'All right'

They still kept a hold on meand I had to say it againI'm all right tillthey'd let me go, difficult patient, yes, I grant you, but don't like being held up, demoralizing.

When the nurse had gone off I said:

'Go and tell them.'

'Tell them what?'

She thought I hadn't been listening. The nurse had finally had enough of me and she was going to bring help and get me undressed and into a bed.

'If they try anything I'm going to smash the place up so make sure they understand because it'll save a lot of noise.'

She went off a bit impatiently and I had five minutes to straighten out, steady deep breaths, muscles relaxed, one or two questions, why wasn't Loman here, he must be packing us up at base, the Arab could have been working in strict hush for the opposition yes but in delirium he'd have broken down, shouted aeroplane all over the place, something didn't quite add up in this area.

Opened my eyes and she was there again, her eyes worried, waiting for me to start collapsing but I wasn't going to any more, didn't intend to, the organism was trying to take over and I was going to let it.

'You tell them?'

'Yes.' She stuck her small hands into the windcheater but she was obviously ready to pull them out fast to do something if I keeled over again and that annoyed me and I got off the bed and went a couple of paces and leaned on the wall and she had more sense than to help me, could see my face.

Very good being on the feet again. Therapeutic.

'Who was the doctor?'

'He's visiting the American camps.'

'Where did Chirac land me?'

'At South 6.'

'And brought the doctor along with me?'

'He'll be able to shoot that stuff into the Arabs now.'

'Yes.'

'The last one died in the night.'

Turned awayas she said it and turned back when I didn't answer. She looked quietly furious, not a bit worried now. I said

'Getting on your nerves, is it, all this?'

Surprise, comprehension, frustration: she had wonderful eyes and you could read everything in them and that was why they'd been such bastards to use her, reaction-concealment capacity sub-zero and her hands too small to lift a gun.

'Do you always go on till you drop?'

'Oh Christ,' I said, 'don't you start.' I leaned off the wall and tried walking about, not too bad, no pratt-fall. 'Listen, they were in poor condition anyway, what d'you expect, a diet of dates all their life, or they inhaled more of it than I did. You'll have to find something better than me to worry about.'

I walked some more, a few steps to the window and back, did it again and felt the hallucination thing starting up and their high cackling screech and the fourth one smashing into the instrument-panel and stood and didn't do anything, hung limp, remarkable efficacy of total muscular relaxation, very old ferret, an instinct now, the wall steadier but I had to slow the breathing consciously, I didn't think she'd moved to help me, learned fast.

'We have do — ' try again and get the slur out while you're at it, 'Do we have a rendezvous Lo — with Loman?' Possibly it wasn't good enough yet but I didn't want to repeat it, certain amount of satisfaction in having pulled out of the spasm without having to sit down and ask for an aspirin or anything.

I turned round, away from the wall, and looked at her. She wasn't looking at me, looking upwards, listening. I could hear it too.

'Not immediately.'

I didn't understand. Traces still threatening the psyche, his upturned face and the expression on it and the way the leg had snapped when I'd hurled the thing away, I suppose I was a bit tired, that was all, it didn't help, not being on top form.

She was watching me. I saw what I looked like, because her eyes showed everything, and I turned away but the window was there with the outside dark making it a mirror, yes indeed, a sorry figure as they say, rather messed about with, one way and another. Saw her point now. Motherly little soul, wanted to tuck me up before the whole bloody auction had time to disintegrate.

So I walked about a bit to prove it wasn't going to.

'When's it for?'

'What?'

'The rdv.'

She was still listening to the jet, head on one side. It sounded as though it was going into circuit above the airport.

'Later,' she said, not looking down.

'What time?'And she jerked her head to look at me because I'd put a lot of force into it, fed-up with not knowing things and not being able to talk properly or think properly, getting better but not nearly fast enough, upsetting.

She was watching me critically, trying to make some sort of decision. Her hands were still bunched inside the windcheater, and the weight of the Colt Official Police.38 was dragging it down at one side; you wouldn't have to frisk this pint-sized Mata Hari: you could see shewas armed half a mile away.

She kept her voicelow, moving closer.

'Loman has some orders for you. He insisted I didn't give them to you unless you seemed fit enough for some more work. Well, you're not fit but you won't give an inch so what can I do? He's at base keeping up a signals exchange with London in the hope that you'll be able to operate. '

'That doesn't sound like Loman. He'd grind a blind dog into the ground.'

'I don't think it's a question of consideration.'

'More like it, come on.'

'He wants you to do something he called «sensitive» and if you can't bring it off he said the "repercussions would be grave in the extreme". He also — '

Suddenly I was shaking her and she drew a breath and shut her eyes and waited and when I realized what I was doing I stopped and stood away and she didn't say anything for a bit, furious again I suppose because she was doing her best and I wasn't helping. Quietly as I could:

'Just put it in your own words.'

Couldn't stand the man, that was all, a pox on his grave repercussions, if he meant the whole thing'd blow up if I ballsed it why couldn't he bloody well say so. Besides which I was badly shaken because they'd wanted me to go and report on Tango Victor and I'd done that so I'd thought the mission was tied up and now London had got second thoughts on it, they never let you alone, those bastards, drive you till you drop.

'Things have been happening,' she said. 'Soon after you went off the air we had an alert from London. We were asked to rebrief you for the end-phase of the mission. We didn't know if you were still alive, but London said they were going ahead on the assumption that you could still operate.'

The whine of the jet was thinning above us as it came into the approach path and I looked at the square electric clock above the instrument trolley. 23.52.

'It's for tonight, is it?'

'Yes. I don't know it all. I can only tell you what I've been instructed. You're to know that a representative of the Foreign Office was flown out this evening to meet the Tunisian Minister of the Interior. It's been arranged that an aircraft of the RAF Tactical Command will be permitted to land here at Kaifra tonight, at approximately midnight. Your orders are to meet it, receive a consignment and take it to base.'

Final approach now and eight minutes early. I looked from the window but couldn't see anything of his lights in the sky. Then I moved away, not hurrying.

All right,' I said. 'Anything else?'

The room wasn't big: nine short paces from this window to the one opposite. I counted the paces because I like knowing about things, especially about the environment I have to operate in. I hadn't walked this far since I'd been in the desert but the legs were holding up all right.

'Nothing else,' I heard her saying, 'till you reach base.'

The glass of the window was black and I could see her reflection: she was standing there with her hands in the windcheater, watching me. The only light from below was from a street lamp, reflecting on edges and curved surfaces.