'Where are we going?' I asked Baker.

'The railway station. Freight yard.'

We lost the back end and he touched the wheel and used the kerb to kick us straight and when he'd settled down again I asked him the question I'd been trying not to ask him ever since we'd left the airport.

'Who's the executive?'

He gave me a glance and stared through the windscreen again and tucked his chin in. 'Hornby.' He said it quietly.

I hadn't heard of Hornby either, and it didn't sound as if I ever would again. He must have been new, too — they were cutting down the training time at Norfolk these days and sending neophytes into the field without a chance of getting them home again if anything awkward happened. I'd told Croder how I felt about it and he'd said he'd pass it on to the proper quarters, but it wouldn't do any good: he felt the same way as I did, and those pontifical bastards in the Bureau hierarchy obviously hadn't listened even to him. Say this much at least for Croder: he's a total professional and one of the three really brilliant controls in London, and he doesn't get any kick out of going into the signals room and listening to those calls coming in from the field — I don't know if I can make it. They've cut me off and I haven't got long. Can you do anything, send anyone in?

There'd been a call like that reaching London this evening, some time before six, and Hornby's control had said yes, he'd find the nearest executive and send him into the field, and that was why I was sitting in this dog-eared Volvo skating through the streets of Bucharest a little bit too late — it's nearly always a little bit too late, because things happen so fast when a mission starts running hot that there just isn't time to pull people out.

'Was there a rendezvous?'

Baker glanced at me again. 'I don't know.'