There was already a message for Mr Wing: please call TWA about my reservation. I used the phone in my room and we listened for bugs and then he went straight into speech code, switching to cypher where he had to and rattling off the numerals. The code was standard operational for this date, Far East theatre, listed arbitrary with no mnemonics: October for briefing, Monday for rendezvous, Gin-rummy north east, yellow left hand, so forth. I went into the same pitch and thought Christ, he's got something moving.

'I want you for briefing,' he said.

'When?'

'20.00 hours.'

'Where?'

He gave the directions: there was a junk tied up in the Causeway Bay typhoon anchorage, the August Moon, the seventh along from the base of the north-east breakwater, left-hand side of the utilities stanchion.

'What's the flap?' I asked him.

'There's no flap. I'm sending you out to the rig, that's all.'

'When?'

'Midnight tonight.'

I slept six hours in Room 31 at the Harbour Hotel with traps at the door and the window and then got up and showered and took the stuff out of the canvas case and tried on the wet suit again and tested the mask, putting talc on the fins and taping the safety marker to black it out: they might just as well have painted a bull's-eye on the back of the suit, bang on the tenth vertebra.

19.00

It was only a ten-minute run to the typhoon anchorage, allow another five to park the station wagon with decent security and find the August Moon. That gave me forty-five minutes to spare and I didn't like it: Ferris must have got a panic signal from London with orders to arrange immediate access and put his executive into the target zone, Bureau signals phrasing right out of the book. It meant they wanted the ferret thrown into the sea. That was all right: the thing I didn't like was having to hang around for three-quarters of an hour before I could even get to the briefing and find out what kind of access Ferris had fixed up and what kind of communications we were going to use and what kind of chance there was of my coming out of that particular target zone alive.

The oil rig stood in international waters but it was Chinese territory and at a rough guess I'd put its defence armament at about the same strength as a pocket battleship.

I knew from earlier missions that Ferris was terribly fast and it was possible they'd picked him to field-direct this operation because they knew we might have to hurry at any given phase or at some precise phase they'd been able to anticipate in the initial planning. They might have shot him out to Pekin as a cultural attache or some kind of Embassy stooge the minute they'd seen Mandarin coming up on the agenda. I began wishing I knew a bit more about this job and that was a perfectly normal reactio

n at forty-four minutes to final briefing: the blood starts moving a few degrees quicker and the nerves start exchanging energy a few microseconds closer to optimum speed and you start wondering why the hell those zipper-lipped bastards in London couldn't have told you a bit more or preferably a bloody sight more about the operation they'd decided to pitch you into — in this case by Egerton's thrice-accursed subterfuge.

Relax.

I picked up the phone and gave it ten rings and put it down again and that was a perfectly normal reaction too at forty-three minutes to final briefing: the closer you move to potential death the more you think about women. Poor little bitch, we'd got her hormones moving again after all that time and all she was going to get at the El Caliph at eight o'clock tonight was a bunch of gardenias and all I was going to get was the shakes.

Phone.

19.11.

Ferris.

'London wants to send a shield.'

'Oh for Christ sake, Ferris, be your age.' We were using cypher and all I could give him was the circumscribed phrase: Instructions refused. But I got what I meant into the tone. Trust those bloody people in London to get you to the brink and then pull you back while they sent someone out to hold your hand.

'They're postponing the operation twenty-four hours,' Ferris told me, 'while they fly someone in from Taiwan. He's due to-'

'Ferris.'

He waited.

'You let those pox-ridden bastards try sticking a shield on to me and as far as I'm concerned they can screw this mission and find another ferret. You know me and you know I mean that. I'm going in solo repeat solo or not at all.'

Difficult finding the right cypher phrases, request no support, am withdrawing from mission, like trying to blow someone's head off in a foreign language without knowing all the pronouns, but some of it I put across in straight English, pox-ridden, so forth, because it wouldn't give anything away.

'I think they're right,' Ferris said reasonably.

I gave it five seconds because you don't get as far as the final briefing phase and chuck the whole thing in your director's face without another thought. This wasn't Egerton, or not totally: his chief talent was in knowing precisely what a given operator could do and how he was best able to do it. We all have our little ways and Heppinstall won't work properly without a shield because he's really a slide-rule and requires peace of mind to do what he has to do, and while he's trying to feel his way in to the complex centre of some sophisticated shadow-summit configuration or whatever he's doing he likes to be free to concentrate while his shield keeps the competition away till he runs out of ammunition. Styles won't operate without a shield because he's shit-scared and London keeps a whole regiment standing by to support him through a mission because they know he's sensitive and brilliant and highly successful so long as he can keep his sphincter muscles under control.

I have to work solo because for me there has to be a risk. This isn't because I like a a cheap thrill but because I need the stimulation of constant hazard to whip up the nerves and galvanize the organism to the pitch where I can do things I couldn't do otherwise. If I had to rely on other people to keep me alive I'd get sloppy and make mistakes and that can be just as fatal as if you haven't got a shield at all, look at that poor bastard Crowther — I thought he was there, his face puckered like a child's and his eyes watching me as we swayed along in the ambulance, I thought he was there, the last thing he ever said and I've never told anyone because he meant he thought Jones was there, shielding his back while he went in and found he couldn't get out again till they dropped him over the railway bridge for someone to find, blown and cleaned out and dying while Jones was waiting for him in Lyons Corner House and stuffing himself on buns, a question of a missed rendezvous, that was all, a little misunderstanding at a critical time, the tears running down Crowther's face as he closed his eyes and gave it up — frustration, not self-pity or anything, he didn't leave anyone who loved him — frustration because he'd completed the access and was ready to strike and get out again, another beautiful job, beautifully timed, how does he do it, we all used to say.

Don't you give me Jones. Or anyone.

'Ferris,' I said, 'if you're not prepared to direct me without a shield you'd better say so now.'

After a bit he said plaintively: 'It's London, old boy.'

'London knows bloody well I always work solo.'

'It's because it's underwater,' he said.

'Tell them they can pull me out, then. Send someone else in.'

There was a short silence, then he said: 'Don't go away.'

I put the phone back and left an imprint of sweat on it and walked up and down, feeling soured and deceived and afraid because they could have settled this question earlier: Ferris had his access worked out, or he wouldn't have called me in for final briefing, and he couldn't have worked out his access before he'd signalled his plans. That was when they should have said all right but if it's underwater we're going to insist on a shield. But they'd had second thoughts and I didn't like that: it meant they were worried.