'Do you go through an operator?'

'God, no, we can dial direct now, through the new exchange.'

She went into the kitchenette and I got on the phone and told Signals I was in Moscow. I didn't know who was on the board at this time of night but it sounded like Medlock.

'I'll tell Mr Croder,' he said. 'Meanwhile we're waiting for Zymyanin to contact us again and tell us where he wants the rendezvous, and when.'

'He's still in Moscow?'

'As far as we know. You'll hear from us as soon as we've got anything for you. Everything all right there?'

I said yes, and shut down the signal. I hadn't caught anything in Medlock's tone but he was probably worried, and so was I. Zymyanin had got here soon after eleven o'clock last night — 'He arrived in Moscow twenty minutes ago,' Croder had told me when I was at the Hotel Constanta in Bucharest — and he should have oven us his ideas for a rendezvous before now. One of the reasons why he hadn't done that could be because he'd been frightened off by what had happened to Hornby, and he might even think twice about contacting us again. There were other possible reasons, and one in particular that I didn't want to think about.

'Would you like a cup, now I've made it?'

Jane had put a tray on the long carved stool; one of its legs had been mended with glue and string. 'It's not Chippendale,' she said — she was a quick observer — 'but it's better than the plastic able I found here when I came.' she'd taken off her windcheater and was suddenly thin, boyish, in a ballet top under a black cardigan.

I said I didn't want any coffee: there might be a chance of some sleep.

'They gave me instructions,' she said,' to clear you for the USSR, since it looks as if they'll be running the mission here. You're completely fluent and can pass for a Muscovite, is that right?'