I said I was operating freelance and there wasn't an actual cell, and he just shook his head and didn't take me up on it. I think it was just a random question to try me out. He looked like a hardworking field executive, the eyes alert but unimaginative, a man who had reached the position of lieutenant in a small cell operating overseas. I thought he would put the requirements of the operation before everything else, and would work well with Ahmed when the grilling began. I would have given a great deal to know whether either of them would have the intelligence to use Diane as the means of persuasion; I believed they would, because it had two immense advantages over a single interrogation session: a man might easily hold out if the pain was his own but might as easily break if he had to listen to someone else going through it, especially a young, girl; secondly the girl could be brought again and again to the point of mental unbalance while the man was left with a clear head and the ability to answer questions.

It would depend partly on how well Ahmed and Hassan understood the European attitude to things like this: an Arab would entirely ignore the suffering of a mere woman and it wouldn't be worth touching her.

'Where is the aeroplane?'

'I still can't find it.'

The answers had to be acceptable: it was no good saying what cell, what aeroplane, so forth. He knew I was an agent operating in the local field and he knew I was assigned to the UK Tango Victor mission and if I could give him some answers that would fit in with what he already knew it might get him to think of a few more questions. The more I could persuade him to talk, the more he'd tell me.

'Do you think the aeroplane is somewhere near Kaifra?'

'Well,' I said, 'I don't know about near. We certainly thought it was, but it looks as if we were wrong,'

He seemed about to ask me another one and I waited but he shut up and began stamping his feet impatiently, looking along the perspective of the palm-trees to see if Ahmed were coming. I thought it was interesting to note that this was an Egyptian cell and not the one controlling the marksman; also that one of the other cells was Algerian and working at government level with immediate-category liaison, because Chirac had brought in five squadrons of desert-reconnaissance aircraft just by mooning around up there at dawn this morning.

'Feeling all right?'

'Yes,' she said.

She was looking pale, the gold skin losing colour.

'Do not talk!'

Hassan had swung round nervously.

'You mean don't talk in English?'

'Yes. Talk in Arabic.'

'But this woman doesn't understand Arabic.'

'Then do not talk.'

His olive-black unimaginative eyes stared at me to make sure I was getting the message; then he turned away and looked for Ahmed again.

He wasn't trying anything subtle: he was energetic and efficient but not educated and it was almost certain that his henchmen didn't speak anything but their own crane-hook argot but it'd be too risky to rely on that so I asked her in English:

'Did you leave the other gun in the ambulance?'

I didn't expect her to have time to answer: she hadn't heard about any other gun and anyway she'd be thrown because I'd just been told not to speak in English and here I was doing it.

He came round very fast, Hassan, and his teeth flashed in the light as the animal mouth delivered its speech, the expression more explicit than the words.

If you talk to the woman in English again we will kill you, I will not have my commands disobeyed, if you do it again you will die, so forth.

But I'd got the information I'd wanted because the other three had closed in on me almost by reflex action when they'd seen him swing round, and their sub-machine-guns had come up to the aim. So they didn't understand English and Hassan didn't understand it either or he'd have told them to search the ambulance for the 'other gun' instead of telling me off.

I just hoped Diane would work things out and make a careful note: I'd told her they wanted to interrogate me and she knew you can't interrogate a dead man so if we had to talk to each other urgently we could do it in English.

Hassan was still glowering at me and I could see he'd like to shoot me here and now just for disobeying his orders: he was terribly nervous about the whole situation and didn't really trust in his ability to keep me subdued.

'Oh come on, Hassan, I bet you talk a bit of English, if it's only Coca-Cola.'

He spat, not too far from my shoe. We could hear a car somewhere, its exhaust-note muffled by the phalanx of palms, and he jerked his headto listen, watching the end of the avenue. I was worried because there was so little time and because this situation couldn't be expected to improve. One man and one sub-machine-gun would be enough to keep us immobilized, and this force-already overwhelming — would be augmented as soon as Ahmed arrived.

And I didn't like the thing about Diane.

I could only save her by getting her away and I didn't think I could do that. Once they'd got us in the confines of an interrogation chamber she wouldn't' have a chance. Nothing very important of course would happen: a fledgling agent seconded from an embassy to an active cell would go into the reports as fatally injured during the course of a mission and the incident would be passed on to those responsible for spreading the blackout. Two young gentlemen with diffident voices and polished nails would call at the flat in Lowndes Square to break the news, bearing the personal sympathy of the Foreign Secretary and hoping it might be a consolation to know that this very courageous civil servant sacrificed her life for the sake of others, adding that since her duties had been of an exceptional kind it would be unfair to her memory if any demand were made for enquiries that could only prove abortive and at the same time undo much of the work she had so assiduously accomplished in the cause of active diplomacy.

We never really found out. It was sort of — hushed up, all very strange. They say there were just some Arabs, and it was night-time, and — well we don't let ourselves think too much.

The avenue was still empty: the car was moving at right-angles to it, a good mile away, its note rising and falling as the sound was trapped and released among the buildings. Hassan turned back to us and fumbled quickly for a cigarette, breaking the first match before he could light it.

Nothing very important and it happens two or three times a year to experienced executives like O'Brien and Fyson and we never know how many smaller fry are neutralized. It was infinitely more important that when she began sobbing I should remind them that I hadn't yet been able to locate Tango Victor, that when she first screamed I should repeat that I was only a freelance without a local base, and that when she failed to respond to resuscitation I should tell them they'd been wasting their time simply because they hadn't believed me, and that they would only waste more time if they put me through the same treatment because if I didn't know where the freighter had crashed then I couldn't tell them.

Hassan went and leaned into the Citroen GT and put the headlights down to dipped so that he could watch the road without having to move away from us beyond the glare. The smoke from his Egyptian cigarette drifted on the air, tarry and perfumed. He was smoking it nervously, flicking away the ash before it had time to form more than a millimetre. I watched his cigarette.

Diane was yawning quietly, being afraid. It happens in the trenches and behind thebarrera of the bull-ring: the intake of oxygen for the muscles, the release of thyroid secretion for the nerves. I looked at her and nodded and said:

'Okay?'

'Yes, thank you.'

Hassan jerked his dark head to look at me but okay was international and that was why I'd used it and he didn't slam into me this time. I said in Arabic: