'Where are you?'

'Where I was last night.'

On the other hand there is always a risk in meetings. The agent is usually infectious: there are tags at his back or trying to trace him or set up a trap and if he's seen making a contact it exposes the director. They are not two members of a team: they are strictly departmentalized. The agent is a bit of clockwork on the floor and when it hits something or turns over the director's hand comes down and sets it going again on a straight course unless it's broken in which case he throws it away and sends for another one. An agent can go through a mission and be set running again through another one and if he's lucky they can use him half a dozen times before they have to plug him with platinum tubing and bone-rivets or reach for the next-of-kin form. Bu t the director is a career man, a white-collar manipulator who keeps his nails clean, stacking up mission after mission till they pension him off to prune roses.

'How much can you say?'

The door was shut and her English was school-level and we had our own terms for things and if I spoke fast there wouldn't be any risk. I knew two things about Nitri: she was at this moment completely safe and if anyone ever told her that she could possess Franz exclusively by selling her soul to the devil she would become totally dangerous.

'It's all right this end. It's just a question of bugs.'

He was silent for a bit and I knew he was considering a rendezvous and the trouble was that we didn't have a safe-house in Hanover: there was no need for one because I was still too mobile and the mission had been running for only three days and every time we picked up some kind of direction the bastards blocked it. Lovett. Benedikt.

He said at last: 'What happened?'

'His code-name was Benedikt He'd started doubling so as to get across and he didn't have the stamina. You know how it goes. There's the odd patch of info missing but I can guarantee that a few hours before he found out who I was he had to save himself_ I He must have shown his hand and they didn't like him tagging me down to Linsdorf so he told them to come and get me. Then he broke up and went religious and tried to save me instead. Maybe he just confessed: it looked like that. They wiped him out. He knew they would.'

'Was it effective or did you have to break your way out?'

'It could have been effective. He drew them off me. But I was too interested. They did it in his room at the motel.'

He didn't say anything for a minute because he was partly thinking and partly listening for bugs. I supposed he would have been hysterical if he'd known the girl was so close because he was a fanatic about security. There's a story at the Bureau, very shop-worn by now: 'I saw old Ferris having a cup of tea with his mother in Lyons today. He had her screened first, of course.'

'And?'

'They had a go at me afterwards.' He had enough on his plate already without my telling him I'd lost my memory and anyway it must have happened: I don't just drive clean off the bloody road, I've passed my test and everything. There was probably some 9-mm material stuck in the tyres if anyone wanted to look for it.

'What happened to the cover?'

'I had to make a search in his room to see if they'd missed anything. There'll be prints. Then I had to get out. As soon as they find him I'll be first suspect'

'Oh, shit'

Because that had been the third thing I'd had to tell him. Tomorrow there'd be a full-scale manhunt for Walter Martin throughout West Germany and although there was nothing to connect him with a non-existent government department in the U.K. it wasn't going to be easy for Ferris to fix me up with a new cover when the Identikit version of my face was plastered all over the papers.

But it wasn't my fault. Even if there's been time to do the search according to the book I couldn't have gone into my own room to fetch gloves because I'd been pretty sure they were waiting for me there. And I couldn't have stayed in the motel because everyone's got a right to go on living.

'Look,' I said, 'forget the cover.'

Rather stiffly he said: 'If you want one you can have one.' He really was very upset.

'Just get me some papers and if I'm stopped I'll play it by ear. Some papers and transport.'

'Where do I pick up the old one?'

'You don't have to. I wrote it off along the autobahn.'

'Hurt yourself r There's a bit of a twinge in one tooth.'

'Don't mess me about — what sort of condition are you in?'

'Look, if I weren't capable of looking after myself I'd bloody well say so and if you get London to send in a shield I'll pull his balls off.' But I wasn't pleased about it and he knew that. I was protesting too much. It was a simple fact that if anyone broke in here at this moment my chances would be some degrees worse than fully normal because the right upper forearm was still in the healing stage and the left hand wanted stitches and the rib-cage and shoulders were bruised. But I had to be practical: if I had to start relying on a shield I'd take less care and that would be dangerous because even if they sent the best man in the Bureau he wouldn't be a hundred per cent reliable. No one is. It was no go.

'When do you want it by?'

He meant the papers and transport and I relaxed again. He wasn't going to press the shield thing. I said:

'Soon.'

After a bit he said: 'I'll put the keys in the mail-box and the papers will be in the car.'

'Don't do that. Leave it halfway along the Marienwerderstrasse.'

My left arm was aching because I was having to keep it raised. I thought of asking him to do something about shoes but it might hold things up and I was working on the premise that the Kriminalpolizei would be putting out a general alert from first light onwards. I watched the keyhole of the bedroom door all the time but there was never movement against it.

'All right,' Ferris said. 'It's a dark-blue Ford 17M, Hanover-registered. You'll find everything inside but don't forget if you're stopped: you've borrowed it.'

'As long as it's left-hand drive.'

'What've you broken?'

'I just like that kind. They don't attract attention.'

There might have been an edge of annoyance in his voice but I couldn't be sure. The right ear is unused to telephones. 'Can you give me any kind of location?'

They hate not knowing where you are and it's understandable because if you stop reporting they start getting the wind up and there's nothing they can do: you could be making progress somewhere inside an adverse area with no available communications or you could be at the bottom of the Mittellandkanal wrapped in a chain and London is pettish about sending a replacement unless the director in the field can practically produce a certificate, and this is reasonable too because a mission can get very sensitive in the final stages and there's a risk of rocking the boat. They'd thought Houseman was inside a burnt-out helicopter on Mont Blanc when the Lausanne thing was running and when they sent in a replacement the vibration was felt as far away as London and it nearly brought the Lowry off the wall.

'I'm going to have a try at reaching X.'

'All right,' he said.

'2-11-14-11-9-14-4-7.' He didn't ask for a repeat and he didn't question the need for speech-code because there can always be bugs. The second thing I knew about Nitri made it advisable and in any case the idea of putting your next location into so many words on a telephone brings out a rash.

The last thing he said was: 'Did you leave anything in the wreck?'

'The odd bit of skin. What the hell do you think I am?'

We were both a bit touchy: he'd got a week's work to do in half a day and I had to drive a hundred and fifty kilometres through a manhunt in daylight. I dropped the receiver with a bit of noise but the keyhole didn't change and there was no sound from the extension unit in the bedroom. This was no more than routine, like an actor checking his flies in the wings.