Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Twenty

'When they are half-way, the middle of the beach,' Bikov murmured.

'I can't see the middle, I only have the sight—'

'The middle of the beach.'

'I only have the vision from the sight 'scope — where is the middle?' Vasiliev snapped. 'You tell me, you have to call it.'

'I'll call it.'

'It's all you fucking have to do, call it. Spot. Is that too much? Just tell me when to shoot. Which target?'

'Not yet, a moment.'

Now Vasiliev — the conscript from Volgograd — thought the colonel was shit. He, Vasiliev, had the machine-gun. He had the target in the crosshairs. He had the power. All that was asked of the colonel of Counterintelligence (Military) was to call the shot and spot, and he hesitated. Did he not understand the breathing pattern that was necessary? The caller, the spotter, the feeder of ammunition was a servant. He could have taken them on the dunes, two scrambling figures with the sand slipping loosely away under their feet. He could have fired when they slithered down the last slope from the dunes to the beach, each breaking their fall with their hands. But each time he could have taken them, fired, the murmur in his ear had been that he should wait.

They ran. For moments he had the two of them in the 'scope. Then it was none of them, then one. He thought they went slower, as if the impetus of the charge from the trees was slackened. He thought it was more from the sun than from the flares but pricks of light bounced from the beach and played in his eyes. He blinked. By closing, opening, squeezing shut, opening his eyes he lost the focus of the aim and the crosshairs showed him only the beach. He swore, edged the 'scope sight the fraction required. A cormorant fluttered in it. There was a colony of cormorants. Distraction, and he swore again. He had them. The black figure had stumbled, had slid to its knee, the white shirt checked, reached down and dragged the figure up. The moment was perfect.

'Do I fucking shoot?'

'A moment.'

'What do you wait for?'

'The middle.'

He should have been allowed to shoot in his own time. The machine-gunner was the principal. In infantry tactics, as taught him, the machine-gunner was free to fire as the best moment was presented. He knew his breathing was bad. He gulped air. His right hand clamped down on the guard above the iron frame of the butt, it was tight against his shoulder, but his left hand reached forward. He did not have to look to click the sight a notch further, to take in another hundred metres. They were no longer together in the sight. He wavered between them. Either the black figure or the white shirt. They were both targets, no more and no less. He had no emotion for the figure he did not know, or for the man who had been his friend. He made the click and his finger drifted back to the trigger guard.

'Which? Fuck you, which one?'

The petty officer's voice rang in his ear. 'Don't speak like that to a senior.'

'Fucking make your mind up.'

The petty officer's voice dropped. 'He's a good man, Colonel. Archenko is popular, well liked. I don't mean…'

The same murmur from Bikov. 'I respected him.'

'I don't mean to diminish his guilt. He has the best reputation of any officer — efficient, fair, we trusted him.'

'And strong, the best of officers.'

Vasiliev screamed, 'Which?'

The murmur had gone cold, like ice crusted it. 'In your own time. One or both.'

Vasiliev snatched his eye up from the 'scope sight. He gazed out, over the barrel. He saw the dunes and the width of the beach, and the two tiny figures of men, black and white, in the middle of the gilded beach. Without the magnification they seemed to move at snail's pace. His eye darted back to the sight. He saw empty sand. He twisted the sight to the right — saw only the beach space. To the left a blur, then sand and gulls. He made the adjustment. Vasiliev snatched in the air, filled his lungs. He held them. Beyond them, soft focus, was the shimmer of the sea. His finger went from the guard to the trigger bar. Mouth open, he allowed the breath to seep from his lips. He had them, he began to squeeze. He paused on his breath, gentle.

He heard the whistle of its approach.

The grenade exploded.

Vasiliev flinched.

The shrapnel sang.

By flinching, turning away his head, twisting his exposed shoulders, he jarred his aim. He saw sand, dirt, debris, hanging in a little cloud. It was not near him. His eye was back to the sight. He heard the petty officer spit, contempt. Where he looked for them there was only the cloud's mist. He fired. He could not see the beaten zone. The tracers beaded from the barrel, then were lost in the cloud. The colonel fed the belt. The butt pressured his shoulder and the thunder of the weapon was buried in his ears. He kept his finger on the trigger — not double tap, not releasing. The cloud cleared. He still had his finger on the trigger bar, depressing it, all his strength on it, when the belt was exhausted, when the brass cases no longer flew to the side.

