At that end of the mission there was a building full of people with talent enough to man an international chess tournament and signals facilities in excess of the requirements of an operational air force base and a codes staff capable of hitting our agents-in-place in Moscow or Pekin with a telephone directory got up as Hymns Ancient and Modern and a permanent hotline direct to the Minister of Defence and at this end of the mission there was a half-doped ferret sitting in a cave and getting slowly covered in bat-shit.

At a rough guess I'd say Mandarin was blown. All I was interested in now was getting out alive and I didn't think I could do it.

Swordfish would arrive in these waters at 01.29 tomorrow and the call of the sea swallow would be heard and go unanswered and the sub would pull out and all Ferris could do then was consider sending in the reserve, but I didn't think there'd be one available because the Bureau didn't have anyone stupid enough to take on a shut-ended penetration job with a seaborne access problem except possibly for O' Malley and for one thing he was in Athens and for another thing he'd get pissed the night before and go in with a sawn-off motor torpedo-boat and they'd see him coming before he'd started the engine and Control knew that: he'd told Ferris to hang a reserve in front of my nose just to make me go into this thing out of sheer stinking pride.

Well, this time it hadn't worked. If they wanted George Henry Tewson off that rig they'd have to use a skyhook.

Aural data becoming significant and demanding analysis.

Increase in the volume of sound: and the only sound of any consequence was that of the helicopter.

I dropped into the water and floated towards the cave mouth and saw the thing was perceptibly closer. Two of the boats were also moving in, one of them heading directly this way with its bow wave appropriate to half speed: they weren't hurrying because they hadn't seen anything and if there was anyone on this group of islands they could head him off and pin him down without any trouble. It would finally depend on manpower and they had unlimited resources.

I thought the best thing to do was to start getting some information on the cave system on Heng-kang Chou and with that bloody boat heading this way I thought I had less than a couple of minutes to get clear of here. This cave didn't offer anything: it was a cul-de-sac.

Preliminary hyperventilation is dangerous if it's pushed too far and I spent only thirty seconds on it, emphasizing the exhalation and taking nine or ten pints into the lungs before I slid below the surface and followed the undersea cliff.

I couldn't see them.

This cave was no better than the other one. It had a shut end.

I couldn't see them but I could hear them.

They were checking the other cave: two men in a dinghy.

When they'd checked that one, they'd come and check this one.

I waited. There wasn't anything else I could do.

The launch was standing off a short distance. The men on board couldn't see into the cave: they were base and support for the men in the dinghy. There were now two helicopters over the island: I could see one of them banking sharply across the southernmost headland and sloping down from the sky, chop-chop-chop-chop, coming closer.

I sank under the surface and lay prone in the shallows of the cave because even when you know you've finally lost a wheel you go on trying till the very last second: it's in the nature of the beast.

It's always someone else.

Always.

Never you.

Someone like KLJ, Berlin, a long-range rifle shot.

Or Thornton. Hit a mountain head-on with a Petrov X-7, Or North with his brains all over the bathroom.

You never think it's going, one fine day, to be you.

The bloody thing slammed past the cave mouth, chop-chop-chop, the echo slamming back.

I waited five seconds and pushed my face into the air and started breathing again. The bats were going frantic, swarming into the sunshine and back, perfectly understandable, imagine what they must have thought, picking up that bloody great super-bat on their little radars.

It would have been a piece of cake to hyperventilate and go down to fifty feet and come up on the far side of the dinghy and go into the cave after they'd searched it, but they had divers down in the area and I could see their marker buoys on each side of the launch. They were being very thorough.

I suppose Ferris was hanging around one of the islands in Hong Kong waters, Lamma or the Soko group, and from that distance Swordfish would probably notice the aerial activity. Conceivably he'd put a signal out: a lot of choppers up, looks like a search, could be we're blown.

You never think it's going to be you: they're looking particularly shut-faced when you go through Clearance and you know it must be Mario because it's the only one running, or you find you can't reach Parkis and you know his operation must have come unstuck because he told you to be here and he doesn't miss an appointment unless the sky's caved in and this time it's poor old Talbot, or you see two of the escape-crew couriers going into Debriefing as white as a sheet and that's either Fitzroy or Crocker and you don't ask anyone which.

This time they'll know it was you.

The sun was striking into the cave mouth, sending light dappling the rocks. Now that the helicopter had reached the end of its loop a mile away it was quiet in this stretch of water and I could hear voices from the power launch. When I sighted along the surface I saw three of the crew standing in the stern and watching the cave where the dinghy was. The men in the dinghy were armed and carried something heavy and chromed: I'd just seen the shape of it and the flash of the sun when they'd gone in there and it had looked like a portable searchlight taken from the launch.

There weren't any ledges in this cave, in this one where I was trapped. There wasn't a hollow where I could have crouched or a loose rock I could have used as cover. There was nothing.

And nothing I could do when they came. The divers weren't just making a random search of the rockface below water: they were keeping precise station, on watch for anyone swimming out of a cave when the search party went in.

All I could do was wait.

What's wrong with Egerton today?

Who?

Egerton.

Oh, his mission got blown.

Christ. Who was he running?

Dunno. Quiller, I think.

You never think it could be you and then one day you find out you're bloody well wrong and when I heard the splash of their oars I pushed with my feet and floated out of the cave face down so that they could see it wasn't anything worth shooting at.