‘It’s worked!’ declared Peter Harkness.

For a moment Wilson didn’t speak. Then he said: ‘Sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Thank God for that!’ How long would it take, he wondered.

General Valery Kalenin’s car was an official Zil, authorized to use the exclusive centre lane of Moscow roads, but the traffic at night was light, so the privilege reserved for members of the Soviet hierarchy was unnecessary. Kalenin’s driver still used it; he enjoyed the advantage of power more than the KGB chief. The Zil swept past Kutuzovsky Prospect and the Kremlin towards Dzerzhinsky Square. That day’s overseas files and reports were waiting for him, neatly arranged in order of their late-afternoon transmission. Kalenin unfastened his jacket, lit a tube-filtered cigarette and settled down to work. He read steadily and carefully, annotating margin notes from which his deputies could initiate action the following day.

For years Kalenin had maintained an office cleaner at the British embassy in Cairo. Usually the information was of low-level interest, little more than the occasional indiscretion from a waste-paper basket, from which they had to make a surmise. But sometimes there was something worthwhile. Like tonight. Kalenin had a retentive memory and saw the significance at once. A meticulously cautious man, he went to the filing cabinet where the intelligence from his top agents was kept and located at once what he wanted, turning the shade of his angled light upon an identical message he had received a month earlier. Identical but for one thing. The source of the first message was listed as Cape Town. The origin of the second, which he had upon his desk, was given as Lagos. From the advice docket attached to the initial information he saw that it had been transmitted a week before to the Warsaw Pact capitals, for guidance to their embassies.

Kalenin returned to his desk and for a long time stared sightlessly at the wall. A trap had been set and he had fallen into it: and it could hardly have happened at a worse time. The qualification came almost at once. If he were clever, it could be worse for others.