I dropped onto the quay and waited. Not Victor. Viktor. There was a phone on the tug but I didn't want to use that one. I'd have to find a booth as soon as I could and do it in private, signal Ferris: Proctor has been turned. Contact's first name, Viktor, at the Soviet Embassy.

Chapter 6: LIMBO

There was the long black weatherboard wall of a wharf on the right side and a row of capstans on the other side with the sheer drop to the water just beyond them and when I gunned up the rear wheels met a wet patch and slewed and sent the front end smashing through a stack of fish crates and I did what I could to get back on track before I killed someone but it wasn't easy because I was crouched as low as I could below the seat squab because they'd probably try again.

Pickup truck on the left and I grazed the side and tore some metal away, someone shouting, a two-tone cab pulling out from the gap between the wharves but keeping its distance as I pulled the rear end straight and looked for a clear passage but there wasn't one – three or four people with bags and fishing rods were walking down from the street and I hit the brakes and we slid and I let them off but the speed was still too high and I chose the only way out that wouldn't hurt anyone and put the car between a capstan and a rusting trailer and flexed the seat belt to make sure it was tight and then they tried again and after that there was just a lot of metal screaming as we ricocheted and hit the trailer at ten degrees and dragged the wings off and the car windows on that side burst into snow and we bounced and corrected and hit the rear end of a private car and swung it round, glass smashing again and the pop of a tyre bursting and then there was a shed straight in front of me and at this speed it was going to be a jolt and I sank lower into the seat and settled the belt again and waited with my foot hard down on the brake and the tyres shrilling across the concrete.

Hit the shed with an explosion and the daylight got shut off and the impact pitched me at an angle but I was ready for that because of the belt's diagonal and I used my right hand against the facia as the deceleration phase came in and there was the ripping of metal again and then flames bursting in the dark with an orange light and I was feeling for the belt release and the door handle but it was going to be awfully close because we'd hit some kind of flammable tank and all I could see was a mass of bright orange.

Waves of heat now and I got the door open and dropped and crawled to the rear of the car because we'd come straight through the wall and I wouldn't have to look for a door, but the fuel tank was at the rear and I got across the ground as fast as I could with the heat washing down across my back.

Someone yelling, In there? something like that, broken glass under my hands and I shifted them, pulling my legs after me, a face staring from the near distance with the eyes shielded by the hands, a man shouting again, Get you or something and then I was into the daylight, Roll over, roll over, roll! Clothes on fire presumably, then hands grabbed me and the face was close and the mouth said Barracuda.

Rolling and rolling and his hands beating at me, 'Okay now, that's it.'

'Get me clear,' I told him, 'I don't want the police.'

'I don't think there's time.' I could hear a siren from somewhere quite close, or maybe it was echoing off a wall.

'You've got to cover me and get me out.'

He turned away and I could see the two-tone cab turning broadside on to the flames and I crawled that way through the debris until the man turned and said, 'Wait – wait there.'

I couldn't see anyone else in the area because the whole shed was crackling and there were beams coming down and sending out sparks and I had to crawl further into the open but I kept my face down because I'd have to go to ground at this stage and hole up and work things out but that bloody siren was closer now and it didn't look as if -

'Come on – in here!' A man grabbing for me in the black rolling smoke. 'Make it quick!'

The door of the cab had swung open and I went for it with the man helping me because my eyes were streaming. 'Show them the bullet holes,' I told him, 'two of them from the rear – bullet holes, you got that?'

'Got it.' He slung me into the cab. 'Keep right down.'

'Listen,' I said, 'this is for Ferris, immediate. Proctor's been turned by the Soviets.' Said it again because of the choking, I wanted to make sure. 'Got that?'

'Yes, I've got that,' he said and slammed the door shut and told the driver to move it.

Throat still raw, kept drinking water.

Decker, name of the driver, one of ours, a Bureau cab – Ferris had kept it standing off with Decker on the peep even though I'd told him I did not want support. I'd sent Decker away after he'd brought new clothes for me and taken the old ones, old, Christ they were more than old, more like the coat off a scarecrow after a lightning strike.

The phone rang and I picked it up.

'Who?… All right.'

Cardinal rule: we can't refuse.

There were two windows, north and west, because this was a corner room, and while I was waiting I took a look from both of them – the airport control tower a couple of miles away and some three-storey buildings nearer than that with billboards, United Overnight To These Ten Cities, Marlboro For Those Who Like To Smoke, Coors Is The Champion, no windows overlooking mine at a distance of less than fifty feet on the north, thirty on the west, a man in the doorway near the bus stop and another one at the corner and two more on the north side twenty yards apart and looking in shop windows and of course there'd be more of them on the south side of the hotel where the entrance was, prisoner of bloody Zenda but they weren't there only to give me moving cover whenever I left; they were also scanning the environment for possible pollution: field glasses behind windows or the hump of a magnum with a laser sight or an infrared night lens, so forth.

They would also note any opposition peeps standing off in the environment or coming into the hotel, leaving it, hanging around, it was ironic, if you will, that the first thing I always ask for at the start of a new show is that Ferris should direct me in the field, and here he was blocking me in with so much support that I wouldn't be able to move without saluting the troops.

'Come in.'

'Greenspan,' he said, a soft handshake and Charlie Chaplin eyebrows, dropped his bag on the bed and looked me up and down.

'Does anything hurt?'

'Bit of sunburn.'

'I'm not surprised. That was a gasoline fire, wasn't it?'

'Something like that. Are you from the consulate?'

'I look after their staff. I'd like your shirt off.'

It's a cardinal rule: you can't refuse a medical checkup after you've been through any kind of traumatising action, otherwise I wouldn't have let him come up, because I wasn't in the mood for coughing and saying ah when there was so much to think about, so many questions, did she set me up for those shots?

Take a full breath. Another one. Now, did you feel you were filling your lungs to capacity?'

'Yes.'

'Well you were lucky with that seat belt. I've seen osteo-chondritis of the cartilage around the sternum you wouldn't believe. You must have taken some of the shock with your right hand, even though there's no echymosis. I've had people with the belt go halfway through the side of the rib cage. Have you seen The Rainbow?'

'What?'

'It's a movie. You should see it. This hurt?'