'Yes. There are two bullets, and a third wound. He needs to rest. He came out of a general anaesthesia an hour ago.'

'Can he handle protein yet?'

'Perhaps, in liquid form. But you are taking risks. He has lost blood, quite a lot, and so he is weak. The conditions were sterile but I cannot guarantee there will be no infection.'

'Have you any liquid protein?' Croder was into fast fluent Russian.

'I have chicken broth, yes.'

'Give him some, if you will.'

I sat down on the crate again, sliding my back against the wall and feeling the left shoulder gradually coming to life. The room span slowly for a while and then Croder came back into focus, perched on the end of the bed. Zoya went out and he asked Bracken: 'What's security like in this place?'

'As good as you'll get,' he said, 'in Moscow. She even keeps weapons here.'

'We don't want those.' Croder looked back at me. 'I don't wish to press you, but I'd like your report on Schrenk. Just give me the salient points if you feel up to it.'

There was still some fog in my head but I thought I could work out a summary. I took a minute and then said: 'He's gone half out of his mind. They roughed him up too much in Lubyanka. And he's Jewish. He's made some friends among the dissidents. He's out for revenge and he's rationalizing it, thinks he's crusading for the cause. Just my impressions.'

I had to wait for a bit because I was out of breath. Croder watched me, still as a reptile, his black eyes brooding.

'Don't hurry,' he said.

'He blew me off the street. He said he had to get me out of his way, didn't want anyone to know where he was, wants to be left alone.' I tried to remember what else Schrenk had said, with the cigarette smoke curling past his narrowed bloodshot eyes and his body twisted to face me. 'He said there's only one thing the bastards will listen to, by which he meant it was no good just protesting against oppression. I'd say there's something he wants to do, and very badly. I'd say he's become a dangerous fanatic.' I stopped again to get my breath. 'Something else. He said "Moscow needs me." I was trying to talk him into pulling out with us, and that was his answer. Degree of megalomania, I suppose.'

'Do you think so?' asked Croder.

I thought about it. 'It's hard to say. I mean he's still a very capable operator. He could do a lot of damage if he wanted to.'

'Quite so.'

Then the door opened and we all looked round. It was Zoya.

'Bracken,' I said. 'Does Schrenk know this address?'

'No. Don't worry.'

All very well. Schrenk had just blown Gorsky's safe-house and if he knew about this one he'd send in the KGB and there'd be nothing we could do: they'd get the London director, the director in the field and the executive all in one bag. It didn't bear thinking about.

Zoya had brough me a can of self-heating soup, US Army issue, God knew where she'd got it from. She poured it into a thick white cup and gave it to me.

'Would you say,' Croder asked in his cold thin tones, 'that Schrenk has got a cell together?'

'Possibly. There's this man Ignatov, and he mentioned two other people, Boris and Dmitriy. It's either a cell or some kind of wildcat group of revolutionary dissidents.'

Croder said nothing for a moment, then began speaking in formal Russian to Zoya. 'You did a splendid job with this man's injuries — I should have mentioned it before. I'm most indebted to you, Doctor.'

'It was good to work again.'

He gave a slight bow. 'Now if you'll excuse us, we have to debrief him.'

'I understand.' She looked at me critically as she turned to leave. 'Take care of him, please. He is still weak.'

She took away the self-heating can and quietly closed the door. Croder sat with his head half-turned, listening to her footsteps growing fainter along the passage. Then he swung round to look at me. 'I want to get a picture of Schrenk in my mind, as clearly as you can give it. Would you say he's totally unbalanced by his experiences in Lubyanka? Do you feel his imagination has run wild and that he sees himself as the shining liberator of oppressed Russian Jewry, that sort of thing? Or would you on the other hand say that he's still in full possession of his professional expertise and capable of mounting a sensitive operation with the help of an organized cell? Please consider carefully, because this is important.'

They were both watching me in the silence, and I leaned my head back against the wall and shut my eyes, remembering all I could of Schrenk: the ravaged face and the crippled body with its rage contained like a furnace, that strange laughter that had led to those fits of coughing when the force of his hate had threatened to choke him, the chilling diatribe about Detsky Mir and its mechanical toys. When I felt ready I opened my eyes and said:

'I don't think he's unbalanced, in the normal sense. I think he's been given a direction. I've never seen such hate in a man, and he's turned it into a driving force — which is typical of him. I'd certainly say he's in full possession of his talents and could get a cell together. I don't believe he sees himself as a shining liberator, but I'm pretty sure he's capable of liberating Borodinski, for instance, by leading an armed raid on the courthouse and getting him out.' I left it at that.

Croder wrinkled his thin brows. 'Did he mention doing such a thing?'

'No. It was just an example.'

'I see.' He studied his skeletonic hands. 'I don't think he's interested in Borodinski, but the rest of the picture you've given me ties in with the information we've received — that he means to assassinate the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Leonid Brezhnev.'

I got off the crate and on to my feet. Bracken came to help me but I said, 'No, I'm all right.' I took a few steps, keeping close to the wall, and began feeling stronger. The thing was, I couldn't just go on sitting there. Not now. I went on shuffling between the furniture, making quite a lot of progress, and when I turned round I saw that Croder was standing up now, watching me. He said thinly

'You think he can do it. Don't you?'

'Yes.'

'You didn't hesitate.'

'No.'

Croder looked at Bracken. 'What do you think?'

'I think this is all we needed.'

Croder said to me: 'I should explain that we've had various information coming in, some of it to Bracken, some of it by signal to London. That's why I decided to fly out.' He was standing perfectly still, I noticed, like a perched bird of prey; he didn't need to pace up and down or light a cigarette to transfer his tension: he could handle it internally. 'The information we had was from fairly reliable sources but the informants weren't close to Schrenk, as you have been. Frankly I was hoping you'd tell me that he was half out of his mind and a broken reed. Since your considered opinion is quite otherwise, then we shall have to take action.' He looked at me very directly, as he'd looked at me in the airport in Berlin. 'You say you tried to talk Schrenk into pulling out of Moscow and that he refused. Is that correct?'

'More or less.'

'Is it correct, or isn't it?' Standing perfectly still, his shoulders hunched in his oversize military coat, his black eyes fixed on me.

'Yes.' And I waited for it.

'Then why didn't you follow my instructions?'

Bracken looked away.

I couldn't tell him the truth: that I'd been going to do it.

Three paces and a sword-hand to the larynx, a matter of four seconds. I couldn't tell him that because it'd sound like a lie.

'I still thought I could talk him into pulling out.'

'Did you indeed? And what happened?'

'He got to a gun.'

'You let him do that?'

The room had begun swinging slightly and I found my right hand on the back of a padded chair. Croder stood facing me with that eerie stillness of his, and I wanted to go and smash his face in.