'You mean he was bitter in general? What made you think he bore someone a grudge?' He stood up and came from behind his desk, drawing the dressing-gown around him. 'Surely you can understand that a man in his condition should bear a grudge against those responsible for it?' 'Or did you just expect him to feel like that?' It was important and he didn't realize it and I couldn't explain. 'You will have to excuse me, Herr Matthofer. I agreed to receiving you in the middle of the night in order to discuss this patient's case for a few minutes, but not to submit to an Interrogation. I am leaving Hanover at nine o'clock and I need some sleep.' He jerked the chain of the desk lamp and went over to the door. Floderus got up. I asked Steinberg: 'Did the police find any clues?' 'Not to my knowledge.' 'They came here to ask questions?' 'But of course.' 'Did anyone see the car these people used?' 'No, they did not. I would have been told. Now I will say good night, gentlemen.' He opened the front door for us. Floderus started blowing into his hands again the minute we were in the street. 'Haven't you got any gloves, for God's sake?' I asked him. 'I lost them,' he said irritably. 'Haven't you got any others?' 'Why was it so important,' he asked me, 'about Schrenk being bitter?' He swung the Mercedes in full turn and headed north by the river. 'It's right out of character. What time's our rendezvous?' '03.30 at Zellerfeld. He should be there by now.' 'Why so early?' 'I didn't know you wanted to see Steinberg first.' 'Couldn't you signal him?' 'Look,' he said, 'we're all doing our best, OK?' He got on to the autobahn at Hanover-Flughafen and drove east, moving into the eighties before turning south at the cloverleaf with the Hildesheim sign coming up. 'Your stuff's in the glove pocket if you want to start looking it over.' I found the thick envelope. It had the single word Scorpion written in pencil at the top left corner. 'Where else did they take him,' I asked Floderus as I pulled out the papers, 'apart from Lubyanka?' 'We think he was at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, and the mental hospital in Chernyakhovsk. London's still checking with our people in Moscow and you'll be briefed when you get there.' 'Is that all you know?' 'I'm just contact and relay, sorry.' I checked the stuff over: transit cover in the name of Hans Matthofer, East German representative for Plastichen Farben; visa and travel permit, Moscow only; record of previous visits; stated purpose of present visit; advanced hotel booking and proposed itinerary (including a visit to the Bolshoi Theatre on the evening of February 23rd, unaccompanied); currency vouchers; a batch of sheets in a file with photographs of plastic moulding and three letters of introduction, one of them to the Ministry of Labour. My photograph was recognizable, with fur hat. 'Have you got any clothes for me?' 'In the back. Coat, hat, furlined boats and gloves; it's twenty below in Moskers, rather you than me.' We drove for two hours, through Hildesheim and over roads covered with snow when we reached the mountains, while I thought of Croder and Schrenk and Steinberg and tried to think why Schrenk should feel 'bitter' about what they'd done to him. It didn't fit in with the pattern and I kept on worrying it because these are the little things that can take you off course if you're not watching. I'd done two missions with Schrenk and in two missions you learn a lot about a man; Schrenk knew the score, all the way along the line, and he wouldn't bear a grudge against the KGB any more than he'd bear a grudge against a snake that had bitten him, because there's nothing personal about these things. Floderus was slowing, and I tore off the top left corner of the envelope and put the papers back. 'Where are we?'