BACK IN MANCHESTER, the Rabbit and his family finished yet another superb dinner from Mrs. Thompson.

"What does an ordinary English worker eat?" Zaitzev asked.

"Not quite this well," Kingshot admitted. He sure as hell didn't. "But we try to take decent care of our guests, Oleg."

"Have I told you enough about MINISTER?" he asked next. "Is all I know." The Security Service had picked his brain pretty thoroughly on the subject that afternoon, going over every single fact at least five times.

"You've been most helpful, Oleg Ivan'ch. Thank you." In fact, he'd given the Security Service quite a lot. Most often, the way you caught such penetration agents was by identifying the information he'd transferred. Only a limited number of people would have access to all of it, and the "Five" people would observe all of them until one did something difficult to explain. Then they would see who arrived at the dead-drop site to retrieve the package, and from that they'd get the bonus of identifying his KGB control officer, and get two breaks for the price of one—or perhaps even more, because the case officer would be working more than one agent, and the discoveries could branch out like the limbs of a tree. Then you tried to arrest a peripheral agent before going after the main target, because then the KGB could not know how their main penetration agent had been exposed, and that would protect the primary source, Oleg Zaitzev, from discovery. The counterintelligence business was as baroque as medieval-court intrigue and was both loved and hated by the players for its intricacy, but that just made the apprehension of a real Bad Guy that much more rewarding.

"And what of the Pope?"

"As I said the other day, we have a team in Rome right now to look into the matter," Kingshot answered. "Not much we can say—in fact, not much we can really do, but we are taking action based on your information, Oleg."

"That is good," the defector thought out loud, hoping it hadn't all been for nothing. He'd not really looked forward to exposing Soviet agents throughout the West. He'd do that, to safeguard his own position in his new home, of course, and for the money he'd get for turning traitor to his Motherland, but his highest concern was in saving that one life.