'British Embassy, on Unter den Linden.'
By the time we got there I was starting to sweat and I showed my identity in the hall and took the stairs two at a time and went into the signals room without knocking and asked the man at the desk to put me on the scrambler to London through the Government Communications HQ in Cheltenham. Time hadn't meant anything when I'd been talking to Yasolev in the woods but I was in a hurry now because I'd had a chance to do some thinking on the drive to the checkpoint and the whole thing had come spinning round full-circle in my mind and I knew what I had to do.
'Anyone specific, sir?'
'What? No, main signals board. No, cancel that. Ask for Bureau One. Are you already on the scrambler?'
'Yes. I'm trying them now.'
He pressed three more keys and I stood waiting with a cold skin and the heart-rate elevated: I could feel it under the rib cage. The thing was, the whole thing was that I'd been looking at this project as if it were just another mission and it wasn't, it was not, and I suppose it had taken a bit of time to sink in. Either that or the subconscious had already made up its mind that we should keep well clear, and it had steered my conscious decision-making. Put it in English: I'd been shit-scared. All right, it was indeed the size of the thing that had rocked me back and it was certainly the idea of working with the KGB that had sent the nerves running for cover but I'd overlooked the obvious, the absolute.
I didn't have any choice.
'Main board, sir.'
'Can't you get Bureau One?'
'I'll ask them. Just telling you we've got through.'
Photos all over the wall of hang-gliders, I suppose that was his thing, picture of Diana, sign of the times, she was nudging the crown for wall-space in all the government offices I'd been in lately, you couldn't wonder. For Christ's sake hurry.
'You're on, sir. Bureau One.' I took the phone from him
'Ash.'
'Oh, yes.'
His voice was just as quiet at the console.
'I've just left him. I told him I couldn't take it on, but I've changed my mind.'
'Why?'
'Because I want this one. I want it badly.'
'Anyone would.'
'Yes.'
Everything closing in.
'How long ago did you leave him?'
'Say fifteen minutes.'
'Did he have a phone in his car?'
'I don't know. He came as far as Charlie in mine.'
I heard him turn away to speak to someone else, something about fully urgent. He'd have to contact Yasolev now, see if we still had a chance. The KGB wouldn't necessarily want to work with someone who'd shown cold feet. I'd left Yasolev in a rage.
Everything closing in, the walls crowding me. I still didn't know whether the Bureau was setting me up, using me for what I was worth, selling me the pitch that even a top shadow executive could go into a mission this big and bring it home. And I didn't know whether the KGB was trying to use me too, Yasolev for the furtherance of his own career or the whole of his organisation for their own cryptic purposes. All I knew was that the temptation for me to go into this, the challenge, was enough to bring me in here and have me lay my neck on the block in the name of blind ambition.
But the blood was running cold.
'What reason,' Shepley came back, 'did you give him?'
'Too big, too political. And having to work by their rules.'
''That's understandable.'
'He didn't think so. I left him furious.'
'That's understandable too. But I need this from you. Are you prepared to undertake the mission on their terms, if we can't talk them down?'
Now is the chance, my friend, the last chance, if you want to say no and save yourself.
'Yes. On whatever terms.'
Blood running cold.
'Very well. I want you here on the first plane. There isn't too much time.'
I gave the phone back to the man and stood doing nothing for a moment, letting the psyche centre if it could, while at the brink of consciousness I caught glimpses of the pretty coloured hang-gliders and the man watching me and then another face, Yasolev's, and the faceless, nameless people in London who were prodding the new mission into life on their computers, getting the facts in order, November 3, 09:54 hours, signal from the Embassy, Berlin: the executive accepts the mission.
Running cold.
4: DAISY
I can't do that.
'Why not?'
They know where I am.
Slater glanced up, looking for Croder, but couldn't see him. He looked down again, leaning forward over the desk of the console, thinking. Slater was new at the signals boards. We always feel vulnerable, with someone new.
'You mean you can't get clear?'
No way.
The voice on the radio was steady enough, but I caught a tone of false nonchalance; probably the others did too. I'd spoken like that myself in the earlier missions; when you're certain you can't get clear and all you can do is let them come for you or pop the capsule, your voice sounds like this at the signals board in London, because your greatest fear of them all is of sounding scared.
'Look,' Slater said, 'if we can do anything, we will. But — hold it a minute.'
Croder had come in and Slater told him the problem. Croder took over the microphone, his mechanical hand resting on the desk like a steel skeleton. 'Stay precisely where you are and wait for dark. At some time before midnight you'll get a signal from the embassy. If they can reach you, they will. If they can't — ' he broke off and there was dead silence in the signals room and I noticed Holmes swallowing '- then I shall trust in your own discretion.'
The Bureau can't actually tell you to use the capsule; all they can do is to issue you one in Clearance when you go out. But if you've really got your back to the wall and there's any major information inside your head the opposition could get out of you, then your 'discretion' is expected.
We didn't find the contact. Instructions?
Different voice, different board. There were three in here. Slater's had Pineapple chalked at the top of the black formica console; this one had Quarry. No one had told me what the code name for my own mission would be, but at this stage they were going from P to Q
'Get hold of your director in the field. It's his job. Ask for a new rendezvous. Weston's ETA is 11:06 hours and you'll have to be at the airport by then.'
Roger.
There was some morse beeping somewhere; we wouldn't have anyone using it; it was just part of the slush. I saw Holmes turning away and pouring himself some more coffee, worried sick about the executive for Pineapple. He always worries, being more human, I suppose, than the rest of us.
Not that I was all that cool. I'd got on the first plane, according to instructions, and they'd shoved me into a police car at Heathrow and dumped me outside the building ten minutes ago and if I never hear another siren again I won't complain: it's not the most reassuring of noises.
She's just a bloody whore.
Malone's voice, you couldn't mistake it. Costain, sitting at Peashooter, said briefly, 'Explain.'
That word from a signaller means a bit more than it says. It means shut up and mind your language and give exact details, because one of the top Controls is in the room.
C–Charlie told me the silly bitch was a Venus trap for the militia but he was dead wrong. She's just a tart. One thousand pesos and not even a good fuck.
It was no use telling Malone what the word 'explain' meant. He was furious; he hates wasting time in the field.