Merrick himself hadn't known they were going to pick me up or he wouldn't have bothered to give me the signal from London.
My hand moved and I stopped it, have to do better than that. The phone wouldn't be bugged: they'd just put a man in the switchboard room and leave him there. I'd have to do it from outside in forty minutes from now at 16:00.
She was there and all I said was that I'd phone her again tomorrow on the hour or the half-hour. She sounded edgy about something.
'You all right?' I asked her.
They watched me from the corner by the state supermarket. The others were across the road.
'Yes. But the police came here.'
'When?'
'Not long ago. An hour ago.'
'Your papers were all right.'
Nothing could have happened because she was still there but I had to relax my hand on the receiver, do it consciously.
'Yes.' She'd been unnerved, that was all. 'Yes, they looked at them, and went away.'
'They come to see you, or was it just a routine check?'
'They checked everyone in the hotel.'
'Fine. You won't see them again. You know it's all right' now, you can rely on your karta.'
They stood like penguins, their arms hanging by their sides and their heads raised slightly. They were damned good, I knew that; on the way to the phone kiosk I'd thrown a feint, doubling and using a street repair gang for cover, nothing too patent because it didn't have to look like a test, and they'd closed in very fast and revealed a third pair on the flank across the road: it was a six-box and it wasn't going to be easy when the time came.
She said goodnight. For me to take care, and goodnight.
On the way back to the Kuznia I slipped on a patch of packed snow, just in front of a parked taxi, and the driver got out to see if I was hurt.
'Where do they go?'
'To the Hotel Cracow.'
'Nowhere else?'
'Always to the Hotel Cracow.'
I hit the dirty snow from my coat. 'I won't need you again.' After I'd gone a dozen paces I heard the loose thrust of the starter.
The forecast had been right: snow began falling on the city before midnight, the wind bringing it from the forestlands in the north.
Wtorek. Tuesday.
The streets had become altered, the new whiteness covering the soot and making the sky seem lighter. During the morning I went out twice and made a show of telephoning, talking with the contact down and using the chance of thinking aloud, going over the major points and looking for trips, not finding any. I couldn't give it much longer now and the nerves were playing up because once I'd hit the switch the pace was going to be fierce and there wouldn't be time to rethink. I'd give it till noon.
The time factor didn't balance. I had to go slow to keep him happy, letting them observe and report, letting him see that I was ostensibly in contact with Czyn; and I had to go fast, bringing the deadline back as far as I dared: to noon. The waiting was unpleasant and I sensed being caught up in the feverishness that today had come to Warsaw, showing in people's eyes, in the sudden movement of their heads when they believed someone was near them, in small accidents as the snow thickened and the traffic tried to keep up speed, impatient with the conditions, in the increasing efforts of the police to search out the last of the suspected hostile elements: a man in the Hotel Kuznia itself, going with them peaceably through the lobby and then making a bid at the doors, glass smashing and shouts and a shoe wrenched off and slithering across the pavement and under the wheel of a bus as they crowded him and threw him limp into the back of the saloon.
The fever had a name: Sroda.
At 10:40 I was in my room and used the phone to book a call to London so that the man in the switchboard room could confirm what I'd told Foster: that I was in direct contact. The delay was estimated at two hours and that was well across the deadline so I made it the Foreign Office, Governmental Communication Headquarters, and told them to give me what priority they could.
At 11:00 I blanked off mentally and let the subconscious review the whole set-up without disturbance while I thought of irrelevant subjects: they'd probably done it with photographs and I'd have to deal with that; it had been a light brown shoe with arrowhead indentations on the sole for better grip, still lying there when they'd driven away, would they find a pair his size? Foster hadn't telephoned me although he knew my room number: I'd half expected him to get through, how are things going, old boy, to remind me that I was entirely in his hands, but perhaps he'd found a bit of pride at last, didn't want me to think he'd started panicking, afraid of losing me.
At 11:45 I rang the switchboard and asked if they were giving my London call priority. They said there was nothing they could do: there were many visitors here for the coming conference and the pressure on the lines was heavy. I asked for a precise time-check and rang off and set my watch.
No point in packing anything: washing tackle could stay where it was on the shelf over the basin, g chance, a thin chance, of coming here again. Check shoe laces and making double knots. Couple of glucose tablets. All.
Sweating a lot. Stress reaction developing hypothalamic stimulation, pituitary and adrenal cortex, secretion of cortin, pulse rising, the organism responding to the brain's warning of danger to come. Normal therefore reassuring.
At noon I left the room and took the stairs and handed the key in at the desk and went through the doors and down the steps into the street and began walking.
15: BREAKOUT
They came with me, two ahead and two behind, keeping their distance. I checked the flank and saw two more and it threw me a fraction because they wouldn't have left the rear of the hotel uncovered. It was an eight-box. He really didn't want me to do anything that he didn't know about.
The snow fell from an iron-grey sky and in a lot of the windows the lights were on. I took the yellow Trabant at the head of the rank and told him the Dworzec Warszawa Glowna and as we pulled out I saw a black 220 making a U turn across the station gates. It tucked in and waited and I leaned forward with my arms on the front squab so that I could square up with the mirror. It was an eight-box with mobility. We passed two of them walking back to the Kuznia to cover the point of departure, routine and predictable. Two others were using an M.O. telephone point to report movement.
You can't plan anything specific when you have to flush an overt surveillance complex but you can't rely on luck either: the compromise is to watch for breaks and take them and play them as they develop. The difficulty is built-in: with a covert tagging operation the assumption is that you don't know they're on to you and if you sense and start flushing they won't risk showing themselves but in an overt situation they'll close in and block your run the minute you start anything fancy. because they've nothing to lose: you already know they're working on you. So it has to be done very fast and the danger is that when you choose a break it's got to be the right one because it's going to be the only one you'll get.
In this case there'd been a gentleman's agreement between a rat and a ferret and when I broke the rules and made my run they'd go for an immediate snatch. Those were their orders because Foster was taking' a chance and he knew it. My offer was quite a big one or he wouldn't have listened: they knew that even if they decimated the population of Warsaw by midnight tonight there'd still be a few isolated Czyn groups ready to shed their blood across the barricades and I'd told him I knew where they were. But he didn't trust me: he wasn't a fool. The risk he'd taken was calculated and he'd imposed a break-off point: the point where I went out for a flush.