Foster. Christ, had he sent me to bring in Foster?

Turn the coin. Foster had been sent to bring me in.

Because he'd been flown from Moscow, part of the alert situation. That was why they'd kept me caged, to give him time to get here. He lived in Moscow, the Sundays said, 'a modest existence in a flat not far from the domes of the Kremlin, once an Old Etonian and now a hero of the Soviet Republic with an alloy medal somewhere in the top drawer with his handkerchiefs and cuff-links', a rumour about a Hungarian woman, 'a simple daughter of the proletariat content to share his uneventful life'.

Until less than forty-eight hours ago he'd been given the signal: Contact established Warsaw please proceed.

The fly had hit the web and the web trembled.

They hadn't needed full-face and profile blow-ups for the patrols. They'd known where to find me at any time. That was why they could afford to let me go.

Brain think. Stay on brain think because there's a lot coming up and it's got to be looked at and there's not much time left now.

Let him run and we'll see where he goes. It still stood up: it was based on mission-feel and mission-feel is never wrong. But I could extend the certainty now: they already knew where I was going to run because I was in Warsaw to find things out and the.only way to do it was to close in, get near them, as near as I was now, just across the street, observing and surveying and trying to work out how to

close the gap and get right inside, into the double-windowed room over there where they were quietly running their programme. Let him run and he'll run to us.

Into the trap.

I came away from the window. The light in the room was winter dim but there was nothing here I wanted to see the moves had to be made in the mind, the next in my own because they'd already made theirs and they were waiting.

It didn't matter that at this moment, at 14:05, my security was total. No one in Warsaw knew that a British agent from a non-existent bureau in London was at this tick of the clock holed up in Room 54 at the Hotel Kuznia under the cover of Karl Dollinger journalist born Stuttgart, 1929. No one. Not even the two men over there with the dark green folder on the desk between them. But it didn't matter because they weren't trying to find me; they were prepared to wait for me. They could have left me to rot m the Ochota precinct or thrown me into Grochow and left me to rot there instead or they could have put me under the lights and broken me open to see what was inside but the time hadn't been right.

They hadn't known enough. They wanted to know more.

In any capital where international talks are being convened there's always a fierce light focused on the central assembly of delegates and the plenipotentiaries and secretaries and interpreters and in the peripheral glow there are shadows and in the shadows there are always the nameless, the faceless, the eyes and ears of the intelligence networks whose job is to peel away the laminations of diplomacy and protocol and deceit and counter-deceit until they can form a picture of the realities beneath the maquillage and pass it back to Control for data-processing and onward transmission to the overt departments of government where policy is formed. There is nothing adventurous about this: it's an art becoming so fine that a great deal of what is said at the conference table is indirectly dictated by those unseen in the shadows; and in some countries the liaison between statesmanship and political intelligence is so closely linked that the first would fail operate without recourse to the second. This was exemplified in a coded cable from the Elysee to Whitehall during the Fourth Summit of 1970 and the decoded version is framed on the washroom wall at the Bureau. Spent an hour in private discussion last night with the Persian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Please let me know what he said.

Here in Warsaw the talks were to be staged between the two halves of a divided world and the spotlights were thus blinding and the shadows, by contrast, darker. The area, by this situation rendered highly sensitive, was charged with the explosive element of Polish dissension. In these circumstances Moscow had been driven to devise two programmes aimed at the protection of its own interests and of the talks themselves. One of these programmes was already running: the streets were being cleared and the trains were moving east. The other was also under way.

This was the one that Egerton wanted me to destroy and I hoped to God he knew what he was doing because the talks were as vital to the West as to the East.

Not my concern. Discount the shivering fit of the nerves, the gooseflesh fear that somewhere I'd wandered into a minefield that even the Bureau didn't know was there. Discount every consideration that had nothing to do with the mission itself, to do with the implicit instructions: define, infiltrate and destroy. Do what you're bloody well told.

Or at least try.

They didn't know enough about me but they'd know enough to damn me, to kill me, once I'd found my way inside. All they'd need to know was that I was trying to blow up their programme, the second one, the silent one. Then they'd knock me off. They'd set the trap and that was all they'd had to do: they knew, as I knew now, that I'd have to spring it myself, and hope to survive.

The main line station was three blocks from the hotel and I walked there. I'd had to get free of the claustrophobic confines of Room 54 and I'd had to take a first step towards their base and this was it.

He was a thin quick-eyed boy with a lot on his nerves and I'd have preferred an older man but there was only one rank and his beaten-up two-door Wolga stood at the head of it and I didn't want to waste any time.

'Hotel Kuznia.'

The smell of burnt clutch linings filtered through the ripped carpet. After two blocks I told him to pull in.

'This isn't the Kuznia. It's farther on.'

He watched me in the cracked mirror.

'You can leave your engine running.' We spoke in Polish and I let my accent show. 'How much would it cost to hire you for the rest of the day?' It didn't matter how much it would cost because that bloody woman was going to pay the bill anyway but I didn't want him to think I was a madman. Only a madman would commit himself too this kind of expense without asking how many noughts there were: that would be his point of view because he was half starved and I wanted to keep him with me.

'I'm on the station run. You'll have to get one from Orbis.'

'They're shut today.'

It was still there so we were all right.

'I can't help that.'

'Five hundred zlotys. That's fair.'

'I haven't got a licence, only for station runs.'

'You can check in at intervals. Your friends'll cover you.'

He twisted in the seat and looked at me. 'There's rules and I'm not breaking them.'

'You'll be breaking a few on Wednesday.'

His young mouth tightened. We listened to the ragged beat of the engine. He didn't look away. I said: 'Put it this way: if you'll keep your car at my disposal you'll be helping things along, firing the first shot. You shouldn't miss a chance like that.'

'I don't know what you're talking about'

'You see that big Moskwicz over there? I want you to keep it in sight when it leaves the Commissariat. I want to know where it goes, that's all. You're lucky, you know, got a chance of being a hero of the revolution. But you'll have to do what I tell you. Go on past the Kuznia and make a turn before the bridge and come back and stop when I say the word.'

He licked his thin lips, looking away, looking back at me. 'Show me your papers.'

They didn't mean anything except that I wasn't a Russian but that was enough. He took his time, just for the look of the thing, and I knew he was hooked. They were dreaming of Sroda, those who were left, and I was bringing it closer for him.