'This isn't a KGB trap?'

'It can't be. They're dependent on our cooperation.'

'Still?'

He looked up from his tea rather quickly. 'No.'

'So tell me the score now, Fane. Whether I believe you or not is my business.'

He looked offended. 'I really wish you-'

'You weren't there. You didn't get into that truck and sit within an inch of getting your guts plastered all over the roof of the barn.'

In a moment he said: 'Very well. The situation with Karasov was that although he was a Soviet national he was working for the West. The Soviets knew that the only thing he could do, once he'd deserted his unit, would be contact us and request transit out of Russia and asylum. They therefore came to us with a deal and we agreed to it. They could have hunted Karasov for weeks or even months without finding him, but we could find him very easily: as soon as he made contact with us.'

The light from the yellow bulb in the ceiling was reflected upwards from the surface of his tea, and played across his eyes; they were looking down, not at me. As I listened, I had to catch the import and tone of every word, and decide, now or some time later, whether he was telling me the truth or setting a trap for me as he'd done before. 'The situation with Zhigalin,' he went on 'is different. He too is a Soviet national but he has no ties with the West. They won't expect him to make contact with us, and so they won't suggest another deal. We shall deny strongly any report that we are involved with him. They'll hunt him themselves, and are doing so now, and vigorously. That makes it infinitely more difficult for us to take him across. For you, perhaps-' he looked up — 'to take him across.'

I turned away, going to the window. There were lights out there now, breaking the near darkness of midday. I could hear the ringing of shovels as work gangs moved along the street.

'All right,' I told Fane. 'But the rest of it is the same as before. Zhigalin is now the objective for the mission. We want him. The Soviets want him. The Chinese want him.'

'The only difference,' Fane said from behind me, 'is that we want to take him across.'

'Yes.' I turned to face him again as he went to the dressing-table and squeezed his cigarette butt into the ashtray. 'That's the only difference. This time, when I rendezvous with the objective, you might not have plans to blow us both into Kingdom Come.' I went over to him, bringing out the small steel cylinder from the pocket of my coat and unscrewing the end, dropping the capsule into the ashtray. 'But if I find out you're following any new instructions to endanger me, I'll go straight into the nearest KGB headquarters and blow London. Tell Croder that.'

24 VIOLIN

'And then they wait till it's been snowing for twenty-four hours before they call us out. Is that intelligent?'

'What would you expect of the civic leaders in this place? They spend all day round the stove playing dominoes!'

'Or in the whore-house.'

'That too!'

'Which is not inappropriate, if you think of it, since they're a pack of whoresons!'

Much laughter.

My shovel hit on stone and sent a shockwave up my arm.

'What are you, comrade, a volunteer?'

'Yes.'

'More fool you.' He spat.

A navy transport went past, mud dripping from its dark green paintwork, and jeers went up from the work gang. Jeers came back from the bus. We were left choking on diesel gas with our legs soaked again from the slush-wave.

When I next looked at my watch it was midnight. It was eleven hours since Fane had left the hotel and I'd been back three times to see if there'd been a telephone message. In between I'd worked at the snow with the volunteer gangs, taking a break for a bowl of potato soup at the Red Dawn cafe, hunched by the steamy window in a soaked coat, sure now that Croder wouldn't do it, or couldn't do it, couldn't locate Ferris or persuade him to take over from Fane and local-control me for Northlight.

'Volunteers are all very well, comrade, very patriotic, but what have they done with the taxes we pay? We let them bleed us white and then do the snow-clearing ourselves!'

'Mind my foot with that bloody shovel, that's all I ask.'

After eleven hours of waiting for news I was certain that Croder would leave Ferris in Tokyo and crash-brief one of the shadow executives on standby and put him on a plane in London — one of the Soviet specialists, Hopkins or Bone or Reilly — with instructions to report to Fane in the field. I'd signalled Croder to let him know I was outraged, that was all, to make demands he couldn't hope to meet, simply as a way of easing my injured pride. He had known that.

Another bus crawled past, its wheels spinning on slush and its windows opaque with steam; an open truck followed it, packed with volunteer workers.

'Come on home, you bloody lunatics! It's gone midnight!1 Gravel drummed under the mudguards, thrown up by the tyres.

Fane had put it perfectly well. Tokyo was seven thousand miles from here, twenty-four hours by air even if Ferris had boarded a plane the moment London had signalled him, even if he could get instant connections in Calcutta or Karachi or Tehran and an instant connection in Leningrad. And he'd need high-level Overseas Trade Commission cover to get him through Leningrad to Murmansk: that too was true.

I pushed the shovel under the snow and swung it upwards across the side of the truck, feeling ready now to go back to the hotel again after twelve hours' more or less constant exercise. In that freezing garret I'd have gone crazy listening for the phone to ring in the hall below, and my muscles would have lost their tone.

'Come on, comrade!'

'What?'

'Room for one more!'

Men waving from the truck. I slung my shovel into the bin with the others and climbed onto the running board, hanging on as we lurched through the slush, the mudguards scraping between the snow drifts that loomed under the flickering lamps.

On the other hand Croder might not find anyone available, anyone with my degree of experience. Reilly had come back from the Budapest thing two weeks ago looking like death and Bone was in Norfolk pounding his way through a refresher course in unarmed combat. I didn't know where Hopkins was, but he'd left Bureau-DI6 relations in a mess at the end of his last mission in Rome and Croder would think twice before he sent him out again.

It could conceivably be that the only competent agent available for Murmansk was already there now, jolting his way back to his hotel with ice forming in his boots and the chill of a different climate forming along his nerves because there might, yet again, not be a message.

The concierge was asleep behind his desk when I got there, and shone a torch on me through the glass door before he'd open it up.

'You are asked to ring this number, comrade.' He unfolded a scrap of dirty paper. 'They called an hour ago, but I didn't know where to find you.'

Fane answered.

'They can't locate Ferris. My instructions are to ask you whether you are willing to continue the mission under my local direction.'

Water seeped from my boots across the worn parquet floor, reflecting the light from the cracked white globe above the doors. An engine rumbled outside as a truck spun its wheels, sending gravel hammering against the wall like machine-gun fire.

Fane was waiting.

I didn't trust him.

The concierge was sitting behind his desk with a newspaper, turning the pages — as he waited for me to speak again into the telephone. How many English words did he know, apart from football and chewing-gum and rock 'n' roll?

I didn't trust Fane and I didn't trust Croder. Croder would instruct my local control to set up a trap for me if it suited Northlight, if it would protect the infinitely delicate machinery of East-West relations at this crucial time, if one lone man's death could make safer the lives of millions. And my local control would follow the instructions, as he'd done before.