Quiller Balalaika

Oh, sure. But what the fuck are you trying to push me into?

Sweat gathering: I could feel it. Worse, Croder would see it. Not on my skin. In my eyes. The first admission of commitment to Balalaika.

I took another turn, needing urgently to shake the idea out of my mind. It was too early yet to put my life on the line, if that was what I was going to do. The man with the bald head at the other end of the nave made clanking sounds with his silver candlesticks, trying to be careful not to knock them against each other, perhaps, but not quite managing his veined and sallow hands, his arthritic fingers, vexed with himself because these sacred ornaments were thus far flawless, burnished and gleaming, a glory to God; how satisfactory, how safe to live a life wherein the worst of your concerns is centred on the flawlessness of candlesticks, or isn't that a kind of living death, a perpetuation of all those years of trivia, what do you think, my good friend, what is your honest opinion, now face him again, Croder, pop the question, the next one, the obvious one, the one the bastard is waiting for, perched there on the bench, on my shoulder blades, like a hooded crow.

'If I say no, who will you try next?'

Croder got up, pushed his right hand into the pocket of his coat, let the steel claw dangle. 'No one.'

I thought about this. He'd asked everyone else? And been turned down? Every time? 'Who else have you tried?'

'Fern.'

'And?'

'He said his Russian wasn't perfect.'

'Fern's Russian?' I regretted it immediately, wished I hadn't said it. Croder knew it was a lie, too, but cold feet were cold feet and I've had them myself – pay attention to them and you stand the chance of a longer life. 'Who else?' I asked Croder again.

'Teaseman.'

'And?' Making me drag it out of him.

'He said it sounded like certain death.'

Honest enough. 'Who else?'

'No one.'

'Why won't you try someone else, if I say no?'

The black snow whirled past the coloured windows behind his head.

'There isn't anyone else,' he said.

'Pelt? Sortese? Vine?'

'There isn't anyone else capable.'

'So I'm your last shot.' Not a question but he answered it.

'Yes. You've got to understand -'

'So you've come down to the only psychopath you can think of who might say yes to your bloody suicide run.'

'You've got to understand that I find myself in an invidious position. I have virtual instructions from the prime minister' – he turned this way, that, the energy coming off him, palpable, his aura burning with it – 'to go for Sakkas and bring him down, and in my living memory the Bureau has never refused a mission coming directly from its commander-in-chief.'

His guard down now and I admired that: other men would have sheltered behind their authority. 'So you accepted it,' I said. 'This one.'

Look, anybody can make a mistake, even the Chief of Signals. Faced with virtual orders from the head of state he'd refused to believe he couldn't find a shadow to take this one on, and when the door of No. 10 had closed behind him he'd been committed.

'Yes. I accepted it.' He swung towards me. 'Should I have?'

'Oh for Christ's sake, I can't tell you the answer to that yet; it's too soon.'

'Take your time. Take all the time you need.'

And enough rope.

'This is why you're here personally,' I asked him, 'in Moscow?'

'Of course.'

'I don't quite see why it's so bloody obvious. You could have signalled me personally in Paris. Or sent an emissary.'

Standing close, face to face suddenly. 'You're making it very hard for me.'

'I've no intention. I'm just looking for the bottom line, that's all.'

He swung away again. 'The bottom line is perfectly clear if you choose to read it.'

So I read it, took a minute, but I think I got it right. Even Croder wasn't prepared to send a man to his almost certain death over a signals line. It had got to be done face to face, if at all. And he was forcing himself to the issue on the thinnest possible chance: that before my almost certain death I could get close enough to the target for the mission – Vasyl Sakkas – to bring him down. And you can interpret that how you please: put him out of business, run him out of Russia, destroy his network or conceivably arrange to have him found spread-eagled among the stinking bric-a-brac of a rubbish dump or floating in the Moscow River or sitting like a cinder at the melted wheel of a Mercedes 206 in Sokolniki Park: the Bureau too has its hit men, though I am not one of them. But even if I could pull this thing off, the risk would increase a thousand-fold in the final act because of the kill-overkill syndrome.

'Look,' I told Croder, 'if I take on Balalaika, what toys am I going to get?'

Again it was a second before he answered. I don't think he'd been quite ready to believe I'd even consider this one. 'I would be your control,' he said.

I felt the reaction. When you're offered the Chief of Signals as your control it's like being handed the Holy Grail on a gilded platter even before you can wipe your feet on the red carpet.

'On a twenty-four-hour watch,' I heard him saying, 'throughout every phase of the mission.' He wasn't turning away from me now, stood birdlike in the shadows, the candles touching his eyes with brightness.

This too impressed me. They've got cubicles next to the signals room where the controls can catch some sleep if a mission starts running hot and they have to keep close to the board. But I could remember Croder mounting a round-the-clock stint only once in the whole of my time with the Bureau, and that was when Flack was stuck in a trap within a mile of the Kremlin with the proceeds of a document snatch that had to reach the Ministry of Defence in London before the PM could raise the president of the United States on the red telephone to say whether or not he was prepared to send troops in with the UN forces if an air strike against Iran was ordered first. Croder had lit a fuse under Flack's support group and got the documents out and faxed within three hours and brought Flack home with not much more than a touch of shell-shock. Croder is that good.

More toys, I'm never satisfied. 'Who can I have as my director in the field?'

'Whom would you like?'

'Ferris.'

In a moment: 'Ferris is directing Rickshaw in Beijing. But if -'

'Who's the executive?'

'Tully.'

One of the higher-echelon shadows, or he wouldn't have been given Ferris. 'Where are they,' I asked Croder, 'with Rickshaw?'

'Approaching the end-phase.'

'Does it look sticky?'

'Not at present, though in the end-phase anything can happen, of course.'

Conscience pricked. 'I'd give a lot for Ferris, but -'

'You need give nothing.' He was looking down, Croder, saw the problem, was trying to assess my thinking. To take a major DIF away from a top shadow moving into the end-phase of a mission was probably unheard-of in the annals of the Bureau. But the trade-off was obvious: if the Chief of Signals was prepared to order it, it meant that he wanted me to have every single advantage he could give me for Balalaika because it was that dangerous. How much, then, was I ready to listen to my conscience? How willing was I to go into this one with someone directing me in the field who lacked Ferris' experience, brilliance, intuition, and ability to get me home with a few bones left, to pull me out of God knew what bloodied stew of an end-phase where Balalaika could leave me foundering?

I have little stomach, my good friend, for the last-ditch eleventh-hour death-or-glory gotterdammerung favoured by some of the shadows – Kruger, Blake, Cosgrove. Bold fellows, but they carry within them the death-watch beetle, quietly burrowing.