'I have already spoken to Lumley. You go home tonight. Travel Section will attend to your tickets.' Bradfield's desk was piled high with telegrams. 'And I have apologised in your name to Siebkron.'

'Apologised ?'

Bradfield dropped the latch on the door. 'Shall I spell it out for you? Like Harting, you are evidently something of a political primitive. You are here on a temporary diplomatic footing; if you were not, you would undoubtedly be in prison.' He was pale with anger. 'Godalone knows what de Lisle thought he was up to. I shall speak to him separately. You have deliberately disobeyed my instruction; well, you people have your own code, I suppose, and I am as suspect as the next man.'

'You flatter yourself.'

'In this case, however, you were placed specifically under my authority, by Lumley, by the Ambassador and by the necessities of the situation here, and specifically ordered to make no move which could have repercussions outside the Embassy. Be quiet and listen to me! Instead of showing the minimal consideration that was asked of you, however, you go round to Harting's house at five in the morning, frighten the wits out of his servant, wake the neighbours, bellow for de Lisle, and finally attract a full-scale police raid which, in a matter of hours, will no doubt be the talking point of the community. Not content with that, you are party to a stupid lie to the police about conducting an inventory; I imagine that will bring a smile even to Siebkron's lips, after the description you offered him of your work last night.'

'Any more?'

'A great deal, thank you. Whatever Siebkron suspected that Harting had done, you have by now delivered the proof. You saw his attitude for yourself. Heaven knows what he does not think we are up to.'

'Then tell him,' Turner suggested. 'Why not? Ease his mind. Christ, he knows more than we do. Why do we make a secret of something they all know? They're in full cry. The worst we can do is spoil their kill.'

'I will not have it said ! Anything is better, any doubts, any suspicions on their part, than our admission at this moment in time that for twenty years a member of our diplomatic staff has been in Soviet employment. Is there nothing you will understand of this? I will not have it said ! Let them think and do what they like, without our cooperation they can only surmise.'

It was a statement of personal faith. He sat as still and as upright as a sentry guarding a national shrine.

'Is that the lot?'

'You people are supposed to work in secret. One calls upon you expecting a standard of discretion. I could tell you a little about your behaviour here, had you not made it abundantly clear that manners me an nothing to you whatever. It will take a long time to sweep up the mess you have left behind you in this Embassy. You seem to think that nothing reaches me. I have already warded off Gaunt and Meadowes; no doubt there are others I shall have to soothe.'

'I'd better go this afternoon,' Turner suggested. He had not taken his eyes from Bradfield's face. 'I've ballsed it up, haven't I? Sorry about that. Sorry you're not satisfied with the service. I'll write and apologise; that's what Lumley likes me to do. A bread and butter letter. So I'll do that. I'll write.' He sighed, 'I seem to be a bit of a Jonah. Best thing to do really, chuck me out. Be a bit of a wrench for you, that will. You don't like getting rid of people, do you? Rather give them a contract.'

'What are you suggesting?'

'That you've a damn good reason for insisting on discretion! I said to Lumley - Christ, that was a joke - I asked him, see: does he want the files or the man? What the hell are you up to? Wait! One minute you give him a job, the next you don't want to know him. If they brought his body in now you couldn't care bloody less: you'd pat the pockets for papers and wish him luck!'

He noticed, quite inconsequentially, Bradfield's shoes. They were hand-made and polished that dark mahogany which is only captured by servants, or by those who have been brought up with them.

'What the devil do you me an?'

'I don't know who's putting the finger on you: I don't care. Siebkron, I would guess, from the way you crawl to him. Why did you bring us together last night if you were so bloody worried about offending him? What was the point to that, for one? Or did he order you to ? Don't answer yet, it's my turn. You're Harting's guardian angel, do you realise that? It sticks out a mile, and I'll write it six foot high when I get back to London. You renewed his contract, right? Just that, for a start. Although you despised him. But you didn't just give him work; you made work for him. You knew bloody well the Foreign Office didn't give a damn about the Destruction programme. Or for the Personalities Index either, I shouldn't wonder. But you pretended; you built it up for him. Don't tell me it was compassion for a man who didn't belong.'

'Whatever there was of that has worn pretty thin by now,' Bradfield remarked, with a hint of that dismay, or selfcontempt, which Turner now occasionally discerned in him.

'Then what about the Thursday meeting?'

A look of sheer pain crossed Bradfield's face.

'My God, you are insufferable,' he said, more as a mental note, a privately recorded judgment, than an insult directly intended.

'The Thursday conference that never was! It was you who took Harting off that conference; you who gave the job to de Lisle. But Harting still went out Thursday afternoons all right. Did you stop him? Did you hell. I expect you even know where he went, don't you.' He held up the gunmetal key he had taken from Harting's suit. 'Because there's a special place, you see. A hideaway. Or may be I'm telling you something you know already. Who did he meet out there? Do you know that too? I used to think it was Praschko, until I remembered you fed me that idea, you yourself. So I'm going bloody carefully with Praschko.'

