‘You are feeling well?’

  ‘Fantastic,’ I said.

  He’d been ahead of me on the stairs but he’d noticed me stop, halfway up: his thoughts weren’t so far away as he liked people to think. It was the result of long habit: he’d been our agent-in-place for seven years and Macklin said this was the safest house in southern Europe.

  ‘If you need anything …’ he murmured, and we began on the next staircase.

  He’d almost certainly seen the report in the press: they’d held over some space for this one because it wasn’t often they lost a 747 on the ground because some maniac blew it up with a fuel tanker. The Italian police were playing it close to the chest: a person whose identity had not yet been revealed had caused an accident on the tarmac, killing four members of the maintenance crew and a freight loader. The 747 was totally gutted. A British journalist, as yet unnamed, had driven his automobile through the flames and hit a maintenance trolley a hundred yards away on the far side without having caught fire. He had been dragged to safety by the emergency crews. Unfortunately it was impossible to reach the occupant of the other car, since it was hi the heart of the conflagration.

  No mention of the carabinieri, or the chase, or the exchange of shots.

  Rome, like Marseille and other focal points, is a centre for every major intelligence network including Africa, South America and Japan. The Italian police knew who the occupant of the burned-out Alfa-Romeo had been, and so did the monitoring sections of every major intelligence network. The Italian police were very interested in the British journalist but I’d given them the Interpol routine and they’d called Paris and then asked me a lot of questions and got a lot of answers that didn’t tell them very much and finally called off the two men they’d stationed outside the door of my ward. The third one had tagged me from the hospital as far as the nearest intersection, where I’d got rid of him for the sake of practice.

  The thing was that the intelligence networks would also be very interested in the British journalist. They hadn’t asked any questions yet but if they could get hold of me they certainly would. London would have got the story through Fitzalan right away, and the Bureau’s sleeper agents in Rome would have been alerted. Emilio Rumori had got it direct on the air from London or from Fitzalan, long before he saw the newspapers. Fitzalan had rung me at the hospital twice in the name of Jones, asking for news of my progress. He’d been hanging around the out-patients department when I’d gone down there to see if I could get away, so he knew I was back on my feet and presumably he’d cleared the area because I was hot and if anything happened to me he wouldn’t be involved.

  That nurse had been such ‘a bitch that I finally had to bribe one of the cleaners to get my clothes back for me so that I could do the fire-escape thing. They were in a pretty bad condition because I’d been dragged out of the Fiat and there’d been a lot of fire-foam about, and I had to re-kit in a man’s shop and pick up another suitcase, real pigskin because I liked the look of it and because I was so bloody upset about blowing the Fogel assignment that I thought I’d pass on some of the angst to those withered old crones in Accounts.’

  All I hadn’t replaced was the razor with the fancy modifications and I didn’t imagine Rumori kept things like that around. If I came across any locks that needed blowing I’d have to do it the hard way and go in shoulder-first.

  I stopped again, near the top of the second flight of stairs. The whole thing was reeling and I held on to the banister and waited, you should take it easy for a couple of weeks, the specialist had told me, the banister rail tilting up and down under my hand, Rumori’s pale ivory face looking at me from above, his deep eyes lost in shadow, take it easy, the roar of the flames again and the wail of the sirens.

  4 - Right?’ His voice coming and going.

  ‘Perfectly,’ I said, and began climbing again, one ankle weak and the shoe supping a bit on the edge of the stair, come on for Christ’s sake, put some bloody effort into it, watching me carefully with his pale ivory face.

  ‘You can rest here, of course. Nobody would disturb you.’

  ‘Some other time.’

  He watched me for a bit longer and then took me across the high-ceilinged landing to the small room at the end, where there were two ceramic cherubs above the door, one of them with an arm broken off. A fly buzzed against the coloured-glass skylight. He stood perfectly still for a moment with his head inclined and his eyes half-closed, listening to the uncertain run of notes from the music-room below. Then he straightened up with a slight sigh and unlocked the door of the room with a large iron key and led me inside.

  This was the lumber room, full of Florentine stools and chipped porcelain lamps with their shades at all angles and the parchment torn away. A huge bronze lion on a marble base was wedged between a console and a hand-painted urn, and they were obviously on some kind of base because he twisted the lion’s head and swung the whole thing round, sitting on the stool that was part of the base and nicking a switch.

  ‘Q-15,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know.’ He began fiddling with the set until he got the station identification bleep sorted out from the squelch. After a minute he got a successful series of nines in three blocks and told mem I was waiting. It was now close on 10:00 hours in London and it was just conceivable that Egerton was sitting in at Signals: his standard practice when there was something big breaking was to stay with it until, three or four in the morning and then come in again about noon, but the Rome objective was dead and standard practice might no longer apply, 999-999-999.

  Rumori leaned over the set, shifting the band-spread and watching the carrier needle to get the signal as pure as he could. All they were doing at the moment was keeping us open with the mission identity sequence: 9 was for Kobra.

  Egerton had possibly told them to call him in if they got anything from Rome, but they wouldn’t wait until he’d driven all the way to Whitehall from his place in Richmond: they’d only keep us hanging around if he were already in his office.

