Adam Hall: Northlight

The Bureau is not popular with the legitimate secret services, because we've got privileges and prerogatives above and beyond their own franchise and they envy us. The Queen doesn't even know we exist, though the prime minister certainly does, but not officially. We are also rather dirty, and do things they are not permitted to do, even if they wanted to. They work in offices and glean their material in bars and restaurants and at diplomatic functions; we work in deep shadow, and are unknown, and leave no trace, except sometimes a crumpled figure with its hand flung out, half-seen in a back alley or in the bilge of a rotting hulk or on a frosted wasteground with weeds for a wreath: the earthly remains of one of them or sometimes one of us, depending how the day has gone.

Brekhov went slowly to the door again and looked out at the rain, then at his watch, miming, coming back and glancing around him in case the man he'd come to meet had come into the lobby another way; his glance drew blank.

There were in fact no options. The only thing he could do was make a move, because they would never do it; they would if necessary bring in relief agents and wait him out, however long it took. There was no move I could make; at some stage I would have to decide whether to abandon the courier and what he carried and make my own way out, or to follow whatever lead he took and try for a last-ditch attempt to save him and secure the product. There were no rules to guide us here, no protocol for survival. As the shadow executive of the bureau running this operation I was technically in command, but a courier has one sacrosanct function: to reach the agent and deliver the goods.

In any case there was nothing I could do.

09:31.

There were some ten or fifteen people in the lobby at any given time, darting in from the rain and leaving the porters to fetch their baggage, or coming out of the lift and going to the reception desk or the coffee shop or the main entrance. They provided good mobile cover for small movements but that was all. They were useless as shields because we couldn't use them: the most sacred edict of the Bureau's creed is that we don't compromise the public. We don't steal a car, even if it's the only way we can get out alive; we don't steam open letters or bug telephones or ask anyone for help, and we don't expose ten or fifteen people to risk in a hotel lobby because there's nothing else for us to — do but start chaos and take it from there.

So I knew what Brekhov would do, as soon as he'd gone over everything in his mind and thought for a moment of the girl in Leningrad or wherever she was, or maybe his mother, or a brother, people like that, before he made his decision and threw everything else to the wind and made his move. It was the only thing he could possibly try.

I felt for him. He'd come a long way. He'd signalled London and been told to start his run, and been told that it was important, vital, that he should reach the rendezvous and complete his mission. On his way here he'd been faced with risks and dodged them through the lamp lit freight-yards or stared them out at the militia posts or discounted them and kept up the even measure of his pace toward his goal. And his goal was here, in the centre of a trap.

His glance passed across me again but there was nothing in his mild brown eyes, no kind of signal. His face looked paler now; his blood was draining from the surface and favouring the heart and brain and muscles; the adrenalin would be pouring into the arteries and he would be feeling that strange lightness that comes to us when we know thai there might not be much longer for us now unless we are ready to do things normally beyond our powers.

The KGB men had moved only a little, a pace here or there, a pace back again, each preferring the area he'd chosen for himself, where he could get used to. the angles and lines of sight and reflecting surfaces. They were in no hurry. They would sleep tonight. The day would take its direction and they would follow its measured and predestined course until night was reached, and then they would sleep.

People entered the lobby and went out. The rain filled the street with a silvered haze, curtaining the green park of the square.

Then Brekhov made his move.

The technique of the gateswing turn is the European version of the bootlegger turn they use in the States: you bring the speed well down and pull the wheel over and stand on the hand brake until you're swinging at ninety degrees and then you release the brake and slam the power on and drive through the final vector. At this stage you're facing in the opposite direction and if you can do it right and do it fast enough you can be gaining ground while the hunter vehicle is still coming the other way and if you're doing it at night you can try a quick swing towards him with your headlights full on and hope to blind him off the road.

This is what Brekhov did and I wasn't ready for it — he was swinging wild in the path of the Porsche 944 and hitting the edge of the curb and correcting with his front end pointing straight again. I caught a glimpse of his white face in the driving window as I slowed and stood on the hand brake and went into the gateswing myself, too late for anything neat but getting it half-right and bouncing a little off a fire hydrant before I could settle into the acceleration phase with the rear tyres waltzing badly over the wet surface.

The Porsche hadn't seen it coming and we lost it but the BMW had the distance it needed because it was bringing up the rear, and it simply slowed and went into a tailslide and lost usable traction until the curb kicked it straight again. It was between Brekhov and me, accelerating hard, and I tried to damp out the rear wheelspin to the point where I could close the gap and bump him with enough off-centre leverage to push him round into some kind of crash; but the road was too wet and I couldn't get close enough. I could see Brekhov still ahead, so I settled down to watch for a chance to help him.

What he had done, because it was the only thing he could possibly have done, was to try driving out of the trap.

It had gone well at first: he was a competent actor, looking at his watch again and going across to the reception desk and leaving a verbal message and then going steadily to the main entrance and down the steps to the street, pulling his collar up and loping across to his Mercedes. It had looked beautifully natural but die agents had followed suit, two of them getting into the Porsche and two into the BMW.

I took my time, because my SSL was nearer the corner of the square, which had one-way circulation. I could let them go past me before I pulled out and took up the rear, which was the only place where I could do anything. I didn't know if Brekhov would try reaching the British Embassy or a police station or somewhere crowded like a street market where the opposition couldn't use their guns without killing other people. At this moment we had the streets almost to ourselves because of the rain: a lot of the shopping traffic had pulled in somewhere to wait out the downpour, and we were now driving on dipped headlights like the few other vehicles we saw.

Brekhov was taking us eastward all the time, maybe looking for street patterns that could get him clear: narrow places with cars parked where he might be able to swing to a stop broadside across the street and get out and run clear; or loop roads with a one-way T-section where he could make a right feint and turn left and hope the hunter car would swing out of control when it tried to follow.

He knew how to drive: he was a courier. As we reached stretches of open road he veered toward the centreline and chose a late apex on the right-hand turns, losing ground on the way in but gaining speed on the way out. The BMW was keeping well up on him and I began getting worried that Brekhov would use the late-apex technique when the BMW was close because it had more power, and if it were right on the Mercedes' tail when it went into a right-hand turn it could overhaul him alongside and force him into a crash.