We inched forward again, the lamps sliding past the tinted windows of the Mercedes and throwing shadows across the driver's head. He hadn't spoken until a few minutes before, when we'd reached the checkpoint. 'We could go through the official-traffic lane, but we'd call more attention. Is that all right with you, sir?'
I'd said yes. Shepley had told me there'd be no delay getting through — no one would check us — but I wanted to attract as little notice as I could.
The driver had fallen silent again. The figures outside looked almost faceless through the smoked windows and my dark glasses; their voices were faint. It was four in the morning, a dead hour, with only half a dozen vehicles ahead of us.
We moved again, the engine's note soft, muted, the lights on the facia glowing.
Are they going to interrogate us?
She was shivering, curled against me, her woollen coat soaked from melted snow. One of the guards outside the hut was coughing again, the cold air freezing his lungs.
Not you, no. You don't know enough.
Margaret. Margaret Someone. Jennings? Fenning? Something with 'ing' at the end. In three years you can forget your own name, in this trade.
'Which road are we taking?'
The driver turned his head slightly, his eyes in the mirror. 'Through Barnau. Be an hour, maybe. A bit more.'
Car doors slammed ahead of us. Peaked caps, the angular roofs of low buildings, the silhouette of an alarm siren against the haze beyond.
She can go, the guard said, coming in, his face muffled in wool against the cold. Come on — move! He kicked her foot.
She turned her head to look at me, but I said in English, Don't question it. Get going.
The Mercedes was new, smelling of leather, not the kind of transport you normally get from the Bureau. And a uniformed driver. Perhaps not the Bureau, then, perhaps by courtesy of the General-Secretary. I didn't think this was going to be my kind of thing, too political, too distinguished, not the job for a ferret. But I'd nothing to lose.
We inched forward again, and the peaked caps gathered immediately outside, turned towards a civilian with papers in his gloved hand, orders.
But what about you?
I knew she'd say that.
I can look after myself. Get going, for Christ's sake, before they change their minds.
She struggled to her feet, giving me a last look, her eyes frightened but for me now, not for herself. It makes me feel awful.
I jerked a hand. Just get going.
The voices outside the car had stopped, and we moved on again, this time accelerating through barriers.
'Is that it?'
'Yes, sir.'
I looked at the clock on the facia. An hour, maybe a bit more, would bring us to the rendezvous just before dawn.
She lurched to the door of the hut, her legs cramped from the long night, the long waiting, and when she'd gone I asked the guard in Russian, On whose orders?
Comrade Colonel Yasolev's.
I put away the sunglasses, and the environment took on brightness, colour: a steady 3,500 rpm on the revolution-counter, the star mascot outlined against the wash of the headlights, a signpost sliding by: Bernau 22km, Eberswalde 47km.
He'd known, of course, Comrade Colonel Yasolev, that it wouldn't have been worth putting her under the light, wearing her down, she knew almost nothing; she'd been a contact for the frontier line pulled in at the last minute to cover a gap in communications; she hadn't even been briefed, just told to get there and wait for instructions. She'd only made contact with me as a matter of routine to establish liaison, and that was when they'd caught us, holed up under the floorboards of a rotting wharf with our hands and faces darkened with some soot I'd scraped from a boiler and one of her feet shoeless, which was how they'd got on to us: the other shoe had come off when she'd run headlong for cover.
And what would have been the point, anyway, in their putting her on trial and sending her to a penal settlement? Another mouth to feed, however many mailbags she sewed, however much wood she hauled. But that wasn't why he'd let her go. It had been a, gesture. I'd got to know Comrade Colonel Yasolev quite well during the three weeks of the mission and I'd picked up a few things about him from the KGB lieutenant I'd pinned down and grilled in a cellar in Klimovsk: Yasolev was the son of a Soviet Army general, and a graduate of the Moscow State University with a degree in Japanese and some post-graduate work put in at the Institute of Oriental Studies. In 1985 he'd served undercover for the KGB as Bureau Chief of the Soviet magazine New Times in Tokyo; then he'd been brought back to his homeland to run clandestine operations from Moscow, trapping Western spooks for the counterespionage division and pulling in Price-Baker, Johnson of the Company, Foxwell and Grant and Bellows from the SIS, all of them senior people, most of them now in the Gulag, Foxwell dead and Johnson exchanged for Pitovsky a year ago.
