‘Nyet, nyet!' he gasped his denial, his face working with a strange mixture of fury and loathing. And then, his voice gradually rising and growing shrill, he began a diatribe in Russian which would soon attract attention.

Krakovitch gripped his arm and shook him, and Gulharov's jabbering faded into silence. ‘Now I ask him if we accepting your help,' Krakovitch informed. He spoke to the younger man again, and this time Gulharov nodded twice, rapidly, and his colour began to return to normal.

‘Da, da!' he gasped emphatically. His throat made a dry rattle as he added something else, unintelligible to the two Englishmen.

Krakovitch smiled humourlessly. ‘He says we should accept all the help we can get,' he translated. ‘Because we have to kill these things — finish them! And I agreeing with him...‘ Then he told these strangest of allies all that had happened at the Château Bronnitsy after Harry Keogh's war.

When he'd finished there was a long silence, broken at last by Quint. ‘We're in agreement, then? That we'll act together on this?'

Krakovitch nodded. He shrugged, said simply, ‘No alternative. And no time to waste.'

Quint turned to Kyle. ‘But how do we go about it?'

‘As far as possible,' Kyle answered, ‘we go the straightforward way. We get it all right up front, without any of the usual —, The airport tannoy broke in on him, echoing tinnily as some sleepy, unseen announcer requested in English that a Mr A. Kyle please take a telephone call at the reception desk.

Krakovitch's face froze. Who would know that Kyle was here?

Kyle stood up, shrugged apologetically. This was very embarrassing. It could only be ‘Brown', and how to explain that to Krakovitch? Quint, on the other hand, was his usual ready-for-anything self. Calmly he said to Krakovitch, ‘Well, you have your little bloodhound following you about. And now it would seem that we have one too.'

Krakovitch gave a curt, sour nod. And with an edge of ‘sarcasm, echoing Kyle, he said, ‘Without any of the usual, eh? Did you know about this?'

'it's none of our doing.' Quint wasn't exactly truthful. We're in the same boat as you.'

On Krakovitch's orders, Gulharov accompanied Kyle to the reception-cum-enquiries desk, leaving .Quint and Krakovitch alone together. ‘Maybe this is all in our favour,' said Quint.

‘Eh?' Krakovitch had turned sour again. ‘We are followed, spied upon, overheard, bugged, and you say is favourable?'

‘I meant you and Kyle both having shadows,' Quint explained. ‘It evens things up. And maybe we can cancel out one with the other.'

Krakovitch was alarmed. ‘I not being party to violence! Anything happen to that KGB dog, is possible I get the troubles.'

‘But if we could arrange for him to be, er, detained for a day or two? I mean, unharmed, you understand —completely unharmed — just detained. .

‘I not know. .

‘To give you time to clear our route into Romania. You know, visas, etcetera? With a bit of luck we'll be finished there in just a day or two.'

Krakovitch slowly nodded. ‘Maybe — but positive guarantee, no dirty work. He is KGB — you say — but if true, then he's Russian too. And I am Russian. If he vanish . .

Quint shook his head, grasped the other's thin elbow. ‘They both vanish!' he said. ‘But only for a few days. Then we'll be out of here and getting on with the job.'

Again Krakovitch gave his slow nod. ‘Maybe — if it can be arranged safely.'

Kyle and Gulharov returned. Kyle was careful. ‘That was somebody called Brown,' he said. ‘He's been watching us, apparently.' He looked at Krakovitch. ‘He says your KGB tail has traced us and is on his way here. By the way, this KGB fellow is well known — his name is Theo Dolgikh.'

Krakovitch shook his head, shrugged, looked mystified. 'I never heard of him.'

‘Did you get Brown's number?' Quint was eager. ‘I mean can we contact him again?'

Kyle raised his eyebrows. ‘Actually, yes,' he nodded. He said that if things were getting sticky, he might be able to help. Why do you ask?'

Quint grinned tightly, said to Krakovitch, ‘Comrade, it might be a good idea if you were to listen carefully. Since you're a little concerned about this, you can start working on an alibi. For from this point forward you're hand in hand with the enemy. Your only consolation is that you'll be working against a greater enemy.' The grin left his face, and deadly serious he said, ‘OK, here's what I suggest. .

On Saturday morning at 8.30 Kyle phoned Krakovitch at his and Gulharov's hotel. The latter answered the call, grunted, fetched Krakovitch who came grumbling to the phone. He was just out of bed, could Kyle call later? While this brief show was going on, downstairs in the Genovese's lobby, Quint was talking to Brown. At 9.15 Kyle phoned Krakovitch again and arranged a second meeting: they would meet outside Frankie's Franchise in an hour's time and go on from there.

There was nothing new in this arrangement; it was part of the plan worked out the night before: Kyle suspected that the phone in his room was now bugged and he simply wanted to give Theo Dolgikh plenty of advance notice. If Kyle's phone wasn't bugged, then Krakovitch's surely was, which could only work out the same. Anyway, the psychic sixth senses of both Kyle and Quint were playing up a little, which told them that something was brewing.

Sure enough, when they left the Geriovese just before 10.00 A.M. and headed for the docks, they had a tail.

Dolgikh was keeping well back, but it could only be him. Kyle and Quint had to admire his tenacity, for despite his rough night he was still very much the master-spy; now his attire was that of the shipyard worker, dark-blue coveralls and a heavy bag of tools, and the blue-black stubble of twenty-four hours' growth on his round, intense face.

‘He must have a hell of a wardrobe, this lad,' said Kyle as he and Quint approached the narrow, still slumbering streets of Genoa's dockland. ‘I'd hate to have to carry his luggage!'

Quint shook his head. ‘No,' he answered, ‘I shouldn't think so. They'll probably have a safe house here and there's bound to be one of their ships in the harbour. Whichever, when he requires a change of clothing, they'll be the ones who'll fix it for him.'

Kyle squinted at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘You know,' he said. ‘I'm sure you'd have been better off in M15. You have a bent for it.'

‘It might make an interesting hobby.' Quint grinned. ‘Mundane spying, that is — but I'm happy where I am. The real talent's with INTESP. Now if our man Dolgikh were an esper, then we could be in real trouble.'

Kyle gave his companion a sharp glance, then relaxed. ‘But he isn't or we'd have spotted him without Brown's assistance. No, he's simply one of their surveillance types, and pretty good at his job. I've been thinking of him as something big, but this is probably the biggest assignment he's ever had.'

‘Which,' Quint grimly added, ‘with any luck, is just about to terminate a mite ingloriously. But I wouldn't be too sure he's small fry, if I were you. After all, he was big enough to show up on Brown's firm's computer.'

Carl Quint was right: Theo Dolgikh was not small fry, not in any sense of the word. Indeed, it was a measure of Yuri Andropov's ‘respect' for the Soviet E-Branch that he'd put Dolgikh on the job. For Leonid Brezhnev would likely give Andropov a hard time if Krakovitch were to report to him that the KGB were interfering again.

Dolgikh was in his early thirties, a native Siberian bred of a long line of Komsomol lumberjacks. He was the complete communist for whom little else existed but Party and State. He had trained, and later done some teaching, in Berlin, Bulgaria, Palestine and Libya. He was an expert in weapons (especially Western Bloc weapons), also in terrorism, sabotage, interrogation and surveillance; as well as Russian, he could speak a broken Italian, decent German and English. But his real forte — indeed his penchant — lay in the field of murder. For Theo Dolgikh was a cold-blooded killer.