'Arsehole,' the petty officer snarled. 'So far away it would not even have cut your pretty-boy face. You missed.'

'A belt. Give me a belt.'

The petty officer grabbed the ammunition belt that hung from Bikov's neck. Vasiliev had the breech plate up. He snapped the first round of the belt into the breech, rearmed the machine-gun. They were near to the water's edge. His breathing was fast, uncontrolled. He raked the sight on to them. He saw his friend's head, and the white shirt. They were running, each holding the other's hand, the black arm and the white arm, each pulling the other along. He gasped to fill his lungs.

The petty officer scorned him: 'You said you were the best, and you fucking missed.'

Not a squeeze, a jerk. He had them both. His finger wrenched on the trigger bar. Both were in the crosshairs, would be in the beaten zone. Silence. Not the hammer blow but only the metal scrape of the working mechanism going forward. A jam. The breath sighed out of him. For a moment his mind blanked. It was empty. He heard the petty officer's shout, and the murmur of Bikov, but not their words. He scraped his mind for the answer. There was no instructor to help him. Not the calm of the firing range. He recocked. He squeezed the trigger. Silence. He lifted the breech plate and pulled the belt clear, but the first round was still wedged in the chamber. Fingers in. No feeling in them and clumsy movements as he prised the round out an armour-piercing round with the black-painted tip and the red ring on the cartridge rim, and if it had detonated as he'd reached his fingers into the breech it would have taken off his face. He freed it from the belt, dropped it. He laid the second round of the belt in the breech, whipped the plate down, and armed the weapon again.

'You arrogant shite, you're fucking useless!' The petty officer crouched close to him.

They were going down to the water. He had to wait. 'Regain control of breathing,' the instructors said. His heart pounded. He made another click on the 'scope sight. He breathed hard, twice.

'Where did it come from?'

'Just shoot — pretty boy.'

'I don't know,' the murmur answered him. The hand gently moved on his shoulder. 'In your own time…I don't know.'

He stared into the sight. He had the breathing. Finger to the trigger bar. They were at the water. He thought it was the sun, not the flares. Where the sea came to the shore, where the waves ran to their limit, the light was silver and reflected back. The brilliance burned his eye. The light danced on the crests and he saw the splash as they hit the waterline. He could not look into the sight, but he fired.

He thought they were in the water.

Locke had blasted off the grenade, but it had fallen far short of the source of the tracer.

He did not understand why the firing that had brought Lofty down had been short bursts, but the firing aimed at them on the beach had been a never-ending cacophony of rounds…and he had not understood why there had then been the delay. They had reached the water. He crawled forward. The scrub tore at his coat and his trousers, and scarred the hands that held the launcher. The blast of the machine-gun had started again. He must get forward.

They still held each other's hands.

The spray leaped around them. Wickso held his hand until the shelving of the beach had the water at their knees, and they could no longer run. Out beyond them, the sun playing on the hull's rust, was the Princess Rose, and closing with it was the bow wave. The bursts were wild — once they had been so accurate. Wickso did not know why they now spattered the sea in a great arc around them.

Wickso shouted, 'There's no other way.'

'Never was.'

'We go for it.'

'We are brothers.'

'Stay with me.'

The bleep rang in Wickso's ear. He loosed Viktor's hand. Together they dived at the wave breaking ahead of them. The tracers seemed to ignite the water. It was twelve years since he had swum hard…with Billy, Ham and Lofty, in rough winter seas, off a beach of grey pebble, into Murlough Bay off the Antrim coast on an away-day from the Ballykinler camp. Flippers, then. The flippers were discarded, were back in the treeline. He could not have run in them across the dunes, could not have stopped at the shore to ease them over his boots. He swam crawl and only his arms and the tip of his head made a target. He did not look back. There was more firing, but with the seawater in his ears he no longer heard the impact of rounds into the water or the shockwave as they went overhead. But the bleeper, prised off Lofty's webbing, was close and the ringing tone was ever shorter. He was far away from the beach, he glided away from Billy and Ham, and the memory of Lofty's eyes staring up at him, mute and pleading, on the dunes. They had gone past Lofty, almost tripped on him, and Lofty's hands had been on his stomach and the hole was big enough for an orange to have settled in, and he hadn't stopped to feed him morphine, only to snatch the bleeper. A burst hit the water ahead of him. He didn't know whether Viktor was labouring behind him, or was a carcass on the tide. The bleeps came together, and he sucked the air into his lungs.

