But he was thorough: this one 'wasn't for me'; they were 'giving it to Waring'; there 'wasn't time' to change the director in the field if I didn't want to work with him. I'd have worked with Pontius Pilate and the Seven Dwarfs and he'd known that. I was a shadow executive and he'd made me sit up and beg for a sabotage investigation job and now I was doing it. I would have refused: he'd known that too. I'd tried to refuse the Berlin thing and after that Bangkok and he wasn't going to let me refuse this one.

The sole consolation was self-cancelling: Parkis wanted me on the Striker pitch because it might break me into something bigger before I was through and the odds against that were the same as the odds against any of his blind swipes: twelve to one.

There was one chance, one, of breaking into something bigger. Somewhere along the line I could turn up the missing link.

'… as well as I'd like to.'

He waved to someone going past.

'I see.'

The link. The man who had told Lovett.

'It's because my duties are rotational — I cover a dozen bases on a strict schedule and that doesn't give me too much time to meet with them, I mean as individuals.'

The man who had told Lovett could be in Moscow or East Berlin or Hanover or here in this room tonight but most probably he was dead because he'd been the primary leak and Lovett was only a contact and Lovett had gone through a glass roof and woken everyone up.

'You seem very popular,' I said.

But there was a chance.

'I fill a need, they need a father figure.'

He was speaking in English with an American accent. Most people in the Federal Republic who speak English do it with an American accent and sometimes you forget they're German and not American. In appearance he could have been anything: Austrian, Swiss, Scandinavian. He had light eyes and a strong nose and a habit of lifting his head when he looked at people as if he were fixing a sight on them, especially people in middle distance. He wasn't much taller than Philpott but he was more energetic, jerking his hands as he talked, swinging his head suddenly to note my reaction. He was doing that now.

I said: 'That's not surprising.'

'But what can I do? I send them for mud baths and psychoanalysis up at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I talk to them before they take off and after they land. I give them sedatives and tranquillizsrs — quite often it's a sugar-pill and statistically they're almost thirty per cent as effective and that satisfies me because the speed of the nervous impulse is in the region of three hundred kilometres an hour and I don't like to slow it down even by a fraction.' His long thin hands were jerking again. 'You have to find a working balance between calming their minds and slowing their reactions, do you understand me? It is becoming very difficult here at Linsdorf because there hasn't been an accident for quite some while and they're waiting for it. Everyone is affected: ground staff, administration, their own families. Yesterday a request was sent out to the wives of all pilots asking them to refrain from telephoning for news whenever the squadron has just landed. Everyone is affected and I have my own private name for it: Striker psychosis.'

They had changed partners, Franz and Nitri.

'Is it better or worse at the other bases?'

'It is as you would expect. I have drawn graphs of the pattern. When I arrive at my next base I can tell at once if there has been an accident and how many days ago it took place. After two days the shock is absorbed and the anxiety dissipates quite automatically. The worst has happened — do you understand me? — and everyone feels better. Here at Linsdorf it is different now. Look at them. They are so gay. But that is forced. It is frenetic.'

The floor was small and they came past often. They didn't look across at each other. It was as if they'd changed partners for life. I watched Franz Rohmhild because I would need one of them — one pilot — for study, and it might as well be him.

'He is not a difficult one.'

'Which one?'

'Rohmhild. The one you are watching. His outlet is in — shall I say — human company. His wife's. Others'. That is very good. But some are difficult. They come to me with spurious complaints: headaches, vision, chest-pains. Of course I send them to the Herr Doktor Reitermann: he is a physician and I am not. But they don't keep the appointment. They come to me in the hope that I shall suspend them from flying duties and finally that is what I do because their stress has reached its threshold and if I let them go up they will only bale out and report an engine failure. That has happened. It will happen again. I would be delighted: what do we lose? One plane. Six million dollars. Who cares? The pilot is safe. But I am not delighted because he is no better: he is worse. He now has guilt feelings added to his anxiety. He knows he is a sham and a coward. Then he is finished. We do not let him fly again.' His head had swung towards me and he was sighting along his nose. 'I think that comes in your own field, Herr Martin?'

One of them was getting drunk. It was the one who'd run back for his sea-horse. He was doing aerobatics with his hands and there were people round him, laughing loudly.

'My job is to save money for my government,' I said.

'Doc! Nitri wants to dance with you!' Franz was going past with a new girl. I couldn't tell if he wanted to break it up between Nitri and her partner; it just looked like a pleasantry.

'I am a responsible married man! I cannot dance with girls like Nitri, you realize that!'

It was noisier in here now and there was a lot of laughter and you could hear the undertone, the fear of tomorrow.

'I think you are attached to the engineers,' said Wagner with polite interest. 'But I cannot see how a psychologist can help them. How is that?'

'When a pilot sends in a false report to the wreckage analysis team they can spend months looking in the wrong places. My job is to question the pilot and find out if he's lying. Especially if he's reported engine trouble.' I kept my voice low so that he'd get bored with missing the odd word or two and let it go but he was listening hard.

'Engine trouble. Why?'

'It's the only bit of the plane we can't examine. It's just a lump of burnt-out alloys. And the pilots know that.'

'Yes, I understand.'

He was still watching me and I had a choice. I was on thin ice and I could either keep as clear as possible of Wagner or try to work with him. If I could work with him I'd learn more but he had a doctorate and there was the risk of blowing my cover. I chose the risk because it could pay off if I used great care.

'That's where you could help me. You know these boys better than I do.'

His head swung away. 'I would be delighted. You say you are trying to save your government's money. Is that modesty or cynisicm? What you are really trying to do is to discover the cause of the accidents and to prevent them. That will save many lives. It is my own ambition.' He was facing me again and saying forcefully: 'Herr Martin, I am averse to the waste of men like these. They are the youth and the future of Germany. I shall willingly sit in with you at a pilot's examination and shall invite you to attend my own. Co-operation can only — '

The one at the bar, the one who was drunk, had finished some aerobatics with his hand and now his hand drove downwards vertically and the stiffened fingers hit the teak surface of the bar and sent a glass crashing. The only sound after that was his laughter and when it stopped there was a hush in the room. People turned away from him.

A murmur came from Wagner. 'He should not have done that.'

'Let's hope he never will.'

Halfway into Hanover along the autobahn the rain came and I switched on the wipers.

'Either with her or someone else. He has a wide choice. Is that the phrase? A wide choice.'