'Same old thing.'

'I told you, didn't I? London wants me to do what I can to help keep the peace for the talks. You've been clearing the streets as quick as you can but there'll still be a nasty lot of T.N.T. going up on Wednesday because there are one or two units left intact and you won't ever find them.' When I'd counted up to five I said: 'I know where they are.'

Something snapped, near where I was standing. The woman had broken the handle off a cup she was drying, her nerves in her fingers making them clumsy. She put the handle on to the zinc draining board; it looked like a bit out of a puzzle picture.

'Oh, we'll find them all right.'

I'd expected him to say that. He couldn't have said anything else. I'd laid my ace and he'd trumped it.

'And the best of luck.'

'Of course,' he said reasonably, 'that, doesn't mean we wouldn't be able to do it quicker, with your help.'

'I'm not helping you, Foster, so get it straight. I don't trade with your type. Our interests are parallel, that's all, so you're in luck.' The line went fuzzy and the sweat came again; this thread was so thin and it was all I had. 'Listen, you can do something practical as a kick-off. Ten days ago the U.B. pulled in someone from Czyn and we're going to want him.' I gave him the name. 'He's got a head full of essential info that you won't get out of him: they grilled him and drew blank. But he'll tell me.'

'What sort of info, old boy?' Tone rather lazy.

'Don't be bloody silly. Put it this way: we're trying to open a safe and he knows the combination.'

'If they got him ten days ago he'll be across the frontier by now.'

'Of course. Get him back.'

'I know it sounds easy, but he's just one of — '

'Find him and fly him in, use a snow-patrol chopper. I don't care how you do it, that's your headache. Hold him for me till I'm ready.'

It was all I could do now but I believed he was hooked.

'Sorry, old boy, but it won't work. It's all so awfully vague, you see. If you could just give me the odd pointer.'

The wooden boards under my feet started vibrating and the whistle came from the distance, a muted shriek. It would be small at first but it was coming fast and would grow gigantic, a black mountain on the move towards me.

'I'm ringing off now, Foster. You've had your chance.'

'Just the odd pointer.'

The thunder gathered, beating at the windows; a glass on the shelf tinkled against another. An express from the north, from Olsztyn, running through to Warsaw Central.

'Where's your pride?' I had to shout a bit above the noise. 'You're asking an intelligence officer in the other camp to give you clues and pointers, you know that? Christ, you're far gone, no wonder you got yourself blown!'

He was saying something but I couldn't hear properly, something about surveillance

'What?'

'We'd have to keep you under surveillance.'

I let my eyes close. I wanted to sleep.

The train went through and smoke billowed against the windows, dimming the light as my eyes came open.

'As long as they don't get in my way. Tell them that. Tell them to keep their distance, and no tricks. For your own sake, you get that?'

I handed the receiver to the thin man.

The sound faded. The floorboards were still again. 'Yes,' the thin man said. 'Yes,' he kept saying. 'Yes, Comrade Colonel.'

They were all standing to some kind of attention because they knew who was at the other end.

An honorary rank. He must have hated that, to have his brand of subtle and specialised intelligence brought by implication to the level of the bovine military mind; but they'd thought it was a compliment and his courtesy wouldn't have let him refuse. A private Englishman, Colonel of the Red Army. His own bloody fault.

'Yes,' the thin man said. Then he put down the telephone and turned away from me, speaking to the others. Two of them left, by the door to the street. The rest didn't move.

I went out to the platform and noticed Merrick on a bench, sitting alone and crouched over his gloved hands, staring at the ground; he didn't look up; he may not have heard me. I walked past the dark-windowed saloon and came to the open street.

The first pair were already ahead of me, looking back sometimes; the other two had taken up station behind me. It was a box-tag and we don't often meet with it, especially towards the end of a mission, because when the heat's on there's no time for either side to formulate rules; but this was a specific situation and the rule was that if I didn't try any tricks they'd leave me alone except for overt surveillance.

I led them to the Hotel Kuznia, thus blowing my new cover. I wouldn't need it again. By the time I'd reached Room 54 they were checking the register at the desk and getting the passport number of the anglik who'd just taken his key, very well, the West German, yes, Karl Dollinger, this one. By the time my shoes were off and I was propped on the bed they were passing my cover to Foster. That was all right: he had to feel reassured until I was ready to start the thing moving. It would have to be tomorrow and I didn't care for that but it was fragile and haste could break it.

Thought began streaming. I couldn't signal Egerton that the untrained novice he'd sent me to look after was a double agent for the K.G.B. because my only communications were through the Embassy and through Merrick himself. There was nothing wrong with the cypher-room staff: when Foster had bottled me up he hadn't left the cork out. The cork was Merrick. They would have been content to sit back and wait for me to spring the trap but when I'd asked Merrick to get me three people from Czyn as a back-up team he'd passed it on and Foster had decided not to risk anything: he'd been afraid I'd got some kind of coup lined up, fancy him thinking a thing like that.

Merrick himself hadn't known they were going to pick me up or he wouldn't have bothered to give me the signal from London.

My hand moved and I stopped it, have to do better than that. The phone wouldn't be bugged: they'd just put a man in the switchboard room and leave him there. I'd have to do it from outside in forty minutes from now at 16:00.

She was there and all I said was that I'd phone her again tomorrow on the hour or the half-hour. She sounded edgy about something.

'You all right?' I asked her.

They watched me from the corner by the state supermarket. The others were across the road.

'Yes. But the police came here.'

'When?'

'Not long ago. An hour ago.'

'Your papers were all right.'

Nothing could have happened because she was still there but I had to relax my hand on the receiver, do it consciously.

'Yes.' She'd been unnerved, that was all. 'Yes, they looked at them, and went away.'

'They come to see you, or was it just a routine check?'

'They checked everyone in the hotel.'

'Fine. You won't see them again. You know it's all right' now, you can rely on your karta.'

They stood like penguins, their arms hanging by their sides and their heads raised slightly. They were damned good, I knew that; on the way to the phone kiosk I'd thrown a feint, doubling and using a street repair gang for cover, nothing too patent because it didn't have to look like a test, and they'd closed in very fast and revealed a third pair on the flank across the road: it was a six-box and it wasn't going to be easy when the time came.

She said goodnight. For me to take care, and goodnight.

On the way back to the Kuznia I slipped on a patch of packed snow, just in front of a parked taxi, and the driver got out to see if I was hurt.

'Where do they go?'

'To the Hotel Cracow.'

'Nowhere else?'

'Always to the Hotel Cracow.'

I hit the dirty snow from my coat. 'I won't need you again.' After I'd gone a dozen paces I heard the loose thrust of the starter.