'That's what we told him. D'you mind if I sit down?'

'Feel free, but you haven't got long.'

'Just for a minute.' I dropped into one of the chrome and velour chairs. It hadn't been a good night; the knife-wound had festered and I was on antibiotics.

'If you've any problems,' I told her, 'we'll smooth them out for you. It was a genuine offer.'

'That's very nice of you, but I'm doing fine.'

'It hasn't crossed your mind that someone could be using you as a tool?' Long shot.

Step, step, step, turn, the hair. 'You know you really have got a bloody nerve.'

But she looked shaken, deep inside all the mascara.

'I'll put it this way,' I said. 'Although I've no right to ask you any questions, the government feels that you'd want to avoid doing anything against your own country. Unwittingly.'

'I do a great deal for my country, thanks. I'm quite a valuable British export, and wherever I take my group I get a lot of reaction. In Israel a month ago the fans broke through the police cordon and nearly overturned the limo. I might add that I donated twenty-five per cent of the proceeds to the survivors of the Holocaust. That's bad for Britain?'

'I'm sure we're all very pleased.'

'So what's the gripe, Mr Ash?'

The phone rang but she didn't move.

'I believe you were a cultural exchange student in Moscow about three years ago, or am I wrong?'

'Christ, I do wish you'd stick to the point.'

The phone went on ringing.

'The point is that if you have any Communist leanings we don't want them to lead a very talented, charming and popular international artiste into any kind of deep water.'

'Communist? Me? '

'What do you think, for instance, of Mr Gorbachev?'

'I've never met him.'

'Don't you think it's a coincidence that you'll be performing here during his visit?'

'Maybe he planned it like that.'

'Let's try it the other way round,' I said, 'shall we?'

The phone stopped ringing.

'Look, I didn't plan anything. I was invited here.'

'By the City of East Berlin?'

'Not straight off.'

'Wouldn't you like to sit down too?'

'I'm fine like I am.'

And angry, and beginning to be scared.

'Where did the invitation come from, then, initially?'

'It wasn't exactly an invitation. I got a letter from the British embassy saying that if it'd interest me to bring The Cats here, they'd ask the authorities.'

'The authorities in East Berlin?'

'Well, of course.'

'I just want to be sure I understand you. And who was it at the British Embassy who wrote to you?'

'Mr Pollock.'

'Of course. He's the cultural attache, that's right.' I got up, and one of the stitches pulled. 'That's all I wanted to ask you, Miss Baxter.'

'What have I said?'

Very scared now.

'You've been very cooperative, and you've set my mind at rest.'

'You people are so bloody smooth, aren't you?'

I thought if I offered my hand she might have spat in it. 'Let me wish you a very successful concert. The East Berliners are lucky to have you here.' I went to the door, and she followed, step, step, step in that tiny silver skirt, her eyes bright.

'Okay, Mr Ash, I'm taking a risk, out here. But it's going to be worth it.'

I'd leave that one to Cone.

'Then look after yourself. I mean that.' I opened the door and found the KGB bodyguard outside.

'Mr Ash.'

I looked back at her.

'Will you be at the concert?'

'I hope so.'

'Try and make it.' Eyes shining. 'It'll blow your mind.'

'He knew very little.' Yasolev's eyes were sunk deep under the brows and he was pouring himself another shot of vodka.

'He knew very little, or only said very little?' I wasn't on vodka but it wouldn't have needed much for me to blow up in his face. It'd taken me close to ten hours to snatch whatever I could off the streets and it had been that man Dietrich and I'd handed him over to a KGB colonel with a reputation for squeezing blood out of a stone in an interrogation cell and all he'd come up with was close to zero.

'He said very little, but I believe he would have said more if he had known it.'

Bloody assumption, that was all.

'What about the other man you snatched, the one on the bridge?' Those nicotine-stained eyes of his had never looked at me with this much animosity before and I was warned. I'd come out here to run Quickstep for the KGB and Shepley would quite rightly blast me into Christendom if I provoked Yasolev into calling the whole thing off.

'We had no better fortune.'

A tone of icy control.

'Interrogation,' Cone said, looking at no one, 'doesn't carry a guarantee.'

Pouring oil, so forth, perfectly right. Bureau One would blast him into Christendom too if we lost control.

'Point taken.'

'Thank you,' he said.

I liked his manners. 'All right, Viktor, give us what you got.'

I t was the first time I'd used his Christian name, waving a flag of truce.

'Mr Cone has sent it for analysis to London, and I have of course sent it to Moscow.' I think some of the edge had come off his voice. 'For what it's worth.' He knocked back the shot and absorbed its force. 'He obliged me to use pressure. There was no time for sophisticated procedures.' Hooding, love-hate, psychiatry.

'The General-Secretary,' Cone said, 'arrives here in forty-eight hours, yes.'

'Would you care for some vodka?'

'Thanks, I'll stick to tea.'

A tilt of his head. 'It was also clear that Dietrich didn't have the confidence of Horst Volper. He said that he had only ever spoken to his master on the telephone, and that he spoke German with an English accent. Dietrich has no English. He was no more than a minion, like the man you questioned that night in the river, with as little success.'

Touche.

Cone stepped in. 'How long did it take, with Dietrich?'

'I think perhaps half an hour.'

Mystery of dead man discovered in garage. Signs he may have been tortured.

'The rest of what I have to tell you,' Yasolev said, 'is patched together from the scraps of information Dietrich was willing to part with. My feeling was that the little he gave me was true, that he has never met Horst Volper nor. heard of Trumpeter, and that Volper's operation is aimed at the General-Secretary — as we already knew.'

Cone put his tea-cup back on the tray. 'You think he was talking about assassination?'

'Whether he was talking about assassination or not, I am assuming an attempt will be made. From the information you have given me, it is Volper's speciality. But you can imagine how I feel. I have reported to my department on the inherent risk to Comrade Gorbachev, and that would normally evoke immediate and urgent concern.' A bitter shrug. 'But the visit is not to be cancelled. The General-Secretary's meeting with President Honecker is apparently considered vital. What more can I do?'

'But they'll strengthen the guard.'

His eyes flicked to mine. 'But of course. And we shall request the HUA to do the same. But this is Gorbachev. We must not lose him. He is… precious.'

It was extraordinary how much charisma this new man of theirs possessed. People had gone crazy about him in London and Washington and here was a KGB man getting emotional. Of course he was right: no one could afford to lose this totally different breed of Soviet leader.

'We'll have to do what we can,' I said.

'Do you think — ' he took a step nearer '- do you think that the man Volper has any chance of succeeding?'

Oh God what a question. The answer was even worse. 'Yes.'

'A chance,' Cone said. 'Let's not put it at much more than that.'

'You are not optimistic.' Yasolev looked as if we'd thrust a knife in him.