Merrick had been given the signal by Foster's group because they too knew the deadline was close and they wanted all available info from me before Sroda broke and the confusion gave me a chance of getting out of Warsaw. So the poor little tick had blown himself but my immediate decision was not to scare him by telling him I knew. Maybe I could have tried saving him, at that moment, by breathing on the bit of compassion he'd managed to find in me, giving it warmth: tell him to get out and hole up and pray. But I could use him now, and anyway I think he would have walked out of the buffet and across the platform and under the next train.

He'd been usable because of the mike. Foster knew I'd asked for three Czyn people because Merrick had told him, so I'd let Foster know why I wanted them, direct on the tape. I told him two important things: that they were to help me leave Warsaw, and that I no longer needed them.

These were things he could accept. The first gave him a plausible reason for my asking Czyn for support: to get me out of the city, not to mount an offensive operation. The second gave strength to what I knew I'd be telling him later, here in this room: that I no longer needed them because I'd been in direct touch with London and had orders to work with Foster and not against him and would therefore expect him to let me out of Warsaw as a temporary ally.

It wouldn't have mattered if there'd been no mike: the gist of it would have been passed on to Foster as routine info; but the tape gave it substance. I wasn't in fact sure there was a mike: it was just that Merrick had been sitting unnaturally still at the table and I'd put it down to chest pains, the asthma, until he gave me the duff signal. Then I knew it could be because he was trying not to fuzz up a mike with background noise, the friction of his clothes when he moved.

He could never do anything right, tripping on things and dropping things, cocking things up. Even when he used a mike on me it kicked back and he didn't know.

'I believe you've already met Voskarev.' The man in the other chair got up.

'Yes.'

He was the man with pale hands and thyroid eyes who'd directed my interrogation at the Ochota precinct after they'd ordered Merrick to have me pulled in. He lowered his head in a token bow but his eyes stayed on me, round and staring, the eyes of a fish. He didn't sit down again but turned slightly away and stood gazing into the middle distance as if listening for something.

But I wasn't ready yet. I had to wait for Foster. I needed a cue from him and it had to be the right one because it depended on his next words whether I had to kill off the whole operation or kick it into gear.

'How's London?'

Kick it.

'I've just had my orders confirmed.'

London was the key. He believed what I'd told him on the phone, or believed some of it, enough of it to test me for slips. Otherwise he wouldn't have been replaying the tape, wouldn't have been interested, would have told the man at the door here to put me in a cell and make damned sure this time I didn't get out.

'That's good.' His tone was sleepy. 'Been on to them direct?'

'Yes'

'Not from the Hotel Kuznia.' His tone hadn't changed.

'There was too much delay.'

'Oh yes of course, they told me.' He took a sip of Scotch. 'So you're still on our side, that it?'

'What's it look like, Foster? You think I'd have come here under my own steam, otherwise?'

I had to work up some anger. The whole thing had to sound exactly right and a show of anger would do that.

'I suppose not. On the other hand you gave those chaps a lot of trouble, not very sporting. I mean if you're meant to be on our side — '

‘Christ, haven't you got the picture yet? I told you I'd got a lot to do before I could come here and hand you the full works and I couldn't do it with a bunch of thick-eared clods treading all over my heels the whole time. You put them there because you were shit-scared I'd go off on some lunatic suicide mission and do some damage, right? I don't expect you to trust me but I expect you to trust your own judgement and see the sense in what I was telling you on the phone. Does this man understand English? If not, I'll say it again in Russian because I want the whole of your outfit to know that if you start blocking me again you'll cost yourselves a good deal of valuable help and God knows you need it.' I looked at Voskarev but he was staring at the wall. 'Better still, tell him yourself, your Russian's a bit more fluent than mine, part of your contract.'

Foster was looking into his tumbler. In a moment he said idly: 'They found a man this afternoon. In a lavatory.' He looked at me and I saw that a certain shine had come to his eyes under their puffy lids. He didn't like what I'd said about his contract and he didn't like his people being found like that. My anger was counterfeit but his was the real thing and I was going to keep working on it because in anger the judgement suffers.

'That was your own fault — I told you not to let them get in my way. You're slipping, you know that? What are you by this time, a bottle-a-day man? They all go like that once they're blown.' I went close to him and he didn't look away. 'The trouble with you Slavs is that you can't stand back far enough to get a world view. The Bonn proposals have opened up the chance of an East-West detente that could wipe out a lot of the mutual fear that's keeping both camps with one hand on the hot-line telephone and the other on the nuclear trigger and all you can worry about is a thug found dead in a lavatory.'

I could hear movement behind me. Voskarev, getting restless. It was a fair bet he understood English and didn't like what he heard because Comrade Colonel Foster was their blue-eyed boy and I didn't sound too impressed.

They can't stand heresy.

Foster was perfect. Give him that. He took a sip of whisky and savoured it and said mildly: 'All I mean is, old boy, that you must have been rather keen to go off on your own, which makes it difficult for us to believe you've nothing to hide from us. Why did you have to — '

'Listen, Foster.' I turned away and moved about so that I could keep them all in sight: it wasn't the time for anyone to do something silly. 'I told you there are one or two Czyn units still intact and I had to go and talk to them and I didn't intend exposing them to your people so that you could give orders to have them wiped out. They trust me and that might be a new idea to a man like you but it's a fact of life. If you've any more stupid bloody questions I don't want to hear them now because Warsaw's going to blow up if we don't do something to stop it and we haven't got long.'

I went over to the trolley and found some soda and hit the tit and drank a glassful. It was very quiet in the room.

'You'd better be more specific.'

'Now you're talking.' I turned back to him. 'Did you bring in Ludwiczak for me?'

'He's on his way.'

'But I told you to fly him in and that was thirty hours ago!'

'It's not really the problem of transport. There are always formalities.'

'How long's he going to be kept hanging around while they're filling in forms? He's our key man and we can't do much without him. Can't you phone someone?’

He spoke to Voskarev in Russian and he stopped staring at the wall and picked up the telephone. Merrick had left his chair and stood with his back to us and I heard the atomiser pumping. The guard was still by the door.

I had to do it now and the sweat was coming out because if it didn't work first time it wouldn't ever work at all and I watched Voskarev at the phone as if it was important that Ludwiczak was here.

He spoke to Foster, not to me.

'They are bringing him through the airport.'

Foster nodded and looked at me to see if I understood.