He dived.

Something worked. The bleeper was good. His hands groped into sand, then a rock, then he saw the shape of the deflated dinghy. His first touch was against the engine, and he clung to it, then began to feel along the side of the sunken shape. The breath bubbles careered past his eyes. He found the bottles, broke them. The dinghy corkscrewed as it inflated. The engine's propellers smacked his knees and the side came up hard under his chin. He was dazed, hurt, and he kicked out and up.

Wickso broke the surface. The salt of the water was in his mouth, and he spat. The dinghy floated away from him. He flailed with his arms, lashed with his feet. A dozen years ago, as a member of a Squadron, he would have been rolling over the dinghy's smooth side with an otter's agility. He struggled for a grip on the rounded side, clawed it, then slowly heaved himself up, over, and into it. He felt the strength ebb from his body. He floundered, gasping.

He threw the switch. The cough of the engine was reluctant, then it caught.

He saw the bobbing fair hair and the white shirt. The head and the body had drifted a full forty metres past where the dinghy had surfaced. The head and the shirt floated and there was no beat in the arms.

Wickso gunned the engine.

He was too far back, but the desperation trapped him. He lay on his stomach and laid out in front of him were all the grenades he had.

Locke had not come close enough, and knew it, but he tilted the barrel up.

'The dinghy. Take the dinghy, Igor.'

The gases burst into Bikov's face, and the cartridge cases spilled out in front of him. The noise reverberated in his ears. He fed the belt and followed the line of the tracers.

He saw the small black figure in the dinghy lifted up, as though on an elasticated rope, then keel over. Perhaps the man had fallen on the rudder arm, because the dinghy now careered in pointless tight turns, and each turn took it further from the scrap of white that stood out on the sea's growing colour.

Grenades exploded near them. Bikov ignored them.

'Well done, Igor. It is proven. You are the best.'

'I know it. It was not my fault that the round was damaged, that the weapon jammed.'

The grenades sighed as they flew, like stones thrown by kids. They cracked, like little fireworks that carried no danger. He thought they were fired at full elevation and some were beside them and some cleared them. He wondered why one man had stayed behind, and made a futile sacrifice by firing without skill, with no purpose.

He loathed the boy.

'Igor, did Captain, second rank, Archenko tell you about Malbork Castle?'

'He did.'

'Igor, did Captain Archenko encourage your skill with the machine-gun?'

'Yes.'

'Igor, it is what I heard — did Captain Archenko go into the water of the docks to save your life, and did you thank him?'

'But I did not know the truth of him.'

He hated the boy. It was rare for Yuri Bikov to hate. Too many, in his opinion, interrogators hated — despised — the men they were tasked to question. Hate seldom came to him. He did not hate his wife who bled money from him and who denied him access to his daughter. He had not hated Ibn ul Attab whom he had tricked and deceived in a Chechen cave. He did not hate Archenko with whom he had shared a plate of food, by candlelight. Hatred, he would have said, demeaned him…but he hated this boy.

No more grenades were fired. For a moment he imagined one man bunkered like a rat in a hole with the launcher useless in his hand, and a pouch or a pocket empty. In a moment, a minute — a few minutes — he would order the infantry line behind him to move forward to flush out the man. It puzzled him, briefly, that the gesture of sacrifice had been so futile, not pressed home. He pondered it. Looking up he saw the speck that was Viktor Archenko's head, rising and falling in the water, and he thought that, very slowly, the man edged towards the dinghy as it surged on its futile course.

'Igor, what should happen to Captain Archenko?'

'For his treachery, Colonel, he should die.'

'Igor — at your hand?'

'I have his head in my sights. It would be a difficult shot, across water and with so small a target, at that range. I could do it…but I think it better not to.'

'Igor, why is that?'

'To drown is slower.'

'Igor, shoot the fucking dinghy.'