But the most interesting thing I'd picked up from the lieutenant in Klimovsk was that Yasolev was a chivalrous man, enlightened, though not soft: He bullied the prosecutors for the maximum term in every case, and got it. He also had a daughter, Ludmila, who was now studying at the Academy of Science in Moscow. All right, for Margaret read Ludmila; they'd be about the same age or at least the same generation. And reading a little closer, between the lines, yes, his casual act of clemency had been subjective, self-indulgent; but the fact remained that I'd been there in that freezing hut and I'd seen her small huddled figure go lurching through the doorway to freedom and when the guard had told me whose the orders were I'd felt a moment of warmth in that bitter cold and had been astonished by it, because in this trade the smallest act of charity can have the force of revelation.
There'd been a postcard, a month ago, from East Grinstead, just signed 'Margaret'; she still kept in touch.
'About another ten minutes,' the driver said.
It was still dark.
'Are you armed?'
His eyes flicked to look at me in the mirror. 'No, sir. Those were my instructions. You're not expecting any kind of trouble?'
'No.' If he'd had anything on him I'd have told him to throw it away. The rendezvous is to be made, Shepley had said, according to the strict protocol of a diplomatic exchange of courtesies, and both sides understand that. Otherwise I'd never have agreed to go through the Wall in the wrong direction, not on your bloody life.
I still can't believe you managed it, she'd said in her postcard. It means so much to me. Because when she'd gone through that doorway she was certain I was up for a life term in Siberia and so was I. But on the way to the railhead at Vaznesenkoe one of the guards had wrenched his ankle in a hole under the snow and there'd been a chance and I'd taken it and the best they could do was a bullet in the shoulder and a bit of scalp ripped off before I'd got some trees behind me and found a refuge and lain on my back for three days under a snowdrift until they gave it up and left me for dead.
'My instructions,' the driver said, 'are to wait for you, within sight. Is that right?'
'Yes. How far is it now?'
'We're nearly there.'
'I could be quite a time. Did you bring anything to eat?'
'Got some sandwiches and a flask. They told me.'
I didn't know who he was. Certainly not embassy; he'd been in the field, it was written all over him. I'd been told to ask no questions on this trip, give no answers, except at the rendezvous itself.
A crack of light had come into the sky ahead of us, above a mass of dark trees that rose on one side of the road. The driver pulled onto a patch of rough ground and cut the engine.
'It's here?'
'Yes, sir.' He hit his seat-belt release and got a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and opened it out and showed it to me. 'Just up there, in the trees.'
I looked through the tinted window. He'd switched off his lights and I couldn't see a thing so I pressed the button and got the window down as far as I needed. Cold air came in against my eyes. I still couldn't see more than a dark mass of rising ground, heavily wooded, with no light, no signal from anywhere. It was very quiet.
'Is he coming down here?' He'll be at the rendezvous alone, Shepley had said.
'No, sir. You're to walk into the trees.' He folded the little map and put it away.
'We're seven minutes early.'
'Yes, sir.'
I suppose he meant yes, we were seven minutes early but that didn't have to stop me getting out and walking up there into the wood, better early than late, but then it wasn't his bloody neck. Shepley had spelt it all out, the strict protocol of a diplomatic exchange of courtesies, so forth, and they'd got a Red Army general under house arrest in London and the head of the Bureau — the head of the Bureau — wasn't likely to send one of his top executives straight into a trap, but the paperwork was over now and this was where the action was and I was sitting in a car at dawn on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and I was expected to get out and walk into those trees and not question anything, doubt anything, but listen, I don't like trees, standing as these were, deep as black water, with somewhere inside them a KGB officer waiting for me.
Alone?
