'Shortlidge, you can join them and make enquiries after a woman named -' 'Misha,' I said, and described her. Then Croder went through the whole of the briefing again and we repeated paroles, countersigns and contact modes until we'd got it right. We were to dispense with signals through the Embassy: he gave me an Ultravox walkie-talkie, told me that Bracken and the six members of the cell would keep in contact by that medium alone, using speech code only and using the air with extreme discretion. On street mobility Logan told me: 'We've got most of the blood off the inside of your Pobeda and she's tanked up. We didn't have time to find new plates so we've altered the old ones and rubbed some mud on. Don't forget to lose your papers.' Bracken told us he'd be based here at the safe-house, since he wouldn't be able to enter or leave the Embassy without surveillance. Croder and I would wait here with him until we got a signal from the field. 'What was the street like?' I asked Logan. 'Looked clean enough. Three cars this side of the intersection, all facing towards it. Truck outside the warehouse opposite with a lot of snow on it. Nobody moving. The militia work east and west across the intersection and their nearest phone is a hundred yards west of there.' It was one a.m. when he and Shortlidge left us. By that time I felt ready to eat solids and Zoya brought me some goat's milk cheese and black bread. 'Is there some pain?' she asked me. 'Yes.' 'That is good.' 'And a happy birthday to you too,' I said, and she laughed because it was becoming our favourite joke. The left shoulder was throbbing to the rhythm of the pulse but it was only muscle and tissue pain: Ignatov hadn't hit bone. 'If I don't see you again,' I told Zoya, 'you did a great job and I want to thank you.' 'Of course you'll see me again,' she said, and left us. Bracken was getting increasingly nervy and couldn't keep still. I did some walking about myself and tried out the arm for movement as far as the sling allowed; the shoulder flared up but the pain was confined to that area: the nerves and muscles through the lower arm to the fingers were unaffected and I'd be able to drive a car with the sling off. Croder stood still for most of the time, keeping dear of the window and taking a few short steps occasionally and coming to a stop with his feet together and standing still again, his thin neck buried in the collar of the military coat, his dark eyes impassive. Sometimes we heard sounds from inside the house, and turned our faces to the door. The stove began losing its heat after a while but we didn't put any more wood on. I went over the street scene as Logan had given it: three cars parked this side of the intersection, a truck in the other direction, so forth. I went over the briefing pattern, contact modes, signals, the whole thing. I was getting thirsty because of the anaesthetic and the saltiness of the cheese, and kept going to the tap over the basin and coming away with the taste of chlorine in my mouth. We didn't talk much, though Bracken began voicing his nerves after a while. 'I don't see how he can expect to do anything on that scale and get clear.' 'I don't imagine for a moment,' Croder said thinly, `that he can get clear. What concerns me is that he might reveal his identity. If he is discovered to be a London agent I hesitate to consider -' he stopped and in a moment said so quietly that we barely heard him -' but we've already gone into that.' I thought about Schrenk. 'He won't want to live, once he's gone in.' Croder turned his head. 'You don't think so?' 'He was quite an athlete, before. Tennis champ, good-looking, lots of girls. Now he's a wreck. This is a suicide run.' In a moment Croder said bleakly, 'So we have that aspect to contend with too.' I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything we could do about it: a potential assassin who means to get clear after the act will take a lot of care and might finally baulk at the risks, but a kamikaze will go right in for the kill with nothing to lose. We grew quiet again, and every five minutes Croder took his few short steps and halted again, his death's head staring at the wall. Bracken lit a cigarette and then began chain smoking. Just before three o'clock we got a signal.