This is fine.'

'You're thirsty?'

'Dry mouth.'

'Of course. You had a nasty experience, I'm told. Do you mind if I sit behind the desk? I'm not trying to look authoritative, you must understand, it's just that I can think better there – it's my querencia. You are not sleepy?'

'No.'

'It would be understandable, if you were – it's late.' He swung his legs onto the desk, tilting the leather-padded chair back, folding his strong square hands, watching me for a bit longer and then turning his head to Ferris. 'Well now.'

'What I'd like to do,' Ferris said, looking at me, 'is to go through a routine debriefing, and if you find any trouble with it, Dr Alvarez will make things easier. You should know that he's on the Bureau's overseas roster and provides us with this safe-house in emergencies. His clearance status is Prefix 1.' Meant totally reliable, even that being an understatement. I could therefore, Ferris meant, go through a debriefing in depth with nothing barred.

I took a slow breath. It still frightened me, the memory of what my mind had been doing in the time period following the quay thing, and the debriefing wouldn't be easy, even with Alvarez here.

Ferris glanced at him now, and I think Alvarez nodded, only the slightest movement of his head. Then Ferris looked back at me.

'All right, I'm going to ask you again. Why did you leave that hotel covertly?'

It went on echoing in my mind, covertly… covertly… and I realised that something was happening to me, something I couldn't control. But my voice sounded all right, a fraction terse, that was all.

'I didn't go there. Isn't that the important thing?'

Ferris watching me. 'Didn't go where?'

And then the whole thing blew up and I was on my feet and standing over Ferris shouting at him – 'I can't tell you – ' the other two men suddenly on their feet as well and moving towards me very fast – 'I can't tell you, for Christ's sake, don't you understand?'

Chapter 8: SACRIFICE

Her breast brushed against me, her skin copper-coloured in the subdued light, a powdering of dried salt on her shoulder.

There's a special one out there somewhere.

That you want to catch?

That I want to kill.

Green eyes alighting softly on mine, the eyes of a mermaid, of a succuba.

You will go to 1330 West Riverside Way, at any time before midnight.

Flash, flash from the field glasses across the water.

Not later than that.

Her skin bronzed, the down silken above her breasts, the light flashing, flashing on the cylinder of the syringe.

'Can we use your phone?'

Watchful amber eyes, the tick of the jade clock.

'But please.'

The sea had calmed. There was no movement now.

'Get them onto it straight away.'

A man, one of the men, Johnson, no, Upjohn, blotting a wall-lamp out as he passed across my line of vision. The faint beeping of the push-buttons.

'Make a note. 1330 West Riverside Way.'

A shadow across my eyes, then its substance, Alvarez.

'Well now. How do you feel?' His dark face with its black silk beard, his gaze intent. 'How do you feel now?'

'All right.'

'Good!' He rolled my sleeve down.

'What was in it?' The syringe on the tray.

'Valium.' He took the tray away.

'We want you to check out that address.' Upjohn, phoning.

'Utmost caution,' Ferris said.

1:20 on the dial of the jade clock. An hour and twenty minutes' time gap. I can't tell you, for Christ's sake, don't you understand? The last thing I remembered.

'Use utmost caution,' Upjohn said into the phone.

It's an esoteric Bureau term reserved strictly for when, for instance, you're defusing a motion-detonator bomb.

I looked at Ferris, but he was at right angles. Everything was. They'd put me on that bloody couch.

'Ferris.' I got onto my elbows and swung my legs down. No shoes.

'Hello,' he said.

'Did I tell you?'

'Yes.'

The address?'

'Yes. But tell me again, just to confirm.'

Silence, and time going by.

'Where are my bloody shoes?'

'Tell me again,' he said gently.

'Oh, for Christ's sake. 1330 West Riverside Way. Now where are they?'

Somebody fumbling around with my feet.

Take,' I heard Upjohn saying, 'as many people as you need.'

Alvarez, pushing my feet into my shoes. 'I can do that,' I told him.

'Did you hear that, Doc?' Ferris was asking.

'Oh, yes. We are ourselves again!' Sounded terribly pleased.

Ferris said to Upjohn, 'Strictly observation. No entry, no contact.'

'I can tie my own laces,' I told Alvarez. 'Listen, how did you get that needle into me? I don't like needles.'

'Report directly to me,' Ferris said. He was making notes on the debriefing pad the whole time.

'You lost consciousness. We had to catch you.'

'Before you put that thing in?'

'Yes. The stress had become overwhelming. You didn't want to answer his question, do you remember?'

'Report directly to the DIP,' Upjohn was saying.

'I don't know. I don't know what I remember.'

'I think you do. It's a little alarming to you, that's all. But there's no more block.'

'Block?'

'Psychotraumatic inhibition. You'll feel better now. It's all behind you.' Small pearly teeth showed in the black beard.

Behind me? That'd be a relief. That would be, dear God, a relief. 'Can I have some water?'

'Round the clock?' Upjohn was asking.

'Yes,' Ferris told him, then looked at me. 'When you phoned for us to bring you in, you sounded in a bad way. What had happened?'

It was like thinking back through a veil, having to reach for the past. 'Nothing.'

'But you sounded dead beat.' Amber eyes watching me.

'Thank you.' I drank the whole tumbler straight off. It tasted odd.

'Did I? It tastes a bit odd,' I told Alvarez.

'Everything will, for a little while. Your body chemistry has to adjust. There was a great deal of adrenaline in the system, and then there was the Valium. I'm so pleased,' he said, 'to see you in such good shape.'

'Thank you.' I got off the couch and found a chair and dropped into it. Purdom, the top-echelon shadow, got up and went across to the decanter and filled my glass again, which I thought was nice of him. 'Yes,' I told Ferris, 'I was dead beat, that's absolutely right. I was fighting something off.'

'And you won.' Alvarez, at the desk again, his feet on it. 'But it left your reserves critically depleted.'

Ferris asked: 'Fighting what off?'

It meant going back, and it frightened me. I had never known such a force applied against me, such dominance. 'I – I'd been told to go there, and I knew I shouldn't. But I had to. Kind of – compulsion.'

Upjohn came back from the phone and couldn't find a chair; I think I was sitting in it now. 'You did well,' Alvarez said, still pleased. 'Others would not have resisted.'

'You've no idea how strong it was. The compulsion.'

'Oh, but I have. It was so strong that your resistance left you "dead beat", to the point where you couldn't resist any further. When you were asked why you left the hotel covertly, you lost consciousness rather than explain.' The intercom on his desk began ringing. 'It was a remarkable manifestation.'

He picked up the phone. 'Si, mi querida?'

Ferris got up and dragged the carved oak chair closer to mine and sat down again with his pad. 'You also said, when you were coming out from under, Those are your instructions. Do you remember that?'

'Todavia no. Es una emergencia.'

'Yes. I was following instructions.'

'Don't worry,' Ferris said.

I'd started shaking, hadn't thought it showed. More water.