It had occurred to me to telephone Ferris.

The night wasn't much above freezing and I was glad of the sheepskin coat. My breath was grey in the sharp air as I stood looking about. Everything seemed all right. If in point of fact it were not all right I wouldn't get more than a few yards. It was fairly bright in the parking area and when I walked across to the N.S.U. I would present a slowly moving target with good fore-lighting and a clear outline against the motel windows.

The more deserted a place appears the more it is peopled by the nerves and this could be discounted. Further, the headlights had been those of a car leaving, not arriving, and the two men had not gone out through the restaurant: the inference was that they had used a side-door, perhaps the one I had used. And finally: if they had wanted to deal with me they wouldn't both have gone up with Benedikt.

So I walked across to the N.S.U. and discounted another possibility as I went: there could be a third man waiting outside for me. That was just nerves again, stomach-think.

Brain-think: Benedikt had run it too close. They had come here to deal with him, not with me. He may have realized that when we had sat talking at the table. Being not only a potential defector but a double, he had broken down. In cases like his there is a defeat mechanism: the psychic system suddenly can't take any more because it's overloaded. Coming across to the other side presents a hazard comparable to jumping a chasm. It may be only a short jump but when you're in the middle of it you feel the onset of doubts, you distrust all the arguments that have driven you to the act. And you can't turn back.

This had been in Benedikt's face. The outward physical sign of psychic collapse.

The N.S.U. seemed all right. There would have been time for them to rig it, blow me up when I touched it. But that wasn't logical. Even so I held my overnight case in front of me when I opened the door, as a gesture of man's need to survive.

I hadn't checked out at the desk. They would find enough for the bill on the dressing table. (London is particular about things like that, and one fine day and with any luck the A-positive in Accounts would check with the Rhesus-negative in Mission Reports, to confirm. They slang you harder for not paying bills than for trying to sting them for expenses.) It would make no difference to the motel manager, the fact of my not checking out conventionally. He would still have reported it as unusual if I had gone through the correct motions, because I'd given no prior indication of leaving tonight. Either way I would be suspect number one as soon as the police were told about Herr Benedikt. Apart from my sudden departure there were prints all over the room that tallied with those in my own. But the German police were thorough and would busy themselves also with suspects two and three. The one real problem was the N.S.U.: its Hanover matriculation was duly noted in the reception book.

But I couldn't telephone Ferris from the motel. The best idea was to use one of the emergency phones along the autobahn. Then I could peel off eastwards and head for Neueburg where Benedikt said there was the clockmaker.

Lights swung across from the road just as I started the engine and it was unsettling for an instant because it didn't have to be a rocking detonator: they could have connected it with the ignition. Any kind of disturbance — sudden moving light — can be unsettling when you're not certain it's just the ignition you're switching on, when you're ready to believe you can be switching on Kingdom Come.

But I didn't like it. You shouldn't have to justify being unsettled. If you think there's a bomb linked with the ignition key then don't touch the bloody thing.

Some people got out of the car that had swung off the road and I watched them cross to the motel. Then I moved off, heeling her over a bit on the springs to displace anything if it were there and have it done with. But everything was all right so I went on worrying because everything shouldn't be. When you get in their way they don't just leave you alone.

Between the motel and the filling station on the autobahn loop-road there was too much traffic to make observation worth while: the mirror was never clear of lights and I didn't do anything about it because it was only a two-lane strip and nobody would have wanted to overtake even if I'd invited them, with so much stuff coming the other way.

I wasn't sure how I was going to put It to Ferris, over a telephone. There was a lot I still didn't know about the Benedikt situation and all I could give him were the facts without throwing in any assumptions. Then he would have to tell London and they'd have an immediate baby. Ferris had said London wanted him badly: the contact, the man who'd told Lovett when the next Striker was going down. And now they couldn't have him. They would say I should have got him for them, kept him alive and sent him through, and they would be absolutely right. I might even have done that if the material had held up but the simple fact was that it hadn't. Benedikt had been dead before they took him upstairs and he would have been no use to the Bureau even if they hadn't put the cheese-wire on him.

It's happened before with people like Benedikt: they collapse internally and go on running like a headless chicken until someone switches them off or they do it for themselves as Lazlo did. Parkis wouldn't have got any sense out of Lazlo even if he hadn't swallowed the thing and hit the floor and Parkis had known it. That was why he was so annoyed.

It was an Esso station. There was enough on board for the run to Neueburg but I might have to go on from there and places in deeper country would be closed.

Anyway it was for Ferris to tell them. One of his functions was to keep London off my back.

'Vierzig.'

His hands were raw in the cold.

The stars were very clear and the moon was above the Harz Mountains, its outline sharp even on the eastern curve. The pump droned. A boy ran out from the building and sprayed the screen and began wiping it.

Did it go well, with the rotary engine? They both asked the same thing at the same time, and laughed. I said it went well. There weren't many RO-80s on the road yet and people were interested. The screen began shining.

Twenty litres had gone in by the time the Mercedes 300 pulled in behind. It could have come up on the other side of the pumps but apparently it didn't need petrol.

The boy went to see to him.

If it rained later tonight, the man said, the road would freeze. I said I didn't think it would rain, the moon was too clear.

The driver of the Mercedes had got out. I couldn't see his face because the overhead floods threw shadow from his hat-brim. He wanted his screen cleaned, he told the boy. Sound carried easily on the cold air. Was that all he wanted? That was all.

'Stop at twenty-five,' I said.

'Didn't you ask for forty litres?'

'Yes. But stop at twenty-five.'

We worked a lot of instinct. Sometimes it's all we have.

The pump stopped droning.

There was a second man in the Mercedes. He was just a vague shape behind the screen at the moment because the boy had sprayed it and hadn't wiped it yet. The engine was still running.

How about the oil?

I said he could check it. Instinct was wholly in charge now but confirmation was available. It would take longer for the man to check the oil than for the boy to finish the screen of the Mercedes and once it was finished they would tip him and drive away. But I didn't think they would do that.

The oil was all right, the man said.

I gave him a note and he went into the building for the change: they don't carry a cash-bag at night as they do in the daytime.

The boy was thanking the driver of the Mercedes and going towards the building. The Mercedes was black, an uncommon colour these days, rather old-fashioned, funereal. The man wore a black overcoat. He was getting into the car, not hurrying.