He held the belt and was ready to feed. He heard the sucking-in of breath. Speeded thoughts. The conscript would be a celebrity, and famous for an hour, given a medal, and when his service had expired and he went back to a shithole existence in fucking Volgograd he would boast of his skill, boast till he bored everyone around him. Traitors became heroes. Rehabilitation was the Russian way. What then the future of the celebrity executioner? Seen from a grimy window in the Lubyanka, an old man shuffled in the square in carpet slippers, grey-haired and needing a stick to support him — the executioner retired from claiming victims. He worked with two buckets beside him. One had eau-de-Cologne to hide the smell and the other was filled with vodka. All he stopped for on a busy day was to reload his pistol and to drink the vodka. He would have been a celebrity, then a bore, then forgotten.

Two bursts, double tap and short.

'Is it sunk?'

'He is alone in the water, Colonel. When he tires he will drown. I correct myself — he is already tired, he will drown soon.'

Bikov looked up. He gazed out on to the sea. The sunlight had replaced the flares. The ship, even at that distance filthy and humble, had slowed and the patrol-boat circled it. He thought it had been a plan of daring, or of desperation. A boat off-shore, a team landed in darkness for a snatch, a race back to an embarkation point, a sunken dinghy, departure from territorial waters before dawn. Time had beaten them. Why would they have done it? He shook his head, almost with a sense of sadness. Yuri Bikov, colonel in military counterintelligence, had no friends that he would have risked his life for. It had been idiocy. What confused him most: Archenko was nothing, was of minimal importance, Archenko was not worth the price of it.

He went to the petty officer and ordered that the extended line of infantry should come forward, should be alert, should look for a single man — probably without ammunition — and they should rout him out. The petty officer slouched away. He remembered the Argun gorge, where he had been to save the life of a man he had not met. He felt humility, and understood.

Then Bikov sat on the dunes sand beside the tripod legs and felt the sun's early warmth on his face, and sometimes he watched the lines of ants that moved past his boots, and sometimes he watched the faraway fair pinhead of an exhausted man who would drown. He smiled at the conscript. 'Igor, would you like to drink vodka?'

In his deadened ears he heard the surprise from the boy he hated. 'No, Colonel. Why do you ask? Thank you, no.'

He loaded the last grenade. It had the markings of phosphorus. Locke felt a sense of shame. He had not sufficiently pushed home his attack.

The grenades had been launched from too far back. They had fallen randomly, had failed to break the aim of the machine-gunner. He had not gone close. In a frenzy, he had reloaded. He had spilled the grenades from his pockets, had laid them out in front of him and, hands trembling, had forced them down the barrel and fired, and fired again.

His name would not be spoken. He thought himself too late, but he crawled forward. Flies buzzed him, the sun snatched on his skin. The dinghy was sunk, Wickso was lost. He had looked back once, had seen the fair hair and the white shirt in the water. Viktor lived, but it was too late.

His father would have known about revenge, would have put down poison for the rats if they came into the chicken coop behind the kitchen and ate eggs, would have thought nothing of the rats' death agonies.

He had hoped to save Viktor, but he had not pushed forward far enough. It was about revenge. A set book at school, text to be learned for examinations, the same sunlight in the classroom, the words of Shakespeare's merchant Jew: '…revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.' But he had only one grenade, phosphorus, left. As he slithered forward, the snake, Locke could see the light glint on the barrel of the machine-gun and the two men close to it.

It had sunk from his sight. With the dinghy was Wickso.

He was alone. He felt the burn of the sun on his face. He could manage only little movements of his hands and stunted kicks with his feet, but that was sufficient to keep him afloat. The waves lifted and dropped him, but the ebb tide's current carried him further from the shore. From his eyeline, with the spray breaking in his eyes, he could see the ship and he thought it had stopped, or if it had not stopped it had slowed.

Alone, as his grandmother had been when his father was born. Alone, as his father had been when he had obeyed his orders and had flown into the spread of the mushroom cloud. Alone, as he had been at the dead-drop site at Malbork Castle, and alone as when he had turned away from the fence in the zoo park. He would float out to sea, until he could fight no longer, then he would drown.

