It carried the same signature: they'd gone for Scarsdale in the same way but this time they'd assumed I'd be more difficult so the 'd chosen the alley and set up the kill with the girl for the lure and the timing precise and it must have looked certain and would have been certain if I hadn't got things right.

I couldn't see where we were going, couldn't see street names because I was prone with my face down, one cheek sliding across the cellulose and my foot slipping, catching again and slipping with both hands burning on the chips of glass in the frame. I didn't know what the speed was in actual figures but he was moving flat out for the terrain and hitting the kerb and bouncing with the springs heeling, straightening and heeling as he shook the car like a ship beam-on to a running sea, the siren howling close behind us now and the reflection of the headlights dazzling on the bodywork against my eyes.

We turned and the car slewed through an intersection with the tyres sending out a long-drawn whimper that echoed from the buildings and my weight shifted under the pull of the centrifugal force and my foot lost its purchase on the antenna base and my legs swung clear and one hand was tugged from the window-frame and I half-rolled with my hip smashing against the rear quarter as the brakes came on again and the lights of the police car grew suddenly intense and then swung away as it lost traction in a slide that took it across the kerb and into a glass window and the thought came into my mind that this would be a good place to chance it and let go and try to roll and minimise the damage because he wouldn't stop and come back for me with the police here and they'd pick me up and get me somewhere if I were still alive.

But I had my priorities too and the chief of these was to move in on this man if I could and force something out of him, even if only a name, one name, or a clue, one clue that would to take Quickstep a stage further towards the access I had to have, the access to Horst Volper.

A siren sounded again, a different one from somewhere ahead of us: the Vopos had been using their radio and calling in some support and at this hour with the streets almost empty there'd be patrols cruising the city with nothing to do. Lights swept the intersection ahead of us and the driver braked and swerved to the right and hit the kerb and bounced into a wrenching U-turn and my legs were swung back and my foot caught the antenna-base and I got my other hand back to hook onto the edge of the window but I began worrying about muscle fatigue setting in before we hit something and I could move into close quarters with the man at the wheel. I was also worrying about the Vopos because if he smashed up the car and they came for him he'd probably pull his gun on them and then he wouldn't stand a chance because he'd be outnumbered and they'd blow him away and I'd never be able to ask him what I wanted to know. I was within minutes, inches of forcing answers out of him that would give me access to the objective but he was pushing himself closer and closer to death and taking me with him.

Headlights in front of us and a siren howling and he swerved and grazed a lamppost and the Mercedes shuddered, rocking on its springs and heeling to one side before it hit the police car at an angle and the deceleration forces pushed me forward and I kept my foot hooked against the antenna to anchor me but it slipped free and I hit the rear quarter with one shoulder and lost all conscious thought for a while because the metalwork shrieked as the two cars glanced together and glass smashed and threw a shower of fragments across the Mercedes in a sudden hailstorm and the siren's volume rose until the eardrums went dead and all I could do was hang on and wait till it was over. A man shouted something and then we were clear and slewing across the road surface and swinging at right angles into the interesection, bouncing against the kerb and straightening with only the street lights ahead of us because one of the headlights had been ripped away and blown a fuse and shut the other one off. Stink of burnt rubber on the air from the torn treads of the tyres.

He could see me in the driving mirror and one of the things I expected him to do was get at his gun and snatch a half-second to swing round in his seat and fire into me and there was nothing I could do to stop him except let go and drop off and leave it to happen that way instead of with a bullet. He was having to concentrate on driving char of' the tightening police net and he was hoping he could shake time off at some point along the way and leave me lying at the front end of a long red smear on the road surface, but even so I was beginning to wonder why he didn't go for his gun and one answer could be that he didn't have one: he could be a specialist with the hit-and-run routine and have a certain degree of contempt for side-arms, just as I do.

We were going very fast now and the street was wide and I thought it could be Karl Marx Allee again. They'd flushed him out of the side-streets into the open and that was another worry because he was a clear target and they could bring in a dozen more patrols if they wanted to, fifty if they wanted to, and fill the whole of the avenue and shoot his tyres off and wait till he spun and crashed. The speed felt like something close to a hundred kph and the backwash of the slipstream was tugging at my clothes and I thought that if he smashed the Mercedes now there wouldn't be any question of forcing anything out of him and I had a sudden feeling of rage because we were only two days into the mission and Shepley was manning the signals board for Quickstep and all he'd get from Cone was the routine phrase for a terminal situation, shadow down, and upstairs they'd punch the uncoded equivalent, executive deceased.

Sirens were sounding everywhere now and sending echoes from the buildings and there was a wash of headlights flooding the street. He gave it one more block and hit the brakes and brought the speed down and then used the throttle to swing into a side-street but we were still going much too fast to do it cleanly and he lost the rear end and it hit the kerb and bounced back and hit it again as he tried to correct and then we were skinning the shop windows with a scream of metal against stone and glass that hollowed out the night and left conscious thought blanked off because of the overload. Then we were clear again and I caught a glimpse of a street sign and saw that we hadn't been in Karl Marx Allee before we'd changed direction because this was a side-street off Stralauer and we were turning back in our tracks. We'd lost the Vopo patrols but I could still hear some of their sirens in the distance and it'd only be a matter of time before they picked us up again.

I was having to get my mind off the fatigue in the wrist muscles because they were burning now and unless I could shift forward and get one elbow inside the window I wouldn't have more than a minute, a minute and a half before I had to let go and drop. I waited for him to use the brakes and let the momentum take me forward but he was accelerating the whole time now and the strain on the wrists was intensified and there was another factor coming into play — I was beginning to lose the ability to process the data coming in because I'd been bombarded with a massive input of light and sound and movement for a long time now and the stress was nearing the point where I'd start hallucinating and that would be fatal, finito.

Thing was to hang on. Thing was to focus the sense of reality on this one objective, to forget why it had to be done, to ignore all other considerations and reduce everything to the simple facts: these are my hands and they must keep their hold on the edge of metal here and anchor themselves to it and become one with it, my fingers are made of iron and nothing can bend them, the car swinging wide suddenly and lifting on one side as he tried again to shake me off, my wrists also are made of iron and they cannot tire so I have no fear, the momentum of the swing taking us against a parked car and slamming us sideways into it and bouncing off again with one wing torn half away and caught against a tyre, there is nothing the organism has to do but remain where it is, with its iron fingers hooked over the metal and its iron wrists taking the strain without effort, a sudden burst of acceleration with the rear wheels spinning and then some kind of shout from him, from the man at the wheel, before the front end tilted and a strange quietness came in with only the singing of the torn wing against the still-spinning tyre and the dying note of the engine and the sensation of flight, of weightlessness and then a waste of still water as the car tilted and went on tilting, a waste of still water with distant lights reflected in it as we dropped and hit the surface and I was flung away from the white explosion of the impact and instinctively began treading water.