'Any questions?' I asked him.
The silence went on for a bit and I let it. My impression of him in the Moskwicz saloon had been that he was a civilised person with a soft core of morality that wasn't giving him any peace: he'd be sensitive for a long time, perhaps all his life, about how the Brits thought of him, and at this moment he was probably taking his time to swallow my last remark. That was all right because I'd made it deliberately to persuade him I was 4n a position of strength and we could talk on equal terms.
But I didn't like it, the silence on the line. I had to sell him cold in the next couple of minutes or lose the whole thing: a compromise wasn't possible because the set-up I'd worked out would still function and the timing was a bit near the hairspring.
'You'd better come and see me,' he said.
'There's no time.'
'Pity about that.'
'You're not being very bright, you know. I'll give it to you straight: call your people off and let me go on doing my thing and as soon as I can I'll hand you the lot. Those are my new orders from London. Or you can shove me in a cell and three days from now you'll find out you've been losing your grip and you won't like that, a bloke with your reputation in Moscow. Incidentally you'll cost the lives of quite a few of your own people and that won't go down so well either.'
The line sizzled again and I began sweating badly: it'd be damned silly if I lost the mission just because the Polish telephone system had got dry rot in the selector units. My left eyelid had begun flickering to a rogue nerve: I must be getting old.
'Perhaps you'd just give me a clue, old boy.'
'Would you, in my place? Think straight. I've got too much on and bloody little time to do it in so for Christ's sake get off my neck.'
'You're being,' he said slowly, 'a wee bit proud.'
'All right, I'm rotten with it. At least it's something you can understand. I represent an Intelligence service whose present interests happen to line up with yours and if you want me to co-operate it's got to be level pegging and if you think I'm going to start by licking your boots you've got another think coming.'
He kept me waiting again. Then on the line I heard a faint sound that brought his face suddenly into my mind, the puffy eyes in the crumpled tissue-paper skin, the long thin mouth with its hint of private irony. He was using his flask.
In a moment he said: 'What's your field?'
'Czyn.'
'Same old thing.'
'I told you, didn't I? London wants me to do what I can to help keep the peace for the talks. You've been clearing the streets as quick as you can but there'll still be a nasty lot of T.N.T. going up on Wednesday because there are one or two units left intact and you won't ever find them.' When I'd counted up to five I said: 'I know where they are.'
Something snapped, near where I was standing. The woman had broken the handle off a cup she was drying, her nerves in her fingers making them clumsy. She put the handle on to the zinc draining board; it looked like a bit out of a puzzle picture.
'Oh, we'll find them all right.'
I'd expected him to say that. He couldn't have said anything else. I'd laid my ace and he'd trumped it.
'And the best of luck.'
'Of course,' he said reasonably, 'that, doesn't mean we wouldn't be able to do it quicker, with your help.'
'I'm not helping you, Foster, so get it straight. I don't trade with your type. Our interests are parallel, that's all, so you're in luck.' The line went fuzzy and the sweat came again; this thread was so thin and it was all I had. 'Listen, you can do something practical as a kick-off. Ten days ago the U.B. pulled in someone from Czyn and we're going to want him.' I gave him the name. 'He's got a head full of essential info that you won't get out of him: they grilled him and drew blank. But he'll tell me.'
'What sort of info, old boy?' Tone rather lazy.
'Don't be bloody silly. Put it this way: we're trying to open a safe and he knows the combination.'
'If they got him ten days ago he'll be across the frontier by now.'
'Of course. Get him back.'
'I know it sounds easy, but he's just one of — '
'Find him and fly him in, use a snow-patrol chopper. I don't care how you do it, that's your headache. Hold him for me till I'm ready.'
It was all I could do now but I believed he was hooked.
'Sorry, old boy, but it won't work. It's all so awfully vague, you see. If you could just give me the odd pointer.'
The wooden boards under my feet started vibrating and the whistle came from the distance, a muted shriek. It would be small at first but it was coming fast and would grow gigantic, a black mountain on the move towards me.
'I'm ringing off now, Foster. You've had your chance.'
'Just the odd pointer.'
The thunder gathered, beating at the windows; a glass on the shelf tinkled against another. An express from the north, from Olsztyn, running through to Warsaw Central.
'Where's your pride?' I had to shout a bit above the noise. 'You're asking an intelligence officer in the other camp to give you clues and pointers, you know that? Christ, you're far gone, no wonder you got yourself blown!'
He was saying something but I couldn't hear properly, something about surveillance
'What?'
'We'd have to keep you under surveillance.'
I let my eyes close. I wanted to sleep.
The train went through and smoke billowed against the windows, dimming the light as my eyes came open.
'As long as they don't get in my way. Tell them that. Tell them to keep their distance, and no tricks. For your own sake, you get that?'
I handed the receiver to the thin man.
The sound faded. The floorboards were still again. 'Yes,' the thin man said. 'Yes,' he kept saying. 'Yes, Comrade Colonel.'
They were all standing to some kind of attention because they knew who was at the other end.
An honorary rank. He must have hated that, to have his brand of subtle and specialised intelligence brought by implication to the level of the bovine military mind; but they'd thought it was a compliment and his courtesy wouldn't have let him refuse. A private Englishman, Colonel of the Red Army. His own bloody fault.
'Yes,' the thin man said. Then he put down the telephone and turned away from me, speaking to the others. Two of them left, by the door to the street. The rest didn't move.
I went out to the platform and noticed Merrick on a bench, sitting alone and crouched over his gloved hands, staring at the ground; he didn't look up; he may not have heard me. I walked past the dark-windowed saloon and came to the open street.
The first pair were already ahead of me, looking back sometimes; the other two had taken up station behind me. It was a box-tag and we don't often meet with it, especially towards the end of a mission, because when the heat's on there's no time for either side to formulate rules; but this was a specific situation and the rule was that if I didn't try any tricks they'd leave me alone except for overt surveillance.
I led them to the Hotel Kuznia, thus blowing my new cover. I wouldn't need it again. By the time I'd reached Room 54 they were checking the register at the desk and getting the passport number of the anglik who'd just taken his key, very well, the West German, yes, Karl Dollinger, this one. By the time my shoes were off and I was propped on the bed they were passing my cover to Foster. That was all right: he had to feel reassured until I was ready to start the thing moving. It would have to be tomorrow and I didn't care for that but it was fragile and haste could break it.
Thought began streaming. I couldn't signal Egerton that the untrained novice he'd sent me to look after was a double agent for the K.G.B. because my only communications were through the Embassy and through Merrick himself. There was nothing wrong with the cypher-room staff: when Foster had bottled me up he hadn't left the cork out. The cork was Merrick. They would have been content to sit back and wait for me to spring the trap but when I'd asked Merrick to get me three people from Czyn as a back-up team he'd passed it on and Foster had decided not to risk anything: he'd been afraid I'd got some kind of coup lined up, fancy him thinking a thing like that.