Northlight

'I've lasted a long time.'

The relationship between the shadow executive in the field and his local control is complicated. Fane was here to look after me, to do all the chores of booking me in at the hotel and seeing that I was comfortable and sniffing out the human environment — the other hotel guests, not the KGB: they were everywhere — and keeping me hi touch with what London wanted me to know at this phase, communicating through the embassy. In this sense he was a kind of aide-de-camp and I could tell him if I didn't like the fact that my room exposed me too much or that I wanted a European car, not a Moscwicz, that sort of thing.

On the other hand he was primarily concerned with my safety and with the onward movement of the mission, and if London had sudden and critical orders for me they'd go through Fane. In this sense he was my superior, and could move me around the board like a knight, confronting me with the opposition and telling me which squares I'd need to cross. That's how things are ideally, at the outset of a mission. Later things can change, and you can lose touch with your local control or get cut off from communication or find yourself blown in a blinding light without a chance in hell of ever seeing him again or getting his help. It doesn't happen often; it's happened only three times to me and twice I went to ground and holed up solo while my local control finally signalled London that I was probably dead.

'By all means,' Fane said, 'tell me how you like to work. I've had a brief picture from Control, of course, but I'd like it from the horse's mouth.'

'No backups, shields or low-echelon contacts.'

'Strictly solo.'

'That's right.'

A jet was sloping down the sky beyond the gold domes, lowering into Sheremetyevo, its strobes pricking the winter dark.

'Of course,' Fane said, 'I can't guarantee anything like that.'

'I know.'

'That doesn't sound too difficult, then. You're not making demands I necessarily have to meet.'

I didn't say anything. He was being too punctilious. If there's one thing that can bog a mission down it's a bureaucrat working as local control.

'Tell me some more,' I said, 'about Karasov.'

He thought for a moment, then decided I wasn't going to let him set out the ground rules. This isn't a game: it's a trade. 'All right.' We began walking across the bridge, and I found it was impossible to tell whether he'd moved first or I had. 'As I said, he's probably frightened. Although he's been up there in Murmansk for over five years, it's been tricky for him because he's sent so much excellent stuff across. He took a lot of risks. I'd say his nerve isn't what it was any more. You know how-' he broke off with a slight shrug, which was civil of him, because the nerves of a shadow executive are just as vulnerable. Most of us go out with what they put down as mission fatigue, which can mean anything from hitting the bottle to visions of angels pissing in our beer. 'I would also say that Karasov is acutely aware of the stakes. The summit conference has been in jeopardy ever since that sub went down, and there are people who think that world peace is likewise in jeopardy, if we can't get round a table with die Russians.' He shrugged again. 'Even if Karasov hadn't decided to get out and go to ground, we'd have had to bring him in before we could tell the Soviets we've got the tape. The moment they know that, they'll go through their sonar station at Murmansk with killer dogs. I'm not quite sure he wasn't right to get out straight away before the trouble started.'

I watched the strobes of the jet touch the skyline of the Palace of Congress and vanish. The chill wind blew through the railing along the bridge, moving the coat of the man standing beyond the next lamp.

'Has Karasov made any kind of rdv with us?' I asked Fane.

'Not yet.'

'When did he last signal?'

'Two days ago.'

'Saying?'

'That he'd gone to ground and would surface later.'

I turned my back to the wind. He'd been there ever since we'd come onto the bridge: the man whose coat was moving. I wondered where the other one was: they normally go in pairs.

'Is there anything,' I asked Fane, 'that seems a bit odd to you, about him getting out so fast, and on his own initiative?'

'I'd say he panicked. That's not odd, in the circumstances.'

'That's out of character.'

'With Karasov?' He turned to me. 'When did you-'

'No. With a sleeper."

We stopped walking, and Fane stood watching me. 'What's on your mind?'

'I don't like the way we're having to wait for him to contact us. We should have given him very precise instructions on what to do when he got out, where to go and wait for us, who his contact would be, the whole thing. He should have let us look after him.'

'You want things done by the book.' Without looking away from my face he said, 'What's that chap doing all on his own?'

'Maybe they're short of staff.'

'Your papers are perfect. I suppose you know that.'

'I bloody well hope so.' The wind cut our faces. 'Is there any chance that Karasov has reached Moscow?" 'I doubt that.'

'You think he's still somewhere around Murmansk?'

'Yes. Sleepers don't normally run.'

'When people panic they'll do anything. When are you going to send me up there?" 'That's what we're waiting for. They're trying to tell us all the hotels are full.' He lit another cigarette.

'Why?' This was local briefing.

'The background is that while the Soviets are stonewalling and denying everything and the US is trying to make up its mind whether or not to accuse them outright and on presidential level, the longer they can keep the international press out of Murmansk the better. But they'll have to allow a quota, or it'll look too obvious.'

'How are you going to make sure I'm on the quota?'

'I can't. London can't. The minister here can simply say okay, get them in a crowd at a gate and let the first ten through. And we shan't know which gate.' He sounded slightly impatient: I suppose he didn't like having to admit he couldn't just wave a wand and bring the whole of the Kremlin down to show what a good little local control he was.

It occurred to me that I ought to make an effort and stop disliking him. It could be dangerous: at any next hour my life could suddenly be in his hands. But it went on nagging me, about Ferris. I didn't believe they wouldn't have called him in from Hong Kong to local-control me if they'd wanted to, and I didn't believe he wouldn't have agreed to do it, unless there was something going on that I didn't know about.

Had they asked him, and had he refused?

We're never told more than they want us to know. The less we know, the safer we are if we're caught and put under a bright light and worked over.

I thought of contacting Ferris and asking him. But how long would it take to make a phone call from Moscow to Hong Kong?

This was just nerves, the normal paranoia you've got to deal with in the first few hours in the field. I'd slept most of the day since I'd flown in; those had been my orders and I didn't complain. Lack of sleep doesn't help you at this stage; it's when the nerves need an awful lot of tender loving care.

'What happens if you can't get me on the quota?' I asked Fane.

'It'd depend on London, of course.'

'I'd have to go clandestine.'

We'd been walking again to keep the circulation going, in the other direction from the KGB man, and now Fane stopped again and looked at me with a long-suffering blink. 'Quite possibly, yes. But I don't want you to go clandestine without instructions. Please understand that.'

'I can't guarantee it.' One of his own phrases.

He humped his shoulders. 'They were perfectly right. You're difficult.'