  The arpeggios come faintly from below, both hands now, 999-000-000.

  Control at console.

  Perched on the packing case with his long legs dangling and his eyes wandering vaguely around the room. He is one of the few directors who sit in at Signals and respond at only one remove: through the scramble encoder. The others use their yellow telephones and demand memoranda in duplicate, according to the rules. Egerton doesn’t do it for the benefit of his executives in the field: it’s just that underneath his remote and donnish appearance he runs at very high voltage and likes to be close to the action. As a spin-off advantage his executives feel more comfortable because the exchange is a lot faster and we know there won’t be any confusion, send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance, so forth.

  2829-7476-0198…

  Rumori cleared his throat and glanced round at me to see if I looked all right. I nodded and we began reading the signals as they came off the integral unscrambler. The voice we were listening to wasn’t Egerton’s because he didn’t have the skill or experience to choose fast abbreviations and pick out routine phrase patterns to suit the messages, but some of Egerton’s personal signature was coming through and I could tell he was worried.

  There was another thing I noticed.

  8387-9817-9166.

  An encapsulated summary of the info they’d received from Fitzalan. Then they asked me to talk and it didn’t take me long: I hadn’t been able to identify Heinrich Fogel with absolute certainty in visual terms but yes it was his face as I remembered it and yes the cranial scar was there. From the way he got clear of the airport I had recognized his thought patterns and I would go further towards identification on that score. Message ends.

  Wanted to know if I required further medical treatment, whether I would ask to withdraw on physical grounds, whether I felt the Rome phase was terminally abortive, so forth.

  No, no and no.

  Then Egerton began talking again through his signaller and I began listening a little harder because the other tiling I’d noticed was the tone of his phrases: he was diffident (‘would the executive feel prepared’), persuasive (‘assuming a developing potential for the mission’) and specious (‘the Direction would fully understand if the executive opted for replacement in the field with all immediacy’).

  These windy phrases had been designed by their lordships in Admin, but most of them had been chosen so that their initial letters could be transferred straight into numerals and shot through the scrambler at high speed. At the receiving end we habitually decode into the original phrases but what Egerton was telling me now was that he was desperate for me to remain in action because he was lining up something very big for me.

  The specious bit was typical of Egerton. At this stage I could honourably tell London that there was nothing else to do out ‘here and they hadn’t got a mission assembled for me yet so I wanted to come in and do something more interesting. But the brief signal 7372 - the Direction would fully understand if the executive opted for replacement in the field with all immediacy - is normally used when there’s a wheel coming off in a shut-ended situation and the poor bastard can either get out or get killed. Egerton had thrown me the 7372 as a sly attempt to persuade me by an obvious association of ideas: if I’d got cold feet at this stage he was willing to replace me.

  For a brilliant man he can be sometimes naive: he knew damned well I could see through that signal. But naivete is emotional, gut-think and not brain-think, and the thing that came through so clearly was that he was desperate to keep me running. Desperation, too, is emotional.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I said softly, ‘that bloody Egg.’

  Emilio Rumori half-turned his head, ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Don’t send that,’ I said.

  But you can come full circle, you know.

  Listen: if I did come in because there was nothing to do in Rome and there wasn’t a mission lined up for me, I could never be certain that London believed those were my reasons. They’d be justified in believing that when you’ve been shot at and gone through a tanker explosion and come out with head injuries you’re liable to get cold feet.

  My feet can get as cold as the next man’s. I’m in this trade to prove myself. I’m frightened of pushing things to the point where they might blow up, so I push things to the point where they might blow up, to prove I’m not frightened.

  Egerton knows this and this was what he was working on and the whole thing was coming full circle: maybe he wasn’t so naive. Maybe this was pure brain-think: he knew the one thing that could persuade me to stay in the field - an implication of cold feet. And to a certain degree it could even have some truth in it because that craven little organism was still making its voice heard in the dark roaring of the aftershock that was keeping one hand on the banisters: it didn’t want any more tankers on fire; it wanted to go home now.

  I said to Rumori:

  Tell them I’ll stay in the field.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ask for directives.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He selected 938 and 635: Executive prepared to continue mission. Please brief as fully as possible. It wasn’t accurate because we hadn’t got a mission yet and a -full briefing is only possible with a director in the field, but Rumori had picked the two phrases with almost no hesitation and got them through and the saving of time was vital. The whole idea of this method of sending is that you can put through quite a lot of information before the opposition starts getting on to you with a mobile D/Fing unit. There might not be a unit within miles but we always assume it’s next door and for this reason the communication between two first-class signallers resembles championship table tennis: the ball seems to vanish because it’s going so fast.

  276-412-398.

  Routine stuff: Proceed solo — prepare to rdv — report arrival.

  me long: I hadn’t been able to identify Heinrich Fogel with absolute certainty in visual terms but yes it was his face as I remembered it and yes the cranial scar was there. From the way he got clear of the airport I had recognized his thought patterns and I would go further towards identification on that score. Message ends.

  Wanted to know if I required further medical treatment, whether I would ask to withdraw on physical grounds, whether I felt the Rome phase was terminally abortive, so forth.

