'First class.'

'Quite so. You wouldn't,' Croder said with a certain silkiness, 'consider him expendable.'

Like a dog with a broken leg.

'No.'

Stonewall the bastard, don't give him any rope.

'All I would ask is that you would at least meet me in Berlin, so that I can give you the details.' Three seconds, four. 'That is all I would ask, for him.'

The lights glowed on the console. I could hear the voice of the man in the field coming faintly across the room, where they were running Flash point. Tilson hadn't moved. The smell of peppermint had gone now, or I was getting used to it. I leaned forward towards the console so that Croder would hear me clearly, and know by my tone that I meant what I said.

'I'm on leave. I haven't got my nerve back yet — it was close to the crunch, that time, and I'm lucky to be here. So you'll have to find someone else, because I refuse.'

I got out of the chair and went past Tilson without looking at him and opened the door and threw it shut behind me and walked down the green-painted corridor to the lift and pressed the button for down.

It was a deluge outside and there was a traffic block near Hyde Park Corner and I sat waiting for fifteen minutes before I took the phone off the clip and got Tilson and told him I wanted a police car to get me out of this mess and I wanted a flight to Berlin, the first he could find for me. And tell Croder.

2: TEMPELHOF

Blinding sleet and the runway lights floating up from the dark as the wheels hit and we bounced and they hit again and we bounced again with the airframe shuddering.

'Was, zum Teufel, macht der Pilot?'

A few uneasy laughs but at least we were down.