'Look,' I said, 'my job is to bring this mission home and prevent a couple of hundred perfectly innocent people from getting blown out of the sky at thirty thousand feet and if you want me to weep over any graves I dig as I go along, you're clean out of luck.' Punch-bag thumping down there, punch bag thumping, I wouldn't mind having a go at that bloody thing myself, punch the bloody stuffing out of it. 'All I want,' I told Thrower, 'is a director in the field who understands these things.'

Of course I took it seriously, taking human life, I always have, I've spent the dark hours huddled in the keening wind where the ghosts walk, gone sleepless through the night often enough, I'm not a clod, I'm not made of bloody stone. But I hadn't got time now to rake over the ashes of what I'd done today, I wasn't finished with it yet, and there's another thing – it's a minefield, this trade we're in, a whole complex of booby-traps set up in the dark, and I know – I've always known – that somewhere out there there's one with my name on it too.

He was still watching me, Thrower.

'Relax,' he said.

What?

'Relax. You've had a busy time.' He pulled out a notebook. 'Kurt Muller, was it?' 'Yes.' I couldn't sit still, got up, went across the bare splintered floor to look at the river, the Havel, barges on it, small boats, a hulk rusting near the bank opposite, the cold winter sunlight setting the scene in amber. 'But God knows how many Kurt Mullers there are in the telephone book.' He hadn't followed us away from the night-club, no one had, I knew that. But he might have phoned her, later, or she might have phoned him.

'Description?' Thrower had a gold pen ready, a gold pen, withal.

'Thirties, pale face, black hair, five-ten, on the thin side, a bit round-shouldered.'

'Eyes?

'I don't remember, but black or brown, dark, not blue.'

Thrower put his notebook away. 'Let's do some more debriefing.'

'Yes. I suppose,' I said, 'you changed my hotel because of Helen, did you?'

'Of course.'

In case she talked, in case she was made to talk. 'Why did you put me into the Klinghof?'

We know it. We've used it before: it's small, tucked away, and the woman who runs it is discreet.'

'I saw a couple of tarts there.'

That's why she's discreet. I need Krenz's address, don't I?

I gave it to him. 'He carries a Berliner Bank Visa card, and his cover's an electronics engineer – or he could even be one. What did London say when you told them Helen was missing?' In a moment Thrower said, They're very concerned. They feel responsible. I'd like you to feel reassured.'

There was a Pan Am plane coming into the approach path, settling nose up through the haze, the strobes flashing. I turned away from the window. 'As long as they're doing something to find her,' I said. He didn't answer. He sat with his pen ready, watching me. 'All right, that man Sorgenicht went straight to the cafeteria when he reached the airport. There were two girls at one of the tables, and he sat down with them.' We were into the major phase of the debriefing and Thrower made notes sometimes, the gold pen flashing in the light from the window, the only thing of beauty in this beleaguered hole. The name of the German girl is Inge Stoph. Were you actually at the Signals board when I debriefed to London last night?'

'I was.'

'You keep a lot in your head.'

'I used a recorder then. I don't use one in the field.'

Some of the DIFs do – Ferris does, Pepperidge does – but others wouldn't be seen dead with one: halfway through a mission or even before then a tape has got a lot of hot information on it and when Crenshaw was running Jayson through the field in Cyprus a few years ago he got exposed and the opposition got hold of his tape and blew the whole mission and Jayson was found with his head off in the back of a garbage truck because he'd had to write off three of their cell and they hadn't liked that. A tape recorder doesn't carry a capsule.

'My impression,' I told Thrower, 'was that Inge Stoph was trying to persuade the Pan Am stewardess to do something, or agree to something.' I told him about the Iranian, and Thrower looked up sharply.

'A pilot?

'Yes.' He made a note and I said, 'I think Inge Stoph and the Pan Am girl are friends. Sorgenicht and Stoph are both in Nemesis. I couldn't fit the Iranian in: he listened a lot but didn't say much, and I didn't pick up anything of a relationship between him and either Stoph or the stewardess.'

'Iran Air,' Thrower said, 'doesn't normally fly into Berlin. They go into Frankfurt. But the Iranians have an extensive network of sleepers and agents-in-place in Europe. What happened when you left the cafeteria?'

'I followed Inge Stoph.' I gave him a complete picture of the scene with her in the car park and then we wrapped it up 'and he put away his notebook and got off the car seat and looked at the river with his hands dug into his pockets and his eyes nowhere and I didn't disturb him.

When he was ready he asked me: 'You think Stoph went for your approach?'

'I got a lot of reaction when I mentioned the nuclear missile.'

'Did you get any idea of her standing with Dieter Klaus?

'No.'

'She could be a girlfriend?'

'Possibly. She could get any man into bed.'

'You?'

'No. Most men, then.'

'She doesn't appeal to you?'

'She's got hair on her fingers. I mean too much.'

'She's a lesbian?

'I'd say a bi.'

'Is she, do you think, a Venus trap for Nemesis?'

'If she's not, she could be.'

'Did you give her the impression she didn't appeal to you?'

'I'm not stupid, Thrower.'

He looked down, tilting on his toes and heels for a moment.

'Sorry,' I said. It had sounded as if he wasn't sure whether I knew the value of a Venus trap: no experienced agent will ever give a Venus the impression she doesn't appeal to him, in case he wants to use her and walk into the trap and get out again with information.

'That's all right,' Thrower said. We're getting to understand each other, that's all.' For the first time I wondered whether I should signal London and change him as my DIF, have him replaced by someone who'd run me before. But that would blow the board and Solitaire was running flat out and I didn't want to slow it down.

I had to keep this one thing in my mind the whole time, above all others: It could be any next flight.

'What I need to know,' Thrower went on, 'is whether you feel that if Inge Stoph comes through with a proposed rendezvous it will be in order to trap you.'

'I can't say, because I don't know Dieter Klaus or the way his mind works. If she comes through with a rendezvous it'll be on his instructions, either because he can't resist the temptation of blowing up the Houses of Parliament and getting his face on the front cover of the Terrorist's Gazette or because he wants to find out who I am and what I'm doing in Berlin.'

Thrower stood looking out of the window, and he didn't turn round when he said, 'Of course you realise how very dangerous it is for you to agree to such a rendezvous. For you to meet Dieter Klaus.'

'Yes.'

'You know his reputation.'

'Yes.'

'Suppose you meet him, and of course it will be on his own ground and in the presence of his bodyguards, what will you rely on to get you away again, still alive?'

'My cover.'

I was getting impatient but he'd got a right to ask me what my plans were: he was my director in the field and his job was to support them.

'Your cover,' he said, and turned round from the window now and looked at me. 'Is that all?'

'It's all I've got.'

'It won't be enough. If they suspect you're using a cover they'll try and break it and they'll succeed. You know that – you talked to that poor devil in the hospital in London. They turned him into a -'