He tried to cry out, and had no voice, and Billy, Ham, Lofty and Wickso could not hear him. He gave them his silent thanks. And he tried to shout to the shore that they should finish him, show him mercy, but the words lay in his throat with the salt taste.

Viktor drifted.

The patrol-boat came round them again, and the voice distorted by the loudspeaker instructed that they turn or they would be rammed. Then it turned towards them and foam blossomed from the Nanuchka's propeller screws. Its sharp bow lined up on them.

The master shouted from the bridge, 'If I could do anything I would. I cannot.'

Rupert Mowbray stood at that point on the deck, against the rail, where the impact would come, and he held out his arms wide and challenged them, made a target for them. The mate was at the base of the accommodation block, below the bridge, and he had brought up an armful of the white china plates from their mess room and he threw them in futile anger, one at a time, into the path of the patrol-boat.

The engineer, framed in his hatch and above his ladder into the depths of the ship, bit on his lip and clutched an ugly spanner.

A madness caught them all. From each of them was an inane gesture of defiance.

But the master swung the wheel and the Princess Rose turned. The patrol-boat came past them. Its fenders scraped the hull of the condemned cargo tramper. They lurched from the scraping blow. The master wept. Mowbray spat. The last of the mate's plates shattered beside the forward gun crew. The engineer dropped the spanner and it clattered to the deck by his feet. They looked far back. They could see, all of them, the little bobbing head in the water.

Mowbray intoned, 'Dammit, gentlemen, the end of an old man's dream and the end of a young man's life do not make for a pretty sight.'

The patrol-boat was alongside them. Ahead of them was the open horizon of the Baltic Sea.

Her binoculars dropped from her face.

She turned on the crowd. 'He's in the water. What are you going to do?'

Alice saw the uncomprehending faces. She went to Jerry the Pole, who looked away. She kicked his shin. 'Tell them — he's in the water. What are they going to do for him?'

Jerry the Pole limped away from her, then shrugged. 'They know he is in the water. What do you expect them to do?'

She rasped, 'Tell them, and ask them.'

They were told, they were asked.

The fisherman grimaced and shrugged, nothing could be done. The Russian waved his hands, and the light caught the jewel on his finger ring: nothing was possible. Of the villagers, men and women, some laughed and some were sombre and some turned from her gaze. She had the burned hand of Jerry the Pole in her fist and she led him from the fisherman and the Russian, made him stand in front of each man and each woman and repeat her demand: What are you going to do? A woman, big-bellied and big bosomed, who would have recognized emotion, romance, love, helplessness, tried to comfort her and hold Alice close, but she was pushed away.

She rounded on them, 'If he were one of yours, what would you do? Leave him, turn your backs on him?'

Alice was beside a boat. It was sturdy, pulled up high on the sand, one among many. She put her weight against it and heaved. Her feet slipped away in the soft sand, and she could not move it. No one helped her. She looked up. The crowd had made a half-circle around her but were too far back for her to reach them and pull them forward to help. They watched. She strained and the boat did not move, was bedded in the sand. She heard the scream of gulls. She dropped her shoulder against the boat's planks. She panted, gasped. She heard the voice, and a murmur of response, then the sharper reply.

Alice did not have the language and did not understand. Then the priest was beside her, his shoulder against hers, his weight with hers. Then the fisherman's shoulder, then the Russian's weight.

Jerry the Pole told her, 'The Father says we should launch. They say there is a machine-gun. The Father is a man of great learning. He spoke words of Latin to them, as on a Sunday's mass. They will launch.'

The boat moved. All the men's shoulders, and the women's, were against it. It scraped the sand, gathered momentum.

'Ask him,' Alice demanded of Jerry the Pole, 'ask him what he said.' It was relayed. The Father grunted beside her, 'Quern Dei diligunt, adolescens moritur.'

Jerry the Pole said, 'It is what he told the village last year when a fisherman was lost at sea. It is from the words of Plautus…'

She was a convent girl. Alice said softly, 'I understand what he says. "Whom the gods love die young." He speaks a truth.'

'They will face the machine-gun.'

The boat skidded down into the water and the crowd pushed it until they were waist deep. The fisherman was in it first, then the Russian, then Jerry the Pole. Then Alice scrambled up and over the side. The engine rattled, dark smoke coughed, it surged.

