'Where's Melnichenko?'

'He said he'd be back shortly.'

Looked at the folder in his hand. 'I'd like a word with him.'

'I'll tell him that.'

A nod, turning to go, turning back. 'Have I seen you before?'

'Not unless you've ever visited the Commandant at GRU Headquarters in Moscow.'

Head went back an inch and he opened his mouth but didn't seem o know quite what to say, went out.

I'd spoken German with a Russian accent to make the whole thing plausible but it had been very close and if anyone else came in here they might not be so impressed.

Sitting here like a fish in a bowl and I hadn't expected it, wasn't ready for it. Question of choice at this stage: get out of here and don't stop moving until I hit the street, or stay where I am and ransack this room and risk exposure at any minute. Question of urgency, too: Lena Pabst had said there was a file on Trumpeter in this room, so I was infinitely closer than I'd ever been to finding Volper or blowing his operation. Urgent, then, that I should stay here and take the risk of blowing Quickstep first.

There was also the temptation of picking up the phone and calling Cone.

I'm in a red sector and if I can't get out of it you should be informed that the man who works in Room 60 is A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate, presumably GRU.

It would then be up to Cone to work out why the file on Trumpeter was in the safekeeping of an officer of the GRU. Two possibilities: the GRU was simply watching the operation and waiting to blow it up, or Trumpeter had nothing to do with Horst Volper.

I opened the top left drawer while the last thought went through the processing stage; then it came back very fast indeed. Play it again:

'Trumpeter had nothing to do with Horst Volper.

Nothing to do with the assassination.

Then what was it to do with? Something of major importance, because soon after Lena Pabst had started infiltrating it she'd been found shot dead.

No question now: pick up the phone.

While I waited for the, ringing tone I watched one of the reflections of the man in the office over there; he wasn't interested in me: he'd put the phone down and was writing.

Five rings.

Eight.

Someone came into reflection from the direction of the elevator and his images merged and then split apart again. I watched him.

At the tenth ring I pressed the contact down and waited and let it up again. Dialling tone.

He was coming in this direction and I closed the top left drawer.

Ringing.

Where did Cat Baxter come in?

Four rings.

I know I'm taking a risk. What had she meant? A risk of what?

He came past the door without turning his head, a young man, uniformed, lower rank. You do not, if you are lower rank, glance in at the offices of the directorate.

'Yes?'

Yasolev.

'Liaison.'

'Well?'

'For your information, Room 60 is the office of A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Airforce Directorate. I assume he's GRU, not KGB, this being a military headquarters. It — '

'Wait.'

Making notes.

'Yes?'

'It could be possible that the Trumpeter operation is not being run by Horst Volper, and has nothing to do with our main concern.' A KGB officer with a room in an East Berlin hotel uses a telephone that is totally free of bugs, but I shied at mentioning the name of Gorbachev as the target of an assassination project.

'Perhaps Melnichenko has acquired the file and is observing the operation.'

'Giving it rope, yes, that's possible. But I phoned you because if the other possibility is fact, there's got to be a major switch in our thinking. We've got to infiltrate two operations.'

In a moment: 'We already suspected this.'

Because Dietrich, under the intense pressure of interrogation, had known nothing about Trumpeter.

'Yes. This seems to confirm it. I'll leave it to you, all right?'

'Yes. I shall go to work on it immediately. But I am concerned about your position. If you are found in that building — '

'I've been in hazard before. You'll hear from me as soon as I'm clear.'

'Very well. I hope — ' I could see him shrug.

'Over and out.'

I rang off.

He wouldn't waste any time. Immediate signal to Moscow: Require all possible information on A. V. Melnichencko, believed to be a member of the GRU. Also try the personnel files of the KGB. Request immediate and most urgent attention.

My hand went to the drawer again but I froze on another thought. I'd just told Yasolev that it was possible that Trumpeter had nothing to do with "our main concern", simply because it was nothing to do with Horst Volper. That could be dangerous thinking. Crows are black but all black birds are not crows.

Were there two independent operations with Gorbachev as the target for both of them?

Mother of God.

You must understand that inside the Kremlin there are factions opposed to the Comrade General-Secretary's policy of perestroika. Yasolev, in that chill dawn among the trees. Inside the KGB there are factions similarly opposed.

Hand on the drawer.

And inside the GRU?

I would have liked to talk to Cone. He'd said that if I couldn't reach him at the hotel I should try the Soviet Embassy but he might not be there either and I didn't want to spend any more time on the phone; I wanted to rip this office apart and find the Trumpeter file and get clear before someone else came in here and asked if he'd seen me before and refused to be put off by the Russian accent.

There came to me, my good friend, as I sat here at Comrade Melnichenko's desk in this hall of mirrors, in the centre of this critically red sector, the feeling that I had also arrived at the centre of Quickstep, at the point where the entire mission had become focused, its components coalescing into a gem-hard reality. It was a good feeling. The wounds I'd received out here in the field, the underlying grief for those who had met their death — Scarsdale, Skidder, Dietrich, the man on the bridge, the smouldering distrust I felt for Yasolev, even Cone, even Shepley, the paranoid suspicion that they were setting me up, all of them, and running me through this city like a rat in a maze — all these things were leaving my mind, so that my attention could become focused, like the mission itself, on the immediate and paramount objective. The Trumpeter file.

I've had this feeling before, and I've learned to trust it. It's a good feeling, yes. But do not be quick, my friend, with your congratulations. The centre of any mission is like the eye of the hurricane, and there was the warning in the blood, in the atavistic brain stem, that if I didn't leave this treacherous hall of mirrors while I had the chance I would lose the day, and all I would know would be the dying echoes of the explosion as Quickstep blew apart.

Bang of a door and the nerves jerked and I watched the man going along the passage to the elevator, the man who had been in the office across the corner. His room was dark now.

Only two others were still lit, but the passage itself was bright under the argon tubes. They would be left going all night, for the janitors.

I could see six faces from where I sat, two of them substantial except tier the filming of the glass, four of them reflections. From where they sat they could see three faces, all of them mine.

Movement attracts the eye at the periphery of the vision-field; nothing is actually seen, only movement, but it brings attention, and turns the head. It took time, therefore, to reach the filing cabinet in the corner, perhaps fifteen minutes. It wasn't important; but I'd had to move in the chair, lowering my body behind the desk, by imperceptible degrees, and by the time I was at the filing cabinet in the corner of the room the muscles were trembling from the strain. But there were no faces in the windows now.