'Nobody loves Parkis, do they?' He was running his long fingers across the facia-board, transferring his reactions. He spoke mildly for maximum effect. 'But you'll have to bear with him this time because he's on to a rather big show and you are in it. If you let your dislike of Parkis affect your judgement you'll come unstuck, and I don't want that to happen because I'm in it too and I'm responsible for you. So brighten up a little and we can do some good business together.' He ran his fingers round the chronometer and then took his hand away. 'Your judgement's a degree cloudy at the moment. Our contact tipped off Lovett about a Striker crash and the nearest Striker base from Hanover is Linsdorf so he might be there, someone on the admin, staff or on the technical side, even one of the engineers. And your enquiries have brought you back to Hanover tonight — correct? So you can commute between the two. Parkis doesn't realize that, but I do, and I'm not going to tell him he's got his wires crossed just because you're in a tantrum. Wouldn't she let you, or something?'

This was why Ferris was such a good director. He knew how to set you up when you were slipping.

'You really are a bastard,' I said.

That's right.' He resettled his glasses. 'Another thing is, Parkis wants to send in a shield.'

I didn't say anything right away because I was feeling better now and in any case this was confirmation that the mission was expanding: they only send someone to look after you when things hot up and you become valuable to them. A shield is a bodyguard, close or remote, and his job is to stop people messing you about — people like the man with the marzipan — to keep you alive and leave you in peace while you're working. Some of us accept the idea because it can be useful: when Miller burst open the Warsaw thing last year it was almost wholly due to the shield who kept him alive while he was busy penetrating.

'No go,' I said.

That's what I told him.'

'I work best alone, you know that'

That's what I told him.'

He'd been enjoying himself, telling Parkis the answers before I'd been given the questions.

'All I haven't told him,' he said carefully, 'is whether you've dug up any lead-in data at Linsdorf.'

'I've been.down there for twelve hours, remember?'

That's all right. I just asked. Because he will. How's the hand?'

Top condition.'

'And what else was it? The arm, wasn't it?'

'I still don't want a shield.'

'Fair enough. But you'll have to be careful. Independence is one thing but as your director I'm not standing for any flights of bravado. Is there anything else before I go?'

I asked him for a statistics breakdown on the complete series of pattern-crashes to date, chronological, geographical and with background information on the dead pilots. He said he could do it for me.

'Can I drop you off?'

'I'll walk. It's a fine night'

I watched him away while the engine was warming. He had a loping stride and his thin hair blew around his head as he passed below the last lamp before the corner.

The Hanover-Kassel autobahn runs almost due north-south and I could see the few lamps of Hildesheim to the right. The rain had stopped and the three-quarter moon sent a trickle of light along the chrome edge of the screen. After Hildesheim I pushed the N.S.U. to its optimum cruising-speed on the auto-converter, close on 160 k.p.h. Full pelt was 180 but there was no need for that: the mirror was clear except when I overtook a night-running truck.

It had come oddly from someone like Ferris: 'You'll have to be careful.' Yesterday morning he'd told me to 'get in their way' without hesitation and now he was talking in terms of a shield. He'd known I wouldn't agree but if I'd changed my mind an hour ago he would have signalled London by now and they'd have flown one in. The thought was luxurious: once they decide you've got a value they'll do your buttons for you if you can't be bothered, give you that 260-k.p.h. Lamborghini without a Special Uses chit.

I missed her nyloned legs, curled up in the glow from the facia. Her scent was still in the car.

I'd stopped being annoyed with her because the stuff Ferris had given me was important and I was interested in it. It had been nothing more than frustration in any case because there'd been arousal and I hadn't bargained for that.

When I told her it-wasn't on she slipped out of her dress, stretched, stooped and was naked before I had time to say that I meant it.

She was pleased, watching my expression, standing there with a little half-proud smile. 'I'm different, aren't I?'

Anders was the word. The lamp had a rose shade and she moved so that its light could play on her. Then I looked up at her eyes and she was sure of me and came towards me so I turned away and that was when the hysterics began.

I let them come. I couldn't leave her until I'd heard enough to know she wouldn't do anything dumb as soon as she was alone. They were all living on their nerves, the wives of Linsdorf, and if there were any dangerous instability in her a small shock to the ego like this could push her over the edge. Between sobs she said the expected: she hated me, I was impotent, so forth, throwing herself face down across the bed where the lamplight fell so that it was necessary to look somewhere else because for a lot of reasons it wasn't on and it was no good the libido's trying to struggle.

Then of course she was suddenly asking, 'Is it because I'm different?' and I went over and played with the hair at the nape of her neck because she was serious now and needed comfort.

'You're not that different, Nitri.' Her hair was like warm cream through my fingers. The English don't talk, remember? And there are other things they don't do when they don't want to, however, much they want to. You only want to hurt yourself and I'd make it worse, it'd be a kind of rape, wouldn't it?'

When she was quiet and I moved away and she watched me open the door. She said: 'You don't understand.'

'I'll tell him we did. That's all you want, for him to think so.'

The Hara peaks on the left, moonlight along their snows.

He'd stayed in the mirror for more than five kilometres now so I came down to 140 and he still didn't pass and I began thinking things but he pulled out after a while and I kept my speed down until he became a shrinking blob of light far ahead of me. Some night-drivers like company through the long dark autobahns and he was just one of them.

The lamps of Nordheim. Poor little bitch. Not long out of school and into marriage with a man who used variety for a tranquillizer because his nerve was going and now she was only at peace when his plane took off because it was the one place where he couldn't take a woman, the one place where she didn't want him to be: alone with the Widowmaker.

But I would have to see her again. There was more that she could tell me. Ferris had asked if I'd dug up any lead-in data at Linsdorf. Well yes. But not entirely at Linsdorf: it linked with something she'd said in the car on the drive north. And she knew them better than anyone, the pilots, those who knew that she was anders.

There were a few lights in the motel and I swung the N.S.U. into the park and had a thought and turned out again without stopping, driving on for three kilometres and then taking the minor road past the airbase. It ran within a hundred yards of the hangars and they were on to me right away: red lights, mobile barriers, the full treatment.

'Halt!' One on each side with submachine-guns. 'Hire Papiere bitte!'

Their breath clouded in the lamplight 'Von wo kommen Sie?'

'Hannover.' 'Wo wollen Ste htn?'

'Nach Linsdorfins Motel.'

'Was machen Sie aufdieser Strasse?'

'Ich muss wohl aufder verkehrten Strasse sein.'

'Lassen Sie den Wagen hier und begleiten Sie uns.'