'Umm,' said Dicky.

'Any guesses who they are?' Stefan asked me. 'They must have arrived about the time you did. Did you see anyone suspicious in the Europejski Hotel?'

'Me?' I said. 'No.' I dipped the razor in my coffee and continued dragging it through my beard.

'The underworld has put a price on their heads: fifty thousand zlotys for delivering either of these American killers to the black market people. At least that's what I heard.'

'That's only about fifteen hundred dollars apiece,' said Dicky. 'I'd have thought two top-notch hit men were worth more than that.'

'I'm sorry you are departing so soon,' said Stefan. 'But winter is not the best time to show you Polish hospitality. And we Poles enjoy providing a show for visitors.'

We were back on the road by noon, our bellies filled with hot potato soup and our gas tank with precious fuel. But we were still on the estate — and only three miles from the house — when we found the road ahead blocked by two army trucks and a bulldozer. There was a huddle of men: some soldiers were talking to two men hefting a l6mm film camera and recording equipment. Father Ratajczyk, the priest who had exorcized the rooms, was there too, together with Tadeusz, the technician who had assisted him.

A young officer of the Polish army, in sheepskin overcoat and military-style fur hat, detached himself from the group and walked towards us through the fast-falling sleet. He saluted and then leaned in to the car window.

'You're the two Englishmen from the Kosinski house?'

'Yes,' said Dicky. There was little point in denying it.

'I'm sorry to delay you. You can't get through. It will take about half an hour.' He spoke good English. 'We have to bring a big earth-moving machine up the road and there is only just enough clearance to get it between the trees.'

'What's happening?' said Dicky.

'We have to work quickly. By tomorrow the snow could be making it very difficult.'

'What's happening?'

'You don't know? Another mass grave. Trees have grown over a part of it and we can't estimate the size of it yet.'

'My God,' said Dicky. 'A mass grave?'

'At least five hundred bodies. My own guess is that there might be anything up to a thousand poor souls buried here.' He made the sign of a cross.

'They said they found two bodies last night,' said Dicky. 'Are they a part of it? When do they date from?'

'Yes, it's from the war,' said the young officer.

'Murdered by the Russians or by the Nazis?'

'Who knows?' said the officer, and wiped the wet snow from his face. 'They are Polish and they are dead, that's probably all we'll ever be sure about.'

5

Kent, England.

'You haven't told me what it's like in Warsaw these days,' said Harry Strang, newly retired and relaxed in his baggy roll-neck sweater and worn corduroy trousers. I was used to him in suits and stiff collars, and with his hair combed to conceal the bald patch that I now noticed for the first time.

'I haven't told you that I've been to Warsaw.'

'You can't keep a secret from an old agent. Isn't that what they say?' Harry Strang was one of the few pen pushers who could legitimately claim to have been an agent. I'd first met Harry in Berlin. I was very young, and too insensitive to see how miserable and out of place he felt in that city. It was my father who persuaded him not to resign from the service altogether. Harry was posted to Spain and made his reputation infiltrating Catalonian communist networks at a time when the Franco government had made communism a hazardous faith. Despite his remarkable Spanish, Harry couldn't look anything but what he is: a middle-class English gent, but he moved easily amongst an assortment of Spanish reds: terrorists, apparatchiks, opportunists, theorists and politicians. Then with Franco on his deathbed, Harry went to Argentina and worked for a shipping company, and was there working for us right through the Falklands; war. Apart from the fingernails that never grew straight after being torn off, malfunctioning kidneys damaged during a series of beatings in Franco's police stations, and a liver that was the casualty of cheap Rioja and inferior sherry, he had survived intact. Eventually he had been given a position in Operations in London and stayed there long enough to collect his pension. Not many field agents managed that.

'The kids are climbing around your Peugeot,' I warned him.

'It's an old wreck. Come away from the window. Let them alone, they can't hurt it, Bernard.'

'You haven't left the keys in?'

'Why kidnap your kids if you're going to spend every minute worrying about them?'

'I didn't kidnap them; I told my father-in-law I was collecting them from school.'

'You said you left a message on his telephone recording machine,' he corrected me. 'You didn't actually tell him.'

'What's the difference?'

'If he doesn't monitor his messages before he collects the kids from school himself, you'll find out what the difference is,' he said grimly. 'He'll tell the cops, and the TV news will say they are hunting for a tall child molester with wavy hair and glasses.'

'Very funny.'

'It wasn't a joke, Bernard.'

'My father-in-law monitors his bloody messages every five minutes. He was born with a telephone in his ear and right now he's frantically picking up the pieces after the stock market crash.'

Without moving from his chair, Harry looked out of the window at the full extent of his property. No doubt he saw five acres of root vegetables, soft fruit and a dozen plump pigs, but winter had all but eliminated the vegetation, and left only a ramshackle shed in a sea of shiny mud. With only a scrawny youngster to help him it was too much work, but Harry seemed to be content.

'They are nice kids, Bernard. The boy is the image of you.' We had eaten lunch, squelched through the mud in borrowed boots, been shown round the pigsties by a soft-spoken amiable farmhand, and come back inside to drink tea and inspect every last one of Harry's collection of Japanese swords.

I hear Dicky is very active lately,' said Harry, keeping his tone neutral.

'Very active,' I said. 'He's fighting with Daphne so he tries to get away every weekend. And he drags me with him. Then he gives me odd days off. But what good is that when Fiona is at work and my kids at school?'

Harry ran his hands together, pushing the fingers of his white cotton gloves tighter on his fingers. 'The children should be living at home with you,' he said. He rescued a sword which was precariously balanced on the sofa, and held it up to admire the engraving on its blade. There were swords everywhere; on the floor, on the sofa and on the dining table. Glittering blades and shiny scabbards were exploding out of the little box room where he stored his collection, protruding through the door as if some huge metallic hedgehog was trying to break out from hibernation there.

I know,' I said.

'But Fiona is keeping busy at work eh?' He slashed the air with the sword and then slid it into its scabbard. He found a place for it on the sideboard which had been until then the only place free of edged weaponry.

'She's Dicky's Deputy,' I said.

'I heard. And he's hanging on to the German Desk and running the Europe Desk too?'

'Only because Fiona is there to do the real work — trying to keep the networks running on less and less money.'

'Any familiar faces in Warsaw?'

'Only Boris.'

'Boris Zagan?'

'Who else.'

'Was that girl with him? . . . the German one?'

'Sarah. Yes, she was there. She's married to Boris.'