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earned himself another cluster of laurels. Now Ed Schulz could never have come within a mile of cracking that espionage classic. He wondered where Newman was tonight — and immediately pushed the irrelevant thought out of his head.
    `Maximize your concentration,' was one of Foley's favourite phrases. 'And wait — forever if need be — until the conditions are right...'
    Foley was waiting now, eyes half-closed in an apparent doze as he observed the progress of dinner round Ed Schulz's seat. The conditions were right now he decided as coffee was served. He felt inside the little pocket he had unzipped earlier and squeezed a single soluble capsule from the polythene envelope.
    Standing up, he strolled along the corridor to where two stewards cluttered the aisle next to Schulz whose head was turned away as he talked to his travelling companion. He held a balloon glass of Remy Martin in the accepted manner, fingers splayed, and in front of him was a cup of black coffee which had just been poured.
    Foley nudged the nearest steward's elbow with his left hand. As the man turned Foley flicked the capsule neatly into Schulz's cup. Alcoholic fumes drifted in the air, no one noticed a thing. Foley shook his head apologetically at the steward and went back to his seat.
    He checked his watch. Another six hours to Geneva. After he'd drunk his coffee laced with the special barbiturate Schulz would sleep for eight hours. He'd stagger off the plane at its ultimate destination, Zurich. He wouldn't even notice an unfamiliar taste. And many times in his apartment Foley had practised the quick flip with his thumbnail, spinning capsule into empty cup.
    Foley had bamboozled Schulz earlier when he had displayed two tickets for Zurich in front of him to the stewardess. At the check-in counter he'd told the girl to put Geneva tickets on his baggage. Whenever he was travelling, Foley always booked ahead of his real destination — or followed a devious route, changing aircraft. He glanced round before extracting the documents from his brief-case. He wouldn't be disturbed again tonight.
    The night flight had reached the stage he knew so well. All the passengers were sleepy — or asleep, lulled by the monotonous and steady vibrations of the machine's great engines. He refused a pillow offered by a stewardess and opened the brief-case.
    In the last few hours since the surprise phone call to CIDA his feet had hardly touched the ground. He had the typed record of his long phone conversation with Fordham at the American Embassy in Berne. It was headed, Case of Hannah Stuart, deceased, patient at Berne Clinic, Thun .
    Nothing in the typed record indicated that Fordham was military attaché at the American Embassy. His eyes dropped to the comment at the end of the record.
    We are extremely worried about the possible implications on the international situation about rumoured events and situation at this medical establishment .
    Foley opened a large-scale map of Switzerland and concentrated on the Berne canton. His finger traced the motorway from the city of Berne running south-east to the town of Thun. In either Geneva or Berne he'd have to hire a car. He was certain he was going to need wheels for this job.

    Four

    Gmund, Austria. 10 February 1984. 1 ? . For Manfred Seidler, thousands of miles east of Tucson and New York, the day dawned far more grimly. The Renault station wagon was still inside Czechoslovakia as it moved swiftly towards the lonely frontier crossing point into Austria at Gmund — now less than two kilometres ahead. He glanced at the driver beside him, sixty-year-old Franz Oswald who, with his lined, leathery face and bushy moustache, looked seventy.
    Seidler checked his watch. 6.25 am. Outside it was night and the deserted, snowbound fields stretched away into nothing. Despite the car heater it was cold but Seidler was used to cold. It was Oswald's nerve which bothered him.
    `Slow down,' he snapped, 'we're nearly there. We don't want them