Northlight

'But it doesn't sound-' she waved her fork in the air — 'subversive. Wouldn't the Russian people agree with the main content? Peace?'

If he came back to the hotel I'd leave it at that. But if he went to telephone someone and report losing me, then I'd at least know they had a net to throw over me.

'Certainly the Russian people would agree with it. But they can't tell their government to lay down their arms, any more than the Americans can.'

'I suppose I'm just a crummy idealist.'

'Don't lose it. It's our only hope.'

I felt her eyes on me for a while. 'What else do you do, Clive, apart from journalism?'

'Eat and sleep.'

'You don't look like a journalist. You look like an actor. You know, the face crumpled in a good cause, the eyes experienced. You're quite attractive to women, did you know that?'

'It takes all sorts.'

'And there's this look of-' she waved her fork again, and dropped a blob of beef onto the cloth. 'Shit.' She speared it impatiently. 'A look of privacy. Guardedness. You look like a man with past tragedies under the skin, and scars that won't ever quite heal.'

'That really is the most appalling journalism.'

'And you're a creep.'

I would need to leave here in fifteen minutes, to do what I wanted to do and beat the curfew. Most of all I wanted to come back to the hotel before he did and see if he were worried enough about losing me to stay out after nine o'clock to make his report. And then I wanted to see how the KGB men in the lobby handled him when he came in late. That would tell me a lot. This was what Fane had meant when he'd told me to find out about Rinker: it was routine but informative.

'Are you divorced?'

'That's right.'

'For whoring around?'

'What else is there?'

She laughed suddenly, with that rather private, confiding laugh she had, and I found myself thinking about her for a moment instead of about Rinker, but only for a moment because this wasn't the time for any diversions. Once I was out there in the street I could find myself in a red sector: it was dark now, with snow clouds lying across the city, and the moment I manoeuvred him into losing track of me he could call others in and bring the net down, and it would be too late to do anything. They'd done that to me in Berlin and Seoul and Hong Kong and I'd got out from under, but it had been close. Among the back alleys of this trade I'd used up my nine lives long ago, and every new risk was a step closer to death.

She was watching me with her green eyes narrowed.

'Did I blow it, Clive?'

'In what way?'

I had five minutes.

'Trying to get under your skin.'

'As long as it amuses you.'

'How about a drink, when we've finished here?'

'I've got to work for half an hour. Say nine-thirty?'

'Okay.'

I saw her into die bar before I got my coat from the cloakroom attendant and shrugged into it and went across to the main entrance. If anything went wrong, how would she put it? I know I was fired but I've got something that could develop into a story. One of the journalists here was found dead in the snow last night, and they believe he was murdered. If you'll hire me back on the payroll again you can have the follow-up.

Epitaphs vary: some are shorter than others.

When I went out through the main doors it was exactly 8:45.1 saw a plain van with steel grilles at the windows parked at an angle against the snow bank that had been piled up by the ploughs earlier in the day, and when I heard movement behind me I didn't look round until I reached the first corner, letting my foot slip into a snow rut and falling down so dial I could look behind me as I got onto my feet again, but I needn't have bothered to make it look natural because they were too busy outside the hotel, and I walked back slowly, getting a rough idea of what was happening.

It looked as though Rinker had followed me down the steps at about the same time as I'd reached the corner. His coat was still only half on because the two KGB men from the lobby had moved in on him and two more had come across from the van to help. It was a typical street snatch: they hadn't wanted to do it inside the hotel. It looked as if Rinker was trying to fight them off, which wasn't very bright for a professional spook, but when I got closer I saw what he was really doing, and they weren't in time to stop him. One of them tried to catch him as he fell, but he went down like a dead weight with his arms flung out across the snow and his skin already turning blue from the cyanide as he stared up at me and saw no one.

12 INCENSE

'Were you seen coming in here?'

'Not by any professionals.' We kneeled together, our heads bowed.

'He's made contact,' Fane said.

My nerves tautened, then rebounded and went slack.

'We haven't got much time.' His hand dug into his coat.

I'd thought it would never happen, but now it was here with us, a cold fact, and the mission was suddenly swinging into a new phase, the most difficult, the most dangerous. We had access to the objective and now it was possible, achievable, after that first long run without real direction, four deaths in five days as we'd circled blindly in the dark with nothing to do but wait. Now the waiting was over. The sleeper had wakened.

I would remember the Church of Saint Peter for a long time, and the way we had kneeled together on the cold marble while the others chanted around us, mostly women — white hair and black shawls and worn mottled furs, boots caked with snow — and one old man alone but not far from us, weeping as he prayed, perhaps for peace through the days whose number was growing small for him now in the chill of these deathly winters.

I would remember the scent of wood smoke and incense, and the prismatic light flowing from the coloured glass windows above the dais where the priest stood, a white-bearded man of immense height, a brass ikon jangling on a chain from his neck as he moved in incantation. I would only know later why I would remember this time and this place so well, as a haven for the spirit that I would soon want desperately, and in vain, to return to.

'Take this,' Fane said. 'It's your train coupon.'

I put it away. 'Where to?'

'He's in Kandalaksha, two hundred and twenty kilometres south of Murmansk, on the shore of the White Sea.'

'What the hell is he doing there?'

'He was trying to reach Leningrad and catch the Red Arrow to Moscow.'

'Why Moscow?'

'I think he just panicked and wanted to run.'

Karasov had surfaced and we had access to the objective and on the board in London where the red lamp had been glowing since I'd accepted the mission there were hieroglyphs going up: Northlight was now proceeding as planned, but I' felt sudden anger because panic's got no place in deep operations and Karasov had made things more difficult for us all 'What condition is he in?'

'He sounded frightened, on the phone. Badly frightened. You'll have to handle him with care.' He shifted on his knees. 'Tell me about Rinker. Are you absolutely certain it was a capsule?' I'd reported to Fane first thing this morning from the post office, but we'd been cut off; the snow was causing havoc to the telephone lines.

'Yes. I was there when it happened.' I'd seen capsules used before, when Hideo Matsuda thought he was blown when he came through London airport and saw me waiting for him, and when Clifton had lost his nerve in the run out from Beirut. In the Caff they're called blue babies but it's not very funny..

'So he was making sure the KGB didn't interrogate him,' Fane said. 'He was following instructions.'