'My discretion.' He didn't sound complaining. He should have. The director hi the field isn't meant to leave anything to the discretion of the support groups or anyone else except the executive, he's meant to direct them.

'Who's the control in London for Longshot' I asked him.

'Mr Pritchard.'

That wasn't surprising: Pritchard was halfway over the hill and tad done his bit for the Bureau, due for his pension, give him a minor job in Bucharest to end his career with. But Zymyanin was a Russian, and the Russians still weren't playing a minor role in international intelligence. If London wanted me to take over Longshot and get the wheels back on I'd need a new control, someone like Croder.

The bell sounded again from up there at the station, and a whistle blew. It was rather comforting on this stark and deathly night to know that someone was playing at trams.

'How many people have you got,' I asked Fry, 'protecting the 'Four.'

That was a lot of people, seven in all, for the support group of a minor mission. Turner must feel there was safety in numbers.

'You can pull them out,' I said. 'Zymyanin won't be coming back.'

'How do you know?'

His tone was challenging and I said, 'Because I've been in this trade for seventeen years and the number of missions I've seen blown by totally incompetent directors in the field would make your hair stand on end, and since we're on the subject there's one of your people up there with shit in his pants because I came up on him from behind while he was watching the pretty blue and green signal lights, so find someone who can train him before you put him into the field again, you want to get him killed?' That was how the poor devil lying down there in his sack had got killed: he hadn't checked out the area or surveilled local traffic before he'd moved in for the rendezvous, he couldn't have, and he was meant to be an executive. I turned to the man standing next to Fry, not the one who was shivering. 'Go and phone the embassy and ask for their DI6 man and tell him you're Bureau and give the parole and the code-name for the mission and ask him to get a car sent here to pick up the body and send it back to England.'