'Tell C–Charlie to report. Where is he now?'
At field base. Now listen, I want new instructions.
The lights dimmed, flickered and came back on, less bright now. 'Power cut,' someone said. 'It's the storm.'
Most of the high-ceilinged room was almost dark; the consoles stood out like ships in harbour at night, lit overall. There were no windows here; this was the basement.
Two people were talking on the other side of Quarry, one of them Stapely, back from Sri Lanka with no injuries and mission completed in the record books. I didn't know the other one. The auxiliary generators had started humming and Costain was talking to his ferret and Holmes was standing near Pineapple, brooding, when the door opened and Shepley came in and the atmosphere changed at once. Even Croder hadn't got this kind of presence in the signals room. I'd never seen him here before, never known him control a mission personally.
'When did you get in?' His voice quiet, no expression.
'Ten minutes ago.'
He watched me in the wash of light from the boards, looking for any signs in me that I was nervy. I didn't show anything. He'd thrown an ultra-grade operation into my lap and put me into a rendezvous with a KGB colonel east of the Curtain and I'd turned the whole thing down because of cold feet — he knew that — and changed my mind and put my neck under the sword and he was looking for any sign that it had built up my stress level to a point where I couldn't be sent out. He didn't know me personally, had never seen me before the meeting in the underground garage in Berlin, and all he'd got to go on was my track record and he wasn't a man to make a major decision without checking me out at close quarters and with a lot of eye contact. The interrogation cells — the really effective ones — had people like this in them and I knew their style.
Softly, 'What made you change your mind?'
Anyone else, even Croder, would have taken me somewhere else and asked things like that in private. There was no traffic on the boards at this precise moment and you could hear even this man's voice quite clearly. The others in the room were listening hard because this was Bureau One they'd got in here and it amounted to a priority-alert phase at the end of a grinding mission.
'Personal pride.'
His head turned a degree more to the left, favouring his right ear, 'Oh really?
'Yes.'
He went on watching me obliquely with his washed-out blue eyes while I spent the time trying to guess what his next question would be, but it was difficult because it wasn't just a stare he was giving me; I had that feeling again that he was thought-reading, tinkering with the cerebral energies.
'Very well.'
No more questions, then. I felt a palpable break between us, between our personae, when he turned away and stood with his hands in his side-pockets, the glow from the signals boards highlighting his straw-coloured hair.
'Mr Croder, what's your position?'
'The executive's in a tight red sector, sir, and I've asked the embassy to see if they can get him clear.'
'Do you believe they can?'
Beat.
'No.'
Shepley turned his head a little. 'Is he a married man?'
'Yes, sir. Three years.'
Shepley looked across at Costain. 'What about your operation?'
'Malone's gone in, sir, and he's well placed. We're looking for a winner.'
'Malone. He was in Keyhole?'
The signaller glanced across at Croder, who nodded. 'Yes.'
Shepley looked at the man running Quarry. 'What about you?'
'We went into the end-phase early this morning, sir. I'm waiting for completion.'
'What are the chances?'
'First rate, sir. I won't be handing over at this stage.'
Shepley took a step closer to Pineapple, and Croder moved with him. 'Mr Croder, where is Fosdick?'
'Milan, sir. He's on standby, with contact through one of our sleepers.'
'And Stoner?'
'I'll need to ask.' Croder went across to the central phone console. Shepley took another step nearer Pineapple, scanning the chalked lines of information on the board: running-time, status, phase, target, with map references and a quickscan chart of the executive's environment; backups, contacts, communications, travel patterns.
Quarry.
'Yes — yes?'
Shepley's head turned and Croder looked across at the board from the phone console.
I've put him in a car for them.
'You've got him?'
That's right. He's a bit dopy but he'll be back to normal by the time they reach the border.
I was watching the black plastic speaker-grille on the console. We all were.
'His papers are good?'
They're perfect. Calthrop did them for us.
Holmes glanced across at me and back to the board. Croder wasn't talking on the phone, just holding it with the contact down. I'd never been here in this room when a mission was running clear through the end-phase to the objective with the voice of the executive himself on the speaker. We're usually in the Caff, hanging around on standby between missions, when we get this kind of news at second hand:
Winthrop's moving in but Control says he's taking too much risk. Someone told me Fanfare's coming apart but they're sending Kennedy in to see if he can patch it up. And Donavon's bought it in Beirut only last night. But it's never reliable.
'Can you pull out okay?'
No problem. Clean up the base, send a little smoke out, then I'm leaving. All right with you?
'Yes, but keep in contact.'
The signaller flipped a switch and Shepley asked, 'Who is the executive?'
'Roberts, sir. Sending a dissident across.'
Slumped in a car with false papers, a couple of our people with him, their faces calm but their stomachs cold as they neared the frontier and the checkpoint and the end of their mission — the end of Quarry, whether or not they got the man through. I didn't know who he was, but he wouldn't be small fry if the Bureau were bringing him across.
A Soviet dissident, whose name is being withheld for the sake of his family and friends, reached London last night from West Germany, after successfully crossing the frontier from the east. His application for asylum is being considered by the Foreign Office, and is expected to be approved.
And tomorrow, and the days, the weeks after tomorrow, the debriefers would be sitting around the table, going through the wads of paper the man had brought with him, their hands shuffling them with the avarice of men seeking gold, while somewhere else, in the stuffy little offices of Her Majesty's government, other men would be clearing their desks with their hands shaking, the quiet and industrious little moles blown out of their skins and with only a dog's chance of getting across the Channel and running for home.
'Tell him to report here,' I heard Croder saying at the phone console, 'as soon as he can. This is fully urgent.' He came back to the signals board where Shepley was waiting. 'Stoner's in London, sir. They're calling him in right away.'
Shepley nodded slightly. 'Very well. Meanwhile, get Fosdick into Prague, very quickly indeed.' He took another pace and put a hand on the signaller's shoulder, dropping onto the stool and opening the transmission.
'This is Bureau One. Please acknowledge.'
Hear you, sir.
'I am obliged to shut down on your mission, and this is the last signal you'll receive. But I'm sending two agents to your sector with all possible despatch. They are highly experienced in these situations, and it's vital you remain where you are. Be of good cheer.'