As we reached the telephone against the wall she said, 'Are you a Party member?''

'No.'

'If anyone asks what you're doing at the phone, tell them you're a Party member.' She draped her lock of seaweed higher across her brow and pouted her little egg-sized breasts at me under her soiled white coat, turning away with her eyes lingering seductively. You don't earn much in Murmansk, nursing.

I took the phone off its hook and asked for the number.

A man was leaning against the wall between the telephone and the door of the ward, thin as a skeleton and bearded like the Ancient Mariner, his bones shaking so hard that I could hear the brushing of his hospital gown against his legs. In the yellow light from the one bulb hanging from a hook in the ceiling his eyes glinted as he stared at me, and I looked away.

The number began ringing.

Good form, I supposed, should be observed when I spoke to Fane and told him what had happened. He was my local control and in a way this would constitute an interim debriefing.

The rendezvous was blown. The mission is now shut down. The objective is dead.

He would light a cigarette, slowly, before he answered. Then he would ask, because London would ask him, who blew the rendezvous and how did the objective meet his death.

It could only have been the courier. The objective was shot down by the KGB, in error, as he was trying to run clear.

The phone went on ringing.

I began counting.

He would ask me where I was now.

I'm in No. 2 General Maritime Hospital in Murmansk.

He would ask. Twelve rings. Thirteen.

He would ask me what I needed, and if I were in good enough shape for him to get me through the frontier.

I need a safe house first. They'll be discharging me any time now.

Sixteen. Seventeen.

The hairs were lifting at the nape of my neck. The number I was calling was the number where Fane had said I would always find him in this city. Always. For the executive in the field, sometimes hard pressed, sometimes hunted, sometimes dying, the telephone number of his local control is his lifeline. For as long as I remained in the field, Fane would man that line or leave someone with total trust to take over from him in shifts.

Twenty. Twenty-one.

The skeleton with the frosted beard was still staring at me in the yellow light, one of his knees knocking rhythmically against the wall, his thin shadow behind him, waiting to follow him to the grave. He seemed to be listening, but might not be, or if he was, there might not be anything left inside his bone-white head to understand.

Did he know, even, what a telephone was?

Twenty-five. Twenty-six.

Did he know there was a shadow behind me too, coming closer one step at a time, one step closer as the telephone went on ringing?

Fane had shut down.

The trickle began at the top of my spine, the familiar visitation of terror that comes when we know it's certain that we are done for. I'd known that much already when I'd asked for a telephone, and I'd managed to contain the idea by concentrating on the practical considerations of who could have blown the rendezvous and how I would get home. But this measured, insistent ringing on the line brought confirmation. No one was there. The ringing was going on in an empty room, echoing against the blank glass of a window, its vibrations disturbing the motes of dust that had begun settling since the door had closed and the footsteps had died away.

'There is no answer,' the operator said, and the line went dead.

The executive in the field had been abandoned.

The man's knee knocked against the wall like a nail going into a coffin. Can't you go back to bed for Christ's sake? Is that all you can find to do?

Steady.

'Have you finished, lovey?'

I looked at her. I'd seen her somewhere before.

'What?'

'You'll get caught if we're not careful.'

The nurse, yes. Her big eyes frightened.

'I will?'

That would be terrible, to be told off by some fat cow for breaking the rules here.

I put the receiver back on its hook. Fane had already got the news, that was all. He thought I was dead, so he'd shut everything down.

Executive deceased.

Not an unreasonable assumption, actually, and not a bad guess at the future if I had to get home alone.

'You feeling all right, lovey?' She wiped my forehead with her dirty towel.

This was at ten in the morning.

I tried three times to reach the British embassy in Moscow during the day, finally getting a connection and speaking to one of the DI6 cypher clerks in Russian and telling him that my friend in Murmansk wasn't answering his phone and that I was worried about him because he hadn't been well lately.

The clerk wasn't in too much of a hurry to get the point: the Bureau doesn't post staff in any of the embassies because our network isn't meant to exist, so we're given courtesy access to DI6 stations abroad with certain signalling facilities and they do this simply because the prime minister tells them to do it, and it makes them sulky.

'Your friend?'

'This is Boris Antonov speaking.' It was the standard name for any accredited Bureau agent operating anywhere in Soviet Russia with privileges of requesting assistance. In Paris I would introduce myself as Jacques Lafayette, in Bonn as Karl Heidi, in Rome as Julio Napoli — they were the names in the secret files in those embassies and this simple-minded bastard should know that, and he should know that the designation «friend» meant one thing and one thing only: the agent's local control in the field.

'Can you spell it out for me?' he asked oafishly.

Little Pleshakovna — I knew her name now — was hanging around near the doors to the ward, keeping watch. She didn't understand that I couldn't care less about getting a lecture from the comrade matron but that I would care a very great deal if she stopped me using this telephone.

'No,' I told the cypher clerk, 'I can't spell anything out for you. Get Mr Spencer on the line.' Spencer was the code name for the DI6 chief of station in all embassies.

'I'm afraid he's out to lunch.'

'Then get his best friend.'

'I'm sorry, I don't-'

'Listen, this is a 909 call and if you don't do what I want you to do extremely fast you'll hear direct from little mother.'

There was a brief silence.

'Okay, just a tick.'

He was getting the idea. The 909 designation had replaced the original BL565 Extension 9 call a year ago but it meant the same thing: it amounted to an inter-intelligence services hotline and the little mother he'd be hearing from was the prime minister.

'Hello?'

'Is that Mr Spencer?'

'No. But perhaps I can help you.'

'I may not have long so you'd better take this down.' Pleshakovna was making urgent signs to me from the entrance of the ward. 'This is Boris Antonov and my friend in Murmansk isn't answering the telephone. I'm extremely worried about him, so if you see anything of him please tell him I shall phone him again as often as I can.' I waited while he repeated the salient information as he wrote it down. He was a senior spook and knew immediately what I was talking about.

'Where can I phone you back?'

The little white-coated Pleshakovna was hurrying up to me and glancing over her shoulder. 'You've got to put that phone dorm, citizen! She's coming!' It wouldn't have mattered but I was going to have to use the telephone again and if I blew it now it could make things much more difficult later.

'You can't phone me back. Please do everything you can.'

I put the receiver back on the hook and came away as the little slut grabbed my arm and pulled me against her. I leaned on her for support as the matron came through from the ward, a Hero of the Soviet Union medal dangling on her massive chest.