'I was there,' I said.

'Where?'

'In Connie's place.'

'Oh my God, were you?' He dug his hands into his pockets and stood with his shoulders hunched. 'All I know is he got out of Lubyanka about a week ago and came in by plane through Antwerp. Next thing I heard he was picked up in St George's psychiatric department. How the hell did he manage to fetch up round at Connie's?'

We were standing outside Monitoring, and there was some stuff coming through on the short-wave, something about street-fighting breaking out again in Cyprus, and Dewhurst wandered off and I went with him, wanting to hear more about North, if he knew anything, like scratching a sore. Since last week I'd been on a ten-day call, which meant two things: they had a mission lined up for me and at any next minute they were going to shove it in my hands and tell me to get on with it. And when you're on a ten-day call your nerves are quite tender enough without some poor bastard like North blowing his head off right in front of you.

It was like scratching a sore because there wasn't any need for me to know any more about North. On the shadow-executive level we work in totally separate fields and there's just no connection.

'How long had he been there?' I asked Dewhurst.

'Where?'

'Lubyanka.'

'Oh, I dunno really.'

Lubyanka is the place you're sent to if you're picked up on the wrong side of the Curtain and they specialize in implemented interrogation and if you can ever get out of there alive then you'll finish up like North. There wasn't anything more I wanted to know about him — the whole thing had suddenly turned my stomach sour. We were standing by the stairhead now, with the open space between the flights running from the top of the building to the bottom like a vertical tunnel, the low-wattage bulbs throwing a depressing yellow light through the rows of banisters, Dewhurst quietly watching me.