Got a bun.

Went and got a bun from the filthy cracked marble counter and paid for it, a huge woman, face like a po, her eyes already mourning a lost future, sat down again and started on the thing though I wasn't hungry — I needed fifteen more minutes in here and it was something to do, but at least I'd got a glimpse of him, the one by the door, in the mirror behind the counter, and that was a plus because it could be very important indeed if later the same man — if I got out of here — the same man came close to me in a crowd; I'd be able to recognise him and get a chance of jumping the gun.

But let's not talk about guns. Right — I never draw one when I'm going through Clearance because they can be dangerous: it's not just professional caprice. Carrying one of those things can make people nervous and they'll pay you a lot more attention and try for an overkill before you can do any useful work; but let them know you're unarmed and in their opinion harmless and they'll come up quite close and then you can go in with the hands and do a very great deal more damage than a bit of hot copper because you can be selective, picking on the right nerve for the job, producing paralysis or producing pain, the intense pain that's guaranteed to cool them off and get some answers out of them.

But it's like seat belts: they're effective eighty per cent of the time and for the other twenty per cent you're on your own. One of these people could pull something out and use it from where he was sitting, dropping me like a bird off a bough. The risks are calculated, and they're the only kind I ever take.

The one in the corner had gone to the phone when he'd come in here and that was why they weren't making a move. One of two things was on the programme: he'd got instructions to wait here until I left and keep up the tag, or he'd asked for someone else to get here very fast indeed because they had me set up and were ready for the kill.

It really was a bloody awful bun. This was East Berlin, not West, none of your delicate mille-feuilles or rum babas, just this rotten lump of crud straight out of the granary, rat-shit and all.

At 3:16 I began looking at my watch. The time wasn't critical, not important; it was just that the chances of doing anything in here weren't very good. The situation was far too static: when the time came for me to move in on them it'd be when things were suddenly starting to go very fast, so that I could work with reactions and reflexes, find a totally unrehearsed opening and take it on the wing, because the only way you can work this particular operation is in hot blood and with the system full of adrenalin.

At 3:27 I got up and went over to the phone on the wall and dialled at random. The two tags hadn't been joined by anyone: the only people who'd come in here in the last eleven minutes were two women and a man with one arm.

Ringing tone. Five, six, seven. Not at home.

'I can't be there at the time we agreed on.'

Waited.

'I know, Heinrich. I'm sorry. I'll call you again as soon as I can.'

I put the phone back and said Auf Wiedersehen to the big fat woman and walked out of the cafe and turned left without hesitation and had to go half a mile before a bus slowed at a stop and some people got off and it pulled out again and I kept on walking until the rear doorway was abreast of me and I ran flat out and just made it.

'You shouldn't do that!'

Verboten, so forth.

Pitching a bit as the thing changed gear.

'I could have you arrested!'

Abuse of petty authority; it was all the rage because these poor bastards had no authority, by grace of their Soviet overlords.

'Have a heart, comrade, my wife's ill and I've got to get home.'

But I could have got myself killed, peaked cap and a righteous glare, and then I wouldn't have got home at all, would I, so forth.

Paid the fare and took a seat and used the windows and saw the four-door 230 keeping station at a circumspect fifty metres behind. It had been standing near the cafe in support of the two tags and they'd either climbed in before it moved off or they hadn't; it made no difference: Volper would have a dozen men in the field.

'Is it the flu?'

'What?'

'Your wife.'

'Yes.'

'It's going around. Plenty of rest.'

'That's right.'

There was a chance that they'd try driving me into a corner somewhere and make a snatch instead of a killing. Not a big chance but I couldn't ignore it. I'd come out from London and I'd been holed up with Cone and Yasolev and we'd been in signals and Volper might decide I'd be worth snatching first and grilling before he had me put out of the way. It didn't worry me too much at this stage; they wouldn't find it easy and if I got it wrong then I had the capsule and I wouldn't think twice because there was enough information on the Bureau inside my head to blow it clean out of the European intelligence community.

I got out at Strausbergerplatz and walked as far as Blumenstrasse and they came very close and I felt the air-rush and bounced off the side panel of the front wing and went spinning across the pavement while the tyres squealed and someone caught me before I could go pitching down, the rooftops reeling across the vision-field and the stink of exhaust gas and the terrible fear that they'd stop and get out and finish me off, catch me while I was off balance and unprepared.

'Are you all right?'

Said I was, trying to get focus back, trying to get ready in case they stopped and came for me.

'He must have been drunk!'

Eyes watching me, full of concern, hands on my arms in case I fell.

'Yes. Must've been.'

'Are you hurt anywhere?'

'No. I'm — '

'You were lucky.'

'Yes. I'm all right now. Thank you. Good of you.'

'Do you want to sit down somewhere?'

'No. No, thank you.'

And at a deeper level of consciousness below the polite exchange the creeping of dread, because it had been extremely close and yes indeed I'd been lucky and if they'd come an inch or two nearer they'd have spun me round with a smashed spine and left me face-down on the pavement with my arms flung out, finis, the unfortunate victim of a dastardly hit-an-run accident involving a black Mercedes saloon for which the police are now searching assiduously, so forth, and a signal to London, shadow down.

'Well, I'll be on my way.'

'What? Yes. Yes, very kind, thank you.'

The creeping of dread because however much you're aware that you're inviting attack, however carefully you're playing it by the book, the shock of a close call reminds the psyche that its death is sought, its extermination, eagerly sought; and there's something horribly personal in this, horribly intimate, and it reaches down into the secret confines of the personality and plunders it, and leaves its effect, which can finally be devastating. It's this feeling that brings a man back from a mission with a shut face and slow speech as he sits in one of those small stuffy rooms with his operations director and signs his name on the form, request no further action in the field.

Walking on, bumping into someone — Verzeihen Sie — then finding equilibrium again, walking past the line at a bus stop at 4:15 in the afternoon with the dark down and the tops of the buildings lost in a creeping fog.

It had been like a shark.

More people in the streets now, the traffic bunching at the lights. Another hour and work would be over.

Like a shark, that thing.

Yes, like a shark, shuddup. The end of the working day would be over and they could get into their coats and line up for the buses and the trams and the trains and go home.

With its jaws open when it came past.

Oh for the sake of Jesus Christ shuddup, it's over now and we're still alive, it's not the first time you've come close to blowing it. Stamping their feet at the bus stop, breath like steam, going home, sweet home, with all the evening in front of them, a nice hot dish of sauerkraut and spuds, or would you like to see a movie tonight?