'Yes.'
His tone was bleak. This was the first time he'd spoken to me since he'd said he was sorry.
'Tell him we want you to meet us at the Praga Commissariat immediately. Is that clear?'
'Yes. But what — '
'The bomb has been located and it's all right now. Listen carefully. Tell the guard you're going to the Commissariat, but go to the British Embassy instead. To the Chancery, not the Residence. Get the cypher-room staff back on duty as soon as you arrive. Tell the Embassy guard to expect me in half an hour: my papers are in the name of Karl Dollinger and I'll speak to him in German. I shall ask to see you. Have you got that?'
For a moment he didn't answer and I knew why. He was being crucified. Then his voice came faintly: 'Yes, but I can't — '
'Listen, Merrick. Stay in the Embassy and don't contact anyone except for the signals crew. You'll be safe there.'
The silence drew out again.
'No, I won't. They'll only — ' but he couldn't finish. In those words I heard all human desolation.
'They can't do anything more to you now. I've got the photographs.'
Silence.
'Merrick. Did you hear what I said?' In a moment:
'Yes'
He began sobbing and I rang off.
21: ASHES
At 23:06 hours I crossed into British territory.
It had seemed a long way from the hotel to the Embassy though it was only a couple of miles. I'd brought the Mercedes 220, the car they'd used to switch Voskarev from the Commissariat saloon. It had seemed a long way because the co-ordinated police divisions had been searching the city for me since I'd made my break from Warsaw Central and by now the hunt would have become intensified: I hadn't asked Merrick if he'd tried to contact Foster at the Commissariat but he. would have done that when Ludwiczak was taken over at the Hotel Cracow. It would have worried him.
Dangerous not to assume that both Foster and Voskarev were now reported missing, last seen in company of Dollinger.
I left the Mercedes in the yard, parked broadside-on to the main entrance, as a point of routine. The plates would have been noted by the police observation-post in the street outside but might not have gone on record. No one else could see them now unless they came right into the yard.
Only two of the windows showed light.
Merrick was in a small room on the first floor.
There was a change in him. He looked much the same but the tension was gone. He reminded me of a man I'd seen just pulling out of a killing trip on one of the amphetamines: physically weak, deathly pale, the hand-movements uncertain but the eyes calm, perfectly calm.
He said
'This is Webster.’
'Signals?'
'Yes.'
Small alert cheerful man, knitted tie and Rotarian badge, breast-pocket stuffed with pens. 'He's okay now.' He looked at Merrick again. 'Okay now?'
'Yes.'
I asked what had happened.
.'Eh? He saw someone run over. Turns you up.'
Merrick went and stood at the window, his back to us.
'Is that the cypher-room?' An inner door was ajar.
'That's right.' With his pert gaze he tried to see who I was, what I was, a red-eyed man with stubble and a German name and no trace of accent, something urgent to send.
'Open up transmission.’
'Okay.' He'd put a pad ready for me on the desk. 'You got a pen?'
'I'm giving it to you direct.’
'I'll have to have it written. It's rules.'
'Just open it up, d'you mind?'
I dumped the briefcases on to a chair and got one open and took out the envelope and dropped it flat on the desk so Merrick could hear it. 'They're yours.'
I pulled the door open. Webster had half closed it behind him: a cypher-room is sacred ground.
'You can't come in here.'
I heard Merrick in the other room, opening the envelope.
'Do they ever jam you?' I sat on the nearest stool. 'I mean by accident on purpose?'
'Not often.'
'Get Crowborough's acknowledgement on a word-count for each sending. What code've you got?'
'Standard.' He just meant bugger off.
'Don't send standard.' The cowled lamps threw a lot of back-glare and I could feel needles in my eyes. It wasn't exactly fatigue: the organism that started panicking because some of the brain-think had filtered through and it was squealing to know what I intended to do about its survival and there wasn't an answer. 'Send priority.' It didn't want to stay trapped in this dark winter city where people would try to kill it.
Webster wasn't touching the knobs. I'd been vouched for by a second secretary but it wasn't enough.
'I'll want some kind of authority.'
By approximate reckoning it'd take five minutes to give it in fifth series and another five minutes for him to re-encode. It wouldn't matter if anyone was tuned in: I was destroying their operation and they couldn't stop me. They could only stop me if I gave them enough time,
'These are to BL-565 Extension 9. No copies and no repeats. You ready for me? First: K.G.B. operation mounted to stage rigged show-trial as proof that-'
'Hold on a minute.' He'd found BL-565 E-9 on his list. For the Curtain embassies it approximates to the hot-line and I suppose he'd never had to use it before. He threw a couple of switches and dialled for pips and got them and said: 'Okay.'
'K.G.B. operation mounted to stage rigged show-trial as evidence of — '
'Evidence or proof?'
'Proof.' I let my eyes close against the glare. 'Proof of Western conspiracy to incite Polish uprising.' He was on automatic encode but I didn't want to rush this so I gave him time. 'Justification thus established in event of subjugation by Warsaw Pact forces. Primary aim protection of imminent East-West talks.' I heard him making an interval reception-check. 'This operation now defused since candidate for trial no longer available but suggest all Western agencies Warsaw receive immediate warning to retrench in case of 'effort made to provide substitute.'
My foot slipped off the rung of the stool and I sat up and opened my eyes. Bloody little organism trying to flake out and forget its problems.
'Relevant documents by Q.M. next run. Dollinger.'
I found him in a room at the end of the passage, putting the lid back on the cast-iron stove. Even though he knew I'd come in he stood for a minute listening to the dying away of the flames. Then he looked at me. I know exactly how he saw me, exactly what I represented to him: I'd become a composite creature, the object of his hate for my having seen the photographs, gratitude for having vouchsafed him their destruction, guilt for what he had done to me and fear for what I might now do to him.
'How did you find them?'
'I knew where to look.'
He went to the door and shut it: the building was quiet and Webster was still in the cypher-room waiting for an answer to my second signal.
'There won't be any others, will there?'
'No.'
The negs had been the middle ten in a roll of thirty-six and the rest were blank: automatic exposure with a dummy run and timed cut-off, the prints tallying.
He stood uncertainly, his raw hands hanging from his sleeves and his feet neither together nor astride. The calm that had come to his eyes was also in his voice: he could speak abstractly about things that had been for him, so recently, a crucifixion.
'It was horrible of them, to do that.'
'Just routine. They do it to anyone they can get hold of, embassy staffs, businessmen, didn't you know? It's the classic hello-dearie.' I didn't want to ask but I had to because someone else might be glad to know he was off the hook. 'Who was the boy-friend?'
His eyes squeezed shut behind the spectacles and he couldn't say anything for a second or two, then it was over.