The crowd was on the beach. The priest stood in front of them, stern, his hands tight across his chest, but she saw him break the hold and he made the sign of the cross. The boat, on full power, crashed the waves' crests.

Locke heard the popping of gunfire.

He was the snake in the grass. He had left the scrub and was now on the dunes, and he slithered a path on the sand between the grass tufts. The sand was in his mouth and nose and he blinked to keep it from his eyes. It was in his shirt, his trousers and shoes, but he kept the launcher's barrel clear of it. He wriggled forward on his stomach. There must be no sand in the barrel for the last grenade — white phosphorus. Each little contorted movement took him further from the gunfire, and nearer to them. With the gunfire, merged with it, were their voices.

The young man knelt, the older man stood. Their shadows fell across the machine-gun. Though the sun was behind him, the older man had his hand over his eyes, and the younger man pointed over the dunes and the beach towards the sea.

The younger man laughed. 'What do they think they are doing?'

The older man said, 'They are too far out for the cordon to hit them. The shots fall short.'

'Don't they know about me — about the quality of my shooting? When they are close I can sink them.'

'Yes, because you are the best…'

A line of troops idled behind them. Locke, squashed down in the sand, watched. He had sufficient Russian to understand the words, but the older man's words confused him. The gaze of all the troops in the line had followed the young man's pointing gesture. He thought he was a little more than a hundred metres from them, from the machine-gun. He would go closer. The flies were around his face, crawled on his skin.

The young man laughed louder, and pointed again, but the older man looked away. He squirmed deeper into the sand. Very deliberately, Locke turned his head. The grass tufts were in his face. He laid the launcher down, careful that the barrel was clear, then used both his freed hands to part the grass. He looked where the younger man had pointed. He saw the boat, out past the point where the fence ran down into the sea. It threw a crisp spray from its bow, coming along the coastline but keeping its distance from the beach. He freed the grass strands, slid his hands over the sand and moved more grass. Locke saw the fair-capped head and a hint of the white shirt. He had the chance. It would be better than revenge, it would be fulfilment. He thought he was blessed.

He heard the young man ask, 'What will be my reward?'

'A parade, a band, a medal, and fame — if that is what you want.'

'I will wait until they stop to lift him out, then I will shoot.'

He turned his head. The place he lay in had become a nest. He would wait there. He would only move when there was no chance of failure. The troops lounged behind the two men, and held their rifles casually, but he thought their attention would quicken when the machine-gun was readied to shoot.

Chelbia said, 'I identify you, Miss North, as an intelligence officer, a lady of importance. Myself, I am only an insignificant businessman, and I make a small living from the trade of import and export. Now I and my friends do something that is a madness, the play of lunatics. I do not look, Miss North, for financial reward, but for cooperation. I look for doors to be opened and for eyes to look away. My colleague, Jerzy Kwasniewski, he is an old man, in the twilight of his years. He has no pension after a lifetime of service. He should have a pension. We are all in the hands of God, also in the hands of Roman, who is an excellent and honest man, and he has the need of a faster boat. Miss North, do we get a fast boat, a pension and cooperation? They are trifling requests. I think it is important, Miss North, as we go to save your agent, that we have your word they will be given us. Your word would be a satisfactory guarantee. Do we have your word?'

'Whatever you want, Mr Chelbia, you shall have.'

The young man flexed his hands, wiped his eyes, then arched his back. He dropped down, took the machine-gun's butt and worked it against his shoulder for the final time. He was grinning. The older man, as if his knees had stiffened, came down heavily beside him and lifted up the belt in his hands, his elbows taking his weight. The troops were alert now and little nervous whispers passed among them.

'You are ready?'

'When they slow to pick him up…then I am ready. Do I have your friendship, Colonel?'

'You have my friendship, as Captain Archenko had yours. To betray your friend, Igor, is worse than betraying your country. Shoot and enjoy it.'

He saw the mouth of the young man pucker, and the hand that meandered close to the trigger guard came up and wiped fast at an eye. The face of the older man was impassive.

'What should I do?'

'You must do what you believe is your duty.'

The hand cocked the weapon, the finger was back on the trigger guard. The breath was drawn in. The eye that had been wiped was now at the sight.

