4:20 in the afternoon and this one man moving among all the others, not of them, not of their company but isolated, an outcast, threading his clandestine way through the city on his own surreptitious purposes, while the Mercedes turned again at the Andreasstrasse intersection and started a loop for the second time, and the man in the black wool coat and scarf kept pace on the other side.

I would like to see a movie, yes. I would like to see a movie very much.

Walking a little quicker now; the scenario required it: I still had a rendezvous to keep and I still had to throw off the surveillance before I could keep it.

Waited ten minutes for a bus and got on and saw the Mercedes three vehicles behind and the Lancia parked near the U-Bahnhof with its engine running: I could see the exhaust gas.

This at least I knew now: they wouldn't try for a snatch in the hope of' grilling me. They were here for a kill of whatever kind — at close quarters or with a hit-and-run attack or a premeditated set-up involving precision. The shark thing had just been impulsive, but it proved their intention: death in the afternoon.

At 4:38 I got onto a train at Ost-Bahnhof and took it as far as Ostkreuz, with one of the men who'd been in the cafe getting on soon after me and sitting with his back turned at the end of the compartment, facing a glazed poster with useful reflection. Back in the street at Ostkreuz I walked south along Markgrafendamm with the same man behind me and a BMW cruising in from a side street: the people on foot would have been using their radios but there hadn't been time for the Mercedes or the Lancia to get here — they wouldn't have known where I was until I got off the train and they had the signal. They'd brought in the BMW from somewhere closer; it had pulled into the traffic twice and stopped twice, keeping its distance.

At Straulauer Allee I went into a cafe and used the phone. Steamy windows and the smell of stale cigarette-smoke and a litter of crumbs and slops on the plastic tables, two cab-drivers with a jug of coffee and a sandwich from the machine, a man in the corner, possibly a tag, his attitude too casual, a man coming in, certainly a tag, the one who'd been on the train.

'Hello?'

'I still can't throw them off.'

'What? This is Frau Hauffman.'

'All I can do is phone you when there's a chance.'

'Who are you, please?'

'Don't leave the phone; I'll call you again soon.'

I believe you have the wrong number, so forth; neither of them moved when I walked out of the cafe into the Allee and across to Elsenstrasse and the bridge.

The feeling of dread persisting, haunting the nerves, the bruise on the hip a reminder of how close they'd come, how close they would come again.

The traffic across the bridge was light; there was no one walking: it was too cold. Below the balustrade the black waters of the river glittered from bank to bank with the lights of the city, and the air was freezing, here in the open away from the buildings. I walked steadily, meaning to go as far as Puschkin Allee and then make a loop and turn back on my tracks and make a run for it, a very fast run that might bring just one of them, only one of them close to me where I could work on him; but they were getting impatient now and I could see three of them ahead of me at the far end of the bridge and when I looked behind me there were two more and the profile of the BMW gathering speed and I felt the rush of adrenalin and the sour taste in the mouth at the onset of fear as I reached the middle of the bridge and they began shutting the trap.

13: PICKPOCKET

Smell of burning flesh; it clung to my coat.

'Have you got anyone in the field?'

More police cars were going in to the bridge; I couldn't see them from here but I could hear their sirens.

'I did have.'

Cone.

There was still the glow of the fire on the wall of the building opposite.

'Have you got anyone in the field now?'

I was furious.

'I can't say.'

Bastard was stonewalling.

People standing outside the apartment block, staring in the direction of the bridge, the light of the flames on their faces.

'Look, I want an answer.'

'I haven't got one.'

The more you push Cone the harder he is to move. But then they're all like that, the directors in the field, because part of their job is to handle their executives when there's a flap on and they're halfway up the wall.

'Why not?'

'You got rid of one,' he said quietly, 'but there might be a few others in your zone. I can't say for sure unless one of them signals. What happened?'

'One of the tags got snatched.'

'One of their tags?'

'Yes.'

In a moment, 'How close were you?'

'I was halfway across Elsenbridge and they got him at one end.'

'Car?'

'Yes.'

'Police car?'

'It could've been, yes, unmarked.'

I hadn't seen anything close. The car had come past the BMW accelerating hard and then it had slewed to a halt by the three men and then there were two. The BMW had done a lot of wheelspin and got there in time but the other car had swung full circle and hit the tail-end and sent it rolling, and that was when the tank had gone up.

'Was there any other action?'

I told him.

'Do you think they might've been going to rush you?'

'Possibly.'

'Then what are you complaining about?'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, you know the operation I'm doing and you know how it works. If — '

'I haven't got a vehicle of any kind,' he said, 'in the field.'

'Then it must have been Yasolev.'

'Not necessarily.'

'Who else?'

The glow had gone from the building, and the people were going back into the apartments. But that awful smell was still on my coat, sickening me. I'd walked past the burning car on the other side of the bridge when the fire crews were working there, and the air had been heavy with smoke and fumes. One of them had been trapped inside, one of Volper's men.

'I don't know who else,' I heard Cone saying, 'but we've got a lot of interested parties, haven't we? The KGB, the HUA, and whatever other enemies Horst Volper might have in the field. We can trip over anyone at all in the day's work.'

It sounded as if he were putting smoke out, covering tracks, steering me away from the subject. I didn't know Cone very well but it sounded like that.

'Look, I want you to see Yasolev. I can't talk to him direct because I haven't got time. There are three tags still with me and I'm going on trying.'

One of them across at the intersection using a parked van for cover; two of them in the opposite direction, a little way along Puschkin Allee, one on each side of the street.

'What do you want me to tell him?'

'This is the thing: Yasolev could've decided to use me as a decoy to draw those people into the street, with the idea of snatching some of them. That's what might have happened just now on the bridge. The man they took is probably in an interrogation room now, being worked over. If that's what Yasolev is doing I want you to tell him he's cutting right across my operation and breaking our agreement. Tell him that we'll stay out here for just as long as he keeps his word and no longer.'

An ambulance turned off the bridge and headed south from the intersection; it wasn't using its codes; there'd be only the burned corpse inside. I didn't know whose it was, who the man had been, but he was possibly one of the tags I'd seen before on foot, or one of the two who'd followed me into the cafe. Life was that short, this afternoon, and the work wasn't finished yet.

'Would it be that bad an idea?' Cone said.

'Using me as a decoy?'

'Yes.'

'If all Yasolev wanted was a decoy he could've used any one of his peons, half a dozen at a time if they got wiped out.'