They'd been uneasy about this at Norfolk when I'd been put through my first psychological evaluation. Until you can bring yourself to face this aspect of the work, Quiller, you 'II be a danger to yourself and to those working with you. Fowler, with his degree in abnormal psychology and his totally blank eyes and his frightened-looking wife. During your mission it will occasionally be necessary to take life, and we shall expect you to do it only when the need is vital to the mission or to your own survival but with no hesitation, no compunction, no regret. Fowler, with his cultivated penchant for the telling phrase. During your missions you must learn to travel light, and leave your conscience behind.

Another bloody dustbin, this one with the lid off and my foot breaking through something that felt like bones, some kind of carcass, perhaps a dead dog or perhaps only a figment of my own morbidity.

I looked ahead again and saw no one. I looked behind and saw no one. Then I went to find a telephone-box and call Ferris.

'I'm ready to meet the objective.'

Short silence.

'My salutations.' He didn't ask me if I were now certain of a secure environment; he knew I couldn't rendezvous with Zhigalin unless I could go there alone.

He also knew that I had broken a major surveillance chain in not much more than two hours because he'd pushed me to a deadline and it might have meant my taking what the Bureau officially refers to as extraordinary measures. It's sometimes possible for a local director to cover the resulting commotion in both the host country and in London, but we didn't have a consulate in Murmansk to put out a diplomatic smokescreen and London wouldn't make a fuss because the subject had been working for an opposition network: he hadn't been militia or KGB.

'One of them came too close,' I said.

'One of the Ranker people?'

'Yes.'

'And no one is looking for you?'

'Not in that connection. I was clear before anything was noticed.'

'Well done.'

A man of no conscience. Ferris is very sinister beneath the owlish looks and the silken tone. They say that when there's nothing on the telly he strangles mice.

'I'm halfway along the North Harbour Prospekt,' I told him.

'That's convenient.' There was a faint crackling sound on the line and I listened to it with extreme care.

'Ferris? Can you hear-'

'Just looking at a map.' In a moment he said: 'You're within a kilometre.'

That close to the objective.

A man was standing outside the phone kiosk.

'Go to Quay 9,' Ferris told me. 'That's near the end of North Harbour on the east side. There's a seagoing barge tied up there with the serial number K-104 on the bows. There's no security guard: it's waiting for dry dock maintenance,'

The man wasn't looking in at me through the dirty glass panel; he was looking along the street, shrugging himself into his fur coat against the freezing night. I didn't think he was a danger.

'The objective is there,' Ferris told me. 'He's expecting you, and the parole is Potemkin. Repeat.'

I went over the quay and the barge numbers and the parole.

'The timing is very critical,' he went on slowly, articulating with care. This was not only the most important briefing for the whole of Northlight but also the last, if things went well. 'There will be a dark blue Zhiguli van within sight of the barge and just north of it, facing the shoreline. A courier will be waiting at the wheel. The parole is the same. He will take you both to the airport.'

I looked through the glass at the skyline but it wasn't possible to see how bad the fog was; since the full dark had come down the fog had been visible only in the floodlit areas. But this was why Ferris had been forced to give me a deadline: he was going to fly us out.

The man was peering into the kiosk now, getting impatient.

'At the airport, you'll be driven straight to a Beriev BE-12 twin-engined domestic aircraft with private markings, standing at the north end of runway Two. The pilot has flown for us twice before in the past five years and was found satisfactory. He is a mercenary. The parole is the same. Your flight time will depend on the weather conditions and on foxing the radar stations along the border, but we expect you to land in Hoybuktmoen, Norway, within roughly an hour from takeoff. I think that's all. Any questions?'

'Christ, you worked fast.'

'Fane set up most of it.'

Slight reaction in the stomach nerves.

'Have you checked everything thoroughly?'

There was a brief silence and I knew he wasn't going to answer that. 'All right, I know you did but I don't trust that man. He-'

'That's paranoia.'

I let the muscles go slack. Paranoia, yes, probably, but that bastard had taken on an execution for Croder and I didn't know where he was, he could be still in Murmansk. I was within a kilometre of the objective and we were triggered for the final run out and it was Fane who'd set most of it up and I didn't like it, I could feel the gooseflesh under the coarse sleeves of my coat as the skin shrank and stomach nerves went on crawling just as they'd crawled when I climbed into that van in Kandalaksha and sensed extinction.

'Do you know what you 're asking?'

The man was rapping at the glass door now and peering in again and I mouthed at him that he was a fucking whoreson and he seemed quite surprised.

'I am asking you to understand,' Ferris was telling me on the line, 'that I came here at your request to get you out if I could. It wasn't convenient, but I came, and now I can in fact get you out, and I'm not going to allow mission-fatigue and a touch of paranoia to stop me. It hasn't occurred to you that you owe me your trust.'

Sweat running down my flanks, the bloody little organism shit-scared to make the final move, take the final chance, teetering on the brink with cold feet and a sickening stomach, typical bloody end-of-mission panic because the nerves had taken enough and they didn't want any more, they wanted peace.

Using Fane as an excuse.

Fane.

A twitch in the stomach nerves every time I thought of him, Pavlov's dog syndrome but this won't do.

He tried to get you killed.

Relax. Let the muscles go, they're in knots again.

Fane. He might still be. Shuddup.

Fane might. Shuddup.

Standing here in a bloody phone-box running with sweat and scared to try the final run because it might not work, it might leave me here in this stinking hole with my blood icing in the bullet holes because somewhere along the line that murderous bastard. Fane. Shuddup will you for Christ's sake this is just-Relax. Sweat it out. Relax.

Slow down. Deeper breaths. Slow down.

Easy does it, so forth.

It's like coming up from dark water.

Have you ever panicked? There's only one way out, you've got to do it yourself and it's like coming up from the dark water. You'll know what I mean if it ever happens to you, you'll know.

Panic's a killer.

He hadn't said a thing. He was waiting. It hadn't been as long for him as for me because time slows down when the psyche gets pushed close to the edge of things.

'Do you think that's all it is? Paranoia?'

My voice sounded extraordinarily calm.

'Of course,' Ferris said.

'Sorry.'

'Don't worry, I've been waiting for it. As a matter of fact I was expecting it to happen sooner.'

Perfect handling. This was a model of perfect handling by a local director of an executive in the field suffering from a totally characteristic bout of mission-fatigue at the moment when he felt the final pressure coming on, at the moment when he longed so much to get out and go home that the thought of failing to do that was scaring the guts out of him. Ferris had known it had to come and he'd waited for it and simply held off and let me deal with it alone, which is the only way.