Turner was leaning across the desk, shouting at Bradfield's bowed head. 'As to Siebkron, he's rolling up a whole bloody network, like as not. Dozens of agents, for all we know; Harting was just one link in a chain. You can't begin to control what Siebkron knows and doesn't know. We're dealing with reality, you know, not diplomacy.' He pointed to the window and the blurred hills across the river. 'Theysell horses over there! They screw around, talk to friends, make journeys; they've been beyond the edge of the forest, they know what the world looks like!'

'It requires very little, in an intelligent person, to know that,' said Bradfield.

'And that's what I'm going to tell Lumley when I get back to the smoke. Harting didn't work alone! He had a patron as well as a controller and for all I know, they were the same man! And for all I bloody well know, Leo Harting was Rawley Bradfield's fancy boy! Having a bit of public school vice on the side!'

Bradfield was standing up, his face contracted with anger. 'TellLumley what you like,' he whispered, 'but get out of here and don't ever come back,' and it was then that Mickie Crabbe put his red, bubbling face round Miss Peate's connecting door.

He was looking puzzled and slightly indignant, and he was chewing absurdly at his ginger moustache. 'Rawley, I say,' he said and began again, as if he had started in the wrong octave. 'Sorry to burst in, Rawley. I tried the door in the corridor but the latch was down. Sorry, Rawley. It's about Leo,' he said.

The rest came out with rather a rush. 'I've just seen him down at the railway station. Bloody well having a beer.'

'Be quick,' said Bradfield.

'Doing a favour for Peter de Lisle. That's all,' Crabbe began defensively. Turner caught the smell of drink on his breath, mingling with the smell of peppermint. 'Peter had to go down to the Bundestag. Debate on Emergency Legislation, big thing apparently, second day, so he asked me to cover the jamboree at the railway station. The Movement's leaders, coming in from Hanover. Watch the arrivals, see who turned up. I often do odd jobs for Peter,' he added apologetically. 'Turned out to be a Lord Mayor's Show. Press, television lights, masses of cars lined up in the road' - he glanced nervously at Bradfield -'where the taxis stand, Rawley, you know. And crowds. All singing rah-rah and waving the old black flags. Bit of music.' He shook his head in private wonder. 'That square is plastered with slogans.'

'And you saw Leo,' Turner said, pressing. 'In the crowd?'

'Sort of.'

'What do you me an?'

'Well, the back of his head. Head and shoulders. Just a glimpse. No time to grab him: gone.'

Turner seized him with his big stone hands. 'You said you saw him having a beer!'

'Let him go,' said Bradfield.

'Hey steady!' For a moment Crabbe looked almost ferocious. 'Well,I saw him later, you see. After the show was over. Face to face sort of thing.'

Turner released him.

'The train came in and everyone started cheering pretty loud, and shoving about and trying to get a glimpse of Karfeld. There was even a bit of fighting at the edges, I think, but that was mainly the journalists. Sods ,' he added with a spark of real hatred. 'That shit Sam Allerton was there, by the way. I should think he started it.'

'For Christ's sake!' Turner shouted, and Crabbe regarded him quite straightly, with an expression which spoke of bad form.

'First of all Meyer-Lothringen came out - the police had made a gangway for him out of cattle pens - then Tilsit, then Halbach, and everyone shouting like gyppos. Beatles,' he said uncomprehendingly. 'Kids mainly, they were, long-haired student types, leaning over the railings trying to touch the chaps' shoulders. Karfeld didn't make it. Some fellow near me said he must have gone out the other side, gone down the passage to avoid the crowd. He doesn't like people coming too close, that's what they say; that's why he builds these damn great stands everywhere. So half the crowd charges off to see if they can find him. The rest hang around in case, and then there's this announcement over the blower: we can all go home because Karfeld's still in Hanover. Lucky for Bonn, that's what I thought.' He grinned. 'What?'

Neither spoke.

'The journalists were furious and I thought I'd just give Rawley a ring to let him know Karfeld hadn't turned up. London likes to keep track, you see. Of Karfeld.' This for Turner. 'They like to keep tabs on him, not have him talking to strange men.' He resumed: 'There's an all-night Post Office by the hall there, and I was just coming out when it occurred to me' - he made a feeble attempt to drag them in to the conspiracy- 'that may be I ought to have a quick cup of coffee to collect my thoughts, and I happened to look through the glass door of the waiting room. Doors are side by side, you see. Restaurant one side, waiting-room the other. It's a sort of buffet in there with a few places to sit as well. I me an sit and not drink,' he explained, as if that were a particular type of eccentricity he had occasionally met with. 'There's the first class on the left and the second class on the right, both glass doors.'