He was being as specific as he could, on the air. It was no use asking him to spell anything out: he couldn't. He was trying to get me to read between the lines and I wasn't interested. I didn't want to know.

The operator with the chewing-gum was on my other side, opposite Tilson, and I swung my head up. 'Would you go and spit that bloody stuff out for Christ's sake? I can't stand the smell.'

My hands were frozen. I was afraid of what Croder was going, finally, to make me do, by pricking my conscience, or my pride. I listened to the rain beating at the row of narrow sooty windows and wondered who the poor bastard was, and where. We have to get someone out. He couldn't be done for, yet; he was lying on a rooftop somewhere in the pouring rain with the patrol lights sweeping the streets, waiting till he had to show himself; or hunched between rocks in a frontier zone like a wild dog with a broken leg and no hope of food or shelter or mercy when they found him; or sitting in a basement propped in an upright chair with the bright light probing into his eyes till he couldn't see them any more, could only hear what they were asking him, feel what they were doing when he didn't answer. It touches all of us.

The man with the chewing-gum had moved away but I could still smell the stuff, like toothpaste.

I spoke into the console. 'Is it Shapiro?' Tilson moved again.

'Yes,' Croder said. I could tell by his tone that I wasn't meant to know. I wanted to say well what about O'Rourke and Wallis and Jessop, shouting the bloody odds all over the Caff down there? Security stank, in this place, always did, half the staff trying to keep the lid on things and the other half yelling their heads off.

Shapiro. A small quiet man with sharp pointed ears and a passion for chess and a girl in Brighton and a scar the length of his forearm where the knife had got him before I could throw the rest of them off and reach him in time, glass all over the place from the explosion and the sirens coming in, Tenerife, with a full moon and the night temperature still in the nineties and Rosita sobbing her heart out in a bar at the end of the jetty because they'd got Templer, nothing we could do.