'That won't cover me, Samson, and you know it.'

'Say in the memo that you immediately sent me off to check the story.'

'Check it with George Kosinski? Is that what you mean?'

'That would be one way of doing it,' I agreed.

'You're a devious bastard, Samson.'

'It was just an idea.'

He looked at me and wet his lips nervously. He didn't like the idea of conspiring with me. I was not one of his intimates, and deceiving authority was in any case distasteful to him. 'You don't give a damn, do you. I sup pose you falsify your reports whenever it suits you to do so.'

'Of course not,' I said.

'Sometimes I wish I could be like you, Samson. Life is so much easier if you bend the rules to your own convenience.'

'Are we going to sit here all night while you sing my praises? Or are you going to summon up the guts to do what you know has to be done?'

He looked at me without answering. Then he switched on the engine and said, 'Let's get you back to that flea-bitten little place you're staying. Even for workers' apartments: that's an unusually grim place. Why do you choose to stay in places like that?'

'I feel at home there.'

'Okay,' he said. 'You go and find George Kosinski. I'll take responsibility.'

When we got to where I was staying with an old pal of mine, a man who sold American electric generators on the black market, Rupert stopped me from getting out of his car.

'But before you go, Samson, tell me one more thing. Why is George Kosinski giving us all this trouble? Why doesn't he just phone the embassy and ask us what we want from him, and get it over with?'

I looked at Rupert and tried not to sigh audibly. What was wrong with me? I never made sufficient allowances for the slowness of people like Rupert, Dicky and Bret and the rest of them. They never understood what was really happening. Even after I'd drawn them a large-scale street map and made chalk marks on the pavement, they fell into the first manhole they encountered.

'Look, Rupert,' I said slowly and pedantically. 'George went to all kinds of trouble to fake a suicide, hide himself in a disused underground bunker, and God knows what else to avoid us finding him. What reason could he have?'

'That's what I'm asking you,' said Rupert.

'Because he thinks we are trying to locate him in order to kill him,' I said.

'My God!' said Rupert. 'You can't be serious.'

'Go and he down in a darkened room with two aspirins, Rupert,' I said. 'Your mind is too pure for this kind of work.'

'Perhaps you are right, Samson,' he said, and was visibly shaken. 'I know you're a loner. But let me know if I can help you: cash, drops, motorcar or help to catch a ship to England. You know the way it works.' He flipped open his wallet and put on the seat a bundle of Polish money. Alongside it he placed a thick roll of American bills. Beside that he put a roll of plastic gummed parcel tape. And a zip-gun: two smooth steel tubes which could be screwed together to hold a single .22in round. The whole thing was not much larger than a big executive fountain pen, and about as elegant. And about as lethal, at the range that I preferred to do business' I couldn't help thinking that the money, the sticky tape and the zip gun represented three methods of getting George out of the country. 'I was told to bring you this,' he said regretfully. 'This' was wrapped up in ancient newspaper, and turned out to be a VZ 61, a Czechoslovak submachine gun which, despite its tiny 7.65mm rounds, limited accuracy and low muzzle velocity, has a good rate of fire, a very light weight and, stock folded, is less than twelve inches long.

'Well, well,' I said. It was a comforting accessory, and almost as useful as the dollar bills.

'Bret said that would make your eyes light up,' said Copper. 'He said get you a Skorpion or an Uzi and I couldn't get an Uzi. He said to remind you you had diplomatic cover and to only take the gun if there was an emergency. I can keep it for you.'

'No. I'll take it with me,' I said. 'I'll think of an emergency later.' A toy like that goes into a trenchcoat pocket. Copper got an extra magazine and a cardboard box containing fifty rounds from the glove box and gave it to me. I took the money and the tape too. I gave him the zip gun back, in case he got mugged going home with his silver cigarette case.

At last Bret and Copper seemed to be getting the idea.

'And Bret said I was to alert the Swede,' said Copper.

'That's right,' I said. 'Alert the Swede.'

13

Masuria, Potand.

'Don't do this to me, Bernard,' said George.

I hadn't done anything. We'd scarcely been through the hello-and-how-did-you-find-me routine. I suppose he knew everything I was about to say. Perhaps I should never have come. It might have been better for everyone if I had left everything the way he wanted to keep it.

'I love her. Do you know, when she's away I hear her voice every day,' said George. 'We don't have to phone or write.'

'Fi said more or less the same thing,' I said. 'I understand how you feel.'

'You don't understand how I feel. You're a loner; you don't need anyone. I'm different. Without Tessa my life is nothing.'

'She loved you too,' I said.

'You think so? I'm not sure. I've thought about it a lot of course, but I'm not sure. No, the way I . . .' He looked up and pinned me with his glaring eyes. 'So why are they saying she's safe?'

'She's dead, George. I was there. I saw it happen.'

George was wearing brightly colored ski clothes. It was a salutary way of countering the cold, but such a fashionable figure was an anachronism in this gloomy timeworn interior. He went and sat down by the fireplace, almost disappearing into the gloom. His voice came from the darkness. 'She's coming next week, they said.'

'She's dead, George. Face it.'

'You keep saying she's dead.'

'I keep saying it because I want you to get it into your head. You've got to carry on with life, and unless you face the truth you'll not be able to think straight.'

'John O'Hara . . . John O'Hara the writer, told about George Gershwin's death, said — I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.'

'Yes, well he was a writer, and they are full of shit.'

'Stefan is a writer.'

'And he's full of shit too. Yes.'

'Perhaps I too am full of shit. I know people see me as a ridiculous little man — but Tessa never made me feel like that. Even when she was unfaithful to me I never felt really humiliated. Does that sound stupid?'

'I can't make it easier for you, George. I wish I could but I can't.'

'She thought jumping in and out of bed didn't matter. She knew I'd give her anything she wanted — cars, apartments, jewels — so why not the freedom to sleep with men she fancied?' He got to his feet and went to the window, which was patterned with fern-like patterns of frost. In that sombre region of the Great Masurian lakes, each winter day brings only a couple of hours of real daylight. Today there came news of the sun, a pale yellow egg yolk faintly discerned behind the milky sky. 'But all that is past, now I am home. It's snowing again.' It wasn't snowing. The flurry of snowflakes fluttering past the window was loose snow dislodged from the roof by the wind. But George was distraught and tormented minds can't think straight about anything.

'It's not snowing and this is not your home, George. It's not even the real world.'

'This morning I found the tracks of wolves at the back. They come down to raid the rubbish bins outside the kitchen door.'

'Foxes; or perhaps wild dogs.'

'No: wolves. They wake me at night howling. You hear explosions too sometimes. These forests are riddled with minefields left here from the war. Only the big wolves trigger them; the other animals are not heavy enough to detonate the pressure pads.'