23 TEAPARTY

'The circus, yes. I remember the circus. The clowns. The hot coals shimmered between us.'

'When was that?' I asked her.

The ancient face was so lined that her smile was almost lost in it, but it touched her rheumy eyes, lighting them. 'Oh, a long time ago, comrade. A. very long time ago.'

I took another chestnut and bit into it, feeling the urge to eat as the cat had eaten, the urge to survive. I suppose, if I'd wanted to go totally mad, I could have somehow got old Pussy across the frontier to London and put him in front of the fire, and fed him, and fattened him, and given him the right shots for distemper, turning him into a pet, a Kensington kitty, just for sentiment's sake because we'd once soldiered together in the winter of Murmansk. But that would only be a way of killing him, of bringing him a slow death among the bowls of warm gold top milk and the cushions and the hearthrugs, never again to know the fierce demented joy of seeing those fish come bursting out of that smashed crate and ravaging them, heady with rapture, scattering tails, scales and bones in that frenzied celebration of life renewed.

'You are from Moscow, comrade?'

'Yes.'

'The clowns were the best of all.' She took the poker in her withered hand and stirred the coals, and I tried to see her as she'd been then, wriggling on a board bench under the big spread of canvas, shrill with laughter as the men in their baggy trousers tumbled across the sawdust sixty years ago, seventy. 'I married one of them. One of the clowns.' Her head was going down, until I could only see the bone-yellow forehead below the black shawl. 'It is true what they say. Behind the make-up there is always sadness. And they do not live long.'

'But they live longer than others, old mother, in our memories. To bring laughter is to light the soul.'

She wasn't listening. She could span time more easily than I could, and she wasn't with me any more. I left her like that, crouched over her brazier in the midst of the new snows.

Then I rang Croder.

'You've got a bloody nerve.'

It had taken three hours to make the connection, going through the embassy in Moscow and then Cheltenham, using the 909 hotline route.

'I'm sure you're aware of the situation.'

His voice came through a lot of background slush but we didn't have to listen for bugs: I'd found this hotel at the end of a street half lost under the snow, with abandoned trucks and rubbish bins making humped white shapes under the lamps. The concierge had gone back to his desk and was asleep again.

'Yes,' I told Croder, 'I'm aware that since I'm still alive you're asking me to go on working for you.'

I couldn't catch what he said because of the slush.

'What?'

'For us all.'

Typical of him. Team spirit, so forth, mustn't let the side down.

'You'll have to find someone else.'

'Things are too urgent for that.'

It was the phrase Fane had used; I suppose he'd picked it up from Croder. They'd been in signals just before I'd gone to the warehouse.

'I brought you here,' Fane had said, 'to tell you I've just heard from London.' The smoke from his cigarette curled from his mouth. 'Something rather interesting has come up.' I didn't ask him what it was. It didn't look, after all, as if he'd brought me here to put a slug into my skull and shove me under the snow. 'The Soviet naval officer, Kirill Zhigalin, who torpedoed the American submarine, was arrested for exceeding his duties. Last night he escaped his escort and disappeared.'

Zhigalin.

That was his name? I'd only heard his voice.

Advise me.

New position: 17-G on the east grid. You have a kill.

Keep me advised.

Did we make a hit? Did we make a hit?

Confirm. You made a hit. I repeat: you made a hit.

Lieutenant Kirill Zhigalin.

A third man running.

Fane watched me.

I said: 'That's your problem.'

'Hardly a problem. It gives us a splendid chance of forcing concessions from the Soviets in Vienna. Karasov is dead, but if we could take Zhigalin across, London would be terribly pleased.'

'Fuck London.'

He dropped his cigarette butt with care and put his foot on it. 'I understand your feelings, of course. But you should try to see our point of view. If we can-'

'No.'

He shrugged slightly. 'There would be a definite advantage for you if you agreed to-'

'No.'

He inclined his head. 'Mr Croder would appreciate it if you'd at least signal him and hear what he's got to-'

'No.'

I turned and walked out of the place. And then, because my mind had started to work out all the possibilities, the alternatives, the opportunities, and perhaps because the ancient mother's voice had calmed me with its tales of circuses and clowns while the smoky tang of the chestnuts had reminded me of life renewed, my mood had changed, and I had looked for a small hotel where I could telephone.

'The fact that things are urgent,' I told Croder, 'doesn't concern me.'

'Then why did you signal?'

'To make a deal, if there's one available.'

The cubicle stank of cabbage and the dank vestiges of tobacco, and I inched the folding door open, watching the concierge. If he woke up he'd catch the sound of a foreign tongue, but there was nothing he could do about it. If he wanted to tip off the militia that a foreigner had come to the hotel to make a telephone call I'd be miles from here before they could take any kind of action: they'd have to get here on foot.

'What sort of deal?' Croder asked cautiously.

'I'll take Zhigalin across for you, if you'll set it up. But not with Fane directing me.'

The slush came in again, and faint voices, one of them speaking in Estonian.

'Why not?'

'I want someone I can trust.'

'He was simply following my instructions.'

'I know. I want someone who'll refuse your instructions if it becomes expedient again to kill me.'

Just the slush again. He hadn't liked that. Croder is a great lover of euphemism: eliminated, despatched, so forth. He likes his truths sanitized.

'That won't occur.'

'Things can change. Look, if I'm wasting your time, let me know.'

'On the contrary. But you can't hope to bring Zhigalin across without local control, or even get across without him for that matter.'

'I know. But I don't want Fane.'

'There's no one else I could send there, even if there were enough time. And Fane knows the area. He's extremely-' 1 'I want Ferris.'

The line was pretty bad, and he might not have heard properly. 'Say again?'

'I want Ferris.'

Quite a long pause. 'He's in Tokyo.'

'Then fly him out.'

'There isn't time.' He waited for me to answer that, but I didn't. I'd told him what I wanted and there was nothing I needed to add. 'It would be very helpful,' Croder went on at last, 'if you would consider the enormous gravity of the world situation. It is, after all, the reason for, your mission.'

'I haven't had time to read the papers.'

'Negotiations,' he said slowly, 'have now broken down between Moscow and Washington. The United Kingdom is the last link between the super-powers, and yesterday Lord Cranley flew to Moscow in an aircraft of the Queen's Flight to attempt a last-ditch agreement with the Soviets to freeze the present status of affairs and keep diplomatic relations open until a solution can be found to this crisis. He may not succeed. When I sent you out there, your mission was urgent. Its success, in my informed opinion, is now the only remaining chance of saving the Vienna conference and preventing a cataclysmic severance of East-West relations. Zhigalin is the ace in our hand, and only you can get him for us.'

I'd been listening to his tone, and even over the longdistance line it was unmistakable. It had the despair of a hushed voice in a graveyard. I didn't know how bad things had got. But it didn't change anything: there was still only one way out.