Northlight

I'd heard a stair creak only ten or fifteen seconds before I'd pulled the door open; he hadn't been standing outside for very long but that didn't mean he hadn't been going to. We've got all kinds of exotic cover in this trade from hotshot international journalist to butterfly collector but in local situations you don't need more than a tea tray.

'Come in,' I told him.

His faded eyes were taking in the room and resting now on Fane, but Fane had turned his back and was looking out of the window. He wouldn't say anything: the less they see of your face the better, and the less they hear of your voice.

'Unfortunately, comrades, we have trouble with the boiler room. It is often so. Tea will warm you, however.' He lowered the tray onto the split mahogany dressing-table, the strain in his arms setting a tea-cup raiding.

'Good of you,' I said.

He straightened up, turning his weathered face to me. 'I try to be of service, comrade.' On his way to the door his head swung slightly but not enough to afford him a direct look at Fane's back. He knew the delicate intricacies of the situation; a fifty-ruble note gets you more than a tray of tea: it gets you privacy so inviolate that you can have a visitor in your room without any questions asked. But he couldn't resist turning his head just that fraction. Who was the man standing there at the window? A dealer in sables and gems? A magician who could move your name to the top of the waiting list for a little Volga saloon, an official with one life in the corridors of Party power and another in the dockside labyrinths of international crime? 'This is dangerous,' Fane said when the concierge had gone.

'Yes, but the risk is calculated. Milk and sugar?'

'No.'

The cord round the handle of the huge copper pot was coming unwound and I got one of the thin grey towels from the washstand. 'You'll be out of this soon,' I told Fane, 'don't worry.' It's easy for the directors: they keep their foreign cover.

'That will depend on Mr Croder.' He took his tea and sniffed the steam that rose thickly in the chill of the room. 'On whether he can get Ferris.'

'He'll have to.' I picked a strand of sacking out of the coarse brown sugar and put some into my tea, adding some milk. 'This is rather cosy. Quite Tunbridge Wells.'

'You really do have a weird sense of humour.'

'Takes all sorts. You worried?'

'That man.'

I sipped some tea; it was scalding, and half the chill went out of the room. 'A calculated risk is one that you have to forget you've taken, once you've taken it. If that man is going to bring the KGB here he'll have called them by now and there's nothing we can do about it.' The directors are never happy when they have to leave the security of their grand hotels and hobnob it with the ferrets out in the field. 'How did you get on to the Zhigalin escape?'

'He contacted the embassy.'

'The US embassy?'

'No. Ours.'

'Ours? Why?'

We were briefing again. Fane said: 'It seems he's ready to turn his back on the mother country and take his revenge by offering himself to the West. But he said he was afraid that if he put himself directly into the hands of the Americans they'd lynch him on sight.'

'Did he actually say that?'

'Not directly to me. I got the gist of this through the DI6 chief of station. But it's accurate thinking on his part: he'll need a lot of protection from the Company if he gets to America.'

'Does Zhigalin speak English?'

'Very little. A few naval phrases he's picked up on the ship's radio bands.'

'Where is he now?'

'He refused to say. He's to phone me as soon as he can find somewhere safe to hole up.'

'Then he'll ask for a rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

'Give me everything you've got, then.' If Zhigalin phoned the hotel and Fane wasn't there, we might lose him. The longer he stayed on the run the bigger the risk of his getting caught or shot.

Fane pulled a folded sheet of paper out and turned it to catch the light. 'Zhigalin is five foot nine, stocky, dark brown hair, brown eyes, clean-shaven, a scar below his left ear. He's wearing a merchant seaman's clothes — dark blue sweater and coat, dark blue trousers. That's his provisional cover, as-'

'He hasn't got new papers?'

'No.'

'Is he trying to get any?'

'No. He's leaving it all to us.' I poured him some more tea. 'That doesn't worry me,' he said. 'I wouldn't expect a dedicated naval officer to know what he's expected to do when he's suddenly the subject of a manhunt. I'd say his mind is in a state of some turmoil at the moment.'

'What are the chances of his thinking twice and giving himself up?'

'We don't know. But DI6 treated his call with extreme caution. They didn't promise him anything, except to respond to any further contact he might make.'

'This isn't a KGB trap?'

'It can't be. They're dependent on our cooperation.'

'Still?'

He looked up from his tea rather quickly. 'No.'

'So tell me the score now, Fane. Whether I believe you or not is my business.'

He looked offended. 'I really wish you-'

'You weren't there. You didn't get into that truck and sit within an inch of getting your guts plastered all over the roof of the barn.'

In a moment he said: 'Very well. The situation with Karasov was that although he was a Soviet national he was working for the West. The Soviets knew that the only thing he could do, once he'd deserted his unit, would be contact us and request transit out of Russia and asylum. They therefore came to us with a deal and we agreed to it. They could have hunted Karasov for weeks or even months without finding him, but we could find him very easily: as soon as he made contact with us.'

The light from the yellow bulb in the ceiling was reflected upwards from the surface of his tea, and played across his eyes; they were looking down, not at me. As I listened, I had to catch the import and tone of every word, and decide, now or some time later, whether he was telling me the truth or setting a trap for me as he'd done before. 'The situation with Zhigalin,' he went on 'is different. He too is a Soviet national but he has no ties with the West. They won't expect him to make contact with us, and so they won't suggest another deal. We shall deny strongly any report that we are involved with him. They'll hunt him themselves, and are doing so now, and vigorously. That makes it infinitely more difficult for us to take him across. For you, perhaps-' he looked up — 'to take him across.'

I turned away, going to the window. There were lights out there now, breaking the near darkness of midday. I could hear the ringing of shovels as work gangs moved along the street.

'All right,' I told Fane. 'But the rest of it is the same as before. Zhigalin is now the objective for the mission. We want him. The Soviets want him. The Chinese want him.'

'The only difference,' Fane said from behind me, 'is that we want to take him across.'

'Yes.' I turned to face him again as he went to the dressing-table and squeezed his cigarette butt into the ashtray. 'That's the only difference. This time, when I rendezvous with the objective, you might not have plans to blow us both into Kingdom Come.' I went over to him, bringing out the small steel cylinder from the pocket of my coat and unscrewing the end, dropping the capsule into the ashtray. 'But if I find out you're following any new instructions to endanger me, I'll go straight into the nearest KGB headquarters and blow London. Tell Croder that.'

24 VIOLIN

'And then they wait till it's been snowing for twenty-four hours before they call us out. Is that intelligent?'

'What would you expect of the civic leaders in this place? They spend all day round the stove playing dominoes!'