'Did you get the license number?' said Dicky, standing in the yard looking at the gates through which the car had gone.

'I saw it.' It was Gloria coming out of the back doors to find us. 'I saw it all from the window. There were three men and a black Ford Fiesta. No license plates. I looked for the number but there were no plates.'

'He must have been wearing armor,' said Dicky. 'Did you hear the clank as I hit him?'

'No I didn't,' I said.

'Well, thanks for all your help, Bernard,' said Dicky with biting sarcasm. He was standing arms akimbo: panting, excited and angry. And frustrated that his quarry had escaped.

'I wasn't sure what it was you were going to do,' I explained.

'I would have thought your training and know-how would have taken care of that. I thought the instincts of an experienced field agent would show him what to do in an emergency.'

'The developed professional instincts of all the field agents who survive tell them to get quickly out of the line of fire when the bullets are flying.'

Gloria looked at me. I'd disappointed her too, I could see it in her face. After all she'd heard about my exploits, the first time she sees me in action I demonstrate a remarkable capacity for self-preservation while Dicky does the tough-guy stuff.

'Jesus, Dicky,' I said in exasperation. 'He didn't shoot. He probably wasn't armed. Can you imagine what sort of clamor there would have been if you'd killed him? Or even if we had him here now, badly hurt and unable to move?'

Dicky wasn't listening. 'I hit him on the run. My skeet-shooting days were not wasted. No, sir!' Dicky was still glowing with the heat of battle and there was nothing for it but to give him time to cool off.

I went back into the building and looked at the broken pieces of glass,jar, the puddle of chemicals, and the severed hand — unnaturally white and puffy — that was sitting on the floor like some large and venomous species of spider.

Dicky came and looked too. 'I suppose you are right,' he said. Now it was dawning on him what he'd done. And what he'd have to say in his report.

'Where did you get that Colt revolver?' I asked him. It looked familiar.

'I've had it since you took it from those gorillas in Warsaw.'

My God, Dicky. On the plane? Going through customs and everything? I would have died of fright if I'd known what that idiot had got concealed under his duty-free gin and Viyella pajamas. But I didn't tell him that. I just said, 'Better get rid of that piece right away. It might be ballistically identifiable — all kinds of crimes may already be attached to it.'

Dicky didn't respond. 'We must get this place cleaned up,' he said. 'The staircase and the walls. Get on to the Works people, Gloria. I want it all done by this evening. Reliable people. We don't want word to get out.'

Dicky put away his gun and nibbled at his fingernail. He was beginning to worry.

Gloria joined us to stare down at the severed hand and the pool of smelly liquid.

Dicky said, 'This will prove wrong all those dotty ideas about George being alive, Bernard. This is George's hand. It will be conclusive evidence.'

I said, 'You won't easily get a print from flesh that's been marinating in that brew. That skin tissue is like wet Kleenex.'

'Could you pick it up, Bernard?'

I balanced it upon the largest remaining piece of the broken jar, its thick saucer-like base.

'What shall we do with it?' Dicky asked.

'Take it to the mail room,' I said. 'Tell them to put it in a plastic bag and send it to forensic by motorcycle messenger.'

'That's right,' said Dicky, then, 'He had a beard. That's what baffles me. How could he hope to be inconspicuous with all that face fungus?'

'He'll shave it off, Dicky. Men like him don't disguise themselves by growing beards when they can disguise themselves by shaving them off.'

'Maybe,' he conceded.

'Can I use your phone, Dicky?'

He reached into his pocket and gave me his mobile phone. I punched in the number of a friend of mine in the Berne embassy. 'Who are you calling?' said Dicky, who'd watched what I was doing and recognized the Berne prefix.

'Masterson at the embassy.'

'I don't, know him.'

'No, probably not,' I said. Masterson was a lowly toiler in the embassy ant-hill. He didn't have the right school ties, the right accent nor — most decisively of all — the right wife, to win any decent position in the embassy rat race. Mrs. Masterson was a French socialist intellectual who used social functions to lecture her husband's superiors on Britain's failings. The fact that his wife's criticisms were well-founded and well-argued was the final fatal blow to his career.

When the phone was answered, a girl came on the line. She'd come fresh from one of those training courses where telephone staff learn how to rudely deter callers from making contact with their employers. 'He's not here. He's at a meeting. Call later,' she told me.

'Get him out of the meeting,' I said. 'This is urgent.'

'Is it personal?' she asked.

'In a way,' I said. 'I'm his live-in lover and I've just been checked positive.'

She made a noise and went away for a long time, but eventually Masterson came on the phone. 'Hello?'

'Batty? It's Bernie.'

'Of course it is. Who else would phone up to offend my secretary and make trouble for me by pulling me out of a staff meeting with the First Secretary presiding?'

'Those tourists who went to see my brother-in-law. Any of them feature a pigtail haircut, and beard?'

'Yes, Bernard.'

'Short, dark. About one hundred and forty pounds?'

'That's him. A Stasi major. We've got a smudgy Photo-fit picture somewhere if I can find it.'

'Put it on the fax for me, Batty. You have Dicky Cruyer's fax number on file.'

'I'll do that for you, Bernie.'

'Thanks Batty. I'll do the same for you some day.'

'You're always saying that, Bernard.'

I rang off. 'Stasi?' said Dicky excitedly.

'Sounds like it,' I said.

Dicky emerged from his melancholy mood. He could put aside his thoughts on how he would explain shooting an innocent passer-by in Central London. 'I knew it. I knew it,' he said, and rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. 'Incidentally, Bernard. A propos telephone procedure: in future I counsel you to simply inform Berne — and such people — that you are calling from London Central, and give them your priority code, so you won't have to go through all that jokey rigmarole.'

Dicky looked at Gloria and smiled broadly to make sure she enjoyed this crushing directive. Gloria, whose feminine instinct for the right timing seldom let her down, returned this intimacy with a confidence. 'I'm going to work for Mr. Rensselaer,' she told Dicky. When Dicky seemed not to hear her, she reached out and touched hint on the arm to get his attention. I had no claim to her- of course, but seeing her make that most ordinary of physical contacts with another man was enough to make me want to shout my protest aloud. Despite whatever look of horror was written across my face, Gloria gave me her most beguiling smile and said, 'And Bernard's decided to go and work in Berlin.' I suppose she wanted to be quite certain I couldn't wriggle out of it.

'Brilliant,' said Dicky. He studied my face for a moment and said, 'You're fond of Frank, and Lisl Hennig is a mother to you. Berlin's your home, Bernard. Admit it.'

'It sometimes seems that way,' I said. 'And lovely Gloria stays in London,' said Dicky, and looked at her and chuckled in a tone that sounded predatory.

Gloria laughed too, as if Dicky had made a very good joke that only she shared. It was a lovely laugh and came bubbling up like milk boiling over. I didn't join in.

'I'll take the hand to the mail room,' I said. 'They may be a bit squeamish about touching it.'