I quietened down, so that he'd know I wasn't worried, that I wasn't going. 'You'll have to find someone else.'

He waited five seconds and then said:

'You needn't decide immediately. Not for a few hours yet.'

'Hours? You called me in a bit late, didn't you?'

'Everyone else has refused.'

I looked away.

It wasn't in my dossier. Or if it was, it was written between the lines. That was where he'd been busily reading. It said if you want to find Quiller look for the man who stands facing the wrong way in the bus queue just to show the world he can do without a bus, look for the man who wants the window open when everyone else wants it shut. The awkward bastard who's going to kill himself one day trying to prove he's bullet proof. And if you want him for a job that he'd normally throw back in your face, tell him that everyone else has refused it.

I was looking at the little electric fire. The coiled filament had broken in two or three places and someone — probably Egerton — had twisted the ends together; the joins were glowing brightly, absorbing so much of the current that the rest of the filament wasn't more than cherry red. I knew he wouldn't speak next.

'What sort of mission have you given him?'

'Nothing complicated.' The phone rang again and he said 'yes' to someone and hung up. 'I haven't met him yet, myself. He was rather wished on to me.' He sat back now, his donnish head tilted to watch me. The chilblains made red cobbles on the blue skin of his hands and I thought vaguely that as soon as I'd gone he would get up and hold them near the fire again. 'That's why I'm really most grateful to you for helping me out. Really most grateful'

'You haven't met him yet?'

'Not yet. I want you to go and see him first and size him up. He's been fully screened, of course, and given general briefing on security. Then I'll arrange for the three of us to talk before you fly out.'

'Where do I find him?'

'Personnel Section, Foreign Office.' He got up as I took my gloves off the arm of the chair. 'You don't want this little chore, I know, but don't blame Merrick. You're a veteran and he's only a raw recruit. Don't break the poor little devil up.'

2: MERRICK

I filled in the green card.

P. K. Longstreet. To see G. R. Merrick. By appointment.

'Thank you, Mr Longstreet.'

The hall had the dusty acoustics of a cathedral. The security doorkeeper at the desk by the stairs watched me, nibbling on a fingernail.

'Mr Merrick, please.' The two other girls stared disinterestedly at the doors. 'Will you try and find him? He's got a visitor.'

I went to the doors and came back.

'I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but he doesn't seem to be in. Are you sure there was — '

'He's in. I'll go on up.'

'I'm afraid you can't go up without an escort. We have to — '

The doorkeeper was out of his desk as I reached the stairs and I showed him my pass. It took a couple of seconds to register because this one wasn't seen too often: this was the one that could get you into the Houses of Parliament with a barrel under your arm even if the green card said G. Fawkes.

I went up the stairs and turned left. Merrick must have been in the lav when she'd rung because he was back in Personnel when I got there. Twenty-four, medium height, brown hair, blue eyes, heavy spectacle frames, recent scar left hand. 'A slight accident,' Egerton had told me. There were a few other people in the room and Merrick's desk was near the door. A girl in a lemon blouse looked in and said:

'Oh there you are. Visitor for you in the hall.'

He'd seen me and said: 'Yes, he's here, thank you.'

She gave me a pert blink. 'Well that was quick.'

Someone on a phone was saying: 'If I were you I'd put Mrs Pymm on to it — she'll sort it out if anyone can.'

'Where do we talk?' I asked Merrick.

'I'm not quite sure.' He was standing behind the desk, his long fingers shifting some papers to no purpose, his slightly magnified eyes watching me nervously.

'Come on, then.'

'Yes.' He followed me out, catching his foot against something. 'I think there's one of the under-secretaries at a conference this afternoon, so I suppose we could use his room. It's just along here.'

I sensed him watching me obliquely so I said: 'Worst bloody winter since '47.'

He worked it out as quickly as he could and then took it straight from the book. 'In my paper it said since 1939.'

'You mean '39?'

'Oh. Yes.' By the tone of his voice he was kicking himself.

It wasn't important, here and now; but as the years go by you learn to worry less about the mistakes you've made and more about what would have happened if the circumstances had made them important. The code introduction for 5th to 12th was to throw in a random two-digit number and listen for one below and two above, the same thing in London, Rio or Hong Kong, wherever you were and whatever you were doing, it made the whole thing simple. He'd put in the circumspect '19' from sheer nerves.

He tapped on a door and there was no answer so we went in. Very lush carpet and solicitor's office furniture and a portrait of the Queen and a small photograph suitably half concealed by a filing cabinet, an over-exposed long shot with plenty of camera shake, girl on a horse. Egerton should have a room like this but what would he do with it? Plug in a beat-up 250-watt fire and crouch over it with his miseries.

'How long have you been in Warsaw?'

'Six months.' It was said quickly. He was going to get everything right from now on. He sat forward in the other chair, watching me very directly and breathing on his nerves. I went out in — '

'How long's your tour?'

'A year.'

'Where were you before?'

'In Prague. Then there was a home posting before I — '

'You were there during the Prague Spring?'

'Yes.'

'Isn't it unusual to get posted to another Moscow-controlled country the next time out?'

'I asked for the post.'

'Why?'

'I was very affected by what happened in Prague. I liked the people there — I made a lot of friends.' He took something out of his pocket. 'It looks like happening all over again, this time in Warsaw.' It was an atomiser and he pumped it into his mouth. 'Excuse me,' he said.

'So you want to be there, all over again?'

'Well yes, I — '

'No wonder you've got asthma.'

He stopped pumping and put the thing away and said rather sulkily. ‘If the Poles can win their freedom I'd like to be there. It'd be something to remember, wouldn't it, a thing like that?'

'Were you born in England?'

'Yes. You can't enter the Diplomatic Service unless — '

'Englishmen don't think much about freedom.'

'Well no. But that's because they've got it, isn't it?'

I wondered what sort of freedom Merrick hadn't got. It was no good asking him: he wouldn't know; it'd be below the conscious level. But he'd tell me, if I listened. I said: 'You've made friends there too?' 'In Warsaw?'

'Yes.'

'A few. A few friends.'

'They in the underground?'

'Well, I mean almost everyone's in the underground, people of that age. My age.'

'Students?'

'Oh no. Well, a few. But they're mostly engineers or shop assistants, people like that. You have to work, you see, if you want to eat. Some of them have more than one job, doing night shifts as well, just to get enough money for food and clothes, especially in winter — '

'What's the general drift of things out there, Merrick?'

He leaned forward, his long hands chopping at the air. 'There's been tension ever since the Prague Spring — there was a lot of sympathy for the Czechs of course — and now the underground forces are becoming quite organised. This is known, and a few months ago the authorities started trying to soften up the workers by leniency all round — less checking of sickness reports at the factories, smaller fines for indiscipline, lighter sentences for stealing state property, that kind of thing.' A shade triumphantly he said with another chop of his hands: 'Well it didn't work.'