I got out and they took up escort positions. The post was on the far side of the hangars and the guard commander kept me fifteen minutes and used the telephone twice before he was satisfied. 'Sie konnengeben. Das nachste Malbleiben Sie aufdem rtchtigen Weg.'

'Jawohl.'

Then they walked me all the way back and I still wouldn't fall into step and it got on their nerves. When I backed up and turned in the narrow road the headlights swung across the hangars and the statuary of armed figures.

I had needed to know. If anyone were getting at the Strikers it was from the inside.

You can use a book face down or a penknife on edge but I prefer keys and I always carry three on a ring and leave them in a top drawer because they'll go for the top one first and if someone interrupts they don't have time to open the lower ones.

I never vary the pattern: the rim of № 1 just touching the E of Yale and the rim of № 2 super-imposed on the border-moulding of № 3. They're no use to anyone, except to me. The only things they'll open are a '65 Chewy in Mexico, a flat in Putney and a jemmied strong-box somewhere at the bottom of the Nile.

A book isn't so certain. They might not take it out and if they do they won't necessarily put it back face up. The snag with a penknife is that it won't necessarily fall over and if it does they'll smell a rat if they're any good at all. But they're certain to pick up keys: any keys. They'll try them on anything in the room and if they have the time and the equipment they'll make a wax impression. (I've used this set for four years now and there must be dozens of keys that can open the Chewy and the flat and the strong-box.) My room at the motel was like most others: you couldn't move the bed out of sight of the windows. In this case there was a balcony. The wardrobe was built in but I wouldn't have moved it to shield the bed anyway because they don't search your room and shoot afterwards: it isn't consistent.

It was soon after five o'clock when I turned in. Two cars left the park in the few minutes before I slept, their lights fanning across the ceiling. The motel was on a route used a lot by commercial travellers. It might have been a couple of commercial travellers driving away.

Last waking thought: so they'd got on to me but there must have been a policy-switch and for the moment the orders were to leave me alive.

It happened at precisely 0951 hours; I checked my watch from habit.

'She is beautiful.' The manager nodded.

Most of them had gone, much earlier. I had slept until someone had called out across the park below my room: the human voice probes deeper into the sleep-levels than other sounds in the normal range.

I drank coffee at the bar. She stood on the lid of the black padded box. The traveller turned her to catch the light. The work was delicate: the mouth, ear-whorls, fingers.

'Original,' the manager said, 'of course?'

'Copies are a waste of time. A good copy can be valuable these days but people won't offer you a decent price, just because it's a copy.'

The paper was upside down from where I sat. There was still hope for the seventeen miners. Maria Fedrovna said she had not asked for asylum but that both she and her choreographer were 'considering such a step'.

The manager lifted the shepherdess to look at the markings on the base, his big hands gentle because he knew that if he dropped her the price would be double.

'Dresden, Herr Benedikt?'

'Of course.'

Feldmarschall Stockener was killed late last night on the outskirts of Hamburg. He was alone in the car.

'Things are different there now. The bombing made a difference. My wife is there. My family.' He turned to me. 'Do you know Dresden?'

There was hope in his soft hooded eyes.

'It's some time since I was there.' The Wall and its extensions had gone up in 1961.

'Everything has changed now. Except my wife. My family.' He took the shepherdess and fitted her into the case among the others. I watched his face in the mirror behind the bar. He wasn't wearing a hat: it was on the table behind us with his gloves and this week's Stern. He had been wearing a hat before, crossing from the lift in the Carlsberg with the other people three nights ago when the American had said his wife was sensitive about things like that. I wasn't certain. Hats can make a critical difference. I would need to see him walk: people can turn their faces inside out but they never think to alter their walk.

His face was sad. Perhaps about Dresden. Or Lovett.

'How much is that one?' the manager asked.

'Do you want to buy it?'

'No, I just want to know how much a thing like that costs.'

'It would depend. I take them to a man in Kassel. Not a dealer. A private collector. He doesn't buy all of them. I'll be coming back this way, if you're still interested.'

'I'm not. I just wanted to know.'

'I would make a price for you of course. You talk to a lot of people here. That would help my business.'

The sound was dull, heavy and distant.

I looked at my watch. Benedikt hadn't heard, or didn't think it meant anything. Perhaps he thought it was another sonic boom: they were a part of life in Linsdorf. The manager had heard and was looking at the windows. He had lived here long enough to tell the difference.

I went outside and he followed me and we stood looking at the sky and listening. You can't hear a sonic boom without hearing the plane afterwards. The sky was silent.

'What was it?' he asked me.

'I don't know.'

I got the N.S.U. and drove straight there.

When I reached the main gates there was some traffic coming through: three or four official Luftwaffe cars and an ambulance and crash-party tender. They knew there'd be nothing for the ambulance to do but it had to be sent out for the look of the thing.

People were at the windows of the admin, buildings and groups stood outside just talking quietly. There was nothing to see but they'd come out because this was where the noise had been, outside, and it was the noise they were talking about. It had been Like this in the streets of Westheim when I'd gone into the post office.

The A.I.B. team was standing in a group in front of the wreckage-analysis hangar and I talked to Philpott. The rest kicked at pebbles, their arms folded, some of them looking at the sky. One of them said: 'They're gaining on us. We've not put this one together yet.'

'Did your friend find you?' Philpott asked.

'Yes.' Ferris would have telephoned the A.I.B. chief and Philpott had probably passed him on to the barman at the Officers' Mess. Good barmen knew everything and this one had seen me leaving with Nitri and he knew her address: she was an officer's wife. Ferris had gone there to hang about and when he'd seen me go into her flat with her he'd decided to wait. The most comfortable place was the N.S.U. and any director can open a car without any keys: it's in the Norfolk Instructions.

Or it was one of several permutations. Ferris would have found me wherever I'd been; it was part of his job. I wondered if the noise had registered as far as Hanover: it was north of here and quite distant. There was nothing he could tell me to do about it that I wasn't here doing.

Some of the pilots were standing outside the crews' quarters and I walked slowly into the pocket of atmosphere that Dr Wagner had mentioned: I would have known there'd been a Striker down even if I hadn't heard it go in. It was the kind of atmosphere you can almost feel on your skin.

Franz Rohmhild was there with Artur Boldt and some others. Boldt was the Geschwaderkommodore and I'd talked to him last night: a lean slow-moving Rhinelander with no philosophy in his eyes. Most of the pilots accepted the situation: the Striker was a rogue aircraft and their orders were to fly it and as far as they were concerned it was a game of Russian roulette — I'd heard that phrase more than once at Linsdorf. But their Geschwaderkommodore had to lead them into the air and hope to bring them all back again and it affected his nerves differently: his natural fear was turned directly into anger against the top brass of the Luftwaffe who wouldn't ground the Striker until someone had found out what was bringing it down.