'All right.'

'Okay. Like I said, there's someone I know, in Moscow. I can't tell you who he is because he'd scalp me. But he's got a theory too, and if he's right it puts him way ahead of the game. He thinks some guy in that naval base duped a tape of the action when that sub got sunk, and now he's holed up somewhere in this city with half the KGB hunting for him. Now if we could talk to him… that would be quite a story, wouldn't you say?'

11 CYANIDE

Where are you speaking from?'

'The post office.'

'Which one?'

'In Obolenskij prospekt.'

I counted the seconds of silence. Four.

'What do you need?'

'There's something wrong.'

'In what way?'

I listened carefully to his voice.

If it had been Ferris local-controlling me it would have been easier. I didn't know Fane well enough to know what the sound of his voice was like in the field. He didn't sound tense, but that might not mean anything: he could have reserves of nerve fibre that I didn't know about.

The thing was, I'd done some work on the room-search thing and the only reason for the KGB to do that was because Fane had been blown, and had talked, and if that had happened he could be speaking to me now with a gun at his head.

'Are you clear,' I asked him, 'at your end?'

Three seconds. I tried to remember the conversation we'd had on the bridge in Moscow, and whether he'd always paused like this.

'In what way?'

'Bugs.'

'Perfectly clear. I told you this number was all right.'

'I know.'

'What's happened?'

I'd decreased the risk as far as I could. This was a post office but it wasn't in Obolenskij prospekt: it was in Bockova ulica, and if anyone else were on the line and sent out a van they'd draw blank at the other place.

'My room was searched.'

A long pause but I'd expected that.

'Tell me about it.'

I just said I'd complained and the KGB had denied everything.

'How did they treat you?'

'They were civil.'

'I mean did they… ask any awkward questions?'

'No.'

The silence drew out, but I wasn't worried now. I'd been listening hard enough to have picked anything up, anything wrong. He was thinking, that was all.

'Your set-up is absolutely all right.'

He meant my cover.

'If you say so.'

'There is just no way they could have got anywhere near you. I know this.'

'So what's your answer?'

'You've been protected,' he said, ignoring my question, 'all die way from London through Moscow and into your hotel here. I've been in constant signals, and Croder is handling you with die most extreme care. You're absolutely sure, of course?'

'That my room was searched?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, come on, Fane.'

'Just making sure. It's so extraordinary. Have you any ideas?'

'I thought they might have got onto me and decided for some reason to give me rope.'

'I would have known.'

'How?'

'This is the most sensitive assignment I've ever been given, and Croder himself is running it. If anything had started to go wrong — in terms of Galina — we would have known at once.'

Galina Borisovna was spook terminology for the KGB.

'All right,' I said.

'What about you? Have you got any ideas?'

'Only one. There's a journalist at the hotel, a French-Swiss by his accent. He's been taking an interest in me.'

Another pause. 'What sort?'

'He's watching me now.' | The strange, saffron light of dusk was seeping through the grimy windows. It was three o'clock: the nights were long here.

'Is he in the post office?'

'No. He stopped short when I came in. He'll be outside waiting for me.'

'Does he know you've seen him?'

'No.'

I was facing the main doors and already knew the answer to what Fane would ask me next.

'Can you go out the back way?'

'No.' It would mean going past the counter and through the sorting room.

'You say he's a journalist. You mean that's his cover?'

'Yes.'

'How do you know that?'

'I know a spook when I see one.' He'd only made one mistake on the way here through the streets from the hotel: he'd hurried a little when I'd walked round a corner and slowed, looking back. It hadn't been easy for him, over the snow. Figures stood out.

'Do you know his name?'

Fane's tone had become almost casual now, and I recognized for the first time that the more the pressure came on the quieter he got. That was good: there was more to him than I'd thought. But I didn't like this new situation. It had unnerved me to the point of thinking that Fane might have been blown.

'Yes. Rinker.'

'How do you know?'

'I got a look at the reservation book.' He asked a lot of questions, never taking me for granted.

'What does he look like?'

'Short, compact, maybe thirty-five, in training, works out with weights, or it's some form of martial art. He-'

'Eyes?'

'Brown. Dark hair smoothed back. Good tailor. Why?'

'I thought I might recognize him as some kind of opposition tool. So what are you going to do?'

I thought about it. 'Do you have any instructions?'

'Not really, but I'll get some if you like.'

'If I blow him, he'll only bring other people in. That's all right at the moment but when Karasov makes contact I'll want to be free to move.'

A long pause. There was a very faint voice on the line and it occurred to me that he was blocking the mouthpiece and talking to someone else; but it sounded like Russian. I couldn't be sure.

'Fane?'

'I was thinking.'

'All right.'

'Is he worrying you?'

'He'd worry me less if he stopped searching my room.'

'You think it was him?'

'If it wasn't Galina.'

A heavy man came through the doors and banged the snow off his boots.

'See what you can find out,' Fane said, 'and let me know.'

'I can't find much out unless I blow him.'

While Fane was thinking again the heavy man came over and stood stolidly in front of me, flipping a two-kopeck coin. This was the only telephone in the place.

'Don't blow him,' Fane said. 'That would complicate things, as you say. Just see what he does.'

'All right.'

I rang off and went to the doors and out into the yellow twilight and the scent of wood smoke. Fane had sounded so very certain that the KGB hadn't caught my vibrations, and this tied in with the denial they'd made at their headquarters; but Fane could be wrong and they could be lying. I didn't feel comfortable yet: there were too many things going wrong with this mission and I couldn't trust anyone. Or maybe it was the strange light here: at noon it was either dark with snow clouds or shimmering with the first ripples of the aurora flowing from the northern ice cap. Nothing seemed acceptable; everything seemed suspect in some way.

I don't like the cold. I felt cold now, under the thick fleece-lined coat and the astrakhan hat. I was shivering with it.

He wasn't where I'd left him. He was in a doorway of the next block, barely an outline in the shadows, and I took the same route back to the hotel, never looking behind me but sighting him twice in reflections as. we passed windows, climbing snow drifts and crunching through scabs of ice along the gutters while a snow plough followed us, lumbering down the middle of the deserted road and sending up clouds of diesel gas. The staff at the hotel were complaining bitterly about the traffic conditions, and the city's sanitation commissioner was being criticized in the local paper for not doing his job. Before we reached the hotel I saw a whole party of skiers gliding down the street, overtaking a tractor hauling a bus out of a drift.

I stopped once or twice to watch, and again saw Rinker's silhouette in the window of a workers' outfitting shop before I went on. He held back at the last corner and I quickened my pace through the lobby and got to the first floor balcony in time to see him come in through the doors.