I assumed it was a gun but that was all it was: an assumption. Electrical impulse was pouring data into the brain and there was so much to handle that normal thought was ceding the field to imagination and instinct, and it wasn't logical to imagine they were pressing a fountain pen to my head, or a lipstick case. The image of a face flickered for one microsecond among all the others, the memory plundering its archives as a contribution to the welfare of the organism. It was a smooth round face, always rather sulky until you knew the man, Heppinstall's face, in my mind for this instant because we'd laid bets one day, the three of us (Stoner was the other), on whether it was possible to tell the calibre of a gun pressed to the back of the neck. We used several guns, alarming the fellow in Firearms because we weren't on duty at the time, and Stoner lost his money because he said one of them was a.38 and it was really the end of a scent bottle.

The lights went green.

A rickshaw got on the move, the other side of the station wagon, the man between the shafts butting his way through the stragglers. Two girls ran giggling to the crowded pavement, hobbled by their cheongsams, and on the far side of the intersection a bus driver began tapping his horn as he moved slowly forward. No one was taking any notice of what was happening around them: at this hour they were hurrying into the town from the ferries or along to the restaurants and.brothels and bars of the Wanchai district or eastwards to the hotels and supper clubs and theatres of Causeway Bay. A few were strolling, going where their fancy took them: this was their first sight of Hong Kong by night and they circled like moths.

He was a professional.

Quite a lot of the data concerned this man. Memory suggested he was Chinese because the competition on this operation was Chinese, and sensory perception tended to confirm this: he smelt of incense and the faint distorted image in the chrome strip of the window was Oriental. The pressure against my head was steady and constant and I knew he was a professional because he was speaking to me and laughing a little, presenting the image of someone talking to a friend through the window of his car, even though he realized it was hardly necessary when the passers-by were so preoccupied.

The station wagon swayed an inch as the rear door was pulled open on the far side. As far as I could tell there was only one man getting in. Then the front passenger door came open and someone else got in and slammed the door and pushed the muzzle hard against my left side, below the rib-cage. The taxi in the mirror began honking because the lights had changed a few seconds ago, but we wouldn't be long now because the man who had been talking and laughing to me took his gun away and got into the back, leaning forward on the edge of the seat to talk again, bringing the gun to the nape of my neck and covering it with his left hand: I could feel the warmth of his little finger just above the muzzle.

The man beside me spoke now, prodding me, and I drove off across the intersection, going east. It was obvious what he'd told me to do, though I didn't understand: he spoke in Mandarin, the common language of the new China, as the first man had done.

'What do you want?' I asked them in English. Just a slight tremor of alarm in the voice, a couple of snatched glances at the man next to me. My cover was that of a man who dealt in rare coins and bullion and I must have had a few brushes with violence or attempted violence in my profession: a safe-break or a mugging or a bag-snatch, things like that; so I shouldn't be too frightened by this turn of events, but merely alarmed.

There was a flat half-muted singing of Mandarin again and I shook my head hopelessly. I was waiting for a bit of Cantonese but I wasn't going to understand that either because there's a distinct advantage in the language barrier: it invites the competition to speak freely among themselves in their own tongue and it slows the action down quite a bit when they bark out an order, because if you don't understand what they're barking out they can't expect immediate obedience.

I was now being searched, as far as was possible in the confines of the station wagon, and they were surprised not to find a gun. The ones they carried were now pressed a little harder against me, possibly because they were suspicious. Intelligent agents normally use guns.

Some more Mandarin, then some rather inept attempts at Cantonese when I kept shaking my head. These were hit men, recently arrived in Hong Kong, uneducated and no more than action-trained. Probably they'd been flown in from Pekin when the people down here had found my photo in the files. There were a lot of them here, anything up to a hundred, and it didn't even have to stop at that because the population of China is embarrassingly large. They were here in force, presumably, because one operator can often mean a whole cell has moved into the field, and a cell would depend on a network.

'Down along!' he kept saying in Cantonese, while I looked suitably puzzled. He jerked a hand across the windscreen, showing me where I had to go: down towards the harbour.

I looked at my watch, being careful not to take my hand off the wheel, just angling the wrist, because they seemed rather excited and I didn't want any accidents. Both guns were suddenly pressed harder against me and I had a verbal warning. The time was 19.52 and I noted it because it's often important to remember what time an event happened: or this could be just rationalizing the subconscious need for orientation. To know the time was to control the situation, if only in terms of being informed, of being able to measure one of its elements; and I suppose this was a sop to the whimpering little organism as it tried to get my attention — they're going to kill you… it's three to one and you've had it and there's nothing you can do but I don't want to die, don't let them-

Bloody well shut up.

Sweat on my hands.

'Down!' he said at the next intersection, pointing with his thin hand, its striking edge swollen and inflamed. He'd be somewhere near the yellow standard and still having trouble with the bricks. In a couple of minutes we came to a quay on the west side of the typhoon shelter and the man made me put the station wagon through a narrow gap between ropes and warning flags where the parapet was being repaired. Nobody was here, because at night there was nothing to come here for.

'Stop!'

There was a lot of sign language: I had to get out and stand with my hands raised against the wall of the rope store while they patted me all over for the gun, beginning to chatter when they couldn't find one. I could hear two of them back inside the car, pulling up the seats and snapping open the glove compartment.

'Where gun?' they asked me, frustrated.

'What the hell would I want a gun for?' Getting irritable now, a good mind to call a policeman, so forth.

It was possible they were brighter than they looked, so I launched a daring tirade of indignation in colonial English, mentioning the severe punishment they would receive at the hands of the judge, and the long years in prison they were risking by their infamous conduct. They let me go on for ten seconds or so, not because they were listening but because they were completely thrown by not being able to find my gun. Then they told me to shut up, and began on my wallet. They had a photograph of me — I could see it was another copy of the one I'd found on the boy in the snake shop — and they began comparing it with my face and the photograph in my passport, making me stand facing the tall lamp at the edge of the quay. They weren't too satisfied, but then I didn't see how they could be, because passport photos are only ever good for a giggle and the one their network was circulating in Hong Kong was grainy.