'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.
The word for this, I truly believe, is megalomania.
Sitting in my sweat, hunched over the table, hands round my cup of tea, torn this way, torn that, a solitary spook goaded by ambition and pricked by conscience and frightened, oh my God if you knew how frightened.
I don't remember how long it was, how long it took, but the dregs of the tea were cold in the cup and I felt old before my time.
'That's all right, dearie. On me. I don't see you in here very often.'
A woman who knew how to love.
I kissed her dry rouged cheek and walked out past the telephone and into the mission, alone.
5: CAT
Steel everywhere, everywhere you looked, steel and concrete and blank walls and the stink of latrines and Lysol, the jingle of keys and the plodding of boots and the creaking of leather belts, echoing, every sound echoing along the corridors and the metal galleries under the high shadowed roof.
'Wait here, sir, please.'
The sound of keys again, a huge bunch of them hanging from his belt, the trappings of power, of one man's dominion over another. Let me tell you something: I wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks in this kind of place without going mad or getting out, one way or another; with a hacksaw blade or a filched key or a bedsheet, one end round the bars and the other round my neck. That's why I can't stand zoos.
'Right-o, sir, just follow me.'
A tone of cheerfulness, business as usual, we don't like it any more than you do, so forth.
Another door clanging shut behind us, and I wanted to turn and look back.