'The Bar Roxana.'

He didn't know where it was.

'On Jerozolimskie.'

The line wasn't bugged. I'd got the picture on the Embassy before leaving London and part of it was that three weeks ago the clicks and echoes had become so bad that they'd interfered with the actual conversation so they'd fired a diplomatic rocket at the Polish Foreign Ministry suggesting they took a look at Clause 19(a) Para. II of the Instrument of Convention, reference facilities granted to foreign missions: and that such telephonic installations shall at all 'times be free of technical modification. Everyone does it, of course: there's a jukebox in a cupboard within sight of the Cenotaph where you can enjoy a do-it-yourself Linguaphone course right round the clock, but now and then a rocket goes in and for a few weeks His Excellency can date his Bunnies without it actually getting into Hansard.

When did I want him to be at the rendezvous?

'Say half an hour.'

He sounded worried because it was the first specific rdv we'd made and he was wondering why I couldn't just pick him up in the street as I'd done before. He didn't say anything about this: he just said that he'd start out for the Roxana straight away.

Before he could ring off I said: 'Use a taxi. Get it to drop you off somewhere neutral like a post office and then do the last few blocks on foot. They put a tag on you from the Residence to the Chancellery this morning, so make sure you're clean.'

I'd used a phone-box midway between the hotel and the bar so that I'd be certain to get there first. There was a bus-queue opposite and I stood there for nearly thirty minutes in the cutting wind before he came; then I gave it five minutes and it was all right so I followed him inside and ordered vodka grogs.

'It took you long enough.'

'I'm sorry.' He looked like death.

'How many were there?'

'Only one, I think.'

'You think?'

'Only one.' He couldn't look away from the door.

'Don't worry, I checked.'

He looked away now, his eyes red from the wind that had cut behind his glasses, his glasses magnifying them, magnifying the fright in them.

'Did you?' Then he got the thing out and pumped it. 'Excuse me.'

'I'm having you pulled out of Warsaw.'

He looked as if I'd hit him:

'What have I done wrong?'

'Nothing. This isn't your game, that's all.'

It was the first time he'd had to flush a tag and if it had left him shot to shreds like this then how in God's name was he ever going to survive until it became just a natural act like blowing your nose?

'I haven't been at it very long.'

'The best time to pull out.'

But the thing was that I couldn't do it to him and I knew that. Check his reports, keep him out of trouble, those were my orders, and I could signal London till the Telex seized up and, it wouldn't do any good because they wanted him out here and they didn't care if it killed him and they didn't care if I had to stick here and watch them do it.

'I'll get better,' he said, 'as I go along.' He couldn't get his breathing right and I knew by the way he hung on to his mug of grog that he was fighting the urge to fetch out the atomiser again and shame himself with it. 'Don't send me back.'

I looked away. 'It's not in my hands. I just wish to Christ it was. Have you got anything for me?'

It wasn't much, a couple of sheets. Certain changes of plan in spearhead deployment, reduction of present radio contact to minimise risk, increasing importance of person-to-person liaison (he meant cutouts), so forth. Nothing about what I was looking for.

'Which unit was this? The one they wiped out yesterday?'

'The one in Tamka.'

'Where the power station is.'

'Yes.'

'Where they'd fixed up radio-controlled detonators?'

'Yes.'

His tone was numb and he sat hunched in desolation and I was fed up with it.

'Well they won't go off now, will they? Let there be light next Wednesday, and there will indeed be light. It's a bloody shame, isn't it, Merrick? It'd be nice to think we were looking at a report on something that's going to make history, a glorious revolution wresting the independence of an oppressed people from its despotic overlords and precipitating the collapse of Russian dominance in the whole of Eastern Europe. But what we're looking at is the autopsy on a dead duck.'

I think he hated me then. His head jerked and his eyes opened very wide and he stared into my face, wishing me dead.

'That's what you — ' and a spasm took him and he sat with it and I waited and finally he managed to get his breath without using the spray and I liked him for that, he'd got pride. 'That's what you want. Isn't it?'

'No.'

'Then why — '

'Because I'd like to see them do it and I know they can't.'

The tension went out of him and he looked down. 'But they ought to try.'

He said it very quietly and not really to me. And I knew he was saying it about himself, no one else.

'They'll try all right. Christ, so would I. It's just that we're not going to get much of a kick out of watching them fail.'

Two men came in and I checked them in the mirror.

It was routine but I did it a fraction quicker than usual because until tomorrow it was important that nobody asked to see my papers.

'Did that stuff go off?'

'I'm sorry?'

'To London.'

'Oh yes!

'What time does the Queen's Messenger get in?'

'He'll be on the three-fifty plane.'

'Cleared by four-thirty, Customs and entries, all that?'

'A little sooner, unless there's more snow and the roads get — '

'Look, just keep it on you and leave at the normal time, about six. Make for the Residence and if there's a tag you'll have to flush him.'

He nodded, swallowing.

'It gets easier every time. You only had a standard gumshoe this morning and you'd have peeled him off all right if you'd wanted to. Thing is to know they're there.' I folded his report and gave it to him.

'Don't you want it?'

'Hang on to it for the moment' He put it away clumsily, catching a corner aid having to smooth it out and do it again. 'It's on the ball,' I said, 'don't worry. But there's no mention of the U.K. diplomatic support they think they're going to get. Why not?'

His face went blank. 'Support for the revolution?'

And the pattern shifted again and I wasn't ready for it any more than I'd been ready the last time and it took me a couple of seconds to steady up.

'That's right'

'They must be out of their mind. Why should the U.K want to disturb the balance of East-West relations just when there's the hope of — '

'How many people in Czyn have you been in contact with, a rough count?'

'Fifteen or twenty. The Ochota unit near — '

'And none of them have talked about it?'

'Not to me, or I'd have put them right. You remember what Mr Egerton told me about scotching any ideas like — '

'Let it go.'

He shut up and I tried to think of a snap answer because sometimes it'll work if you just let your mind take a jump in the dark before you have to inhibit it with data and do it the hard way, the logical way. Sometimes it works but not always. Not now. The thing was that it would be very important to Czyn if there were even the slightest hope of Great Britain lending support to what they were trying to bring off, and if one unit knew about it they'd pass it on to the whole network, priority flash. And they hadn't.

I finished the hot vodka. It had sped up the circulation and I could feel my fingers again; it had even given a bit of colour to Merrick's face though the effect was macabre, like rouge on a cadaver's cheeks. It'd be interesting to know why he related his bid for freedom from paternal dominance with the Polish people's attempt to get out from under the Muscovite boot to the point where the bare idea of their failing was breaking him up.