'You've got plenty of people in Moscow,' I told Croder, 'who can look after Zymyanin.'

It was only three weeks since they'd pulled me out of the Atlantic with a helicopter, and not in terribly good condition. I'd got another week to go before they could put me in a briefing room again, officially, and we can always ask for more time if we don't feel we've got our nerve back: go into a new mission with your scalp still tight and you'll crash, somewhere along the line. I felt fit enough, but I wanted my final week, it was in my contract and I'd already done my bit — instead of sitting in a plush and gilded box at the opera tonight with the totally breathtaking Valeria Lagorio I'd been grubbing around in a freezing freight yard stuffing a body in a sack, not quite my idea of a holiday.

'Zymyanin,' Croder was saying, 'is an important man, and we think he's carrying an important message — was carrying it to the executive in Bucharest and may still be able to give it to us if we show willing.'

I didn't say anything, so he knew he'd got to go on, give me the whole thing. 'It's not, you see, just a case of someone — anyone — "looking after" this important Soviet contact in Moscow. Since the rendezvous with the executive in Bucharest was set up, a great deal of raw intelligence has been coming in for analysis, and I should tell you that if we'd known as much as we do now about Zymyanin, we wouldn't have left it to a minor cell to find out what information he has for us. We would have asked him to make the contact in Moscow, not Bucharest, and we would have sent in someone of very high calibre to meet him.' One of the windows vibrated as a truck rumbled past the hotel, and I watched its brake lights come on at the intersection. 'We would like,' Croder said, 'to do that now.'

I said, 'I hope it all goes well.'

They'll use you, those bloody people in London, they'll use you like a pawn on a chessboard if you let them. This man was pussyfooting me into going out again, putting his cold steel claw into a velvet glove and stroking me with it.' Our intention,' he said carefully, 'is to put a new mission on the board and bring a high-echelon team together. I would undertake to control the new operation personally, and I have asked Ferris to direct for me in the field.' A beat. 'He has agreed.'

The lights went green and the truck pulled away through the intersection, a big round cabbage dropping onto the street and rolling into the gutter. It looked sickeningly like a head.

'I'm still on leave,' I told Croder. We always played this game and he always won, but I still put up a bit of protest because there was usually something I could get out of him in exchange. This time I had something important.

'I am aware of that,' he said, 'and of course I apologize.'

You don't take an apology lightly from Chief of Signals. It's like God apologizing for the Flood.

I watched the woman at the opera house, Valeria Lagorio, one pale ivory arm resting on the crimson plush of the loge, her huge eyes intent on the stage. Then the picture faded as I said, 'I'll do a trade with you.'

'I'd consider anything you suggest, of course.'

'I want you to bring the Chief of Training, Norfolk, onto the carpet at the Bureau and I want you and the whole of the administration — including senior executives and directors in the field — to confront him with the present situation, namely that there are people being sent into the field without a hope in hell of completing their missions before they're killed.'

Turner had come away from the window and was leaning with his back against the wall, head lifted, watching me through narrowed eyes. I listened to the static on the line. There was a gale blowing across southern England and the north of France, I'd heard at the airport in Rome, and the communications mast in Cheltenham would be swaying in the dark.

'I will give you my guarantee,' I heard Croder saying, 'that your demands are met.'

It had been a lot to ask, and his answer told me something about the size of the new mission he was mounting.

'Within a week from today,' I said.

In a moment, 'One can't always command the immediate attention of the administration, but I shall — '

'Within a week,' I said.

He could get those pontifical bastards out of hibernation sooner than that if he turned on the heat.

'Within a week,' he said, 'very well. As it happens, I share your concern in this matter, but that's not to say I shall find it easy to persuade them. I'm sure you — '

'Give them the facts. Show them the records for the past five years, tell them to count the increasing number of times we've seen "Executive deceased" on the bottom line.'

'I can only promise you to do my utmost.'

'That's all I ask,' I said. Croder's utmost could push a building down. 'Where do I report for clearance and briefing?'

I think it surprised him: it was a couple of seconds before he answered. 'I'm very pleased,' he said. 'I'm really very pleased. Let me switch you through to Holmes.'

It took half a minute, and while I was waiting Turner came away from the wall and dropped into a chair and just sat there with his hands on his knees, staring at nothing.

I blocked the mouthpiece. 'don't feel you're to blame for Hornby,' I told him. 'He was in the field, not you, and he made a mistake, that was all.' He turned his head slowly to watch me, didn't say anything. 'I've tried that death-on-my-hands bullshit, and it doesn't work, drives you up the wall.'

Holmes came on the line and I looked around for a scratch pad and found a bit of paper in the drawer of the phone table with Suzana, 6 P.M. on it and turned it over and found a bright green plastic ballpoint.

'Sorry to keep you waiting,' Holmes said. 'Got a bit of a flap on here, doesn't surprise me they've roped you in, only the best for our Mr C. The thing is, we've got to find you a plane right away.'

'How are you?' I asked him.

'Oh, absolutely ripping, old fruit. You?'

'God knows.'

'Don't worry, it'll be all right. You've got Ferris, no less, and Mr C. is extremely pleased you've agreed to take this one on. It's in the «M» group, by the way — Meridian.'

Code-name for the mission.

He got things worked out within fifteen minutes, sometimes using another phone to get information while I stayed on the line. By the time I reached the airport here in Bucharest there'd be a reservation for me on Aeroflot Flight 291 in the name of Viktor K. Shokin. From the moment I checked in I would use that as my cover name and adopt the identity of a Soviet citizen and would if necessary claim only a rudimentary knowledge of English.

I would be met at Sheremetievo Airport in Moscow and taken immediately to the British Embassy for clearance and briefing.

I put a few questions and got the answers and shut down the signal and left the scrambler on. Turner was sunk into himself and I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound like a trumped-up sop to his misery, so I just told him I was using the Honda and his people could pick it up at the airport, keys in the usual place. Then I shut the door quietly.

By 1:30 in the morning I was in Moscow.

There was a girl in a navy blue windcheater and fur gloves and zippered ski boots in the transport area and I went through one of the doors and walked with a slight limp as far as the comer of the terminal building and she caught up with me there and gave me Meridian in a soft clear voice and said her name was Mitchell.

'Viktor Shokin,' I said, and we got into a dirty brown Trabant and drove through the deserted streets under light flurries of snow.

'There's been a change of plan,' the girl said, taking a fur glove off the wheel and wiping her nose on it. 'They decided they didn't want you seen going into the embassy.' She had a small pale face with intent and intelligent blue eyes; sometimes I thought her teeth were chattering — there was no heating in the Trabant and the snowflakes weren't melting on the windscreen, just clogging the wiper blades. She stopped twice on our way through the city and I got out and unstuck them and scraped the glass a bit clearer with the edge of a notebook she had in the glove pocket.