  No, no and no.

  Then Egerton began talking again through his signaller and I began listening a little harder because the other thing I’d noticed was the tone of his phrases: he was diffident (‘would the executive feel prepared’), persuasive (‘assuming a developing potential for the mission’) and specious (‘the Direction would fully understand if the executive opted for replacement in the field with all immediacy’).

  These windy phrases had been designed by their lordships in Admin, but most of them had been chosen so that their initial letters could be transferred straight into numerals and shot through the scrambler at high speed. At the receiving end we habitually decode into the original phrases but what Egerton was telling me now was that he was desperate for me to remain in action because he was lining up something very big for me.

  The specious bit was typical of Egerton. At this stage I could honourably tell London that there was nothing else to do out here and they hadn’t got a mission assembled for me yet so I wanted to come in and do something more interesting. But the brief signal 7372 - the Direction would fully understand if the executive opted for replacement in the field with all immediacy - is normally used when there’s a wheel coming off in a shut-ended situation and the poor bastard can either get out or get killed. Egerton had thrown me the 7372 as a sly attempt to persuade me by an obvious association of ideas: if I’d got cold feet at this stage he was willing to replace me.

  For a brilliant man he can be sometimes naive: he knew damned well I could see through that signal. But naivete is emotional, gut-think and not brain-think, and the thing that came through so clearly was that he was desperate to keep me running. Desperation, too, is emotional.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I said softly, ‘that bloody Egg.’

  Emilio Rumori half-turned his head, ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Don’t send that,’ I said.

  But you can come full circle, you know.

  Listen: if I did come in because there was nothing to do in Rome and there wasn’t a mission lined up for me, I could never be certain that London believed those were my reasons. They’d be justified in believing that when you’ve been shot at and gone through a tanker explosion and come out with head injuries you’re liable to get cold feet.

  My feet can get as cold as the next man’s. I’m in this trade to prove myself. I’m frightened of pushing things to the point where they might blow up, so I push things to the point where they might blow up, to prove I’m not frightened.

  Egerton knows this and this was what he was working on and the whole thing was coming full circle: maybe he wasn’t so naive. Maybe this was pure brain-think: he knew the one thing that could persuade me to stay in the field - an implication of cold feet. And to a certain degree it could even have some truth in it because that craven little organism was still making its voice heard in the dark roaring of the aftershock that was keeping one hand on the banisters: it didn’t want any more tankers on fire; it wanted to go home now.

  I said to Rumori:

  Tell them I’ll stay in the field.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ask for directives.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He selected 938 and 635: Executive prepared to continue mission. Please brief as fully as possible. It wasn’t accurate because we hadn’t got a mission yet and a full briefing is only possible with a director in the field, but Rumori had picked the two phrases with almost no hesitation and got them through and the saving of time was vital. The whole idea of this method of sending is that you can put through quite a lot of information before the opposition starts getting on to you with a mobile D/Fing unit. There might not be a unit within miles but we always assume it’s next door and for this reason the communication between two first-class signallers resembles championship table tennis: the ball seems to vanish because it’s going so fast.

  276-412-398.

  Routine stuff: Proceed solo - prepare to rdv - report arrival.

  Then they said where.

  Cambodia.

  ‘Get it again,’ I said.

  He asked for a repeat. You can’t make a phrase out of a name-place, so they’d sent Kmbdia. Now they put it in full: 26358193.

  ‘Are you reading?’ Rumori asked me. His narrow dark head had been turned to look at me because I was sitting on the floor now with my eyes half closed.

  ‘Yes.’

  They stayed on the air for another six or seven seconds and he only asked for two repeats. Contact was to be made at the British Embassy with the second cultural attache and I was to retain my cover: I would be in Phnom Penh to liaise with a Berlin correspondent of Europress in an attempt to get the final stories from wealthy merchants fleeing the capital. By the phrasing I suspected that the Berlin correspondent of Europress was probably a replacement for Heinrich Fogel, because Europress doesn’t actually exist and this presented the man as a shadow figure and the only shadow figure around would be in the opposition: I was proceeding solo and wouldn’t have a local director. But reading between the lines of a signal exchange that’s taking place in one-second flashes can be difficult and I shut my eyes and let it go.

  Of course there was a lot of data that didn’t appear in the stream of coded digits: it looked as if Heinrich Fogel were being replaced within hours of his death and it looked as if he’d been feinting his travel pattern by landing in Rome because the two places were a hell of a distance apart, considering the Kobra people were assumed to be zeroing in for a rendezvous. Further indications: Kobra now realized their operation was being surveyed (by the unnamed journalist in the Italian press) and might even be penetrated, but they weren’t intending to call the whole thing off and go to ground and come up somewhere else. London wouldn’t send me to Cambodia unless they had a strong lead, ‘ because Egerton was running this one and he didn’t like shifting his executives around like pawns. He was sitting there in Signals with the pattern spread out on the board as far as it was known: he was pouncing and missing and he’d pounced on Rome and missed Fogel and now he was pouncing on Phnom Penh and with luck I’d make a hit.