What could I do if they were setting me up again, the Bureau, just as they'd set me up before, that time with a bomb, this time with something much more subtle? What if they were using me as bait in some kind of diabolical trap that Shepley had rigged, throwing me to the dogs in the sacred cause of expedience?
Nothing.
I could do nothing.
I'd want your guarantee, I'd told him, that you wouldn't cut me down, whatever the pressure on you. He'd looked at his shoes. That would be difficult, he'd said.
I watched the clock on the facia glowing, digital, marking off the last minutes of the night. Listen, suppose they'd set up this rendezvous to send me straight into a -
But this was nonsense because Shepley wouldn't have come out here personally just to kill off a bloody ferret; it was paranoia, that was all, so I got out of the car six minutes early and slammed the door and stumbled through the low scattered bushes and then climbed, moving into the trees with my hands dug into my coat pockets and my breath clouding on the cold air and my eyes on the trees, on the gaps in the trees, my feet tripping sometimes in the undergrowth because it was still too dark to see much, my mind confident on a conscious level that all was well, that Shepley was playing it straight this time, while in the subconscious my shadow creature came with me, shaking like a leaf.
Rough ground, difficult ground and the smell of damp earth after rain, the crack of dawn in the east casting yellow light among the trees and giving them substance, defining them, beginning to throw shadows as fine as grey gossamer and sending ghost figures moving through them, one of them halting and standing perfectly still.
'Good morning.'
Yasolev.
I stopped dead and he came towards me, a short man in a black overcoat and hat, his face pale, jaundiced with the creeping yellow light of the morning, his small eyes resting on mine with a steadiness that I believed was costing him an effort.
He was offering his hand. It was cold, dry, impersonal; he took it away too soon. He'd spoken in English; I spoke in Russian; from his thick accent I decided we were going to speak in his tongue, not mine, because I was fluent and I didn't want any misunderstandings.
'How are you, Yasolev?'
He inclined his head. It was rounded, balanced on his thick neck like a boulder; it looked heavy, like his body. But this was deceptive — I knew that his brain was capable of cool, incisive thought, accurate and assertive and uncluttered by emotion. He'd come up from the ranks and survived in an organisation that didn't suffer fools gladly.
'I am — ' in English, then a shrug as he slipped into the comfort of his own language '- I am well. And pleased you have come. I was not, as you can imagine, at all certain of it.'
He turned and led me to a clearing, and on our way I looked back down the hill and saw the two cars, the one that had brought me here and his own, half-hidden among the bushes and with two men standing by it. The light was brighter now, pouring below a ceiling of mist that hid the treetops, making it seem as if we'd wandered into a petrified forest.
'Not quite a banquet,' he said with a shrug, 'but — ' he left it. He'd draped a rough linen cloth across a tree stump and set out a couple of cardboard picnic plates and some canned caviar and what looked like a bowl of stuffed pirozhki. Two thick tumblers and a bottle of vodka: not a banquet, no, but a good enough effort, an acceptable gesture.
'Rather grand,' I said.
A deprecating tilt of his head. 'I chose this place for our meeting because I wanted you to be sure there weren't any little beetles around.'
He meant bugs; a joke, I supposed. There was a faint smell of tobacco smoke on the air, but I couldn't see any butt he might have thrown down. The trees were thick here; you couldn't see more than thirty yards.
'Civil of you,' I said.
'Of course — ' one of his little shrugs '- I could be wired. Do you wish to search me?'
This was major, a major point in our relationship, if there were going to be one, in the whole mission, if there were going to be a mission. I didn't answer right away because I wanted him to think I needed time. Then I said, 'I believe we're here on terms of mutual trust.'
He nodded gravely. 'Yes.'
'Then I don't want to search you.'
He opened his hands. He was busy with small gestures, Yasolev, and this one meant, I think, that I could indeed trust him, his hands being open, empty, with nothing to hide.
We ate some caviar on strips of thin dark bread, and he offered me some vodka but I said it was too early in the day; he drank some, almost half-filling a tumbler. The mist was slowly lightening above our heads, and somewhere a bird had started piping.
'And how is Margaret?' he asked.
