Poniedzialek. Monday.

They doubled the guard.

It was getting too close to the limit now to do anything except hack out a last-ditch alternative operation and it took till midday to do it and when I'd done it I knew it would only work if the opposition movement patterns remained constant. And if it worked at all the main objective would be gained: but nothing more. I would blow up their programme by springing the trap but there'd be no hope of survival.

I don't like suicide missions. They're for the angels.

Rethink.

Findings: the only other thing to do was to let the time run out to Sroda and get a plane when the heat came off and take Merrick back to London where he'd be safe and let them put it in the mission report at the Bureau: objective unaccomplished.

So out of sheer stinking pride I set the thing running.

One hour's wait. A lot of the major planning overlapped instead of throwing out the whole of the original operation I'd lopped the dead limbs and done some grafting.

When the hour was up I telephoned Merrick and made an immediate rendezvous and then went down to the street where the taxi was parked. I'd paid him a day in advance and he was filling the Wolga with cheap Russian tobacco smoke.

'When they come back keep an eye open and follow them when they leave again, find out where they go. Does that gauge work?'

'Sometimes.' He tapped it.

'Fill up the first chance you get. You can lose people that way.'

I walked on towards Wilenska against a low wind; the sky was blue-black in the north and they said there was heavy snow falling across the forestland and that the city would get it before morning.

He was late of course.

Trucks banged and the echoes rang under the great sooty roof. A mail van was parked on the slip-road that ran parallel with this platform and they were slinging the bags in; on the far side a short-haul tender was butting at a line of freight. A dozen people waiting, their backs turned to the M.O. patrol. No one else.

After twenty minutes he came in from the street and began looking for me among the group of people because the poor little bastard had only had two weeks' training and he didn't know that when you make a protected rdv you don't use cover: it wastes time. When he finally saw me he started a half-run towards me and the M.O. patrol turned their heads so I called out to him in Polish: 'It's all right, it hasn't come in yet. They say there's snow on the line.'

I waited till he got his breath.

'I'm sorry,' he said. He was always having to say that.

I took him into the buffet. Three men, four women, a kid with a red plastic guitar, his fur hat over his eyes. Steaming urns, a door to the street, telephone. I asked for czosneksoup.

'What happened?'

He sat opposite me at the table, pulling his gloves off and blowing into his hands. 'Someone tried to get asylum, just when I was leaving the Embassy.' His eyes were in a stare behind the glasses, still bright with shock. 'They followed him up the steps and tried to drag him away but he got free and came inside. There wasn't anything I could do; none of us could help him. But he didn't seem to believe it. We just had to — to kick him out.' He fished the thing from his pocket and covered it as best he could with his cold long-fingered hands. 'Excuse me.'

I gave him a minute because he wouldn't even know what I was saying.

'Listen, Merrick. They didn't turn up.'

When I'd phoned him last evening on the way back from the Hotel Cracow it was to ask for three men, part of the original plan and still part of the new one. I still had to have them.

'They didn't?' He frightened so easily.

'I waited for another hour.'

'They were properly briefed. I told them — '

'They've been picked up. That was the risk we took.'

'I'll recruit another three. The Ochota unit's still — '

'No. There isn't the time.'

Looking down at his hands he said numbly: 'I did my best — '

'It wasn't your fault.' Because he was doing it again, with his numbed words and his raw schoolboy hands and his pathetic eagerness to please and his utter inability ever to manage it, uncovering something again that I thought had been long ago buried in me: a sense of compassion.

He looked up with a slow blink and stared at me as if I'd surprised him and maybe I had; I suppose it was the first civil thing I'd ever said to him.

'What about the cypher-room staff, you got any leads?'

'Not yet, but I — '

'Anything positive, anything negative? Come on.'

He drew back on his chair, tender as a sea-anemone. 'I haven't been given much time, and they're making it very difficult. I think they've taken offence.'

Christ, the world was full of them.

Then he was pulling something else, out of his coat and I knew instinctively that he'd forgotten it until now and was hoping I wouldn't realise.

'This is from London.'

I didn't open it straight away. 'You told London to give you a hand?'

'Well yes, you said I must.'

'They given you any leads?'

'Not yet.'

'Because I've got to send signals and if you think the cypher-room's monitoring your stuff then I'll have to risk a direct line.'

Carefully he said 'There's nothing positive. That's all I can tell you.'

I ripped the envelope.

It was fourth series with first-digit dupes. P.K.L. was instructed to furnish full interim report and itemise all info on opposition activities.

I read it twice.

It's always useful and sometimes essential to control nervous reaction when the mind, within a hundredth of a second, is galvanised; but it's difficult not to let something show, just a fraction of the shock that has suddenly taken over while the eyes must remain contemplative and the hands perfectly steady and the voice expressionless. It's hard not to blink when lightning strikes close.

I didn't want to. scare Merrick. He had enough to deal with.

'London wants a report.' I put the signal away.

'Yes?' His hands cupped the bowl of garlic soup and he finished it; he looked less chilled now, less frightened by what he'd seen at the Embassy.

'They'll be lucky to get it. Don't they know we've enough to do?' I thought I'd better put something on record. 'Look, don't worry about the Czyn people I asked for.'

'I can try — '

'Won't you ever bloody well listen?' He flinched, his hands pulling away from the empty bowl, but I didn't care, I was fed up with them, Egerton and the others who'd been scraping away at this poor little bastard's nerves till I couldn't even tick him off without shocking him. 'I said don't worry about it. They were to give me support while I tried to break out of Warsaw but there's no need now.'

He nodded contritely. 'I see.'

Looking at him across the table, at his pale boy's face, at the misery that dulled the eyes and turned the ends of the mouth, at the pain that held him still in case movement would aggravate it, I decided to use his innocence for my own ends. 'I might as well tell you, so that you can stop worrying, that I'm now in direct touch with London. You know why.'

He stared at me for a long time, wanting to find the right answer because if he got it wrong I might hit him again.

'You think the cypher-room isn't safe.'

'That's right.'

He blinked slowly, thankful. 'I suppose you — you've got a kind of instinct about these things.!

'I'm a ferret. I've learned to see in the dark.'

He smiled faintly at my little joke.

I said: 'Listen to me, Merrick, I'm telling London to pull you out. Till you get their signal, keep away from Czyn. They're done for and there's nothing more we need to know. I've had new orders and as soon as I've cleared the pitch I'll be pulling out too. At the moment you're all right, you can sign off at the Embassy and get on a plane, just another second secretary being recalled for reasons of diplomatic expedience, but if you go near Czyn again and get caught in a raid by the Polish secret police they'll make a fuss and you'll be kicked out publicly for inadmissible conduct and it'll look messy.’