'No one you'll remember.'

I left her warmth, breaking the thin filmof ice in the big copper pan. Putting my things into the airline bag I remembered thinking, somewhere in the night, that she'd have to stay here if she were to survive the next few days because the only friends she could go to were at. risk themselves.

'I need a contact in Czyn. Someone I can phone any time between now and Sroda. This is a safe place. You told me to let you know if I wanted any help.'

'You would like me to stay here?'

'Yes.'

'I will stay.'

'Have you got any money?'

'Some.'

'You'll have to buy a few things. Ask the man to get them for you. Take a walk when you need some air but don't go far.' I zipped the bag shut. 'I'll phone always at an even hour, eight ten twelve, so be here then. If I don't phone, don't worry, I'm not sure how things will go.'

I went to the bed and she raised herself, kneeling and twisting against me, biting gently at the pad of my hand. her black hair hiding her face from me till I left her and looked back once at her stillness, her arms crossed against her breasts and her hands clasping her shoulders, head on one side as she said:

'I shall see you again.'

'Yes.' The first lie of Sunday.

12: TRAP

The few people in the street wore black and bells tolled, hurrying them across the rutted snow to where a spire poked at the low grey sky. The wind had died in the night, leaving calm. I walked south-east towards the river.

I'd given him some money.

'Let her have my room. Her papers are in order and you can put her name in the register. Give her what's left of this when she leaves.' She wouldn't find work again until there was an amnesty.

Three patrols in two miles but they didn't stop me.

Karl Dollinger journalist born Stuttgart 1929. The immigration franking tallied with my actual arrival on L.O.T. 504 and they'd put in a slip showing booking-confirmation West Berlin January 6. Reason for visit to cover talks for Der Urheber, left-wing weekly. Various letters and memos, editorial recaps, Telex facilities, press-club card, so forth. nothing to fault

Security was important now but that wasn't why I was switching base: if I'd needed to stay on at the Alzacki I wouldn't have taken her there. A new cover required a new address and the hotel I wanted now was the big state-owned Kuznia, nearly opposite the Commissariat in the Praga district. That was where they'd been going yesterday morning: from the distance I'd seen the security van keep up speed towards the next traffic lights but the big black Moskwicz had pulled in again soon after dropping me, off. They'd gone into the building on the south side, Foster and the man from Irkutsk. I hadn't gone back because they could have slapped a tag on me but the map in the City Library showed what the building was. It might not be their base but if it wasn't I'd have to start my search from there.

I’d known yesterday what I’d got to do but I suppose I'd baulked it because it wasn't a thing you could do in a hurry and I'd have to hurry: we stood three days from Sroda and Sroda was the deadline for Czyn, for the opposition and for me. I knew now what Egerton wanted and his tacit signal was clear: define, infiltrate and destroy. And I couldn't do it by standing in the way of the programme they were running: I'd have to get inside and blow it up from there.

A hundred and fifty rooms, fifty with private bath and outside telephone connection via the desk. This one had two windows facing the Commissariat at something like thirty-five degrees oblique, good enough and close enough to observe without binoculars. There was a spillover from the other big hotels nearer the hall where the talks were going to be held but I managed to get a second-floor single and the timing estimate from the room to the street was fifteen seconds at a pace that wouldn't look hurried.

For three hours I drew blank. Some of the Commissariat staff showed up before noon and lights were switched on, so I began filling in the front-elevation sketch I'd made: records, general admin., public interview, M.O. liaison, so forth. Not many of the public went in, perhaps half a dozen, most of them lost-looking, one of them frightened; they were given an upright chair, fourth window left of central staircase, third floor, and a big fur-coated woman spoke to them without a pause and they didn't interrupt; her mouth was rectangular like a ventriloquist's dummy, opening and shutting at irregular intervals while they sat watching, sometimes giving a nod. There were two clerks in Records, both girls, one of them slightly lame; they plied between the desks and the filing cabinets, stopping sometimes to laugh together, their work routine and their thoughts on personal things. Six uniformed M.O.s reported to the second room right of staircase first floor, handing some papers to a civilian who sent them out with a messenger to a room at the back of the building. The work of these people, routine or not, was important enough to bring them here on a Sunday and it looked reasonably clear that the pressures driving towards Sroda had opened the doors of every Commissariat in the city.

I had the impression that if I could have persuaded the two girls to leave the room with the crowded shelves while I lobbed an incendiary bomb through the doorway a few hundred thousand citizens of Warsaw would be better off. It might even be worth doing once I was in there.

13:05 seventh M.O. reporting. 13:12 ninth interview. 13:24 lights out fourth right third floor and the corollary: two clerks down the steps. 13:30 guard on the entrance relieved. 13:41 Moskwicz.

It came in from the west, from across the Vistula. Foster and another man, not the man from Irkutsk but the political agent who'd conducted the interrogation in the Ochota precinct, his pale hands lifting and dropping on the arms of the chair. They got out and climbed the steps and this was very interesting because he must be high in echelon to travel with a top kick like Foster in his turd-shaped deluxe saloon. I couldn't think about it now because I had to see where they went and they went to the doubled-windowed room at the left end of the third floor, when I'd seen the lights go on I began thinking about it.

Findings: a routine M.O. patrol had picked up an unremarkable foreign visitor in the street and pulled him in for not having any papers but by the time he was inside the precinct bureau there was a high-echelon agent sitting-in to conduct the interrogation and by dawn the next day he was under discreet vetting by the K.G.B.

They took off their coats and fur hats and Foster sat down and the agent took a folder from a cupboard, dark green folder, cupboard not locked.

Working backwards: I'd realised I was being vetted in the Moskwicz and they hadn't tried to cover it. The new material now coming in and making me sweat concerned the events that had led up to that: at some time between being picked up as a routine measure by the M.O. patrol and my arrival at the Ochota precinct fifteen minutes later there'd been an alert situation. Someone had known, without seeing me, that I wasn't just one of the hundreds of foreign visitors in Warsaw on private business or with an interest in the forthcoming talks.

They'd known who I was.

The Moskwicz was still at the kerb and the driver and escort were still on board, black leather coats and civilian kepis. Note this. Note everything and think fast in the intervals.

They couldn't have known who I was.

And make corrections. The wire had burned out and I'd have to twist the ends together till it glowed again and the analogy came to mind because the mission was suddenly electrified and Egerton was close to me, Egerton and his bloody lies, everyone else has refused, I'm really most grateful to you for helping me out.