The girl in the hut.
'She's well.'
He'd done his homework, got her name out of the files, and was reminding me that he'd been chivalrous. Trust again; he wanted my trust.
He'd have to work for it. 'How many men did you bring here?'
His eyes flicked away. 'Six. There are two waiting by the car, and four are dispersed at a distance.' But not at a great distance, because the tobacco smoke. 'And you?'
'One.' He knew perfectly well how many I'd brought: he would have monitored my passage through the checkpoint by radio-phone. 'Unarmed,' I said, to make my point.
He looked down. 'There are hunters in these woods. We don't want be disturbed.'
Then we both fell silent, each waiting for the other to take things further. I wasn't in any hurry, but it wasn't long before he half-filled tumbler again and took a swig and said, 'Let me tell you that we need someone from London who is willing to work with us for a time. My department said there was no one, but I told them that I believed there was such a man. We need someone still active in the field, a man knows how to take care of himself, because this will not be easy, you understand. It will not be — ' gesturing towards the remains of our meal '- a picnic.'
I didn't say anything. He offered me the last pirozhki but I shook my head.
'There is some tea.' He brought a huge thermos flask from behind the tree stump and filled two plastic cups, his hand shaking a little. For the first time it struck me that at this precise moment his nerves weren't any better than mine.
'No,' he said, 'it will not be a picnic.' The tea steamed thickly, giving off a sharp earthy scent. 'My assignment has been handed to me indirectly from Comrade General-Secretary Gorbachev, as you have been told. If I make any mistakes, I shall be cut down in the middle of my career. My career means a great deal to me. It means everything.'
He had small nicotine-brown eyes sunk under a deep brow, and at this moment I had the impression they were looking out at me from shelter. The risk, I could see now, wasn't going to be all mine.
'Gorbachev called you in?'
'Yes, but — '
I mean personally? You met with him about this?'
'No.' He looked quietly appalled. 'And I have to be very careful to keep his name out of it. After the most careful deliberations I decided to trust your Mr Shepley — ' he pronounced it as Shepili '- and to trust you. But if I am wrong, I am finished.'
I could see what he meant. They're not terribly charitable in Moscow towards people who screw up. I waited for a bit and then said, 'I can't speak for Shepley, but on my own account you can trust me as far as your first wrong move, and then God help you.'
He opened his hands again, bringing his head an inch lower in a perfectly clear gesture of submission. 'That is perhaps more than I could hope for. We shall be working under a great deal of stress, you see, a great deal of pressure, and it might sometimes be easy to suspect each other of duplicity. We must avoid that. Above all we must avoid that.' Turning away, turning back, 'My superiors have been understandably reticent on the matter of Comrade Gorbachev's personal involvement in this, but it is not precluded that an exchange has taken place between him and your Prime Minister Thatcher. Unofficially, of course. Has Mr Shepley mentioned this?'
'No.'
'It is my opinion. We are dealing with — ' his eyes held steadily on mine at last '- a matter of extremely high security, not only within the intelligence community but on the highest levels of government.'
Shot.
'Then you might have to find someone else.'
A slight chill along the spine. It had only been faint, but I suppose it was the suddenness, and the image of a man going down. 'Someone else?'
'To work with you instead of me.'
'Why is that?'
'It sounds too political. Too big.'
The sound of the gun came again and he took out a miniature walkie-talkie and pulled the antenna up and switched it on and spoke into it. 'Keep them away.'
Not man, rabbit, that was all. I took a sip of tea and burned my lips but the flavour was good, rich and raw and leaving a bitter after-taste.
'I would not have asked for you,' Yasolev said, 'if I didn't think it was something that suited your talents. Later I shall reassure you.'
'What's it to do with? Give me the gist.'
He hesitated and then pulled himself upright in his black coat, as if suddenly called upon to account for himself. 'There is a British mole buried in Berlin, on this side. He is a grave danger.'
'So what's the HUA doing?' East German Counterintelligence were extremely efficient, normally.
'They cannot reach him.'
'What about you people?'
'If we could reach him, we wouldn't have asked for your help.'
