Quiller Meridian

'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.

Chapter 2: MOSCOW

He opened the door but not much, just his tense grey eyes in the gap, and I went through the introductions and he let me in and said he was on the line to London so I shut the door behind me and slipped the lock and waited, watching him, an angular man with thinning hair and a straight uncompromising back and expressive hands, using one of them now, cupping the air with his fingers to hold out his explanations until they were ready to accept them, London, Pritchard I suppose, because he was the control for Longshot, or perhaps Croder had taken over and was perched there under the bright lights of the console in the signals room with his metal claw scratching at his knee, the only evidence that he was in a towering rage because there'd be nothing in his voice except the cutting edge of his careful articulation as he skinned this poor bastard alive.

'No, sir. There was no question of that. I just told the support group to wait thirty minutes, and if the executive hadn't reported that the rendezvous was established then they could go in with the utmost caution and find out what had happened.'

Holding his own, not flustered, even with the angel of death at the other end of the line, copybook phraseology, 'rendezvous was established', 'utmost caution', so forth, drive you mad in the ordinary way but he just wanted to show he was still in control, I rather liked him, you give a man like this a jodan-zuki and you wouldn't get feathers out, you'd break your wrist.

'Yes, sir, I understand that.' He'd dropped his right hand, spilled his explanations all over the floor, Croder wouldn't buy them, he should have known that, Croder wouldn't buy a box of matches from you even if you were starving. 'Yes, he's just come in.' He looked across at me and held out the telephone. 'COS.'

Chief of Signals: Croder.

I took the phone. 'Good evening.'

There was silence on the line for a couple of seconds, while Croder wrenched his mood round and put his towering rage onto the back burner for a while — this was my impression. When Croder and I made contact with each other we both had to keep our cooclass="underline" we shared what some people called a flint-and-tinder complex.

'I'm most grateful to you,' he said at last, 'for giving up your holiday in Rome at such short notice.'

'I wish I could say it was worth it. There's nothing I can do here.'

'We thought there might be time.'

'Yes, I understand that. Are you keeping the mission running?'

The green LED was glowing on the scrambler to show that it was in synch with the unit on the Government Communications HQ signals mast at Cheltenham, and the red LED was unlit: we weren't being bugged. But it always worries me to trust a telephone with ultra-sensitive information.

'No,' Croder said. 'I'm taking it off the board.'

So we'd lost the Russian contact, Zymyanin. And for the record book under Longshot: Mission unaccomplished, executive deceased.

'Then blame COT Norfolk,' I told Croder. 'No one else.'

I didn't say that for the sake of the man standing over there watching the street from the window: I'd been wrong — this crash hadn't been Turner's fault even though he'd been the DIF running die mission locally. Hornby had just gone and got himself killed because he hadn't secured his approach to the rendezvous, couldn't have done.

'Please explain that,' Croder said on the line. No edge to his tone — he just wanted to get things clear, and so did I. I'd been in a towering rage myself ever since I'd picked up that man's head from the dirt in the freight yard, because you could still see the youth in his face, the clear skin, the smoothness around the eyes.

'In my opinion,' I told Croder, 'the Chief of Training at Norfolk is sending people into the field too young and too soon.' I looked across at Turner. 'How old was Hornby, d'you know?'

He turned from the window. 'Oh, early twenties.'

'They're sending out kids,' I told Croder, 'and they're getting them killed.' The chief of support down there in the freight yard had looked even younger, could have been nineteen.

In a moment Croder said, 'Your comments are noted.' All I'd get, and I let it go. 'In the meantime you should know that the Soviet, Zymyanin, has signalled us and given his whereabouts.'

'Oh really.'

'He arrived in Moscow twenty minutes ago.'

'Intact?' There could have been some shooting down there at the rendezvous point.

'Yes. He's quite experienced.'

An older man, well-trained. Bloody Norfolk.

I waited. A tram went moaning through the street below. Turner watched it, not actually seeing it, I knew that. He was trying desperately to pick up what information he could from my end of the conversation with Croder: he'd been the DIF for the mission but I already knew more than he did about the crash. I cupped the mouthpiece and told him, 'Zymyanin's alive and well.' It'd help him to know that his executive hadn't compromised the contact and got him killed too.

He shot me a look of relief and I lifted the phone again.

'We would like you to meet him there,' Croder was saying.

Meet Zymyanin in Moscow.

Bloody nerve. Someone else could do that.

'We could see Carmen tonight,' she'd said at lunch today at Gaspari's, 'if you would like that. I have a permanent loge at the opera house.'

Valeria Lagorio, her huge dark eyes glowing, two locks of black hair damped and curled into perfect circles against her shadowed alabaster cheekbones, you don't go to Rome, do you, my good friend, to wade through the ice cream wrappers in the Coliseum. As things were, I'd had to break my date with Valeria when the embassy had phoned my hotel, and that was going to take a dozen very expensive gardenias and a champagne supper at the Palazzo di Firenze just to get things back on track again.