Quiller Balalaika

'Look,' I told Croder, 'if I take on Balalaika, what toys am I going to get?'

Again it was a second before he answered. I don't think he'd been quite ready to believe I'd even consider this one. 'I would be your control,' he said.

I felt the reaction. When you're offered the Chief of Signals as your control it's like being handed the Holy Grail on a gilded platter even before you can wipe your feet on the red carpet.

'On a twenty-four-hour watch,' I heard him saying, 'throughout every phase of the mission.' He wasn't turning away from me now, stood birdlike in the shadows, the candles touching his eyes with brightness.

This too impressed me. They've got cubicles next to the signals room where the controls can catch some sleep if a mission starts running hot and they have to keep close to the board. But I could remember Croder mounting a round-the-clock stint only once in the whole of my time with the Bureau, and that was when Flack was stuck in a trap within a mile of the Kremlin with the proceeds of a document snatch that had to reach the Ministry of Defence in London before the PM could raise the president of the United States on the red telephone to say whether or not he was prepared to send troops in with the UN forces if an air strike against Iran was ordered first. Croder had lit a fuse under Flack's support group and got the documents out and faxed within three hours and brought Flack home with not much more than a touch of shell-shock. Croder is that good.

More toys, I'm never satisfied. 'Who can I have as my director in the field?'

'Whom would you like?'

'Ferris.'

In a moment: 'Ferris is directing Rickshaw in Beijing. But if -'

'Who's the executive?'

'Tully.'

One of the higher-echelon shadows, or he wouldn't have been given Ferris. 'Where are they,' I asked Croder, 'with Rickshaw?'

'Approaching the end-phase.'

'Does it look sticky?'

'Not at present, though in the end-phase anything can happen, of course.'

Conscience pricked. 'I'd give a lot for Ferris, but -'

'You need give nothing.' He was looking down, Croder, saw the problem, was trying to assess my thinking. To take a major DIF away from a top shadow moving into the end-phase of a mission was probably unheard-of in the annals of the Bureau. But the trade-off was obvious: if the Chief of Signals was prepared to order it, it meant that he wanted me to have every single advantage he could give me for Balalaika because it was that dangerous. How much, then, was I ready to listen to my conscience? How willing was I to go into this one with someone directing me in the field who lacked Ferris' experience, brilliance, intuition, and ability to get me home with a few bones left, to pull me out of God knew what bloodied stew of an end-phase where Balalaika could leave me foundering?

I have little stomach, my good friend, for the last-ditch eleventh-hour death-or-glory gotterdammerung favoured by some of the shadows – Kruger, Blake, Cosgrove. Bold fellows, but they carry within them the death-watch beetle, quietly burrowing.

'If you took Ferris off Rickshaw,' Iasked Croder, 'who would replace him?'

'That is hardly your business.'

Perfectly true. I was being offered a director in the field of my own choosing and I could take him or leave him. I wasn't invited to play any part in decision-making at the highest control level.

'Then if I agreed to work this one,' I said, 'I'd need Ferris.'

Croder's head came up. 'You would have him.'

'I'm not saying -'

'You would have him,' Croder nodded quickly, 'if you in fact decided to accept the mission. It doesn't commit you.'

Croder has – has always had – his scruples. Tonight he was ready to give me anything I asked for as an incentive to get me into Balalaika, but he was going to stop short of coercion.

'What about -' I stopped short as the distant thudding of an assault rifle started hammering at the walls of the church – distant but closer, a lot closer than the last shots we'd heard. We waited for it to finish: I would have put it at a three-second burst, quite long enough to bring about what was intended.

'At this point,' Croder said, 'let me tell you that if you reach final briefing with Legge, he'll impress it upon you that these people in Moscow are not your cosy Sicilian brotherhood. These people kill those of their protectees who refuse to pay, simply as an example. But they also kill policemen, government agents, bankers, judges, whoever gets in their way. I mention this advisedly.'

The smell of cordite out there somewhere lacing the snow, blood creeping from the red-running eggshell skull, a hand flung out to clutch at the last vestiges of life, the fingers already uncurling, empty.

I suppose I'd been silent for a moment, because I heard Croder saying, 'I'm ready for questions, if you have any.'

'All right. What about expenses? If I had to infiltrate a milieu as affluent as the mafiya I'd need credibility.'

'The figure suggested – I have this directly from the prime minister – is one million US dollars in hard currency, immediately available from Barclay's Bank in Moscow.'

'And if that isn't adequate?'

'You'd be able to call upon whatever further funds you needed.'

'Fair enough. Now tell me about this man Legge.'

'Legge has been in Moscow for nearly ten years. He headed the leading support group for Cossack, Sabre Dance and Roulette. In his last operation – this was post-Yeltsin – he got the executive out of a remote detention camp run by a clandestine cell of former KGB officers by commandeering three armoured cars and a mortar unit from a Russian Army garrison in Tashkent. Prisoners were not taken.'

'Real pro. How big is his group?'

'He runs fourteen men under constant training, and can recruit more from sleepers and agents-in-place if needed.'

'He ever indulge in free-lancer bullshit?' A support chief who commandeered armoured cars from the host services could be tricky to handle.

'I don't quite follow.'

'I mean, he takes orders?'

'From those he respects. I rather think you qualify.'

One of the candles guttered, and smoke spiralled upwards across the statue of St Marius.

I hadn't got any more questions.

Took a turn, watched the man down there polishing his sacred artefacts, felt an instant of brotherhood, listened again to the thudding of the rifle and saw again the fingers slowly uncurling, thought of Moira – how long would the rose take to shed the first petal? – thought of Daisy in the Caff, good luck, she always said, knowing when we were going out, knowing sometimes more than the superannuated cardinals in Administration, knowing sometimes when a shadow wouldn't come home. Thought of life's continuance against great odds, turned back to Croder.