'Quite a mole.'
'He is more than that.'
'More than a mole?'
'Yes. From what we have learned, he is here in order to fulfil a specific assignment.'
'For the British government?'
'No. For whoever is paying him.' He took out a rumpled handkerchief and unfolded it.
'You don't know who's paying him?'
'We believe it is someone in the Kremlin.' He blew his nose, making much of it, giving his nerves some action.
'Jesus Christ,' I said, and started walking about. 'I'm surprised you didn't ask me if I was wired.'
He folded his handkerchief carefully, his eyes watering in the cold air. 'We made the approach. We have to trust you. And your Mr Shepili.'
I took a minute to think and then said, 'You've got the wrong word.'
He'd used 'krot'. 'You don't mean he's a mole, Yasolev; you mean he's an operator.' Rabotnik. 'So let me straighten it out a bit: you're talking about a British operator buried in East Berlin and preparing some kind of a strike, and he's being paid to do it, possibly by someone inside the Kremlin. Is that right?'
'Yes.'
'Who's his target, then?'
'Comrade General-Secretary Gorbachev.'
Oh my God.
British.
Of course. They couldn't risk using a Soviet.
'Are you sure?'
'Yes.' He was watching me steadily now, with the eyes of a man who had just thrown down four aces. 'So you see, we felt that your department might agree that it would be in the best interests of the British government for you to help us.'
I didn't show anything. In a moment I said, 'No wonder you're nervous, Yasolev.'
'No more than you.'
'I haven't accepted the mission.'
He shrugged, kicking up the fibrous earth with the toe of his creased black shoe. 'I hope you will.'
Hope on, then, comrade. Two heads on the block, Thatcher's and Gorbachev's, if that operator pulled off his assignment: Gorbachev's because he was the target and Thatcher's because if a British national hit the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet her government wouldn't last the night.
Not quite my cup of tea, but I suppose it was a compliment that Shepley had called me in and I'd been sent to this rendezvous to listen to Yasolev and check out the job, so I'd better do that.
'What makes you think I can do what the HUA and the KGB combined can't do?'
'This man is British, and you have resources in London that we can't tap. You might — ' a hand shrugging '- how shall I say? You might pick up his trail from there.'
'How much time have we got?'
'Think of it as a short fuse, already burning.'
'All right, so I could make a start over there and with a bit of luck pick up his trail and then move into Berlin for the kill, but what about you, Yasolev? Where would you be?'
'In close support.'
'You mean you'd be running me?'
'We would be supporting you, as a free agent under our protection.'
'We? The whole of the KGB?'
'No.' He took a step closer. 'Just my immediate cell, inside the department.'
'Your immediate cell?'
Quietly he said, 'You must understand that inside the Kremlin there are factions opposed to the Comrade General-Secretary's policy of perestroika. That is why he dismissed Yeltsin, the head of the Party, a week ago. Inside the KGB there are certain factions similarly opposed. ' Drily, 'Internecine warfare along the corridors of power is not the exclusive prerogative of democratic governments.'
'Jesus Christ, Yasolev, I wonder you can ever sleep at night. Is there any more tea in that thing?'
He got the thermos flask and poured me some. My feet were froze and the chill was creeping all the way up my spine because the more I heard about this thing the more it looked like a massive iceberg somewhere out there on the night-black sea, drifting towards us.
'I will give you some time to think,' Yasolev said. 'Excuse me.'
He went across to pee against a tree while I stood there doing a lot of very fast thinking, holding the plastic cup of tea and taking small sips of it, burning my mouth, taking in its raw black essences with certain relish now because there was absolutely no question of letting myself get sucked into this kind of operation — it was strictly a five-star spectacular and I wasn't qualified to take it on and if Shepley wanted that operator blown out of his basement he'd have to come over here and do it himself.
'It's not on,' I told Yasolev when he came back. 'But I've left some tea for you.'
He stood very still with his small brown eyes watching me from the shadows of his brow as if he'd suddenly found me holding a gun on him.
'Tea?'
