“The Federal police are looking for Behrendt,” Ferris said in a low monotone. “Everyone is.”

I thought for a bit and said: “Bocker said he was considered reliable.”

“Yes. That’s why he’s pulling the place apart.”

Neither of us said anything for a minute. I would have liked to know where, precisely, they’d got the reliable Corporal Behrendt at this moment, and how far, precisely, he was forcing them to go before he broke. When he broke, the word would go out to the radar stations and anti-aircraft units along the border from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and if anyone tried to nip across in a MiG-28D they’d blow him out of the sky. Or, of course, Corporal Behrendt might be just drinking himself quietly under the table in his girl-friend’s flat, with the security on the Finback still intact.

I was waiting for Ferris to tell me what he’d come in here to tell me, but he still held back. I suppose he hadn’t the guts.

“Don’t they know his girl-friends?” I asked him.

He looked up. “They’re covering that.” The light seemed too bright for him “Do you want anything?”

“What like?”

He shrugged. “Something to eat. Something to drink.”

“Oh. No.”

I got off the camp-bed and put some slacks on and sat in the other wicker chair between the desk lamp and Ferris so that the light didn’t worry him. He’s normally a very cool cat and it occurred to me that there could be something else, something worse on his mind; but I shied away from that one because the situation we’d already got was quite enough. It also occurred to me that the first man in the Slingshot team to break might be this one sitting here. It’s usually the executive in the field, because it’s his neck on the block, or the control in London, because he’s got most of the responsibility. I’ll tell you one thing: it wouldn’t be Parkis. It was Parkis the Titanic hit, that time.

“Is it still raining?”

Ferris looked up again. I always seemed to be interrupting his thoughts, and that worried me too. He should have got all his thinking done before he came in here disturbing my sleep.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ferris, when are you going to regain consciousness? You’ve got a mission on the board and the whole of the bloody North Atlantic Treaty Organization standing at battle stations and you don’t even know if it’s raining?”

Just the excess adrenalin slopping over: I couldn’t help it. This whole situation was new and it scared me stiff: I’d never been manoeuvred into the pre-jump phase under cover of somebody else’s security organization — we normally use our own and quite frankly the London personnel aren’t the type who don’t show up on guard duty because their marriage is on the blink: it’s dangerous.

“I’ve made three calls,” Ferris said. “Three so far.”

“Big deal.”

“It’s all we can do.”

The wicker creaked as he got out of the chair and looked at the map on the wall and turned away because it showed northeast Poland and we weren’t interested in that.

He still wouldn’t tell me but he’d left the opening so I got it over and asked him. “What’s their decision?”

He looked relieved and said: “We’ve got to wait, of course.”

Another turn on the gut.

“Until when?”

He made himself look at me. “Take-off.”

Everything sounded very still, suddenly, in here. Because they were going to make me sweat it out with no options, right up to the time of the jump. No quarter, no concessions, nothing to bite on except the bullet.

“I want the whole directive,” I said.

I knew he’d got it because he hadn’t been in signals with London just to give them the situation: he’d asked for instructions.

“They’d like you to go ahead.”

“That isn’t a directive.”

“I mean,” he said awkwardly, ‘it’s going to be up to you.”

I looked at the clock on the desk and checked it with my watch and got 05:12. We’d arranged to have me woken at 05:30 for the final phase before the jump and I didn’t think I could psych myself out for eighteen minutes without getting into a deep sleep curve and waking up groggy. I might as well stay on my feet.

“We take everything right up to the off, I said slowly, wanting to get it right, “and then if nobody’s found what happened to Corporal Behrendt we make the final decision whether to start running the thing or scrub it out. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

I picked up my shaving-kit and the towel they’d given me. “Fair enough. I’ll settle for that.”

He moved to the door. “They’ll be pleased.”

“I’m happy for them.” I put a new blade in, because there was going to be a lot of sweat under the face mask and stubble wouldn’t help. “Ferris.”

“Yes?”

“Before they put that directive together, did anyone actually want me to take-off on orders?”

“On orders?” He knew bloody well what I meant.

“With no option. Even if they didn’t find Behrendt.”

He was on his way out and he didn’t stop. “I wouldn’t know, would I? I’m not in London.”

“That’s true enough.”

But he knew what I was talking about. Parkis would have tried to get me airborne whatever happened.

Memo: Quiller is expendable, and if he can complete this operation before getting into terminal difficulties in the end phase, well and good. But if he fails to survive the access phase we shall have no real complaint. It would save us the unpleasant task, later, of ensuring that the threat to security he would continue to present was nullified.

For your eyes only, destroy after reading, so forth. But someone had said no. Possibly Egerton. Possibly Mildmay or one of their lordships on the Admin, floor. It had been agreed that the executive should be given the final decision whether to take-off or abort the mission. It was, after all, his life. Or his death.

But I knew Parkis. And I knew that Ferris did have something else, something worse, on his mind. There was something big getting out of hand, still in the distance but rolling closer, black and mountainous and unstoppable. And I knew now that I wouldn’t have time to get out of its way.

“Ten thousand rubles. Fifty gold Napoleon francs. Four digital watches and these six rough-cut diamonds.”

I nodded and he put them into the leather bag and fastened the straps. I’d seen him before, when Bocker had called those people into the briefing-room: he was BfV with military cover, ranking as captain.

Connors and Baccari were watching, looking a little tense. They’d been told we were going ahead with the programme right up to the point of take-off, when we would either proceed or abort according to whether Corporal Behrendt had been found. Whenever the telephone rang they looked in its direction. We all did.

Ferris was sitting on the steps to the cockpit. Twenty minutes ago he’d told me there had been a further signal from London confirming the last directive.

The time was now 07:14.

There was no news of Behrendt yet. Not long ago Bocker had called Ferris to say he had a lead from the mess sergeant, who had seen the man talking to a civilian in a cafe in the town last evening. He would keep us closely in touch with any progress. We didn’t take much notice: Bocker had lost an awful lot of face over this, and I thought the only thing that kept him going was our decision to press on to the zero in the hope that security was still intact.

“Hunting knife. Service revolver, officer’s.” He hesitated, glancing across at Ferris, who got off the steps and came up close to us, speaking quietly.

“We thought on this trip you might want a capsule.”

They both waited.

But I couldn’t see his reasoning, in terms of ‘this trip’. You need a capsule when you’ve been caught and they’re going to take your mind to pieces and drive you mad in the process — but there’d been no mention of specific opposition in briefing: I wasn’t going to penetrate a cell or filter through a screen or close in on any individual who might detonate if I touched him. You need a capsule in the wilds if you can’t stand pain or thirst or privation, and if I ever reached Soviet airspace I might come down somewhere isolated — but Ferris knew me better than that: I’m an animal and the wilds are my home, whether they’re forest-land or the jungle of the big-city streets.