Quiller Meridian

'Was it a rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

'Hornby and who?'

'A Russian.'

Not a Romanian. That could be the answer to the question I had for London.

'What was the Russian's name?'

'I don't know.'

'Find some shadow,' I said and left him, moving along a rail under the cover of the next line of trucks until I came to three people standing there close together. One of them spun round very fast and had a gun out and I stopped and lifted my hands. 'Longshot,' I said.

The man lowered the gun but didn't put it away. 'Where are you from?'

'Rome.'

'Who sent you?'

'Mr Croder.'

He put his gun away and told me his name was Fry. He looked appallingly young.

'What happened?' I asked him. The other two backed off a bit to let me into the group. One of them had been sick somewhere; I could smell it.

'Hornby was to make contact with a Russian here.'

'What was his name?'

'Zymyanin.'

'Did he turn up?'

'We don't know.'

He was a thin man, Fry, with eyes buried deep under his brows, so that in this light I couldn't see them, just caught a glint now and then.

'Where's the head?' I asked him.

'On the other side of the rail.' I could hear one of the other people shivering, his mouth open, shivering through his teeth, hands stuck into the pockets of his leather coat, his head down, probably the one who'd been sick.

'Well, put him into something,' I said. 'Not you,' I told Fry, 'we've got to talk.'

'We weren't going to move him,' Fry said.

That was out of the book, but not everything in this trade's in the book, in fact very little that really matters, none of the deadly vibrations you pick up in a red sector, nothing of what we call mission feel, the unnamed sense that allows a single photon of light to hit the retina and alert the brain, the sound of a sleeve folding in the dark as the knife is raised, the smell of gun-oil. We were standing here at the site of a blown rendezvous and the contact on our side had been killed and the contact on the other side was missing and we didn't know how many of the opposition might be standing off in the shadows waiting for the right time to move in, waiting perhaps for the man from Rome to get here.

They were worried about booby traps, that was all, Fry and the other two. It's in Chapter 3 of the Practical Field Manual with its red cover: Never move a dead body without first considering that it might conceal a booby trap or other explosive device.

'Get a sack,' I told Fry's people, and went across to the body and turned it over to show them it was safe. In terms of security the opposition had been unusually sensitive: when you blow a rendezvous by killing the opposite number you don't normally take the trouble to disguise things, but the people who'd blown this one had staged an accident or a suicide for the local police and left Hornby's body on one side of the rail and his head on the other, so they wouldn't have triggered them with explosives as well — it would have spoiled the picture.

'Where from?' one of the men was asking.

I looked up. 'What?'

'Where do we get a sack?'

'Oh for Christ's sake,' I said, and went across to the flatbed freight truck and got out my penknife and ripped open one of the sacks and poured out the grain and came back and got Hornby's body into it and picked up the head, my hands more tender now because this husk, this coconut, this Yorick-thing with its matted hair and its staring eyes and its gaping mouth had recently been the vessel of all this man's experience, and now it was here between my hands, a bony urn containing the traces of a human life, etched among the infinitely-complex network of nerve synapses and cerebral electronics until only a little while ago they had burned out like a firework show and left a shell of ashes for the world to grieve on.

I took off his watch and put it into my pocket. Wives and mothers sometimes ask for them as keepsakes.

'Come on,' I said, 'I need some help.' Hornby's arms and legs were difficult because rigor mortis had set in. 'How long have you been here?' I asked Fry when we'd finished.

He checked his watch. 'Nearly two hours.'

In the faint hope that Zymyanin had got clear before the pounce and would come back here to do business as arranged. It sometimes happens.

'If he doesn't show up,' I said, 'have we lost him?'

'Not if he's still alive. He's been keeping in contact with our DIF. Are you taking over as the executive?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I'm here to clean up the mess, for the moment.' I didn't mean Hornby, I meant the whole mission: there was going to be a lot to do, and the first thing was to trace the Russian contact, Zymyanin, if we could. If, yes, he were still alive. 'But you'd better tell me all you can, because there might not be a DIF for this mission any more.' That sometimes happens too, even though the director in the field is required to stay out of the action in his ivory tower throughout the duration. He's not always safe there: it depends on how bright he is. They'd got Hornby and they might have got Turner too, by now.' When did you last signal him?' I asked Fry.

