'Legge is worried about you,' Ferris said when he came back and sat down.

'As long as he does what I want him to do, and otherwise keeps out of my way.'

'He thinks you're trying to rush the mission.'

'It's none of his bloody business.'

I finished the goulash, felt better.

'Well, hello, boys.'

Rouge as thick as mud, navy-blue eye shadow, a broken tooth, what d'you expect in a greasy spoon?

'Don't let me get in your way,' I told Ferris.

'But my dear,' he said and touched my arm skittishly, and she went off on her rounds.

'How's London?' I asked him.

'We'll come to that. Debrief?'

Damn his eyes, I didn't want to wait to hear how things were in London, they didn't sound too bloody good. But he wouldn't tell me until he was ready – you know Ferris.

So I went into the debriefing from the point where I'd run into Vishinsky at the party to the jokari bit forty-five minutes ago and Ferris didn't interrupt, made a couple of notes on his scratch pad, that was all, and this worried me too.

'That's it?' he asked me.

'I think so.' If there was anything I'd forgotten it'd come to me later, with any luck. Just at the moment I was trying to get the wall back into focus: the concussion thing hadn't improved during the fuss at Vishinsky's hotel and I needed sleep, for the love of God.

'What sort of shape was Vishinsky in when you left him?'

'Not bad. Had to put him out.'

'How liable is he to try tracking you and settling the score?'

'He'll do his best, I'd say. He's a psychopathic megalomaniac and takes offence easily.'

'But you left a cold trail.'

I swung my head up and looked at him, said nothing.

'You think you did,' he said evenly, 'but you've still got some lingering concussion.'

Point taken. No one in Vishinsky's suite could have trailed me but someone else could have seen me leaving the building at two in the morning looking like a zombie and decided to check me out – it was Vishinsky's hotel and he might have peeps stationed in the environment.

'I wasn't so far gone,' I told Ferris carefully, 'that I couldn't see a tracker. If I hadn't got here clean this place would be full of ticks by now, and look, I've got to say this, do you really think I'd signal my director in the field for a rendezvous if I thought there was the slightest risk?'

The DIF, by the nature of his calling, must stay strictly out of the action, whatever's happening in the field, and part of the shadow executive's job is to protect him from any risk of exposure. This is sacrosanct and with good reason: the shadow needs to know that he can always rely on getting signals to London, getting support in the field, getting everything he needs – sometimes desperately – to help him through the mission. The director in the field is his communications channel, his universal provider, counsellor and nurse. Without him, nothing can work.

'Just checking,' Ferris said, his eyes still on me. That too is part of his job: to assess what condition the executive is in after there's been some action, to query whether he might have picked up a tick, to decide whether his charge is fit enough to continue the mission, and if not, send him home.

'Understood. As long as we -'

Headlights swept the steamed-up window and Ferris scraped his chair back and went over to the door, taking a look before he went outside.

The food counter began sloping at five or ten degrees and the heavy-faced babushka behind it swayed to one side until I got my head back straight and re-established focus.

'Mercedes,' Ferris said when he came back. 'Not the same model but it's this year's, all right?'

'I'll take it.'

'Some more goulash?'

'No.'

A couple of seconds went by and then Ferris said, 'About London.'

I didn't want to hear. I tell you I did not want to hear about bloody London. You know why?

'You're being recalled.'

That was why. I'd seen it coming, of course. I'd worked with Ferris long enough to catch his vibes, and ever since he'd come in here I'd been listening to the knell of doom in the far distance of my mind.

'Bullshit,' I said.

There was a crust of bread on the table I hadn't eaten and I began breaking it up, pulling it apart, still moist, doughy, smelling of the oven, and I remember doing this, I suppose, because in the last few seconds Balalaika had started to run clean off the track. But that was all. It hadn't crashed. I wasn't going to let that happen.

'Mr Croder,' Ferris said evenly, 'sends you his congratulations, of course.'

On getting clear of the red sector alive. 'How nice,' I said.

'As I told you before, he may not be sleeping too well, having sent you into this one rather impulsively, to save his face vis-à-vis the prime minister.'

Ferris had never spoken like this before: Croder, Chief of Signals and arguably the most effective control in the whole of the Bureau, is regarded with infinite respect, and his personal motivation is never called into question.

'Tell him to take a couple of Oblivons,' I said.

Ferris tilted his chair back, his lean body sloping like a board as he watched me obliquely. 'Strictly entre nous, he may be considering his resignation.'

I stopped fiddling with the crust. 'Croder?'

'His ego,' Ferris said, 'is almost as bad as yours, and just now his pride's hurt, I believe terminally.'

In a moment I said, 'There's something he hasn't considered, in his access of overweening pride.'

Ferris waited, turning his head an inch, and I saw the cockroach darting along the bottom of the wall, bloody place was teeming with them.

'So tell me,' he said.

'I can save his face for him. All he's got to do is leave me in the field and there's a very good chance I can bring this thing off, then he can go back to the PM and shine like an archangel in his eyes. It'd give me a lot of satisfaction to do that for a man like Croder. And for Christ's sake leave those bloody things alone.' He likes putting his foot on them, hearing them crack open. You know that.

Someone came in and Ferris swung his head, a shift worker, leaning a shovel against the wall, snow on its blade.

'Even if you weren't being recalled,' Ferris said as he looked back at me, 'you're not going to be physically operational for another week, and they can't keep this one on the board forever.'

'I'll be back on form,' I told him, 'in a couple of days. For God's sake give me a chance, I'm not superhuman.'

'Even though you may think you are.'

'And a happy Christmas to you too.'

He got up and went over to the wall and I tried to tune out the little cracking noises and when he came back he said, 'The problem, of course, is that these are the instructions I've received from Control.'

In brief there was nothing he could do. When Control instructs the director in the field it's with the voice of God, and this is well understood.

'Have you booked the flight?' I asked him.

'Control only told me tonight, when I reported you out of the red sector. Don't worry, I'll give you plenty of time to rest up first, where you won't be disturbed.'

In a moment I said, 'That's deuced civil of you, but there's another problem. It's my decision to stay in the field, and neither you nor Control can do anything about that.'

I didn't throw down the ace because I didn't know how much it was worth. During the night's business I'd seen the chance, thin if you like, of getting closer to the target for the mission: Vasyl Sakkas. And that was all I needed to run with.

'You make it difficult for me,' Ferris said.

'That's a shame.'

'I can't, as you well know, ignore my instructions. This is -'