Sound in the sky, the sound of the Tupolev.

The French doors were open, one of them hanging on a single hinge, and I stepped through the gap with my shoes clear of the littered glass and went to the end of the balcony and ignored the risk that he might notice movement in one of the broken window-panes down there as I had done, ignored it because I was moving as quickly as I could and there was no question as to whether the sixty-foot drop should be allowed to affect my thinking, only the question of working out the angle and distance and the force needed to take me over the buckled railing and through five feet of space and then the drop.

A thin, loudening scream from the jets of the Tupolev.

Surprise was the only thing in my favour and it would have to be enough and I dragged on the railing to test its strength and thought it was sound enough and swung over it and felt the air-rush of the drop against my face and hit the balcony below on all fours and used the railing supports for leverage and pitched into the room.

He had the flat, featureless face that I'd studied so many times in the photographs, the eyes rather far apart and the nose running almost straight to the brow. The mouth was open a little at this particular moment and his expression wasn't one of surprise but of non-understanding, as if his known version of reality had slipped like a time-warp and left him suddenly a stranger in his own world, and untutored to meet the demands on him.

His hands were occupied and he couldn't reach for a gun or even defend himself as he could have done if they'd been free, and in any case I wasn't interested in attacking him because the urgent need was to deflect the missile and I managed it but his finger must have been on the launch-button because there was a squeezing sound and the thing jerked and the air in the room felt suddenly solidified with the intense volume of sound as, the warhead burst against the wall across the corner of the building and the building shook, holding for a moment and then collapsing with the slow inexorability of an avalanche.

I suppose he was stunned, because he was physically slow to react and I chopped once and dropped him into the void and saw him whirling among the vortex of shattered concrete and timber and plaster lit by the flamelight of the explosion, and later I found him in the courtyard when I went down there, moving like a drunk amid the smoking rubble. His head was buried under the debris but he had one hand flung out, a finger pointing in my direction, as if he were blaming me for something.

27: TELLY

'I couldn't see much detail,' I said. 'There wasn't time. But it looked like a Stinger Mark IV. It was obviously hand-held and obviously a heat-seeker. He wouldn't have missed.'

Cone gave me a glance and switched off the recorder. 'That'll be enough for today. I don't want to tire you.'

'I'm still thirsty, that's all.'

He went over to the telephone and asked them to send some more tea up. I'd slept most of the day, not exactly sleep, you couldn't call it that, just a whole string of nightmares, running through falling buildings, planes blowing up, his white face and his arms tied to the chair, after-shock, I suppose, working itself out.

I got off the bed and went across to the window. The Wall rose against the night, an expanse of floodlit concrete, impregnable. One would have said, impregnable.

'You shouldn't be walking on that ankle,' Cone said.

When the tea came he looked at his watch and turned on the television and played with the local channels.

… What he called a natural corollary to the summit conference in the United States. Mr Gorbachev made a point of stressing that his visit to East Berlin carries no special political significance, but is simply to enable the General-Secretary to discuss with President Honecker the issues raised between himself and President Reagan.,

'I fear he doth protest too much,' I said.

'Right. Blown his cover.'

Cone looked at his watch again and switched channels until he got the scene in the park. Cat Baxter, her mass of blonde hair framing her small kittenish face, her silver sweater and skirt shimmering under the fierce intensity of the spotlights, waving as the crowd gave her a standing ovation. Waving but glancing at the sky repeatedly, the dazzling smile fixed, frozen.

'Going crazy about her,' Cone said. 'Does her kind of stuff do anything for you?'

'I quite like it. I've got some of her tapes in the car.'

We watched for a bit and then the phone rang and Cone went across to it and listened briefly and thanked the caller and rang off and came over to where I was standing.

'Bombers airborne,' he said.

The End