So I just said no, because I couldn’t ask him what he meant by this trip with so many people about and it wasn’t worth our going off to talk in privacy: I know when to ask for one of those things — it’ll be when I ask for a gun.

The man did some sleight-of-hand and the little red box disappeared. The uniform, clothing and equipment were all manufactured in the Soviet Union or one of its satellites. Most of it was made in Tashkent.” Close to the target area. This is the kind of meticulous attention to detail you get from Parkis, and I tried to feel reassured but it wasn’t easy, because there’s the other side to him! the inflexible slide-rule precision that doesn’t give you any freedom of choice when a fuse blows.

I looked the stuff over as it was laid out for me: the only distinctive items were a peasant’s fur coat and hunting gear, well worn, and a short collapsible fishing-rod bound with tape; the rest comprised the standard essentials: signal flares, matches, fire lighting chemicals for use with damp wood, food concentrates, a small torch, a whistle and a compass. The first-aid kit included morphine and water-purification tablets, and there was a compact toilet bag. Almost every item was made in Russia, but the razor was Polish and the torch Czechoslovakian.

“Life-jacket?”

“In the cockpit.”

We began putting it all together and Baccari went up the steps with a testing kit and started checking the circuits. Franzheim was crouched over the landing gear with a tyre gauge and Connors went off on a tour of inspection of the airframe: they were doubling for the ground staff to keep down the number of people on secret commission. They worked without talking, and Baccari seemed especially subdued: it was now 07:27 and we were thirty-three minutes to zero.

Ferris went across to the small door and talked to the USAF MP sergeant on guard there; from this distance I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The BfV man was stowing the equipment in the cockpit and I started changing into the Soviet colonel’s uniform. A few minutes later the telephone rang and Ferris took it. We had all looked in his direction for a couple of seconds, but he stood with his back to us.

I thought he was speaking in German. He was on the phone for less man a minute and when he rang off he went on talking to the sergeant. It could have been London, through the embassy in Bonn or through NATO and the War Office, but I wasn’t going over to ask him. He’d tell me what I needed to know, and if it was nothing then he’d tell me nothing.

The uniform fitted well: it would have been made by the Bureau tailor, the man with the artificial hand in the back room off Regent Street. The KYP are looking for him under the name of Zaphiropoulos and if they find him we won’t see him again.

“Looks pretty neat,” Connors said.

“What?”

“The uniform.”

“Might get me a few girls. Are we fuelled up yet?”

“Sure. During the night.”

I suppose that was why there were so many puddles in here: they’d brought the fuel-tanker in from the rain.

The telephone rang again and Ferris answered it, and there was an odd flash of understanding that passed between Connors and myself: we both wanted to look over there in case the call was important but we didn’t want to show each other how edgy we felt, so we didn’t turn our heads.

“Is it still raining?” I asked him.

There wasn’t any sound on the hangar roof.

“Drizzling, I guess.” He was peeling a piece of gum. “You use this stuff?”

“No. I’d probably choke on it.”

He laughed unnecessarily: things weren’t so bad if we could make our little jokes while the tune ran out and Bocker didn’t call and we hit zero still not knowing.

“What’s the visibility going to be like in the morning?” The morning was now fourteen minutes away.

“The last forecast was a mile and a half.”

“What’s the least I can work with?”

“I’d say twelve hundred feet, for this trip. That’s the length of your take-off roll.” He put the gum in his mouth and flicked the ball of paper into a puddle.

Ferris was still over there and the calls were coming through without a break now, all of them short, less than half a minute. He never raised his voice.

“How are you feeling?” Connors asked me.

“Fine.”

Because they had another twelve minutes to find Corporal Behrendt and he might just have run away from his wife.

“You shouldn’t have any problems.” He gave a tight smile. “You’re too well briefed.”

“Correct.”

Then some kind of vehicle pulled up outside the hangar and we could hear voices. One of the dogs started growling, deep in its throat, keeping it up until I could almost see the fangs and the stare of the trained-to-kill eyes.

“I wish that bloody thing would stop,” I said.

“You wish what?”

He’d been half-turned to the door, trying to hear what Ferris was saying on the phone.

“Nothing.” I went up the steps to talk to Baccari in the cockpit, not pleased with myself, not pleased at all, ten minutes from the jump and showing my nerves to anyone who was around, dear Jesus, I’d have to do better than this, much better than this.

“We’re all checked,” Baccari said and climbed out. Then everyone was moving suddenly and I saw an NCO come through the door and go up to Connors. Ferris came off the phone and started across to the plane, walking a little quicker than he usually did. A nerve in my eyelid began flickering and I was aware of it and knew there was no way to stop it except by relaxing and I couldn’t do that now.

“Everything’s go,” I heard Connors say, and the NCO went back to the door at a slow run. There were voices outside again and one of the dogs barked and a word of command silenced it.

Ferris was standing at the bottom of the steps looking up at me, his hands in the pockets of his mac and his pale head tilted under the lights.

“Bocker hasn’t got anything definite for us,” he said, ‘so far.”

The eyelid went on flickering.

“How’s London?”

“They’re being kept informed.”

Of nothing. Uninformation.

The colonel’s outfit looks good,” Ferris said.

Then the hangar doors began rolling open, making a thin crack of dark that spread slowly with a noise like distant thunder. No stars, no trees, nothing but the dark. It wasn’t morning yet, and I stared at the great black rectangle thinking that if morning never came it would be all right; and I’ve learned for a long time mat the only thing to do about that kind of thought when you’re within minutes of the crunch is to be aware of it, recognize the emotion behind it and remember that it’s natural, perfectly natural.

Men were coming in from the rain, their camouflaged capes bright with it. They came towards the Finback.

Franzheim was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps.

“You want a final run-through with the maps?”

“No.”

We’d covered it exhaustively and the day before the exams old Winthrop used to boot me out on to the rugger field. My God, that was a long time ago: is he still alive? He used to smell of camphor.

Baccari was at the bottom of the steps, winding his instrument leads into a skein over his hand, turning to look across at the telephone: it had begun ringing again and Connors took the call.

07:49 on my watch.

I looked at Ferris. “Have they pushed our zero forward?”

“It’s not daylight yet,” he said and walked off before I could ask him anything else. I suppose they were dragging their heels in London, weighing up the chances and sending each other prissy little memos while these rain-caped men in here guided the tractor across to the Finback and dropped the lugs of the tow-bar into the holes and signalled the driver, sending each other memos for your eyes only, so forth, going through the required bureaucratic ritual, Parkis in Signals now, standing behind the man at the console for the Slingshot board with the red light not switched on yet Egerton with him, possibly, or possibly not: Parkis might have kept him away at the last minute, clearing the place of everyone except the signals personnel. Parkis would be nervous now. Even Parkis.