Quiller KGB

'I eat too much garlic to catch a cold.'

'Does that help?'

'Never fails. Lose all your friends, that's the only thing.'

'Who needs friends like that? Beneficiary or beneficiaries, any change?'

'No. Home Safe.'

'I checked on that. They've gone out of business.'

'Any other battered wives' home, then. I don't care which.'

'There's the Shoreditch Refuge.'

'That'll do.'

She wrote it down. 'Everything you possess?'

'For what it's worth.'

'Sign here, will you?'

Doubts, following me through the building as I left her and checked in at Codes and Ciphers, certain now that they were setting me up, both of them, Yasolev and Shepley, not necessarily in collusion but each in his own way and for his own ends.

'Give me a plain substitution crypt.'

'One of the alphas?'

'No. A ten-character limit. An aristocrat.'

He flipped through the clear plastic sheets, going from blue to red printing, the light from the window passing through one of his thick lenses and casting a pool across the file. 'What about Little Mary?'

I started to feel trapped, forced into using a code that could blow me if it'd been filched. This room had a steel door and a security man outside and you had to draw a special pass to get in here, but suppose this clerk had been got at by — oh Jesus Christ, is there an immunization shot for paranoia?

'Look, give me Beta-3, the short version for the field.'

'Fair enough.' He swung round and pulled a drawer open and gave me the pad. 'Have you got the Cheltenham scrambler prefix?'

'If I haven't now, I never will.'

'Sorry, I'm new.'

'We've all got to start somewhere.'

Walking through the corridors like a rat in a maze, the subject of an experiment, not a rat, a guinea-pig. It had been too easy; Yasolev had given in too fast — I did not believe a seasoned KGB colonel would partner an operation on East German soil with an agent from the West unless he'd got the entire field staked out with his own little army.

Well, there was this: the instant I got one whiff of his people anywhere near me I'd use my option to pull out and ditch the mission.

Medical room: 'When?'

'Three weeks ago, at Norfolk.'

'Phyllis, no blood to draw. Where's his chart?'

A small room, too small, too confining. To paranoia you can add claustrophobia, but listen, this wasn't normal at this stage; a show of nerves on the way through the access phase, yes, but this was too soon, too severe.

'Heart rate's up a little. Is that usual when you're going out?'

'Yes.'

Say yes to anything.

'Diastolic's a little high, eighty-one. Is that normal too?'

'Yes.'

And why not Ferris for my director in the field?

He was too valuable to lose.

'Are you drawing a capsule?'

'Yes.'

He got his keys and unlocked a cabinet on the wall and took down a phial, pressing hard to undo the safety cap and shaking out one of the small grey cylinders with the red band. 'You need a container too?'

'Yes.'

Another cylinder, bigger, heavy steel, uncrushable.

'All right, sign this, would you?'

Signed.

Travel Section: 'Do you need maps?'

'No. I'll get them locally.'

She gave me the passport. They always give you one with a number that has actually been issued.

'Whose was this?'

She looked surprised. 'I don't know.'

He didn't need it any more — but of course he could've retired, could've retired.

They weren't ready for me in Final Briefing so I went down the circular staircase with the worn plum-red carpet and the mahogany banisters and the scuffs on the wall where people had come down in a hurry, bouncing off the curve. The only man in the Caff was Decker, a new recruit to this echelon from ten months' training in Norfolk; he was sitting at the counter chatting up Daisy, and when he laughed it sounded hollow, so I suppose he was going out on his first assignment and sweating ice.

Puddle of tea on the first table I came to, there is always a puddle of tea on the table in this bloody place, though God knows why because Daisy's always got a dish-rag in her hand, I've never seen her without it.

'Hello, love.'

Blue eye shadow, caked rouge and bright brass hair, body like a barrel, I do wish they'd get a woman in here you could actually look at while your nerves are running a temperature: it'd help bring it down.

'Tea, Daisy.'

'You want a bun?'

'God, one of those?

'I keep tellin' them, but it's all they seem to order.'

She mopped up the puddle and rolled away, lopsided, rheumatism, poor old baggage.

Very well, then, we have to work something out, don't we? Into the breach dear friends, let nothing us dismay, so forth, a matter of life and death — actually, yes, quite possibly, my life and death, if I get it wrong.

And a matter of conscience. Shepley and the Bureau and Yasolev might well be setting me up for extinction as a means to an end, but did that justify my accepting the mission and letting them think I was going through with it on their terms and not mine? Because if I were going out there for them I'd have to work solo and find my own safe-house and go to ground at whatever stage of the mission if I needed to, without consulting them. They were -

'Sugar, love?'

'No.'

She slopped some tea into the saucer, par for the course.

'Thank you.'

They were going to put the whole energy of the Bureau behind me and the whole of Yasolev's department of the KGB but I couldn't work like that and they knew it, or Shepley did, the Bureau did. So why did they choose me for this one?

Why did they choose me, Daisy old dear? With three boards running in the signals room it meant there were five other shadow executives hanging around between missions, five others with my ranking and experience and capability, and three of them — Fletcher, Wainwright, Piers — preferred to work with a whole back-up system of supports and contacts in the field. So why didn't Shepley choose one of them?

Scalding hot tea, just how I wanted it — there's a degree of eroticism in wanting to burn your lips, a nice bit of titillation for the mucous membrane, soothes the nerves. Good old Daisy, it's always piping hot, but listen, what am I going to do?

I could assume they thought I was the best man for the job but even if it were true, Shepley knew the way I liked to work, solo, and he must have given it some thought and he wasn't your common or garden moron. Did he realise that if I took on this one I'd work my way through it alone, deceiving them, and was he prepared for that? It'd salve my conscience, wouldn't it, Daisy old love, but a bit too easily.

The alternatives, then: I could go into Quickstep and work solo without their knowing it and risk blowing up the mission by leaving myself exposed, vulnerable, isolated, or I could go across to the phone over there and call Shepley and tell him no, it still wouldn't work, he'd have to get someone else.

Got a laugh like a barmaid, shaking with it over there by the tea urn, enough to bring her wig off; we secretly believe, you know, that it's really a wig.

And let this be known, my friend: if I walked out of here without going near that phone it would mean that in the name of pride and vanity this shadow executive was ready to go behind the Curtain and try to work through a mission within a mission, already cut off from the people who were running him and already cut off from his Soviet collaborator. And still bring it off, still reach the objective.