Northlight

'Yes. A real pro.'

He'd know what I meant. Rinker hadn't been operating alone: he was with a cell and it was highly disciplined. Only I the really professional networks can demand of an agent that he gives his life rather than information.

'Have you any clues?' Fane's tone below the chanting of the faithful was very quiet, very controlled, and I knew by now that this was characteristic and consistent with the pressure that had come down on him. We'd assumed that our only opposition to getting Karasov across the frontier would be the KGB, and that was bad enough; but we knew now that some other network was putting its agents into the field. Rinker would be replaced — would already have been replaced.

That was why Fane had asked me if anyone had seen me come in here. The KGB wasn't alert to us. Some other organization was.

'No,' I told him. 'No clues at all.' That was his job, not mine: it was for local control to find out if the field had been breached. 'All I know is that he was Swiss-French with an address in Geneva, but that doesn't mean much: he could be working for any one of a dozen masters and on any level, from secret service to terrorist group."

The priest began leading a canticle, and we all stood up.

'He wasn't CIA,' Fane said. 'They're very keen to get our reports but they wouldn't put surveillance on you: that's been agreed in London.'

I took a prayer-book from the ledge and opened it. 'I want instructions. If you think they've sent in a replacement it might not be possible to get on that train.'

He gave one of his pauses. 'You've got to reach Karasov and get him out. That's paramount. So if anyone gets in your way…'

'You'll have to spell it for me, Fane.'

London is very touchy about taking life, unless the executive's own is endangered.

'If anyone other than the KGB gets in your way, you must get him out of it by whatever means are available, including terminal.'

'Understood.'

He began briefing me, while the singing filled the cavernous stonework of the church, his voice a monotonous undertone as if he were reciting a psalm of his own faith. 'Your train leaves at eight tomorrow morning. It's the earliest available but you'll be quicker than going by road. Don't check out of the hoteclass="underline" the lobby is under KGB surveillance, as you know. I'll try to get a courier to pick up your things before the staff reports your absence. Have you got a spare key to the room?'

I gave it him.

'I'll try to get someone to take your car down to Kandalaksha if the roads are still open, so that you'll have transport if you need it. I can't guarantee that: he might not get through. Your rendezvous is at noon tomorrow in the main post office. It isn't with Karasov: he's sending a contact.'

'Why?'

'I told you. He's badly frightened. The contact will be wearing smoked glasses with the left lens cracked, and using a white stick. You'll ask him where you can find imported cigarettes, and he'll tell you that those things, are only fit for women. He'll take you to Karasov.' His breath clouded against the prayer-book. 'Karasov told me he changed his identity when he left his unit at Severomorsk, and got someone to do him some new papers. They might be sloppy: you'd better check them over. I'm doing everything I can to get some good ones for him in Moscow, but it'll take time and we'll need a courier to fly them in by hand. Then I've got to send them from here to Kandalaksha. Your own clandestine papers are absolutely foolproof for the whole of the peninsular region, but if Karasov's look unreliable, hold him underground until I can get the new ones to you. Questions?'

'I'll need a bag.'

'Leave the car unlocked tonight outside the hotel. The bag will be put into a rear seat-well, packed for five days.' This time he paused so long that I half-turned to look at him. 'I hope you won't need that amount of time,' he said. 'Control wants the objective over the frontier just as soon as you can get him there.'

His nerves had begun showing, and I noted it. It might not have happened to him before. It had happened to me only twice: at the moment we had access to the objective an unknown network had sent its agents into the field to surveille my travel patterns, and this time the reason was the same. The Rinker cell was hunting for Karasov and trying to use me as a tracker dog. It wasn't going to make things any easier: Karasov himself had lost his nerve and would need dragging like a dead weight to the frontier.

'Questions?' asked Fane again.

'Put a capsule in the bag, will you?'

His eyes moved slightly towards me. 'Didn't you draw one in London?'

'Yes.' I left it at that.

In a moment he said: 'Very well. It'll be inside the head of the electric shaver.'

When the service was over he moved away from me, and I gave him time, hanging back until half the people had shuffled to the massive doors; then I began moving, going out of the candlelight into a night so black that the sky was like a shroud thrown across the city.

She had rings of dark pigment around her nipples, and a way of moving like a swimmer, long-legged and flowing.

'Then I lost my folks, when I was quite young. They were in a car and there was a drunk. By the time I could sleep the whole night through and not wake up crying I was into the cults from coast to coast. A lot of the kids I got to know had lost their parents, except that they were still alive, you know? Then there was this bad cocaine trip and I woke up in a clinic tied to the bed with restraints and everything — but somehow they pulled me out of it. Not too many can survive that amount of coke.'

She was huddled against me like a child, no longer a lover, and in the glow from a street light I saw a tear glistening below her dark lashes.

'And then — oh God, this is going to sound so corny — after two pointless marriages I realized I wanted to spend my life with something much more than a man. I wanted to marry a cause. It sounds more like California than Boston, Massachusetts, doesn't it? But that was the way it was.' She lifted herself onto one elbow so that she could look down at me. 'I kind of found myself standing back and seeing the whole human race caught up in lunacy — war and the fear of war and the threat of war, hot wars, cold wars, wars to end wars, you name it, it comes in all flavours. I saw high school kids on TV saying they didn't feel there was any future any more because they weren't quite sure they could go on waking up and not see a mushroom cloud through the window one day. And finally I discovered — out of anger, I guess — a sense of direction, a conviction there was something I had to do. And I've been doing it ever since, Clive, in my own way, hurling myself at the barricades while everyone else is busy making a detour and maybe getting home sooner. But the barricades are still there, and until I can bring them down, I don't believe-'

'What are they, your barricades?'

'Lies. I don't mean the ones we all tell ourselves and other people, I mean the big ones, the world-class international lies dial talk peace and mean war. Like the ones we were all told about the attempted assassination of the Pope, and like the ones we were told about the Korean airliner. Like the ones we're being told right now about the sinking of the Cetacea.'

'Which ones are they?'

'There's no direct lie, except that the Soviets say they didn't have anything to do with it. There's a cover-up going on, and dial's lying by default. Do you really think we, the people, ever really get to know what goes on behind the scenes? Are we meant to believe there's no quiet diplomacy going on right now between the White House and the Kremlin? Do you believe-' she broke off and gazed at me for a moment and then let her breath out in a quick soft laugh. 'Jesus, Clive, I guess this isn't your night. After a glorious fuck like that you find you're in bed with a poor man's Joan of Arc.' She lowered her body over mine, and I felt the tears dropping one by one on my bare shoulder, while the soft laughter went on. 'You know when people say they don't know whether to laugh or cry?'