The man was Odell.

He told the officers that he had seen nothing of theaccident, which was essentially true, and made hisescape from the scene before events in the adjacentalley were discovered.

It seemed every corner turned on his route back to hisrooms brought a fresh question. Chief amongst them:why he had been lied to about Odell's death? Andwhat psychosis had seized the man that made himcapable of the slaughter Ballard had witnessed? Hewould not get the answers to these questions fromhis sometime colleagues, that he knew. The only manwhom he might have beguiled an answer from wasCripps. He remembered the debate they'd had aboutMironenko, and Cripps' talk of 'reasons for caution'when dealing with the Russian. The Glass Eye hadknown then that there was something in the wind,though surely even he had not envisaged the scale of thepresent disaster. Two highly valued agents murdered;Mironenko missing, presumed dead; he himself - ifSuckling was to be believed - at death's door. Andall this begun with Sergei Zakharovich Mironenko,the lost man of Berlin. It seemed his tragedy wasinfectious.

Tomorrow, Ballard decided, he would find Sucklingand squeeze some answers from him. In the meantime,his head and his hands ached, and he wanted sleep.Fatigue compromised sound judgement, and if everhe needed that faculty it was now. But despite hisexhaustion sleep eluded him for an hour or more,and when it came it was no comfort. He dreamtwhispers; and hard upon them, rising as if to drownthem out, the roar of the helicopters. Twice he surfacedfrom sleep with his head pounding; twice a hungerto understand what the whispers were telling himdrove him to the pillow again. When he woke forthe third time, the noise between his temples hadbecome crippling; a thought-cancelling assault whichmade him fear for his sanity. Barely able to seethe room through the pain, he crawled from hisbed.

'Please ...'he murmured, as if there were somebodyto help him from his misery.

A cool voice answered him out of the darkness:

'What do you want?'

He didn't question the questioner; merely said:

'Take the pain away.'

'You can do that for yourself ,' the voice told him.

He leaned against the wall, nursing his splitting head,tears of agony coming and coming. 'I don't know how,'he said.

'Your dreams give you pain,' the voice replied, 'so youmust forget them. Do you understand? Forget them, and thepain will go.'

He understood the instruction, but not how to realiseit. He had no powers of government in sleep. He wasthe object of these whispers; not they his. But the voiceinsisted.

'The dream means you harm, Bollard. You must bury it.Bury it deep.'

'Bury it?'

'Make an image of it, Ballard. Picture it in detail.'

He did as he was told. He imagined a burial party,and a box; and in the box, this dream. He made themdig deep, as the voice instructed him, so that he wouldnever be able to disinter this hurtful thing again. Buteven as he imagined the box lowered into the pit he heardits boards creak. The dream would not lie down. It beatagainst confinement. The boards began to break.

'QuicklyV the voice said.

The din of the rotors had risen to a terrifying pitch.Blood had begun to pour from his nostrils; he tasted saltat the back of his throat.

'Finish if!' the voice yelled above the tumult. 'Cover itupl'

Ballard looked into the grave. The box was thrashingfrom side to side.

'Cover it, damn you!'

He tried to make the burial party obey; tried to willthem to pick up their shovels and bury the offendingthing alive, but they would not. Instead they gazed intothe grave as he did and watched as the contents of thebox fought for light.

'No!' the voice demanded, its fury mounting. 'You

must not look!'

The box danced in the hole. The lid splintered.Briefly, Ballard glimpsed something shining up betweenthe boards.

'It will killyou!' the voice said, and as if to prove itspoint the volume of the sound rose beyond the pointof endurance, washing out burial party, box and allin a blaze of pain. Suddenly it seemed that what thevoice said was true; that he was near to death. But itwasn't the dream that was conspiring to kill him, butthe sentinel they had posted between him and it: thisskull-splintering cacophony.

Only now did he realise that he'd fallen on the floor,prostrate beneath this assault. Reaching out blindly hefound the wall, and hauled himself towards it, themachines still thundering behind his eyes, the bloodhot on his face.

He stood up as best he could and began to movetowards the bathroom. Behind him the voice, its tantrumcontrolled, began its exhortation afresh. It sounded sointimate that he looked round, fully expecting to seethe speaker, and he was not disappointed. For a fewflickering moments he seemed to be standing in a small,windowless room, its walls painted a uniform white. Thelight here was bright and dead, and in the centre of theroom stood the face behind the voice, smiling.

'Your dreams give you pain,' he said. This was the firstcommandment again. 'Bury them Ballard, and the painwill pass.'

Ballard wept like a child; this scrutiny shamedhim. He looked away from his tutor to bury histears.

'Trust us,' another voice said, close by. 'We're yourfriends.'

He didn't trust their fine words. The very pain theyclaimed to want to save him from was of their making; itwas a stick to beat him with if the dreams came calling.

'We want to help you,' one or other of them said.

'No ...'he murmured. 'No damn you ... I don't... I don't believe ...'

The room flickered out, and he was in the bedroomagain, clinging to the wall like a climber to a cliff-face.Before they could come for him with more words,more pain, he edged his way to the bathroom door,and stumbled blindly towards the shower. There was amoment of panic while he located the taps; and then thewater came on at a rush. It was bitterly cold, but he puthis head beneath it, while the onslaught of rotor-bladestried to shake the plates of his skull apart. Icy watertrekked down his back, but he let the rain come downon him in a torrent, and by degrees, the helicopterstook their leave. He didn't move, though his bodyjuddered with cold, until the last of them had gone;then he sat on the edge of the bath, mopping waterfrom his neck and face and body, and eventually, whenhis legs felt courageous enough, made his way back intothe bedroom.

He lay down on the same crumpled sheets in muchthe same position as he'd lain in before; yet nothingwas the same. He didn't know what had changedin him, or how. But he lay there without sleepdisturbing his serenity through the remaining hoursof the night, trying to puzzle it out, and a little beforedawn he remembered the words he had muttered inthe face of the delusion. Simple words; but oh, theirpower.

'I don't believe ...'he said; and the commandmentstrembled.It was half an hour before noon when he arrived at thesmall book exporting firm which served Suckling forcover. He felt quick-witted, despite the disturbanceof the night, and rapidly charmed his way past thereceptionist and entered Suckling's office unannounced.When Suckling's eyes settled on his visitor he startedfrom his desk as if fired upon.

'Good morning,' said Ballard. 'I thought it was timewe talked.'

Suckling's eyes fled to the office-door, which Ballardhad left ajar.

'Sorry; is there a draught?' Ballard closed the doorgently. 'I want to see Cripps,' he said.

Suckling waded through the sea of books and manu-scripts that threatened to engulf his desk. 'Are you outof your mind, coming back here?'

Tell them I'm a friend of the family,' Ballard offered.