'I've got used to it. And we shan't have the Wall forever. Who knows, Gorbachev might pull it down one day.'

'I can't see that happening,' she said, 'in my lifetime.'

It was another hour before she said goodnight and left the club and I waited three minutes and went up the steps to ground level and saw her getting into a dark-coloured VW with a front wing smashed in and covered with adhesive plastic with the headlamp poking through. Five minutes later I was fifty yards behind her along Franzosischestrasse with a taxi between us and nothing in my mirror, the streets quiet and access to the target for Quickstep depending on the thin thread leading me through the night as the twin rearlights moved ahead of me and I sped up or held back, keeping them in sight.

Northeast along Werderstrasse with the same taxi and a small pick-up truck between us, a black Audi in the mirror: it had come up behind me from a side-street and I discounted it because we'd gone two miles from the club and it was the first I'd seen of it.

Turning right onto Spandauerstrasse with the clock on the dashboard moving through 12:35, into the early hours, and the Audi closing up a little: it had turned right as we had but I still couldn't take it seriously because it was too close. It couldn't be one of Yasolev's people because they'd have tagged me to Charlie's Club and I'd checked when I got there, taking a lot of care. Cone wouldn't have put anyone on to me unless I'd asked for support or unless he'd thought I was going to need it.

Left onto Grunerstrasse with the taxi peeling off and moving down a side-street, leaving the pick-up ahead of me and the rear lights of the Volkswagen showing whenever I veered far enough in the traffic-lane to make a check. There was almost no traffic at this hour and the only police car I'd seen was stationary, three blocks behind.

Eyes watering a little from the thick cigarette smoke at the club, the smell of it on my coat, 12:41 and the thought persisting that I'd handled things correctly, holding off when she'd mentioned Volper, giving her nothing.

I mustn't lose her.

Right onto Karl Marx Allee, 12:45 and the streets almost deserted; another police car cruising north, passing us on the far side. The Audi was still with us but it peeled off a block later, leaving the mirror blank.

12:49.

'98.3.'

It can't be ninety-eight point three. That isn't any kind of time at all.

'Pulse normal.'

The smell of cigarette smoke on my coat, and of something else. 'Blood-pressure 125 over 83.'

Antiseptics. Smell of antiseptics. Terror.

'All right, you can take him off the drip.' The terror of disorientation, of not knowing. 'Lights,' I said. 'Can you turn off the lights?'

Blinding me. I was enveloped in some kind of passive restraint. Blankets.

'Did he say something?' Cone's voice.

'Yes, he's conscious now.'

Conscious? Jesus Christ, of course I'm conscious.

Said, 'Of course I'm conscious.'

It had gone almost dark now, just one lamp burning, like a moon in haze.

'Feel all right?' Cone's face with its eyes squinting and its gash of a mouth, hovering over mine.

'God knows what I feel.' I tried to sit up but the girl in the white linen coat put her hand on my shoulder and I wasn't strong enough to resist.

'You can't get up yet,' a man said in German. Also in a white coat.

'Are you a doctor?'

'Yes.'

Someone else standing there looking down.

Yasolev.

Said, 'Is this a hospital?'

'Yes,' the doctor said.

Some kind of amnesia, then.

'Am I functional?'

'Please?'

'Functional, for God's sake. What injuries?'

'Take it slow,' Cone said. 'You're all right. There's nothing broken.'

Furious now. Panicking. 'Tell me what condition I'm in.'

The sharpest fear of the executive: to become unfit and lose the mission.

'You've come out of hypothermia,' Cone said, 'and there was some concussion and various bruises and some skin ripped off. There's nothing serious.'

'Hypothermia. Cone, fill me in, will you?' Excessively polite, monumentally patient, because my head was full of bells ringing and lights flashing and fireworks going off — the nerves, in other words, had been rubbed raw and the brain was screaming out for information so that I could find my place again in reality. So I had to keep the lid on things, strictly essential.

'You were nearly drowned,' Cone said. 'The police pulled you out of the Spree. The other man was already dead.'

Sensation of black water rising against my face, filling my mouth, blocking my throat — Oh Christ -

'Nurse.'

'Yes, doctor — '

'Take it slow,' Cone said, and the nurse held me by the shoulders, some sort of paroxysm, choking fit, hadn't expected it. 'You swallowed the wrong way, that's all.'

It was a minute before I could speak. 'Out of the Spree? What was I doing there?'

'We're hoping you can tell us.'

There was a sense of oblivion coming into me, of a void. It was enough to chill the blood and I stayed with it alone for as long as I could before I asked for help.

'Doc,' in German, 'I had concussion, is that right?'

'Yes. Mild concussion.'

'Any shock?'

'Shock too, yes, because of the hypothermia and because of the other trauma.'

'I see. Well I — listen, what about retrogressive amnesia?'

'You're having difficulty in remembering?'

I didn't answer right away. When it's necessary to fight panic off you can't think of anything else. It came at me in waves, freezing the blood, stilling the mind, blocking the breath. After a long time, I said, 'Cone.'

He leaned closer.

'The last thing I can remember was looking at the clock on dashboard, at 12:49.'

He watched me for a moment. 'That was twelve hours ago.'

Mother of God.

'What is being said?' In Russian.

Cone turned to Yasolev. 'He's got a memory lapse.'

The doctor glanced at them, not understanding, and I remembered,I hadn't answered his question. 'Yes,' I told him, 'I'm having difficulty recalling what happened between 12:49 this morning and when I came to a few minutes ago.'

He opened his hands, fingers spread. 'It sometimes happens after an accident. The mind protects itself from unpleasant memories. I wouldn't worry. Perhaps nothing very important happened.'

But, Jesus Christ, I'd been tagging someone who'd connected me with Horst Volper and she could have led me straight into access to the target and it would have swung the mission from phase one into a totally new situation with a chance of going in and reaching Volper and completing Quickstep in a matter of days, hours. Nothing very important?

'Cone. You said "the other man". What other man?'

'We don't know who he is.'

It was for me. For me to know.

'Where is he?'

'In the mortuary.'

'Aren't you trying to find out who he is?'

'Yes.'

'What time did they find us in the river?'

'It's down on the incident report as 01:15.'

Twenty-six minutes. That was the gap.

'Where was the car?'

'Your car?'

'Yes.'

'Two blocks away, in a side street off Karl Marx Allee.'

'But that's — what d'you mean, my car? Was there another one?'

'You must allow him to rest now, please. He — '

'You mean I walked as far as the river? But that's over — '

'There was a car in the river, where you were found.'

'In the — I got into someone else's car?'

'We think so. A Mercedes.'

'So why did it go into the river?'

'We don't know.'

'But for Christ's sake, were the tyres shot off, was it hit by another — '

'That is enough.' The doctor stepped between Cone and the bed and signalled the nurse. 'Gentlemen, you have to leave now. My patient needs to rest.'