'You weren't there,' I said to him, 'were you?'

'It makes no difference, surely.'

'Oh yes it does. If you want to know what the executives are up against why don't you come out and do their bloody job for them? You'd learn a lot.'

The echoes seemed to go on for a long time. In the silence I heard Bracken clearing his throat, but he didn't speak.

'The fault,' Croder said icily, 'is partly mine. I know your reputation. You're ready enough to do dangerous things, even foolhardy things; but you're not ready to do unpleasant things. When will you learn that in our trade a conscience is a luxury?'

I held on hard to the back of the chair, thinking out what I'd say, that Schrenk wasn't expendable, that in the army he would have got the VC for holding out as he had in Lubyanka, that killing in cold blood is not the same as killing in a rage. Other things crossed my mind, but in the end I said nothing, because I knew Croder was right in principle and was now proved right in fact: we hadn't got a crippled lunatic on our hands, we'd got a man perfectly capable of assassinating the head of the Russian state.

Something I wanted to know.

'Are you suspending me?'

He looked me over. 'If you think your services can be of any further value, I'd appreciate your staying in. If there's anything unpleasant to be done, I shall do it myself. That is why I'm here.' He turned away.

'Come and sit down,' Bracken told me. 'Get your strength up. Might need it.'

I got across to the painted crate without much bother, but the shoulder was really coming back to life, a good sign but a bloody nuisance. 'Give me some information, for God's sake,' I told him. 'Fill me in.' I'd been out cold for three hours and he said he'd been in signals with London the whole time.

He glanced at Croder, who nodded. 'Our information,' Bracken said, 'had been coming in for quite a time, and from more than one source. We — '

'Quite a time?'

'Some few weeks,' he said awkwardly. 'That's why it was decided to send you out here. One of the reports said that Schrenk faked his abduction at the Hanover clinic with the help of his friends: he meant us to assume the KGB had got him back inside Lubyanka, so that we'd give up and leave him alone. I wasn't told of this until today, but — '

'The first reports,' Croder cut in, 'weren't directly from our own people: they were from the underground dissident faction and passed to London for raw intelligence analysis. The dissidents believed that Schrenk was acting officially and with the backing of the British secret service — revolutionary fervour always has an element of insanity, as I'm sure you know.'

I began going cold. 'If I'd been given this information,' I said, 'I would have eliminated Schrenk the minute I found him.'

Croder wheeled on me. 'The instructions were already there. I told you specifically in Berlin that all we required was his silence.'

'Perfectly true.'

'Thank you.'

There was still some of the chicken broth left in the cup and I finished it.

'Feeling all right?' Bracken asked.

I managed something like a laugh. 'How would you feel?'

'Don't worry. We'll find him.'

I looked at Croder. 'I suppose you've considered warning the Soviets?'

'Of course. It would be suicidal. The situation at this moment is that an attempt on Brezhnev's life might be made and might succeed. If it succeeds, the interests of Russian dissidents will suffer unimaginably in terms of reprisals, since some of the action group are bound to be caught. But if we even leaked a warning to Russian security the repercussions could be disastrous, not only for the Jewish dissidents but for East-West relations, even if no attempt were made at all.' His feet had come together and he was standing perfectly still again, his black eyes brooding. 'Those two possibilities are unfortunately not the worst. The worst possibility is that Schrenk might make an attempt, and succeed, and be discovered and identified as a Western agent.' When he stopped speaking the room was intensely quiet. 'Not long ago, when it was known in the United States that Oswald had offered his services to the KGB shortly before he assassinated President Kennedy, the KGB themselves were terrified that one of their number might have instructed him to do so, and that the Americans might find out. I can imagine few situations that could push us closer to the brink of world war, and that is the situation we are now faced with here in Moscow.'

The intense quiet came back into the room. The shock of what Croder was saying had left my head strangely numbed, and I didn't have any particular thoughts, except perhaps, This is an awful lot to handle, even with Croder running things in the field. An awful lot.

'When do you think this idea began,' I asked Croder, `in Schrenk's mind?'

Bracken was turning his head, but not to look at me.

'That's hard to say. He'd applied for the post of agent-in-place a few months ago, so it seems that he was then involving himself with the dissidents. I would think that his experiences in Lubyanka not only left him outraged but determined on taking revenge, and finally the Jewish dissident cause provided him with the necessary rationale.'

Bracken and I both had our heads turned to listen, and now Croder heard it too. Someone was coming along the passage outside and we waited, our eyes on the door. It would of course be Zoya. It had to be Zoya because if it were anyone else we were wiped out. It's always like this in a safe-house: you'll stop with half the toothpaste on the brush or your shoelace half tied while you listen, facing the door; but tonight our nerves were strung tight because we were the three major components of a mission cooped up together in one small room and we wouldn't stand a chance in hell if we got raided.

Knocking on the door. I sensed Bracken jerk his head a degree but he didn't speak. It was Croder who spoke, his cold voice perfectly steady.

'Who is it?'

'Zoya.'

'Come in.'

She opened the door and I heard Bracken let out his breath. I supposed he was closer to this thing than I was: he'd been in signals with London and London would be panicking; he'd also had Croder on his back, and the knowledge that unless we could do something the life of the Soviet chief of state could be running out.

'There are two men,' Zoya said.

'Did they give the parole?'

'Midnight red.'

'Please have them come up.'

'They are English,' she said. Croder nodded and she went out.

'We have six people,' Croder told me, 'to support you in the field. I have asked two of them to come here for briefing. They are Shortlidge and Logan. Do you know them?'

'No. Not by those names.'

'Logan was an a-i-p in Bangkok,' Bracken said, 'liaising with the Embassy when you — '

'Yes, got him. Have any of them worked in the field?'

'No.'

'Combat trained?'

'Three of them have been through Norfolk,' Bracken said. 'They're contact and liaison, outside of their post duties.'

'They can tag?'

'Oh yes.'

'Fair enough.'

'I guaranteed you full support,' Croder said.

'I appreciate it.' The bastard meant that he hadn't sold me short despite the fact that I'd let him down by neglecting to kill Schrenk. Or perhaps he didn't mean that; perhaps I was being paranoic, because of the size of this thing we had to handle, and because of the time factor: we had no idea of the deadline, and Schrenk could be going in at any minute, including now.

Then they came in, Shortlidge and Logan, both typically nondescript men with quiet voices and poker-face reactions to what Croder told them. All he missed out was the bit about the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet^: he used the word 'coup' every time.

'The situation, then, is that we have no idea when the coup is planned to take place, and we have no idea where. What we have to do is to find our way in, and our target for surveillance is of course this man Ignatov.' He looked at Bracken. 'How many are watching for him?'