I put my passport away. 'When you can do it without anyone seeing, break another hole in the front of your driving-seat and put the gun in there. If you leave it where it is now they'll find it without even trying, and you haven't got a licence for that either.'

He stuffed the yellow duster on top of the bulge in the side-pocket and his quick eyes flicked to the mirror. 'You don't miss much.'

'You're up against people a lot smarter than I am so you'd better watch it, that's all.'

The smell of the clutch rose again. There weren't any chains on but we wouldn't need any. The filthy snow was permanently rutted now along the major streets and the trick was to settle into them and find traction on the bare tarmac in the troughs. He turned at the bridge and came back.

'Pull in here.'

We waited nearly an hour. They came down the steps together, Foster empty-handed, the agent with a full briefcase. I couldn't see the guard at the entrance from here but I knew all I needed to know about him: he was civil police, not military, revolver, not rifle, and his post was inside the main doors on the left-hand side going up. There wouldn't be any trouble with him because when I went in there I wouldn't be alone

At this time, 15:40, I didn't have an alternative operation worked out but there'd have to be one because the thing was so sticky with risks.

'Not yet. Give them a minute.'

It really was the most disgusting design, the rear windows like nostrils and domed hubcaps protruding like warts.

'Now.'

East and north at the first lights and then left again, back towards the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge. There was more traffic than usual towards the city centre: a lot of the people here for the talks were using their first Sunday for sightseeing in taxis and Orbis cars.

'Don't get too close.'

'I don't want to lose it.'

'You won't lose it. It's like a bloody elephant.'

Orbis was no use to me. You'd got to present your papers and let them record the details and that was how I'd blown the Longstreet cover. Blow the Dollinger and there wouldn't be time to get another one before Sroda and Sroda was the deadline, three days from now. Fast driving didn't figure in the operation I was now setting up but if something came unstuck and I had to do some it would have to be in a private banger, whatever I could pinch.

The Bureau wouldn't like that. You were aware of the. strict standing orders that in all circumstances the property of private citizens must be considered inviolable.

Memo to Control: Since the private citizens of Warsaw were filling the detention cells at the rate of a hundred per day a fair percentage of motor vehicles parked in the streets were going to stay there until their blocks froze so I respectfully suggest you go and commit a nuisance.

'Hotel Cracow.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Go on past.'

It was an old building in the grand style not far from the river and the Moskwicz had turned through massive gates into a courtyard. As we came abreast I took a look and told him to pull in.

After the fumes inside the Wolga the air was fresh. The gates hadn't been shut for a long time: the traffic going through had gradually spread the tarmac to the sides and against their rusted bolts. Half a dozen cars in the courtyard, one of them abandoned, the marks of birds' feet across the thick snow on its roof and bonnet, the block presumably frozen. No one about, no one on foot. The hotel took up one entire wing of the building, mullioned lattices and a hewn portico, griffons rampant, part of the fifteen per cent of the city that didn't have to be rebuilt after the bomb doors had closed again.

Foster and the agent were going up the steps and the driver and escort were sitting behind the windscreen with nothing to do but watch people and in a routine situation I would have spent an hour doing this, hanging about for cover and using the rules, but there wasn't enough time and I had to rely on risky premises: that the driver and escort were a relief shift or if they were the two who had driven me across the Slasko-Dabrowski yesterday morning that they hadn't got a good look at me. They were taking a good look at me now but they could have seen me actually coming through the gates and that had been the point beyond which I couldn't have turned and gone back so I kept on and made for the entrance with the image rearranged, shoulders a little hunched and the pace shortened, head down in thought, one of the habitual clientele with no more interest in the aspect of the place.

They were going into one of the lifts and I turned to stamp the snow off my shoes and then went to the desk.

'Would you have a private suite for one week beginning next Wednesday? For two people.'

A quick glance down. It didn't matter how well trained they were: mention that day and there was a reaction. He was wondering how I'd manage to reach here through the barricades.

Reading upside down is a fraction easier than mirror-reading because you don't have to dissociate from the familiar and the brain recognises that if you turn through a hundred and eighty degrees you'll be out of the wood, whereas mirror-writing remains gibberish until you've done a mental switch. All I could see was that his name wasn't among the thirty or so on the one and a half filled pages of the register unless of course he was now A. Voshyov or K. Voskarev, the two possibles among the several Russian entries. He was on one of these open pages if he'd booked in officially because they went back to January 14 and he'd been flown in to vet me on a night flight of the 15th.

'On the third floor, sir, overlooking the court.' He added without any expression: 'It will be quieter there.'

It wasn't important: I hadn't come to look at the register; it’s just that the eye of a seasoned ferret notes the lie of every grassroot on its way through the warren. Voshyov or Voskarev could be the agent and Foster's base somewhere else. The important thing was to expose as much data as possible in the short time left and my real concern was the obscene-looking Moskwicz outside: the courtyard was the area we could possibly work in, facts needed collecting.

He hit the bell but I told him I didn't want to see the rooms now: I would return and confirm.

The pivotal fact was that when the Moskwicz dropped its passengers at the Commissariat and at this hotel the driver and escort remained on board. They were there when I walked down the steps, backed up to the wall between the end window and one of the griffons, the engine shut off and the louvres closed and their faces watching me from behind the reflected light on the windscreen.

On the way back to the Hotel Kuznia I stopped the taxi at a telephone kiosk and spoke to Merrick.

By nightfall I'd gone over the whole thing again and it looked all right: risky but all right. Most of it stood up so well that the one critically weak point seemed less of a hazard. It was to do with the guard. There was a single police guard on the Commissariat but today was Niedziela, Sunday. and it could be that on weekdays when every department was functioning and there were more visitors it carried the normal double guard I'd seen on other official buildings. If tomorrow they doubled the guard it'd be no go.