'Soon after we got here. There's a public phone up there at the station.'

'How long did Turner tell you to wait here? For Zymyanin?'

'My discretion.' He didn't sound complaining. He should have. The director hi the field isn't meant to leave anything to the discretion of the support groups or anyone else except the executive, he's meant to direct them.

'Who's the control in London for Longshot' I asked him.

'Mr Pritchard.'

That wasn't surprising: Pritchard was halfway over the hill and tad done his bit for the Bureau, due for his pension, give him a minor job in Bucharest to end his career with. But Zymyanin was a Russian, and the Russians still weren't playing a minor role in international intelligence. If London wanted me to take over Longshot and get the wheels back on I'd need a new control, someone like Croder.

The bell sounded again from up there at the station, and a whistle blew. It was rather comforting on this stark and deathly night to know that someone was playing at trams.

'How many people have you got,' I asked Fry, 'protecting the 'Four.'

That was a lot of people, seven in all, for the support group of a minor mission. Turner must feel there was safety in numbers.

'You can pull them out,' I said. 'Zymyanin won't be coming back.'

'How do you know?'

His tone was challenging and I said, 'Because I've been in this trade for seventeen years and the number of missions I've seen blown by totally incompetent directors in the field would make your hair stand on end, and since we're on the subject there's one of your people up there with shit in his pants because I came up on him from behind while he was watching the pretty blue and green signal lights, so find someone who can train him before you put him into the field again, you want to get him killed?' That was how the poor devil lying down there in his sack had got killed: he hadn't checked out the area or surveilled local traffic before he'd moved in for the rendezvous, he couldn't have, and he was meant to be an executive. I turned to the man standing next to Fry, not the one who was shivering. 'Go and phone the embassy and ask for their DI6 man and tell him you're Bureau and give the parole and the code-name for the mission and ask him to get a car sent here to pick up the body and send it back to England.'

He took his hands out of his pockets. 'He'll want to know what — '

'He'll want to know where the body is and that is all you'll tell him, you understand? There's no scrambler on that phone up there. All right, get going.'

'Yes, sir.'

He swung away and I looked at Fry again. 'How many cars have you got here?'

'Three.'

'Where are they?'

'In the station yard.'

'Which is the newest one?' This was Bucharest.

'The Honda.'

I asked him for the number and the keys and he gave them to me, taking his time, resentful, a very resentful man, understandably.

'All right, pull your people out as soon as the body's been picked up.' I got Hornby's watch out of my pocket. 'Give this to the embassy people and ask them to put it into the diplomatic pouch addressed to the Bureau, property of Hornby's estate. Where do I find your DIF?'

Fry put the watch into his pocket. 'I'm afraid I can't tell you.'

Not afraid at all, he was delighted, had read the book. The location of the director in the field is sacrosanct, never to be disclosed if there's the slightest doubt as to the bona fides of the inquirer. This man didn't have any doubts: he'd been told by his DIF to expect someone sent in from Rome by Mr Croder and I'd satisfied him on that and I'd also known the code-name for the mission. He was just getting a bit of his own back, that was all.

'I respect your reticence,' I told him. There was still nothing more than the glint of reflected light in the shadow of his brows. 'But it'd save me having to call London.'

'Sorry,' he said.

'That's all right.' I went over to the shape in the sack and put my hand on it, a shoulder I think, and held it for a moment, requiescat in pace, so forth, there but for the grace of God. Then I came away and asked Fry, 'How many missions have you been with?'

'Four.'

'This the first crash?'

'Second.'

'Oh, Jesus, two out of four, what stinking luck.' I touched his arm. 'Hang in there, it gets better as we go along.' I moved away along the line of trucks towards the passenger station and heard his voice behind me.

'Hotel Constanta.'

I turned and nodded and walked on again.