'Don't announce me.'
It was on the first floor and I pressed the buzzer. There were voices somewhere, speaking in English.
He was a short square man with his jacket pulled permanently out of shape by the holster. I told him my name and he came back in less than five seconds and opened the door wider for me.
This was the sitting-room and there were four people here.
With typical courtesy he left his armchair and came towards me. 'Hello, old boy, come along in.'
19: KICK
Foster went across to the trolley.
'I hope you'll have a drink?'
'There isn't time.'
'There's always time, old boy.' His laugh wasn't quite in key but he was doing pretty well because he must have been upset when they told him I'd slipped their surveillance: I was his personal responsibility.
'London wants a report.'
'Yes?’
'They'll be lucky to get it. Don't they know we've enough to do? Don't worry about the Czyn people I asked for.' There was a clinking sound: perhaps the woman washing a cup.
'I can try — '
'Won't you ever bloody well listen? I said don't worry about it. They were to give me support while I tried to break out of Warsaw but there's no need now.'
'I see.'
Foster turned round with a drink in his hand.
'Switch that thing off, there's a good chap.'
Merrick reached for the tape recorder and the voices stopped. He wouldn't look at me: he sat hunched in the armchair, just as he'd sat on the bench at the station. I felt sorry for him: he thought I was only just finding out that he'd used audio surveillance in the buffet while we'd sat with our bowls of soup.
That was all right: it was what I wanted them to think. 'You put a mike across me, did you?'
He didn't answer.
'You know how it is, old boy.' Foster tilted his glass and drank. 'We like to have things on record.'
He'd been much more than upset when they'd told him I'd slipped them. It wasn't coincidence that the tape had been playing when I got here: he must have run it a dozen times since he'd got the bad news from Warsaw Central, listening for clues as to what kind of op I'd got lined up, clues to where I'd gone.
'Well I hope it was worth listening to.'
'So-so.'
Most of the tape could be dangerous but it was too late to worry about that. It was safe — even valuable to me — from the point where Merrick had exposed himself, because from then onwards I'd suspected a mike and used it for my own purposes. It was the point where he'd given me the signal he said was from London.
In that instant he was blown.
There'd been three things wrong. (1) The code was fourth series with first-digit dupes. (2) P.K.L. was instructed to furnish a fully detailed interim report. (3) These instructions were sent during the final phase of the mission.
Fourth series was Merrick's code, not mine, and London would have used my own code or if for any reason they'd changed it to a different series they'd have put a prefix to indicate express intention and there wasn't a prefix.
They would have sent the signal to K.D. for Karl Dollinger and not to P.K.L. for P. K. Longstreet because Longstreet had ceased to exist when they'd given me the new cover.
They wouldn't have asked for a fully detailed report during the final phase of the mission because they know that at this stage of a mission you're lucky if you can hit the Telex or the short-wave, let alone draft a ten-page coverage with itemised refs and carbons. They knew I was in the final phase because Sroda was the deadline for all of us.
Merrick had been given the signal by Foster's group because they too knew the deadline was close and they wanted all available info from me before Sroda broke and the confusion gave me a chance of getting out of Warsaw. So the poor little tick had blown himself but my immediate decision was not to scare him by telling him I knew. Maybe I could have tried saving him, at that moment, by breathing on the bit of compassion he'd managed to find in me, giving it warmth: tell him to get out and hole up and pray. But I could use him now, and anyway I think he would have walked out of the buffet and across the platform and under the next train.
He'd been usable because of the mike. Foster knew I'd asked for three Czyn people because Merrick had told him, so I'd let Foster know why I wanted them, direct on the tape. I told him two important things: that they were to help me leave Warsaw, and that I no longer needed them.
These were things he could accept. The first gave him a plausible reason for my asking Czyn for support: to get me out of the city, not to mount an offensive operation. The second gave strength to what I knew I'd be telling him later, here in this room: that I no longer needed them because I'd been in direct touch with London and had orders to work with Foster and not against him and would therefore expect him to let me out of Warsaw as a temporary ally.
It wouldn't have mattered if there'd been no mike: the gist of it would have been passed on to Foster as routine info; but the tape gave it substance. I wasn't in fact sure there was a mike: it was just that Merrick had been sitting unnaturally still at the table and I'd put it down to chest pains, the asthma, until he gave me the duff signal. Then I knew it could be because he was trying not to fuzz up a mike with background noise, the friction of his clothes when he moved.
He could never do anything right, tripping on things and dropping things, cocking things up. Even when he used a mike on me it kicked back and he didn't know.
'I believe you've already met Voskarev.' The man in the other chair got up.
'Yes.'
He was the man with pale hands and thyroid eyes who'd directed my interrogation at the Ochota precinct after they'd ordered Merrick to have me pulled in. He lowered his head in a token bow but his eyes stayed on me, round and staring, the eyes of a fish. He didn't sit down again but turned slightly away and stood gazing into the middle distance as if listening for something.
But I wasn't ready yet. I had to wait for Foster. I needed a cue from him and it had to be the right one because it depended on his next words whether I had to kill off the whole operation or kick it into gear.
'How's London?'
Kick it.
'I've just had my orders confirmed.'
London was the key. He believed what I'd told him on the phone, or believed some of it, enough of it to test me for slips. Otherwise he wouldn't have been replaying the tape, wouldn't have been interested, would have told the man at the door here to put me in a cell and make damned sure this time I didn't get out.
'That's good.' His tone was sleepy. 'Been on to them direct?'
'Yes'
'Not from the Hotel Kuznia.' His tone hadn't changed.
'There was too much delay.'
'Oh yes of course, they told me.' He took a sip of Scotch. 'So you're still on our side, that it?'
'What's it look like, Foster? You think I'd have come here under my own steam, otherwise?'
I had to work up some anger. The whole thing had to sound exactly right and a show of anger would do that.
'I suppose not. On the other hand you gave those chaps a lot of trouble, not very sporting. I mean if you're meant to be on our side — '
‘Christ, haven't you got the picture yet? I told you I'd got a lot to do before I could come here and hand you the full works and I couldn't do it with a bunch of thick-eared clods treading all over my heels the whole time. You put them there because you were shit-scared I'd go off on some lunatic suicide mission and do some damage, right? I don't expect you to trust me but I expect you to trust your own judgement and see the sense in what I was telling you on the phone. Does this man understand English? If not, I'll say it again in Russian because I want the whole of your outfit to know that if you start blocking me again you'll cost yourselves a good deal of valuable help and God knows you need it.' I looked at Voskarev but he was staring at the wall. 'Better still, tell him yourself, your Russian's a bit more fluent than mine, part of your contract.'