Locke clutched the launcher and drew up his knees. He launched himself, and life passed before him — not the past, but the future.

Locke saw hands reach down to catch the collar of the white shirt and the body was lifted up and fell hard into the boat's bottom.

He ran. The head tilted away from the sight, but the finger stayed on the trigger, and the tracer round streamed out, but high. First, confusion on the face, then irritation, and anger. The older man gaped.

Locke saw elation crease Rupert Mowbray's face, and he punched the air, then snapped down the radio's switch for transmission.

He charged. He felt a great calm. Tiredness had gone from his legs. Behind them, behind the tripod and the machine-gun, the troops were rooted, and two big lads by a mortar were statue still.

Locke saw the cork career from the bottle's neck, thwacking into the ceiling of an office, and the champagne spilled into the glasses held high by Bertie and Peter.

He rushed them. The sand no longer skidded from under his shoes. He was at peace. The older man turned away and his hands were lifted and covered his face, and the belt was dropped. Officers shouted, troops lifted their rifles.

Locke saw the palms of the hands beat on the conference-room table as Americans, Canadians, Israelis, French and Germans of the intelligence community applauded the conclusion of the Director General's briefing on Operation Havoc.

The barrel of the machine-gun waved towards him. It was as he wanted, and all fear was gone. He barely heard the first rifle shots fired at him, and the tracer of the machine-gun spitting wild and wide of him.

Locke saw them walked hand in hand, among trees, where spring flowers bloomed.

The barrel of the launcher was aimed at the young man and the tripod and the machine-gun. The first blow, a hammer's, was against his arm. The second, a pickaxe's, was at his hip. He staggered twice, but held the aim. He was a dozen paces from them. He was falling. He looked into the little pit hole of the machine-gun's flash suppressor. He pulled the trigger. The grenade squirmed out, hit the right tripod leg, ricocheted to the side, rolled, and lay. Another blow battered him. He went down. He was on his knees. He stared at the barrel. There was the burst of the cloud of phosphorus, and the blast of the firing of tracer and ball and armour-piercing bullets.

Locke saw…

The technician's magazine on the floor beside his chair, discarded. The signal decoded. He pulled the paper from the printer and went to the glass door.

The annexe off the central communications unit was empty. Two beds not slept in, two chairs not used, a table cleared and the screen empty.

In the unit, without natural light and with recycled air, the technicians were permitted to dress down. His trainer shoes flopped quietly over the annexe carpet as he circled the table. Where were they? He called back to colleagues that he intended to deliver the signal personally, by hand. He wanted to be the messenger who lightened tired faces, made the smiles crack exhausted mouths. He padded out, and took the lift up. He knocked on the Director General's outer door respectfully. A sharp voice called for him to enter. A young man was hitching his coat on the stand, and an older woman was switching on the computer console. A younger woman was busy at the coffee-machine. Was the Director General in? He was not, he would not be in the building till the afternoon. He walked away.

Back down the corridor, back down two floors in the lift. Another door.

Had Peter Giles arrived yet? Another languid and disinterested answer. No, he'd had a late night, but would be back in tomorrow. He was asked, as an afterthought: Something urgent or can it wait? He clung to the single sheet of paper, as though it were his personal property and he alone was charged to deliver it, and closed the door after him.

The technician descended another floor, traversed another corridor, rapped another door. Had they seen Mr Ponsford? No, he'd left a voicemail, had stayed late and had now gone home, was not to be disturbed — could someone else help? They could not.

He left them, at Russia Desk, to their coffee and their computers, and to the gutting of yesterday's Moscow newspapers, to the transcripts of yesterday's radio news broadcasts. Irritation itched at the technician.

He had been on duty through the night. Through the signals, he had lived their night. He knew them as the Delta team, with their call sign numbers, and they were all down, bloody down, gone, history — and the high and the mighty who knew them and who had sent them had left and not yet returned. He was only a lowly technician, and he lived in a Hackney bedsit. He would try to sleep away the day behind thin curtains that could not suppress the daylight. Try to sleep, but it would come difficult because he had read each of the signals. He had been with them.

