Northlight

I got around faster than the BMW by using the curbstone as a cushion for the rear wheel, swinging the whole thing round and getting enough acceleration to keep Brekhov in sight with the BMW behind me in the mirror, but it was no go because there was a truck turning the corner and Brekhov had to swerve and then the whole thing was over, finis.

'Have you got the product?'

'Yes.'

There was a pause on the line.

'Why are you making contact?'

To tell you I've got it, that's all.'

'Fair enough.'

They've got no bloody imagination.

'There was a bit of trouble,' I said.

'Ah. What happened?'

Stink of burned clothes in the close confines of the phone-box.

'They got onto him, somewhere along the line.'

'In Germany?'

'No. On the other side.'

'Tell me what happened, then.' This was Kinsley and he'd started to humour me, because in the ordinary way I wouldn't need to make contact at this stage: I'd just get the product back to London the quickest way.

'Look,' I said, 'I'll be bringing the thing over in a matter of hours. It's just a question of what plane I can get.' I listened to the police sirens coming in from all over the place. 'I didn't want you to pick up a freak signal from their network about our getting unstuck, that's all.'

'I understand.'

'They got onto him on the other side but too late to stop him crossing the frontier. They just signalled their people in Berlin to take care of things. We walked into a trap and had to drive out of it. I'm clear now.'

'Yes, I see.'

Then why don't you bloody well ask me?

I edged the door of the phone-box open a fraction to let some of the stink out. The sirens were louder suddenly. I could still see the flamelight against a white building, with the rain tinged red.

'What about Brekhov?' Kinsley asked.

'He's dead.'

Every muscle in my body slackened like a broken spring and I was leaning against the side, of the box. The first need of grief is to talk about it and if you don't think we ever have time to grieve for strangers in this trade it's just that you don't understand that there aren't any strangers, really, out there on the brink.

'You're sure?'

'What?'

'You're sure he's dead?'

'Jesus Christ, d'you think I'd have left him there?'

I dropped the phone back on the hook and slumped harder against the glass panels of the box and squeezed my eyes shut arid thought it wasn't going to be any good if I let a thing like this upset me when I ought to be moving on. Two hours into the mission and you're into a KGB trap and out of it again with a dead courier, big deal, a lot of jobs go like that, you should be used to it by now.

Maybe it was because I'd had to watch him go, without being able to do anything about it. He'd tried twice to correct his line when he'd swerved to avoid the truck but the roadway was too wet and he was half aquaplaning with the front end and he couldn't bring his speed down because he was trying to get the rear wheels to drive him straight. The headlights in my mirror seemed as if they were being flashed on and off and I couldn't understand why the driver of the BMW was doing that until I realized he'd made his skid-U-turn too fast and was swinging from side to side, out of control.

The truck loomed through the rain-haze and slammed past me as I saw the Mercedes reach the end of its run, hitting the corner of a red brick wall and swinging hard round and smashing against the side of the building with all four wheels off the ground and the suspension whipping as the rear tank split and caught a spark and the whole place was suddenly a sheet of flame.

I got the wheel hard over and slammed sideways into some iron railings and ricocheted with the seat-belt cutting diagonally across my ribs; then sound and movement stopped except for the hiss of the rain and I was running for the Mercedes, Most of the fuel had been hurled rearwards but there were flames all round the car and I dragged the door open to get Brekhov out before the upholstery caught, but he was twisted sideways against the seat squab with his head at the wrong angle and I just ripped at his shirt and felt for the sticking-plaster and found it and tugged at it but couldn't break it because there were several layers round his body, so I broke a sliver of glass from the smashed driving window and used it for cutting until the small thin rectangular pack was free; then I got clear with the flames catching my clothes and the heat blinding me until I got out of range, rolling over and over in the puddles and beating at my legs till the flames were out and I started running.

There were some shots: the BMW had finished up on its side but one of the men was climbing out and using his gun. The police siren was very loud now and I broke through a hedge and kept to the cover of a row of trees until I could settle into a steady run. The shooting had stopped but I couldn't go back to the SSL: he'd be waiting for me to do that. I gave it a couple of miles before I slowed and started looking for a phone-box.

Slumped inside it, I looked down at the puddle that had formed from my soaked clothes, watching a dead match that was floating on it, until my senses got back into focus and I picked up the phone again and got the embassy.

'I was cut off from London.'

When Kinsley came on the linked radio line I just told him I'd be getting onto the first available plane.

'Do you need help of any kind?'

'No.'

A huge fire engine was thundering past as I left the phone-box, and I looked back once at the light of the flames, faint now in the distance, while in my mind the echoes of steadily running footsteps died away.

7 KILL

'Come in.'

He stood aside for me.

There were six men in the room and none of them looked at me. This was Room 382 at No. 24 South Eaton Place, the office of the Chief of Political Liaison Section, the cover tide for the head of the CIA station in London.

Kinsley didn't introduce me. It was the same situation as the Downing Street thing and I assumed it was the quickest way of getting strict-hush information to me: briefing would have taken much longer. I was still wearing the cheap denim slacks and polo sweater I'd bought in Berlin: my own clothes had been soaked and the trouser legs charred by the fire and I wouldn't have got near a plane before the KGB surveillance team there put two and two together. The report on the Brekhov incident would have reached their local network in a matter of minutes.

'Have a chair,' Kinsley said.

Croder was here, glancing over me with a faint light of approval in his eyes. I don't suppose he was terribly pleased that I'd let the opposition spring a trap and get the courier killed but the main thing appeared to be that the product was here in this room, presumably intact.

The US ambassador was here, brooding massively near the desk: I'd seen him at Downing Street. I didn't know who the others were but obviously one of them was the head of the CIA over here and the two odd-looking types must be the technicians looking after the tape-deck and the sound spectrograph on the desk. They were fiddling with it while Croder talked quietly to the CIA chief and Ambassador Morrison stared at his large veined hands. I remembered he'd had a nephew on board the submarine.

'Sorry about Brekhov,' Kinsley murmured. 'Are you okay now?'

'Everything's relative.' They think you only bring back physical scars.

He watched me with his unsurprisable eyes. 'We may be sending you out again.'