I want police blocks set up immediately and the area contained. I want everyone searched and questioned. I shall remain in my office in the Airforce Building and you will please report to me there.

Thy will be done.

Move along, please. Keep the line moving.

It wasn't, at this end. We were a stationary herd, twenty or thirty of us in the immediate group, standing around the cars. The police kept well back against the buildings, hands behind them, guns on their hips, their peaked caps turning slowly as they watched the crowd.

'I think they're going to search us.'

'Try dropping it between your feet.'

I moved away from him; he might try something cute, and I didn't want them to find a bag of cocaine in my pocket.

It wouldn't matter.

You're perfectly right.

There was another man.

'You'll be late for the party.' The girl with the red mouth.

'Yes,' I said.

'You want to take us along?'

This was the other girl, the one who'd been at the wheel, a mane of black hair, gold earrings, hips tilted, one leg dipped at the knee.

'If I ever get there,' I said.

The other man was looking around him, though not obviously, not obviously at all, just taking a quick glance as he shrugged deeper into his coat, as he brushed ash off his sleeve.

'If you're too late for the party, would you like to come home with us?'

'Very much.'

And you cannot, my good friend, say that I was lying.

He'd been standing close to the pagoda-top Mercedes until a few minutes ago, but now he was deeper into the crowd, not so isolated.

'We'll give you a good time.' The hips tilting the other way. 'I'm Lili, and this is Marie.'

'Delighted.'

He was worried, the man in the crowd. The police weren't likely to notice it because they had to keep so many of us under observation, whereas I could watch the man with more concentration.

'What's your name?'

'Mickey Mouse,' I said, and they both laughed.

When I'd got out of the car I'd done the same as the man, taking some quick glances around the environment; I'd no need to check it again. Behind us there was the intersection and a police car was stationed there and a barricade set up. In front of us was the group of police and the head of the line. There were doorways along the street but none of them offering cover. The only exit was a narrow gap between two of the buildings, not wide enough to call an alley; perhaps only a passage where dustbins were kept. Two Vopos were stationed there.

'Are you married?'

The man had a belted coat on; he was middle-aged, medium height, with a fur hat and a good pair of gloves. He wasn't a businessman, because of the soft rubber shoes. He wasn't, had never been, an official, despite the belted coat: he carried no air of authority, nor even a semblance. The car he'd got out of was the black pagoda-top Mercedes, an old model but light and fast; it suited him.

'Yes,' I said. Married.

He could conceivably be an agent of some kind; not necessarily a spook but an entrepreneur in one of the intelligence services; or freelance.

'What's your wife's name?'

But he didn't have nervous stamina.

'Minnie Mouse.'

Got another laugh. By nervous stamina I mean that he was visibly beginning to break down. His head was turning more often now as he looked for a way out, and the colour was leaving his face. This is the way a trap will work on you, bringing the onset of panic by infinite degrees; and every time you look around for some way of escape and don't see one, the nerves go through another little death. I could see what was happening to the man over there because it was also happening to me.

Movement, near the Lancia.

'If I were you,' I said, 'I'd shut the windows of your car.'

Marie turned her head. 'What?'

''That chap's trying to get rid of some stuff.'

'What stuff?' Then she saw him, the short man; he was standing right against the Lancia and she took straight off like a good gal and clobbered him with her handbag and I turned away because one of the policemen had caught on and was coming across from the buildings and with the all-points bulletin out for me I couldn't afford to let them come too close.

'What's going on there?'

The poor little bastard had dropped the package he'd been trying to shove through the Lancia's window and stood there with one arm up as a shield against the handbag.

Everyone turned to look, except the man with the belted coat, and he was using the chance to move nearer the gap between the bank and the library and I decided to head him off but it took a good ten minutes, stamping my feet quietly to keep them warm, shifting them backwards an inch at a time, watching the comedy going on near the Lancia — a cop, two tarts and a drug-pusher, what a cast — and finally I made the distance and got between the man in the coat and the alleyway and stood there with my back to it, blowing into my hands, slapping my shoulders.

Keep the line moving. Keep moving.

You must be joking, we haven't budged for the last fifteen minutes.

He looked at me now, just once, his glance passing across me and away again, and by now his face was bloodless. I would have said he'd got more on his mind than a packet of snort, though God knew what it might be. Both his hands were in the pockets of his coat and I noticed that the right one seemed a little larger, as if he were holding something.

Keep the line moving. Keep moving, now!

The PA horn wasn't close but its sound hit his nerves and he flinched. And then we were off at last, shuffling towards the checkpoint, and he broke and swung round and started his run and I got in his way and he tried to dodge round me and I let out a shout and he pulled his gun as the nearest policemen came away from the buildings very fast in a crouching run with their own guns out and I moved backwards out of their way and got to the alley as the first shot sounded and then a fusillade so I suppose he'd fired first and they'd just wiped him out before he could hurt anyone, they're very efficient in East Berlin.

20: BLIND

Staring at his face.

Mission status: the executive is clear of his red sector and has gone to ground. He is maintaining contact with his DIF.

The face in the photographs.

Clear of his red sector, so forth, yes, but it didn't get us very far, did it, just saved our skin, all that work and all I'd got was the Melnichenko-Trumpeter connection because the file was in his personal office.

Volper's. Volper's face.

Smooth, flat-looking, featureless except for the eyes, their being further apart than the norm, and the nose, dead straight and with almost no bridge.

He was somewhere in this city and within the next twenty-four hours I would have to find him, and there was only one way and it was deadly because it meant taking to the streets and that was where the police patrols would be.

I telephoned Cone at eight o'clock in the morning, with the hydrogen peroxide stinging in the cuts at the back of my neck.

'I’m at the safe-house.'

'What's your condition?'

'Active. There wasn't a lot of trouble. Few cuts. I got some sleep.'

'What do I report for the board?'

I told him, gone to ground, so forth.

'Do you need anything?'

'Yes. I need funds placed at the Ost-Deutschbanke in Dmitroffstrasse in the name of Gunter Heinrich Blum and made available to him on demand. The amount should be the replacement cost of a Mercedes 280SE.' I gave him time to make notes.

'How old?'

'Last year's.'

That'd get the dust out of their bustles in the Accounts department

'Is there a rush?'

'Make it within two days.'