Twenty. Twenty-one.
The skeleton with the frosted beard was still staring at me in the yellow light, one of his knees knocking rhythmically against the wall, his thin shadow behind him, waiting to follow him to the grave. He seemed to be listening, but might not be, or if he was, there might not be anything left inside his bone-white head to understand.
Did he know, even, what a telephone was?
Twenty-five. Twenty-six.
Did he know there was a shadow behind me too, coming closer one step at a time, one step closer as the telephone went on ringing?
Fane had shut down.
The trickle began at the top of my spine, the familiar visitation of terror that comes when we know it's certain that we are done for. I'd known that much already when I'd asked for a telephone, and I'd managed to contain the idea by concentrating on the practical considerations of who could have blown the rendezvous and how I would get home. But this measured, insistent ringing on the line brought confirmation. No one was there. The ringing was going on in an empty room, echoing against the blank glass of a window, its vibrations disturbing the motes of dust that had begun settling since the door had closed and the footsteps had died away.
'There is no answer,' the operator said, and the line went dead.
The executive in the field had been abandoned.
The man's knee knocked against the wall like a nail going into a coffin. Can't you go back to bed for Christ's sake? Is that all you can find to do?
Steady.
'Have you finished, lovey?'
I looked at her. I'd seen her somewhere before.
'What?'
'You'll get caught if we're not careful.'
The nurse, yes. Her big eyes frightened.
'I will?'
That would be terrible, to be told off by some fat cow for breaking the rules here.
I put the receiver back on its hook. Fane had already got the news, that was all. He thought I was dead, so he'd shut everything down.
Executive deceased.
Not an unreasonable assumption, actually, and not a bad guess at the future if I had to get home alone.
'You feeling all right, lovey?' She wiped my forehead with her dirty towel.
This was at ten in the morning.
I tried three times to reach the British embassy in Moscow during the day, finally getting a connection and speaking to one of the DI6 cypher clerks in Russian and telling him that my friend in Murmansk wasn't answering his phone and that I was worried about him because he hadn't been well lately.
The clerk wasn't in too much of a hurry to get the point: the Bureau doesn't post staff in any of the embassies because our network isn't meant to exist, so we're given courtesy access to DI6 stations abroad with certain signalling facilities and they do this simply because the prime minister tells them to do it, and it makes them sulky.
'Your friend?'
'This is Boris Antonov speaking.' It was the standard name for any accredited Bureau agent operating anywhere in Soviet Russia with privileges of requesting assistance. In Paris I would introduce myself as Jacques Lafayette, in Bonn as Karl Heidi, in Rome as Julio Napoli — they were the names in the secret files in those embassies and this simple-minded bastard should know that, and he should know that the designation «friend» meant one thing and one thing only: the agent's local control in the field.
'Can you spell it out for me?' he asked oafishly.
Little Pleshakovna — I knew her name now — was hanging around near the doors to the ward, keeping watch. She didn't understand that I couldn't care less about getting a lecture from the comrade matron but that I would care a very great deal if she stopped me using this telephone.
'No,' I told the cypher clerk, 'I can't spell anything out for you. Get Mr Spencer on the line.' Spencer was the code name for the DI6 chief of station in all embassies.
'I'm afraid he's out to lunch.'
'Then get his best friend.'
'I'm sorry, I don't-'
'Listen, this is a 909 call and if you don't do what I want you to do extremely fast you'll hear direct from little mother.'
There was a brief silence.
'Okay, just a tick.'
He was getting the idea. The 909 designation had replaced the original BL565 Extension 9 call a year ago but it meant the same thing: it amounted to an inter-intelligence services hotline and the little mother he'd be hearing from was the prime minister.
'Hello?'
'Is that Mr Spencer?'
'No. But perhaps I can help you.'
'I may not have long so you'd better take this down.' Pleshakovna was making urgent signs to me from the entrance of the ward. 'This is Boris Antonov and my friend in Murmansk isn't answering the telephone. I'm extremely worried about him, so if you see anything of him please tell him I shall phone him again as often as I can.' I waited while he repeated the salient information as he wrote it down. He was a senior spook and knew immediately what I was talking about.
'Where can I phone you back?'
The little white-coated Pleshakovna was hurrying up to me and glancing over her shoulder. 'You've got to put that phone dorm, citizen! She's coming!' It wouldn't have mattered but I was going to have to use the telephone again and if I blew it now it could make things much more difficult later.
'You can't phone me back. Please do everything you can.'
I put the receiver back on the hook and came away as the little slut grabbed my arm and pulled me against her. I leaned on her for support as the matron came through from the ward, a Hero of the Soviet Union medal dangling on her massive chest.
'Is this patient all right?'
'He's overdone it a bit, comrade Matron. He-'
'Then get him back into his bed, you stupid little bitch!'
This was at two o'clock in the afternoon.
Snow was falling again: in the ward we could see it through the tall grimy window panes, the flakes catching the light and then dying away into the dark. Night had come down four hours ago, soon after three o'clock.
'With only one leg, things won't be so easy.'
He'd already started whining.
'You'll look like a hero.'
I watched the snowflakes, aware of a creeping sense of limbo. The record had wound down through final discord, leaving silence. I was a man lying in a hospital bed, numbed still from exposure and extensively bruised — I'm quoting from my chart — with nothing to do except console or show contempt for the man in the bed next to me, as I felt inclined, nothing to do except watch the mesmerizing drift of the snowflakes whirled by the wind into the light and whirled away again out of sight.
By the tone of the senior man on the line I was sure that he'd try to raise Fane for me and tell him to stand by his telephone again; but there was no guarantee. I didn't know at what time Fane had got the news of the ambushed rendezvous or how long it had been before he decided to shut down his base and leave me to whatever fate had overtaken me. All he would know was that if I were dead there was nothing he could do for me, and that if I were still alive I would do everything I could to reach the capsule in time if I were caught and had to protect the Bureau.
'When can I use the telephone?'
'That depends.'
This wasn't my little waif: she'd finished her shift. This was a beefy Estonian woman, her arms folded across the bulwark of her breasts in a posture of impregnability, her dark eyes glinting with the secret exultation of power.
I got a ten-ruble note from my box of effects, rolling it and keeping my hand over it on the blanket. A gesture had to be made to propriety: the state was coming down heavily on corruption these days, driving it deeper underground.
'I'd like to make a phone call,' I told her, 'as soon as possible.'
'What's so urgent, then, citizen?'