'I've never worked with him.'

'He's first class, you know that. He directed Fenton in Cairo last year. He got Matthews out of Pekin. First class.'

There were thirty minutes left on the clock, and I thought of something else. 'When did you find out Schrenk was back in Moscow?'

'Early this morning.'

'Then you haven't had time to set it up. I'm not — '

'It was ready to run before I called base from Geneva. You have a director, a safe-house, contacts, sleepers, signal availability and Embassy liaison.' His thin mouth was contemptuous. 'What more do you want, for God's sake?'

'Access. I'm on their files and I'd never get through the airport.'

'You have access by road into East Germany.'

'Overt?'

'Of course not.'

'What are you talking about, a bloody farm cart or something?'

'A closed truck will take you across the frontier at Zellerfeld, in the Harz Mountains, with no questions asked.'

He was blocking me every time. I was his last hope, I knew that now. He'd tried half a dozen other people and drawn blank, because this was a suicide trip and he didn't pretend it was anything else.

'What about access into Moscow?'

'By commercial airline: Aeroflot. We have a seat for you on the morning flight from Leipzig, where the truck will drop you. It's perfectly straightforward.'

I took a slow breath. 'Cover?'

'Transit papers, East German national.'

It was beginning to sound like a trap and I stopped thinking about it for a minute, watching the people in the group by the main doors. A man was shouting his head off now and so was his wife: he wanted asylum but his wife said it would mean leaving her mother behind, and the secret police would take reprisals. A younger man, possibly their son, was trying to make them shut up. Two more policemen were marching towards them, unbuttoning their holsters to make an effect. A crowd was collecting.