'You're the executive?'

Chandler spoke from slightly behind us. 'Quiller, sir.'

The pale eyes went on looking at me without any reaction; then, when he was ready, he brought his right hand out of his pocket and offered it to me. 'Good of you to come. I'm Shepley.'

A cold hand, hardened by holding things that might have blown up if he hadn't been careful — 'this was how I thought of it.

'My privilege, sir.' To put poor old Elliott out of his misery. Shepley put his hand back into his raincoat and leaned against the car, his head turned a little to the right but his eyes watching me.

'You've been told we'd like you to work with the KGB on a certain assignment?'

'Yes.'

'How does it appeal?'

'I'll need more information.'

He looked away, at the guards by the entrance or beyond them: I think he'd stopped actually seeing the environment, and had slipped into alpha waves. I noticed pockmarks below his left ear, some kind of scarring left by an explosion, perhaps, a grenade. It would explain why he always turned his head to listen with his right ear.

'More information,' he said softly. 'Of course.' He looked back at me again. 'This man Yasolev. Would you trust him?'

'What with?'

'Your life.'

I thought about it, then said, 'I'd trust him to keep his word to me. If he said, for instance, that whatever the orders from Moscow he wouldn't cut me down, I'd accept that.'

'Would you.'

It wasn't a question. I didn't add anything; he was giving me the information I needed by asking me things and listening, so that he'd know what his next question should be. That sounds complicated but it isn't really; it's the classic technique for limiting the information to what the other man needs to know, so that the least amount of information possible is given. I wished him a lot of luck in this case because I was going to want a lot of data before I'd consider working with the KGB, and he knew that.