five minutes and then broke up, two of the men going north to the next intersection, the remaining man and the woman turning in this direction and passing the Mustang without glancing in. The man was the one who had been laughing; he swung the guitar case as he walked.

'Okay, he goes for the audition and they ask him who his agent is, an' he says I don't have no goddam agent, an' they throw him out on his ass!'

His laughter rang along the street The woman said something and the man laughed again.

There was nobody else in the street until the first car turned the corner and stopped outside the hotel. When five cars had dropped their passengers I got out of the Mustang and walked back to the traffic lights and bought a late edition of the Post from the box and opened it out as I walked back under the lamplit leaves, checking once, checking twice before I got into the Mustang and shut the door and reviewed the driving mirror for any change in the pattern.

At 21:40 a small police unit was dropped off by a van and took up station: two uniformed officers on each side of the hotel entrance.

Cars began arriving at regular intervals, dropping people off and driving away. Burdick was due to reach the hotel at 22:00 hours.

Ferris hadn't been specific on all points but I hadn't pressed him because my report on Finberg had shaken him and he'd had to get into immediate signals with London via the Embassy radio. I was on what amounted to phase stand-off and feeling very worried because there'd been two fine threads keeping us in contact with Kobra and now one of them had snapped.

Post: Unconfirmed reports attribute Mr Finberg's death to cardiac arrest, and close relatives have spoken on the 'intense strain' he has been under for the past few weeks.

I looked over the top edge of the paper and saw the pattern was a little different: two plain-clothes men were taking up station not far from the police officers, who didn't appear to notice them. If they hadn't in fact been plain-clothes men the officers would have noticed them and moved them on.

Mirror.

A similar pattern change. He was Short, slow-moving, and alone. He came to within fifty yards of the Mustang and then went back to the intersection. I didn't think he was plain-clothes or FBI because he didn't look like that.

21:50.

Ferris had told me to report by phone on the hour at hourly intervals but he never gave me anything useful so I made some enquiries about James K. Burdick, Secretary of Defence, since he was the most interesting man among Fin-berg's acquaintances.

Now I was sitting here wishing to Christ I could get on a plane to New York and take over the Zade surveillance because that was the other thread, the one that hadn't snapped, the one that could snap at any next minute because Kobra had told us before not to get in their way.

Mirror.

The slow-moving man passed the telephone box again, «looking behind him twice in the next fifteen seconds. His image was wrong for an official service operator but he'd undergone basic training. He had noted the Mustang and the fact that I was inside it. He was keeping within the necessary distance of the telephone box and glancing behind him the necessary number of times per minute to ensure that if anyone tried to get into the box he'd be there before them. I assumed that he didn't have to make a call on the hour — in nine minutes from now — but had to make a call when something specific occurred: the arrival of the Secretary of Defence outside the hotel.

I didn't think it was a bracket situation where he was surveying for any form of assassination attempt although information is always information and when he reported Burdick's arrival he could be- triggering any one of a hundred chains of events.

Two identical black Cadillacs turned the corner of the nearest intersection and came towards the hotel entrance, slowing.

At this distance I wouldn't be able to identify Burdick with certainty but the image of the man getting out of the leading Cadillac compared very well with the seventeen photographs I'd studied at the newspaper office. Also he outranked every other guest at the convention dinner by a wide margin and the four uniformed officers were now standing slightly more upright and the two plain-clothes men were turning their heads in a slow sweeping rhythm.

The party of five men crossed the pavement from the leading car into the hotel and I got out of the Mustang and walked back towards the telephone box.

The man inside was talking but I couldn't hear what he was saying. I walked fairly fast, with the paper under my arm. Every one of the twelve cars parked between the Mustang and the first intersection was empty and there were no cars parked along the other side of the street. The man had walked here, turning this corner. He wasn't interested in me. He'd seen me sitting at the wheel of the Mustang but it hadn't meant anything to him: his basic training was narrow focus and all he could think about was obeying orders and his orders were to make a signal when James K. Burdick arrived at the hotel. If the man had been police or FBI or any trained service operator he would have done one of two things: he would have come right up to the Mustang to check or he would have kept out of my driving mirror.

I reached the corner.

Note two people leaving blue Chevrolet and walking south.

Note patrol car heading in this direction from the next intersection.

Note light-haired girl walking north on opposite side.

Fine rain beginning.

Three cars stopped at the traffic lights, this side: two cars stopped at the lights the other side. A cab went through on the green and the lights changed and the patrol car slowed and prepared to stop.

The traffic lights would govern my sequence of actions, then. There was nothing I could do about that.

Red.

The rain began jewelling the green spring leaves above the pavements and drops fell, darkening the ground. There was no need to note consciously that wet stone is more slippery than dry: the body would adjust automatically.