A full minute went by and Ferris began showing his nerves, leaving the set and sitting on his sack again, crossing his legs and huffing. 'Did you hear the one about the sailor who got his finger stuck in the keyhole? They tried to-'

555-000-000.

Mandarin: Control at console.

Ill Ferris squatted on the floor again with his head near the integral mike and acknowledged. Within five seconds the signals came on stream and I sat upright with my eyes shut reading London, extending the digits and reversing the transfers and trying to place the tone and failing: they had in fact got a new boy in there, rather prissy but first-rate on his pauses and repeats.

After a minute Ferris swivelled round and looked at me.

'You reading?'

'Yes.'

He turned his back again and went full out for almost thirty minutes, getting the details from me as Control asked for them: estimated number of opposition observers in the field — identity of principals if any known — location of opposition base and disposition of other field-quarters, safe-houses-degree of insistence — so forth, most of it routine with key contractions, the kind of things they always wanted to know at the outset of a mission. Then the questions got specific: Egerton wanted to know Mrs Tewson's attitude towards her 'deceased' husband, whether she appeared venal, disloyal, opportunistic. Was she promiscuous?

I did What I could, catching the questions in the air before Ferris had to ask me, and in fifteen minutes I was sweating hard and wishing to Christ I didn't feel so ragged: the little bastard had forced a throat block for ten seconds or so before I could break it and I was still getting flashes in front of the eyes. Then Control went on to the mundanities and the only question I had to answer was about the damage to the Hong Kong Cathay: I said they'd want some new wallpaper and a plumber and an electrician but no windows smashed, telephone okay, so forth, while some poor bloody clerk put it all in the book — you could tell this was Egerton's mission. The Hong Kong Cathay Hotel would in due course receive a cheque 'in compensation for any damage sustained during the sojourn of one of their guests'. If the manager took it into his head to try tracing the cheque to its source he'd grow old before 'his time. Egerton was particular about what he called 'the public domain'. Dewhurst would have just said they must be insured against drunks, bookies and acts of God and left it at that, his point being that as a British taxpayer he wasn't going to fork out for things the insurance companies ought to pay for.

298 — 363–586…

Flower. No further action required on our part.

What would actually happen was that his parents would be met at the airport by a senior secretary of Welfare Section, and all their expenses would be paid.

398 — 277–972…

I began reading alertly again because I could tell they were getting round to instructions. Egerton had probably gone into another room to work things out either alone or in consultation while his second-stringer key-contracted the routine advisories: further movements and establishing of access, liaison and security left to discretion of director in field; transmission schedules to be as per current pattern, Far East theatre; emergency signals to follow established rulings as to times, form and code; allocation of stand-by periods to conform with current schedules, bi-hourly (diurnal), hourly (nocturnal); heavy traffic by-pass key: 555–000. State of mission reports were specified, right down to the last microdot.

Then they went off the air for fifteen minutes.

Two stand-by signals and then four blocks of 555. Then they began on the instructions, the first of which we'd already been expecting: I was to go out to the oil rig and try to get aboard.

Chapter Nine: SHIELD

Then I stopped dead.

I suppose there wasn't anything to get excited about but it had worried me, having to kill him like that, and he'd left a lot of muscular strain in me and there'd been those bloody things slithering about. Oh fair enough, all in the day's work, but look, we hadn't even got any target access figured out yet and already there were two dead and I wasn't beginning to fancy my chances all that much.

I stood in the street, close to a doorway, very close, looking between the buildings towards the open square in the distance, wanting to shout at them: Can't you leave me alone?

I just didn't feel ready for any more, that was all, at least for a while. Give me a day, or even a few hours if that's how it's got to be. Bloody well leave me alone.

I stood in the street with the morning sun dazzling in the shop windows, the temperature in the eighties and warming up to another lovely day in exotic Hong Kong, Pearl of the Orient: this morning we shall be taking you on yet another fascinating tour, this time beginning with a tram ride to famed Victoria Peak, then down again to explore the fabulous Tiger Balm Gardens, pride of the island. I stood in the street feeling how cold it was, how perilous.

From this distance I could see the Taunus easily enough, and the traffic passing it. There'd been a slot and I'd backed it in and it was still there where I'd left it. The square was a lawful parking zone but I'd taken the last slot and there hadn't been any vacancies since then, or they'd only just arrived. The Humber was double-parked with the bonnet up, some kind of engine trouble so the police couldn't move it on in a hurry. The red van had Typhoo Tea on it in gold letters but there wasn't a grocer's or a cafe or a tea shop anywhere near: they were all souvenir shops and cheap jewellers' on that side of the square, but the van was parked with two wheels on the pavement and the roller-door was down as if there was a delivery being made. The Chinese on the bike was just sitting there with his arms folded watching the traffic, not even bothering to fetch a paper or something to read.

The others I couldn't see or hope to recognize. There'd be others, I knew that. This was about the roughest static surveillance job I'd ever seen but that wasn't the point. The point was that the Taunus was a death trap.

The left eyelid was flickering: it always did when the nerves got close to the edge. And I was cold, standing by the doorway in the sunshine, because I knew Ferris was up there in the room below the roof, thinking I still didn't know how that tag had been on my back when I'd gone into the snake shop; well, he was bloody well wrong because I knew. I knew now. And the unnerving thing was that I'd known for quite a while, and could have told him, put him out of his misery. It was just that I'd had other things on my mind and hadn't taken too much notice.

I wasn't prepared to dodge the issue by saying that boy had sighted me by chance, even though Ferris had offered me the option. I might have been sighted by chance, but it was damned unlikely. And the only other way that boy could have got on to my back was by a communications pitch and the only way they could have found any use for communications was by having a signals source and he could be only one man: the one in the Honda at the Golden Sands Hotel. He'd been somewhere on the ground floor and seen me and recognized me and got on to the phone and told headquarters, and headquarters had put out an all-points bulletin and from that moment the Taunus was a marked target. I'd checked and double-checked on the way up to the safe-house but there were limits to what I could do in a narrow winding street already crowded with Chinese, and the boy had been the first one to sight the Taunus and he had my photograph — they all did — and he came to make the hit.