'Oh for Christ's sake' – blowing up now and high time – 'the Chief of Signals himself comes to Moscow to offer me a decidedly tricky mission and I agree to take it as far as I can go because it's a challenge and I'm under his personal control and I gain access on the second day out and move into some action that leaves me a touch groggy and then I'm recalled to London because he suddenly gets cold feet. I don't intend -'

'Rather more than a touch groggy – you were very nearly terminal. And the Chief -'

'How many times have I come close to getting wiped out in any given mission, for God's sake, it's part of the job, you know that -'

'There's never been a mission quite so predictably lethal -'

'Then Croder shouldn't have challenged me -'

'And that is precisely what he's come to realize now -'

'A bit late -'

'Actually no, because you're still alive and that's the condition he wants to see you in when you reach London – I'm not interested in shipping a coffin out of Moscow. And let me remind you that as your director in the field I'm responsible for giving you whatever instructions I think fit, and you're responsible for carrying them out.'

Pulling rank, and he'd never done that before, and I was warned. Ferris is by nature the coolest of cats and he never raises his voice or drives his executives into a corner, but now he was really putting things on the line and I wasn't so stupid as not to listen. But I'd already made up my mind, so the only thing left was to try ducking the fallout.

'Be that as it may,' I said, 'I'm going to ground.'

And left it. You've heard, my good friend, of throwing the gauntlet down. That is the sound it makes.

The man who'd brought the shovel in from the street was going across from the counter to the table with his tin tray loaded with potato pancakes and a mug of vasti, and the tart moved in on principle, though her expression was not sanguine. Headlights swept the window again and Ferris watched the shadows swinging across the wall and didn't speak until they'd faded. This was noted, though I said nothing.

I gave him his time. For the executive to go to ground means that he vanishes from the face of the earth, usually with the full understanding on the part of his director in the field that he needs to do this because the situation suddenly demands it – there's been some action and the mission's running hot and the hunt is up and the opposition's closing in and the shadow has no choice but to get out of harm's way. But to go to ground against his DIF's instructions is to burn his boats and leave the ashes strewn across the field – and risk the ultimate sanction: the end of his career.

'If you do that,' Ferris said at last, and carefully, 'you would be aborting the mission.'

'Protecting it,' I told him.

'Without your being operational in the field, there'd be no mission.'

'I am the mission.'

Ignoring this: 'If you go to ground, the Chief of Signals will shut down the board for Balalaika. You'll have no director in the field and no support.'

He knew I realized this but he wanted to spell it out for the sake of formality. I had indeed made things difficult for him, and he also would need to duck the fallout when he got back to London: I warned the executive of the consequences, soforth.

'Point taken,' I said, and in my mind's eye saw the lights going out above the board for Balalaika in the signals room, the dusting block erasing the first reports in from the field and leaving the slate blank as Holmes stood staring at Croder with disbelief in his eyes and those bloody people upstairs put it on record: Mission abandoned, executive's decision.

'Have you any kind of a lead?' Ferris was asking. This was typical: his intuition had cleared a gap.

'Conceivably.'

'How useful?'

'It's pretty thin.'

'But it's there.'

'Yes.'

'And you want to follow it up?'

'Intend.'

'It concerns the target?'

'Sakkas.'

The cockroaches were out again after his recent assault, but now he wasn't interested.

'Do you think it might get you closer to the target?'

'There's a chance.'

In a moment: 'Obviously, if you felt like cluing me in, I might want to signal Control. And he might change his mind.'

'It's too slight,' I said. 'It's just someone's name, out of the blue. Croder wouldn't go for it.'

'Suppose' – Ferris picked up one of the crumbs from the table in his thin pale fingers and rolled it into powder – 'suppose I thought of going for it?'

'What would you do?'

'There are quite a few things,' he said, 'I could do. I could delay signalling London with your decision to go to ground.'

'You'd take that much responsibility?'

'It's vested in me as your DIF.'

He'd never sounded so formal. I asked him, 'What else could you do?'

He looked away. 'Would you go to the safe-house?'

'No. Somewhere else.' It could expose him to risk, because he knew where it was, the place Legge had fixed up for me. A safe-house, once blown, is the most dangerous place in the field. Besides which, Legge himself knew where it was, and he was liable to get in my way: he already thought I was 'rushing the mission', none of his bloody business; I don't like a pushy chief of support – they too can be dangerous.

'If you holed up somewhere else,' Ferris said slowly, 'then Mr Croder might instruct me to mount a search for you, so that I could send you home after all. Then in the meantime, if this lead of yours paid off, you could signal me and I'd report it to London. That could change Mr Croder's mind too.'

Read it like this: he was prepared to stay in the field in case I needed him, provided he could do it on formal instructions and the pretext that he was mounting a search through my support group. That could put Balalaika right back on track, keep my communications open and provide me with support if things started running hot. But I knew that Croder, despite his conscience, could throw me to the dogs once he was told I'd gone to ground: my DIF had been given instructions to get me home, and if I chose to risk death on the streets of Moscow then it wouldn't be Croder's responsibility.

I told Ferris: 'I can't see him leaving you out here with no executive and no mission.'

'There's a chance.'

'All right. Try.'

The flat of his hand came down softly on the table and he let out a breath. 'Let us pray, then, for Balalaika.' It was the closest, in my experience, Ferris had ever got to showing the slightest emotion.

'Amen.'

But I didn't think there was going to be any dancing in the streets. No control of Croder's stature would take kindly to his executive going to ground on his own decision: it was the ultimate offence, implying distrust and indiscipline.

'I'll give you three days,' Ferris said. 'Unless of course the Chief extends that.'

'I'll signal you.'

Headlights swung across the window again and he watched the wall. Then the lights were doused and a car door slammed and a man came in, stomping the snow off his boots.

'D'you need anything more to eat?' Ferris asked me.

'No.'

'Then we'll go.' He nodded to the man as we made for the door and he followed us out. 'This is Dr Westridge,' Ferris told me, 'from the UK embassy.'

Jolly and red-faced, despite the hour. 'And this is the patient?'

Yes.'

'Let's get into my car,' Westridge said. 'There's all my gear in there.'

'Look,' I said, 'I'm perfectly -'

'Just for the moment,' Ferris cut across me, 'you're under my instructions, so get in.'

Westridge got his bag and opened it. 'Been in the wars a bit, have we?'

'Not really.' God protect me from jolly red-faced men at three-thirty in the morning. 'I need some sleep, that's all.'