'Yes. Just look after him for me.'

'I savvy. Book that call, did you?'

'Call?

'The local. Rules, see, they're red hot on expenses. I'll take care of it, don't worry.' He unclipped one of his pens.

I went along the passage and past the room with the cast-iron stove and its red curling ashes, then down the stairs and into the bitter night air.

It was a clear run back to the Hotel Alzacki. The streets were deserted: the curfew was for thirty minutes from now and people didn't want to be caught out because their watch had stopped. A few taxis: they'd be journalists covering the scene.

The hotel was halfway along the street and they came in from the far end while I was switching the engine off, a dark-coloured mobile patrol slowing on sidelights, and a couple of seconds later my mirror went bright. I knew the Mercedes was all right so it was the hotel itself they were closing on. I threw the door shut and crossed the brittle snow on the pavement and went inside.

22: SRODA

The staircase. curved and I caught at the banister rail, pulling myself up. One of them was guarding the door and I told him to get inside.

A tin tray on the billiard-table, dirty bowls and spoons and the smell of czosnek, the Ludwiczak boy asleep, nothing else different.

'Alinka.'

It couldn't be said in front of Foster because there was a last chance: he might not see the vulnerable point that could finish me.

As she came quickly the slamming of metal doors sounded from below and in the half-lit passage her eyes glittered.

'Police?’

'Listen, I'm taking the Englishman and not coming back. Get control of them if you can, tell them Voskarev's no good as a hostage if they kill him, make them see sense for your own sakes.'

The door below came open and we heard their boots. She turned her head to listen, contempt on her shadowed mouth, then looked, up at me.

'Thank you for my brother.'

They watched me as I went back through the doorway and Foster was standing up and on his face I saw fear and knew it was for Voskarev.

A man tried to get past me with his rifle and I pushed him back. 'Stay here and keep quiet. Foster, I want you,'

He looked once at the Russian and may have said something to him. Then he followed me out and I shut the door. Through the banisters I could see the cap of, the man guarding the main entrance while the search spread through the ground floor.

'They'll kill him,' I said, 'you know that.'

He looked at me without enmity, his mind too disciplined for abstraction. 'I'm not sure,' he said, 'that I can do it.'

We went down the stairs together. A lieutenant was at the desk throwing questions at the patron and swung round when he saw us. Foster showed him his credentials and I heard him trying to get authority into his tone: what were they doing here?

The Commissar saloon had been reported as having been seen outside this hotel.

Yes, it had brought us here. What was the trouble?

The Comrade Colonel and the Deputy Chief Controller were said to be missing.

'Some fool,' Foster told him with a flash of impatience, 'is spreading confusion. Comrade Deputy Chief Voskarev has gone to the Najwyzsza Izba Kontroli. Now get your men out of here.'

I turned to the patron and apologised formally for the disturbance as the orders were shouted along the passage. The tramp of boots gathered at the entrance and an engine started up outside. The lieutenant's salute to Foster was perfunctory: the Polish M.O. branch was at present under control of the Co-ordinated Information Services Foreign Division and the position was one of sufferance.

Foster was standing perfectly still. I think he was waiting for the sound of a shot from the billiard-room: in hostage situations the death rate is highest when a search comes close.

The rhythm of snow-chains passed the building and then it was quiet.

'All right.' I took his arm because he was turning towards the stairs.

The street smelt of exhaust gas.

'Where are we going?'

The ignition and oil-pressure lights dimmed out and I turned by gunning up and bouncing the rear off the kerb because there wasn't room for the lock. I didn't answer him. He sat without a word until we were into Zawisza Square and it occurred to me that he knew what I was going to do with him.

Sidelights came into the mirror and I noted them. The Square was heavily patrolled and the white beam of a lamp swung from somewhere above us, a rooftop command post. A long way off I heard the chopping of rotors again. Then there was firing of some kind, nearer to us, and I checked my watch. It was midnight minus one: a minute to Sroda.

Will you be here? Don't be here Wednesday, pal.

The shape was still in the mirror. I don't know if Foster had caught a reflection or heard the chains but he looked round and then sat facing forward again. 'You're going to have a crack at getting out, then.'

'I'm taking you to London.'

He didn't say anything immediately but I heard him suck his breath in. His fear was in the car, like a smell. He didn't want to go to London; there were people there who'd believed they were his friends and he had something in common with all shabby men: he couldn't face his creditors.

'Throw me to the pack, eh?'

'No. Formal trial.' I brought the speed up another few k.p.h. 'And no faked evidence.' I was taking the odd chance with the unpredictable surface but they didn't drop back. One of my eyelids had started flickering because he'd had time to think about things and there was the vulnerable point that could finish me and I no longer believed he'd miss it.

'Revenge is sweet, that old lark.'

'Oh balls, you don't mean anything more to me than something on a doorstep and it's mutual.' There was a soft area in him that I hadn't suspected: an inability not to emote. It felt sticky. 'A full-scale trial's going to tell us a lot more about you and your network. I'm just taking some goods home, it's my trade.'

We crossed Jerozol imskie and headed north and heard firing again.

'Then you've had it, old boy. Without you in control of those nervy idiots, your hostage is as good as finished.'

I felt my scalp go tight.

'Not necessarily.'

Suddenly his discipline broke and his voice became. very bright. 'If there's another police raid they'll shoot him before they're taken. Otherwise they'll shoot him in any case when he's no more use. He was a good man, you know that? He was my one friend, the only man who ever understood.’

'Bloody shame, what chance did you give the others to understand?'

He made me sick.

The street lamps flickered and steadied again. I took the next set of lights on the red and the shape closed right in, filling the mirror.

When he spoke again he'd got the control back.

'That's a patrol car behind, as I suppose you know. They weren't satisfied, that'd be it, wouldn't it? They're checking to see where we go. Better pull in, you know the score now.'

They began flashing and I tipped the mirror.

When the trap closes you. shake at the bars, it's a reflex, all animals do it. Their klaxon started up and I took an intersection and hit piled snow and got her back and swung left and saw I'd blown it because there were barriers across the street and the lights flickered again and went right out, one of the power stations gone up, no help to me, dark figures moving among lamps, the shadows alive and something waving, red and white stripes, then flashes poppling the dark and I spun the wheel and felt the front end go, Foster calling something, the bodywork taking a shock and then another one, rapid rifle fire.

Still spinning and then the rear hit a kerb and we bounced and some feel came back into the steering and I used it, sudden brilliance striking across my eyes, the patrol car coming at us with the heads full on and then glass smashed behind me and I sat low and found a gear and got traction again as the patrol glanced off and the scene went black in contrast, coming up again as I hit the heads on and kicked the switch to full, a repeater starting a rat-tat from the barricade, a side window going and my arm jerking to the force, pain flaring, then some stability as the chains bit and we closed on the intersection, the sound of the engine taking over from the noise back there, the fusillade fading as I drifted the right-angle and sped up, settling along the street's perspective.