Double agents don't last long: the strain is killing. The exceptions are people like Sorge, Foster, Obermann, but the strain on them is no less killing: it's just that they're harder to kill. For a boy like Merrick to go double was simply an elaborate attempt at suicide.

It was irrelevant that he'd tried to take me with him.

Other thoughts: intensive attempt to work out how to get the maximum amount of information into Egerton's hands before the possibility of my non-survival. Foster wanted me alive but captive and the risk lay in the actions I'd have to take to remain free. Intensive thinking on this too. Intervals of free-ranging images, disjointed, unimportant.

Cannot locate references in mission report to actual train journey Bydgoszcz-Warsaw therefore question amount of 130 zlotys paid at Dworzec Warszawa Glowna 12:50 hours Tuesday 19. Silly bitch.

I heard them coming.

At first one man, and I listened for clues: the cleaner might be a woman, her steps lighter, but this was a man; the cleaner would be older, possibly, than an M.O. officer, thus might shuffle, could detect no shuffle. Then suddenly there were the others and within a minute the confines were sharp with echoes: they came from all directions, down the double staircases and from each end of the subway in a blanket operation designed to remove the risk inherent in a simple wave motion: a wave coverage moving from one end of the subway to the other could drive the quarry in front of it and allow him a chance of finding an exit.

All the exits were simultaneously blocked.

They were civil police in uniform, their boots metalled and their pace regular. None of them spoke. Their sound filled the passage.

I had to be quick getting into the cupboard because some of them were coming down the twin staircases close to the washroom and they would be here in a few seconds. The metal bucket was a hazard, its sound alien to the background, and I was careful. The locking of the door gave no trouble since the tumblers came within the same aural range as footsteps on stonework.

The earlier patrol had smashed the hinges of three cubicle doors in kicking them open but I'd left the other five closed so that these people would find something to do that would take their attention from the cupboard. The mind of one policeman becomes much like another's: they're trained to work as a group and their imagination is corporate. The earlier patrol had gone for the obvious — the cubicles — and had given the cupboard only token attention. It was possible that these would do the same.

Two of them came into the washroom. The others went past.

One began on the cubicles, his boot crashing at the doors. He would be standing back as he kicked, his gun out of its holster and prepared to shoot and to shoot first. The aim would be low: Foster would have given orders that I was to be taken alive. The other had noticed the cupboard.

He wrenched three times at the handle. I felt its movement against my sleeve. Then he crossed to the cubicles and used his boot. The noise of the doors crashing open was very loud, overwhelming the sounds coming from the subway. The smell of the cleansing fluid had become stronger because my sense of sight was frustrated and the others were compensating, stimulated by a crisis situation.

They finished with the cubicles and turned and came past the cupboard on their way out.

'What about that?'

'I've tried it.'

'Is it locked?'

'Yes'

The handle moved again.

'We'll have to make sure.'

The explosion made me think he was firing at the lock but it was his boot against the panels.

'That's no good, it opens outwards, look.'

'Have to force it, then.'

'What with?'

'We'll have to find something.!

'Shoot round it?'

'Round what?'

'The lock.'

'We'd bring the others.’

'What about it?'

'They'll think we've got him. Finish up looking silly.'

'How can anyone be in there if the door's locked?'

'We've got to make sure. You know what the Captain said, turn every stone.'

'Ask someone where the key is, then.'

'Take all day. You stay here and I'll fetch an axe or something.'

The sound of his boots faded.

So there was only one of them but the conditions were zero because the instant I turned the key he'd hear it and get ready and I'd run into close-range shots.

He crossed to the far side and urinated at the stalls.

The main groups were leaving the subway and when the last of the echoes died they left total silence. He moved again, passing the cupboard, his feet idling, going through the entrance and then halting, looking along the subway.

I had already raised my palm upwards and with the fingertips leading, and touched nothing. Now I felt for the damp rag and found it and folded it into an oblong and draped it across the end of the broomhandle and began raising it by degrees. The risk was high because there was so little room to work in: I'd removed the key after locking the door but the handle and the metal bucket remained dangerous; in total darkness I had to steer the broomhead past them both and touch neither, keeping my elbow clear of the doorhandle as the arm was extended.

I had to work quickly and it was impossible, discount need for speed and concentrate on need for silence.

Sweat had begun creeping close to my eyes. Heartbeat audible, the pulse fast. Another inch, raise it another inch. The end of the rag brushed across my face, clammy and smelling of mould. Another inch.

He kicked at something, perhaps a cigarette end, flicking it with the toe of his boot, taking a pace, stopping.

The broomhead passed my face. I lifted it higher

The sound was loud and came from below me and I froze all movement and stood with the nerves reacting. It was certain that he'd heard and would turn and come back into the washroom and stand listening but he didn't do that and it took a full second for the forebrain to bring logic to bear. The rag was half-saturated and the moisture had started draining towards the ends and the first drip had hit the bucket and the sound was magnified by the funnel acoustics and to my ears it had been startling but to his it had been a strictly normal sound associated with plumbing and cisterns.

Raising the broom I tilted it, bringing the rag directly over my head, because any sound, however closely associated with the environs, would increase his alertness. Silence, lacking aural stimulus, is an overall sense-depressant in non-crisis conditions. For him there was no crisis.

He moved again, coming back into the washroom and pacing there, turning, halting. Possibly he was looking at himself in the mirror as sometimes we do when we are alone, seeking a reaffirmation of our identity. He had begun whistling through his teeth.

The broom was as high as I could raise it. I began bringing it down.,

The second drip fell, hitting my shoulder.

It would take time, lowering the broom: it would take as long as it had taken to raise it because the hazards were the same. I had made progress: was nearer, by a broom's length, to completing the mission; but that didn't allow me to hurry. I couldn't know how many more minutes I had left. Three or with luck five, but not more than that because they'd be as quick about this as they could: their group-sense would be disturbing them since the others had gone ahead and left them isolated.

I didn't think I could do it in three minutes but I thought I could do it in five.

Footsteps.

No go.

'Have you got something?'

It would take thirty seconds with a crowbar, sixty with an axe. That wasn't enough.

'No.'

'Then what the hell have you — '

There's a ganger on his way here with something. He's fetching it from the tool store.'