'There's some left. But I can't take this thing on. It's not my style.'
'Style?'
It was only then that I knew he'd thought I was a certainty; that Shepley had told him I wouldn't refuse. Or maybe he was just thinking like a KGB man and believed I had to obey orders, as he did.
'Look,' I told him, 'it's far too political, far too important. There's too much in the running: if you don't manage to put the skids under this operator, you're going to lose your General-Secretary and we’re going to lose Thatcher and let those snivelling socialists back in to screw up the economy again. Listen, do you mean they're planning an actual kill? Are we talking about attempted assassination?'
In a moment: 'We don't know.'
'All right, even if this operation is aimed simply at getting Gorbachev out of office, then you've not only lost him as a leader but in my opinion we've all lost the biggest chance of genuine world peace we've had for the last fifty years, if the Americans can find a president like Nixon who can really get down to brass tacks at a summit meeting. So this is something I'm not even qualified to touch. Sorry.'
I thought he'd never answer.
'It frightens you.'
'How did you guess?'
'Your Mr Shepili believes you are the best agent for this.'
'He's not infallible.'
'You'd say that, to his face?'
KGB thinking, yes.
'Of course. But it's not only the size of this thing, Yasolev. You want me to work with your people in close support. I couldn't do that.'
'Why not?'
'It'd hamper my movements. It'd mean tagging, and not always in good light. I wouldn't necessarily know who the tags were — yours or the opposition's. That's dangerous, could be fatal.'
I finished my tea and put the cup down onto the rough linen cloth and looked at my watch.
'But of course we would have to put tags on you — ' suddenly animated, his thick square hands coming out of his coat pockets and chopping at the air '- how else could we possibly work? We — '
'I work alone, unless I call people in. You're — '
'Mr Shepili would allow that?'
'Of course. He — '
'But you would be working with us, the KGB.'
'I know that.'
'Perhaps — ' on a sudden thought '- it's this that frightens you?'
'Perhaps.'
'Without reason.' Hands chopping the air again.
'Possibly.'
'Then I do not understand you.'
'And that's the problem,' I said. 'We can't even agree on basic principles, so what d'you think would happen if we tried to get through an entire mission together? Christ, it'd be like a dog fight.'
He didn't leave it at that; I didn't expect him to. We started walking, to keep our feet warm, in and out of the trees and down the slope and up again while Yasolev made his pitch and I countered when I had to, not wanting to leave him with nothing in his hands, because they'd made the approach, the KGB, or his department of the KGB, and we didn't have any reason to turn them down without grace, without respect.
The normal trappings of a mission on foreign soil weren't applicable: there'd be no need for courier lines or contacts or drops or a safe-house because Yasolev's network would contain all those things; I'd be noted by the East German police and secret services as an agent to be left alone but given assistance if I asked for it, and that would be totally acceptable; but it would mean working the mission under the concerted scrutiny of those same organisations, a fly in a spotlight, and that was enough to chill the nerves of any agent even before the action got under way.
If I took this thing on I'd be one small alien cog enmeshed in the machinery of the most powerful and most ruthless intelligence organisation in the world, and it could reverse its direction at any given stage of the mission and grind me into pulp if it suited its purposes. Let's face it: that shot we'd heard earlier, deep in the trees, had triggered the image of a man going down because the last time I'd been fired on it had been by this man's agents, less than a year ago.
It was two hours before he saw I meant it, and then he walked off along the top of the slope to isolate himself and do some thinking, and when he came back his face was expressionless and he just said: 'Very well.'
Not quite that, exactly — the words he'd used were Horocho… Tak e buit. With a more fatalistic tone: So be it.
'Sorry,' I said. 'It could've been a whole lot of fun.'
I screwed the top back on the thermos flask and he pulled out his radio and told them he was escorting me to the checkpoint and we left the remains of our little picnic on the tree-stump and went down the slope to the road, and in the car I said, 'But listen, Yasolev, you'll have to find someone to do this for you. No one in their senses wants anything to happen to your man Gorbachev. It's just that I can't work like that, you understand?'
