The bloody thing had been ticking all the time and he'd stood looking at it with his small gnome's head on one side: 'the best thing'd be to disarm it, don't you think, take it apart, before it can do any harm.' He'd worked at it for nearly three hours without a break, his pale grey eyes wide open, staring at God all the time while his nicotine-stained fingers stroked and caressed the matt-black metal components and the sweat ran off his face and dripped on to the bare boards where I sat waiting, hunched into my own ghost and unable to look away. 'I think that's it,' he said at last, and pulled the detonator clear and reached for a cigarette and put it into his mouth with fingers that shook so badly now that he knocked the flame out and I had to strike another match for him. Shapiro. Say this much: he was a professional. 'You know his work, at least.' Croder's voice came insistently. 'Yes.' 'What would be your opinion of him,' in slow and reasonable tones, 'as an executive in the field?' I felt Tilson listening, beside me. I thought of lying, then realized I didn't have to. In the end I could refuse, I could refuse, repeat it like a litany, I could refuse. '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.