He did not know of a hut above the beach of a Scottish loch, where a man had painted in the shadow of Beinn Odhar Mhor, but he knew Delta 1 was down. Nor did he know of a file marked 'Not To Be Continued With' in a locked cabinet in a south-coast police station but he knew Delta 2 was down. He did not know that early morning winds blew leaves against lines of gravestones at a well-known cemetery, but he knew Delta 3 was down. S-trolleys were hurried down the corridors of a West Midlands hospital, carrying the victims of the morning's first traffic accident and of the first coronary attack, but he knew Delta 4 was down. He had been with them through their last hours.

The technician came into the atrium. He stood among the storming flow of the Service's staff coming to work. He had thought he was proud to work there. The technician could not believe he would not see one of them — the Director General with his bodyguard, Peter Giles who had the limp from his hip problem, Bertie Ponsford with the pinched face of a hunter — but the sea of movement swam round him and he did not see them. He had read the first line of the signal, and could have punched the air.

He did not know who Ferret was, what was Ferret's importance, why men's lives had been lost that Ferret should be brought out, or what were the prospects of an alien, in exile. He had been with Ferret during the long dark hours, had run with him, gone into the water with him, and could have cheered out loud at his rescue. Nor did he know that Alice North would leave the Service, would live with Ferret and help him earn a meagre living as a translator of Russian documents after his brief usefulness had been leached from him.

He saw Clarence. Clarence had his raincoat over his uniform tunic, would be going home after his night shift — Clarence was the eyes and ears of the great and monstrous building. Had Clarence seen the Director General? Had not set eyes on him. Had Clarence seen Mr Giles? Gone home, definitely not come back. Had Clarence seen Mr Ponsford? Not since he left, looking for a taxi.

The technician did not know about firebreaks. Nor did he know that within two years awards for Other Buggers' Efforts would be discreetly listed in a New Year Honours List, and that Giles and Ponsford would go in the company of their wives to the Palace.

Clarence winked, then whispered, 'Was it a big show? You know what I mean — an "old times" show. Did it work out?'

'At a cost.'

'Well, it's the show that matters, isn't it? I'm glad to hear it worked out.'

He saw Clarence strut away, like a goal had been scored, like his team had won something, as though at a cost did not matter. The technician took the lift back to the lower basement. He knew who Havoc 1 was. He could put a name — Oh, and Locke has shown up — to the call-sign, but not a face. He did not know of a farm in west Wales where the morning's milking was finishing, or of a body that had floated under a marina's pontoon, or of a dead drop that had failed at a castle in eastern Poland, or of a kiss, or of the moment when a machine-gun had fired and a grenade of white phosphorus had exploded.

The technician settled at his desk and punched through the numbers for internal mail.

He did not know of a colonel in casualty with severe arm burns who, on discharge from a military hospital, would resign his commission and go far to the east for a job in a lumber factory, never talking of the cause of his scars — or of a conscript in intensive care because the phosphorus had spattered his face and hands and fire had licked through his uniform, who would go home and would drive his father's taxi in the night on the streets of Volgograd when his disfigurement could not be seen — or of the funeral with full military honours of the admiral who had commanded the Baltic Fleet, at which successive senior officers queued to praise his memory.

He sent the signal away.

He did not know of letters, bloodstained, that would be retrieved from a scorched body, holed by a hundred rifle shots, which would be returned after an interval that was decent, along with the bodies. Or know that Rupert Mowbray, under the arc-lights at the border crossing at Braniewo, would say, side of mouth, 'Just like the Glienicker bridge. It's comforting to know that little changes,' and Libby Weedon would nod agreement as Russian soldiers used the dark small hours of the morning to carry forward the five unmarked coffins to the waiting hearses, then hurry away because Mowbray had a plane to catch and a lecture to give in Bologna to the Italian Service that afternoon.

The technician cleared his desk, briefed his replacement, put on his coat.

He did not know that after that decent interval the intelligence men of old enemies, new friends, would drink together, chuckle, and forget together.

The technician left the building for his bus, and his home with the thin curtains and his bed. What he did know — he no longer heard the machine-gun, as he had through the night, but he saw a beach where the sea had not yet wiped away the footprints of men who had run for the water, and the sun caught the bloodstains and nestled on discarded cartridge cases, and the gulls wheeled, and the silence had fallen.

The technician felt the anger hurt him.

It had been a big show — but at a cost.