He ignored that, and sank into a brooding silence all the way to the checkpoint. His car had followed us up and he got out of mine and told the border guards the score and then leaned in to look at me with his eyes sunk deep under his brows and his hands still in his coat pockets and said with a tight mouth: 'You undervalue your talent, you know, and that is very disappointing for us. For all of us.'
He slammed the door shut and stood away and we got rolling and when we were back in the West I leaned forward.
'British Embassy, on Unter den Linden.'
By the time we got there I was starting to sweat and I showed my identity in the hall and took the stairs two at a time and went into the signals room without knocking and asked the man at the desk to put me on the scrambler to London through the Government Communications HQ in Cheltenham. Time hadn't meant anything when I'd been talking to Yasolev in the woods but I was in a hurry now because I'd had a chance to do some thinking on the drive to the checkpoint and the whole thing had come spinning round full-circle in my mind and I knew what I had to do.
'Anyone specific, sir?'
'What? No, main signals board. No, cancel that. Ask for Bureau One. Are you already on the scrambler?'
'Yes. I'm trying them now.'
He pressed three more keys and I stood waiting with a cold skin and the heart-rate elevated: I could feel it under the rib cage. The thing was, the whole thing was that I'd been looking at this project as if it were just another mission and it wasn't, it was not, and I suppose it had taken a bit of time to sink in. Either that or the subconscious had already made up its mind that we should keep well clear, and it had steered my conscious decision-making. Put it in English: I'd been shit-scared. All right, it was indeed the size of the thing that had rocked me back and it was certainly the idea of working with the KGB that had sent the nerves running for cover but I'd overlooked the obvious, the absolute.
I didn't have any choice.
'Main board, sir.'
'Can't you get Bureau One?'
'I'll ask them. Just telling you we've got through.'
Photos all over the wall of hang-gliders, I suppose that was his thing, picture of Diana, sign of the times, she was nudging the crown for wall-space in all the government offices I'd been in lately, you couldn't wonder. For Christ's sake hurry.
'You're on, sir. Bureau One.' I took the phone from him
'Ash.'
'Oh, yes.'
His voice was just as quiet at the console.
'I've just left him. I told him I couldn't take it on, but I've changed my mind.'
'Why?'
'Because I want this one. I want it badly.'
'Anyone would.'
'Yes.'
Everything closing in.
'How long ago did you leave him?'
'Say fifteen minutes.'
'Did he have a phone in his car?'
'I don't know. He came as far as Charlie in mine.'
I heard him turn away to speak to someone else, something about fully urgent. He'd have to contact Yasolev now, see if we still had a chance. The KGB wouldn't necessarily want to work with someone who'd shown cold feet. I'd left Yasolev in a rage.
Everything closing in, the walls crowding me. I still didn't know whether the Bureau was setting me up, using me for what I was worth, selling me the pitch that even a top shadow executive could go into a mission this big and bring it home. And I didn't know whether the KGB was trying to use me too, Yasolev for the furtherance of his own career or the whole of his organisation for their own cryptic purposes. All I knew was that the temptation for me to go into this, the challenge, was enough to bring me in here and have me lay my neck on the block in the name of blind ambition.
But the blood was running cold.
'What reason,' Shepley came back, 'did you give him?'
'Too big, too political. And having to work by their rules.'
''That's understandable.'
'He didn't think so. I left him furious.'
'That's understandable too. But I need this from you. Are you prepared to undertake the mission on their terms, if we can't talk them down?'
Now is the chance, my friend, the last chance, if you want to say no and save yourself.
'Yes. On whatever terms.'
Blood running cold.
'Very well. I want you here on the first plane. There isn't too much time.'
I gave the phone back to the man and stood doing nothing for a moment, letting the psyche centre if it could, while at the brink of consciousness I caught glimpses of the pretty coloured hang-gliders and the man watching me and then another face, Yasolev's, and the faceless, nameless people in London who were prodding the new mission into life on their computers, getting the facts in order, November 3, 09:54 hours, signal from the Embassy, Berlin: the executive accepts the mission.
Running cold.