'It's in his report,' he said rather tartly. 'But there's no pollen out there in the winter months.'

'There's none in this clammy hole: the origin's nervous, anyone can see that.' We were into the faster lane now and getting a move on: he'd told the driver to make for the Cenotaph. 'How much does he know about the Bureau?'

'Nothing, of course. He's never been there; he was trained by Special Branch instructors, not by us. He's seen me only once and without any chance of recognition, as you note. All he knows about you — apart from anything you've him — are your features and your cover name. I've no intention of saddling you with a potential risk, Quiller.'

‘Accident, was it?'

He took off his smoked glasses and shifted into the corner, facing me obliquely. 'You accepted this little chore,' said patiently, 'and I'm most grateful. It's only for a few days and you're not going into a sensitive area, so — '

'Apart from an imminent revolution, or is that just a tic fancy of his?'

He looked past me through the window. 'I doubt if there'll be a revolution; we don't think Moscow will let it get that far.' By 'we' he meant the Bureau's pet department: political analysts. Meeting my eyes again he got a measure of coy reassurance into his tone: 'But the situation there could well become interesting, and while it's not your cup of tea we thought we might just give it a stir see if it's sugared.'

Merrick's clearance didn't amount to more than an air ticket, which he got from the Foreign Office anyway. A second secretary was resuming his post at the British Embassy in Warsaw following sick leave and that was all; he didn't need a cover because he was already established and in place.

The Bureau doesn't normally use hired labour but it was clear enough that he was going out on a special situation mission and if he survived it I didn't expect to see him again. Egerton hadn't told me this and I hadn't asked. Merrick's long-term future was one part of the overall background picture that I wasn't going to be shown; my job was to check and confirm the information he'd be sending in to London and try to keep him out of trouble while he was getting it. The one thing I'd have liked to know was the extent of his value to the Bureau. At first glance it didn't look too high: he spoke a bit of Polish and had established organisational cover and unofficial access to the underground cell of an East bloc republic simmering with dissension. But someone in the Bureau had recruited him and appointed Egerton to direct him despite the fact that they knew he'd need looking after from the minute he left the U.K. According to the rules it shouldn't have worried me but the rules don't mean a thing.

'That one do you?'

I looked at it. Third series, fifth-digit duplications with recurring blanks, normal contractions and all numerals reversed. The alert-key was general, not integrated: you just put a contraction in full.

'Can they recode this for radio?' It looked as if I'd be sending my stuff through the Embassy, diplomatic telegram.

'We've made sure,' he said.

'Oh really?'

Codes and Cyphers don't normally go into little points like that: they just select one that nobody's using and try it on for size. This was Egerton, steering me through clearance as smoothly as if he were at my elbow. The same thing had happened in Firearms: they know I never use anything but they usually try a bit of persuasion so they can feel they're still in business, but today they'd just said nothing for you, that right? Nil under Weapons Drawn. Egerton again, taking care of me, hunched in front of the little fire up there in the other building, with his every thought devoted to my welfare. I could have done without that. I didn't like being taken care of so smoothly by a man who'd done his best to pass this thing off as a 'little chore', 'only for a few days', 'not really our cup of tea'. Maybe it was just because he was most grateful, most grateful. I didn't think so.

Accounts. Travel. Field briefing. Credentials.

She opened the folder. 'Is this all you need?'

I hadn't asked for deep cover and Egerton hadn't insisted because this wasn't a full-scale mission. It was only light stuff: passport with two-year-old border guard frankings at Danzig and Krzeszow, visa background, C.P.S. membership card and a few letters carrying fairly recent dates; a nice touch was that although their subject matter was in obvious sequence the latest one was headed January 2 of the previous year, a thing a lot of people do from force of habit.

‘Are any of these present-day?’

'The two top ones are,' she said. 'We had enough time.'

To M. Stasiak, 17 Chalubinskiego, Warsaw. December 20.

Oh you bastard, I thought, you bastard.

On Tuesday there was an L.O.T. flight via East Berlin and I’d told them to book me on that. Egerton must have known but he didn't question it.

There wasn't anything about Jan Ludwiczak in the paper the stewardess gave me but I didn't expect there would be: they always throw a blackout after the first run. It didn't matter because. I'd seen the story in a copy of Zycie Warsawy I'd picked up on the off-chance at the shop near Cambridge Circus. Jan Ludwiczak, 21 — there was no address — had been arrested for subversive acts against the Republic, chiefly the operation of a clandestine printing press with three other men and a woman — none of whom were named — for the publication and distribution of violently seditious material among the bourgeois elements of the universities. The arrest of Ludwiczak's confederates was said to be imminent.

I hadn't been looking for this particular story when I'd bought the copy of Zycie Warsawy but it was the kind of information I needed. As a by-product it told me quite a lot about the situation out there because in the paper the stewardess had given me there wasn't a hint of subversive acts or even mild unrest. This wasn't so much an example of typical Russian split-mindedness as a pointer to indecision on the part of the authorities: first they'd tried to 'soften up the workers by leniency' — according to Merrick — and then they'd gone on to 'the other tack', and they obviously still weren't sure whether to clean up dissident factions by secret arrests or scream their misdeeds from the housetops as a deterrent. On a personal level Jan Ludwiczak was of course cooked and the arrest of his friends was indeed 'imminent': under the glare the rubber truncheons would work through the routine and their names would come out one by one.

The sky was brilliant and below us lay an ocean of sludge. After East Berlin I put my watch forward an hour and thought: you bastard. He'd known I wouldn't ask for deep cover because the pitch he'd decided to sell me on was the 'only for a few days' ploy. So he'd told Credentials to fix me up with these few letters ostensibly exchanged between me and the people in Warsaw, arranging to meet. That was all right. The meetings weren't important ones: a meal somewhere, a little business, the sort of thing I could cancel or postpone or leave in the blue if it suited my plans. The letters were typed and the ones from P. K. Longstreet were signed in a perfect imitation of my own handwriting so that nothing would look odd if some bright spark thought of checking with the signatures on my passport and visa. That was all right too. But the first letter had gone off on December 20. So 'everyone else' hadn't refused. They'd never been asked. He hadn't roped me in at the last minute: he'd lined me up for this job nearly three weeks ago.

He wasn't a bastard for doing that. He was Control, not Bureau, and a director puts his ferret to work in the way he chooses, shows him the hole and shoves him down it and stands back and crosses his fingers. No, he was a bastard for knowing I'd pick up the date on that letter when I was going through clearance and was therefore committed, too late to change my mind without actually getting slung out.