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it with a wicked-looking pin. She got to her feet. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said, and pushed the bill across to me before leaving the restaurant.

Chapter 3
    I checked into the Marski that afternoon. It’s a tasteful piece of restrained Scandinavian on Mannerheim. The lights are just bright enough to glint on the stainless steel, and sitting on the black leather at the bar is like being at the controls of a Boeing 707. I drank vodka and wondered why Kaarna had been smeared with raw egg and what had happened to the egg-shells. I had a quiet little laugh about being recruited for British Intelligence, but not a big laugh, for two reasons.
    First, it’s the usual practice of all intelligence organizations to tell their operatives that they are working for someone whom they will be happy to work for. A Francophile is told that his reports go to the Quai d’Orsay, a Communist is told that his orders come from Moscow. Few agents can be quite sure whom they work for, because the nature of the work precludes their being able to check back.
    The second reason that I wasn’t getting a big laugh was because Signe just might be working for Ross’s department at the War Office. Unlikely but possible.
    As a general rule—and all general rules are dangerous—agents are natives of the country in which they operate. I wasn’t an agent, nor was I likely to be one. I delivered, evaluated and handled information that our agents obtained, but I seldom met one except a cut-out, or go-between, like the Finn I had spoken with on the ferry. I was in Helsinki to do a simple task and now it was becoming very complex. I should follow up this strange opportunity, but I was not prepared. I had no communication arranged with London except an emergency contact that I dare not use unless world war were imminent. I had no system of contacts, for not only was I forbidden to interrupt the work of our resident people but, judging by the speed with which the grey-haired man answered the phone, that was a public call-box number.
    So I had another vodka and slowly read the expensive menu and felt in my pocket the five hundred marks the girl with the wide mouth had given me. Easy come; easy go.
    The next morning was blue and sunny but still a couple of degrees below. The birds were singing in the trees of the esplanade and I walked through the centre of town. I walked up the steep hillwhere the University buildings are painted bright yellow like boarding-house custard, and down on to Unioninkatu and the shop full of ankle-length leather coats.
    The girl Signe was standing outside the leather shop. She said good morning and fell into step beside me. At Long Bridge we cut off to the left without crossing it and walked alongside the frozen inlet. Under the bridge ducks were probing around among the debris that was scattered across the ice, soggy old cardboard cartons and dented cans. The bridge itself was pock-marked with bomb-splinter scars.
    ‘The Russians,’ said Signe. I looked at her.
    ‘Bombed Helsinki; damaged the bridge.’
    We stood there watching the lorries coming into the city. ‘My father was a trade unionist; he used to look at that damaged bridge and say to me, “Those bombs were made by Soviet workers in Soviet factories in the land of Lenin, remember that.” My father had devoted all his life to the trade-union movement. In 1944 he died brokenhearted.’ She walked ahead rather quickly and I saw the quick flash of a pocket handkerchief as she dabbed at her eyes. I followed her and she climbed down towards the frozen surface of the water and began to walk out on the ice. Other tiny figures were taking the same short cut across the inlet farther to the west. Ahead of us an old woman was tugging a small sledge full of groceries. I planted my feet carefully, for the ice wasworn smooth by a winter of heavy use. I came alongside Signe and she took my arm gratefully.
    ‘Do you like champagne?’ she asked.
    ‘Are you offering