At two-thirty the phone rang.

'Yes?'

'D'you want some transport, old horse?'

Tilson was back: he was admin, and worked shifts.

'I'll take the Jag.'

'Want it picked up?'

'If you will'

'OK. Take care.'

The line clicked, severing the last connection, and I went downstairs and threw the bag in the car.

The place was like a morgue, only seven flights on the board and one man with a mop trying to get some of the floor dry before the next coach came in: there was a blocked drain outside and the pavement was flooded.

'Rome.'

'Yes, sir.'

There was no delay on the screen printout.

'What time was this booked, can you tell me?'

He tore the perforation and used a stapler. 'You mean when. was the reservation actually made?'

'Right.'

He checked his books. 'Five p.m. yesterday, sir.'

'Thank you.'

Oh, that bastard Egerton.

On the way to the waiting area I saw a man who reminded me of someone, pale face and a kind of lost expression, couldn't think who, then I remembered: North, getting up so quietly like that, excuse me. They do it so often in bathrooms, I suppose because it's messy. I put a cheque into the Interflora box and a message, twelve red roses, Cheer up, Connie, life goes on.

A high faint whistling from beyond the roof and a sudden rush of lights. An entire Italian family in the waiting area, electing their next president, their hands presenting inarguable arguments in the air.

Taxiing to the end of the runway I got out my homework, committing the thing to memory: the extended-phase digits were in groups of vowels, labial consonants, labial and dental, so forth, and I ran off cheer… up… connie… and egerton… you… bas-tard… and reversed the transfers, forgetting the alert mechanism and having to look. This one wasn't going to be too easy, old Hanbury had done his nut.

Getting the green from the tower: the brakes came off and my spine began pressing into the seat. Reverse transfer and regroup, try again. But I couldn't concentrate because a top man like Macklin doesn't normally handle a low-key operation and they'd used 'highest priority' in terms of cover security in a routine enquiry into an accidental death and now I'd got him: Egerton had booked me out to Hong Kong a full hour before I'd bust a gut persuading him to send me there.

Jets roaring, the shoulders pressed hard to the seat.

So I wasn't just helping them out and I wasn't going to hang around looking at the postcards till they switched the signals from Pekin and triggered the real one for me, the big one. It was already running: Mandarin.

Chapter Three: CONTACT

'Fettuccini.'

'Si, signore.'

While I was eating it I reversed ten transfers, switched all groups at random and dropped the alert in every time without making a mistake, running off rome air-port 07.45 who the hell is tew-son and why won't they tell me. Then I reached for the vinegar and leaked some into the little flat box and watched the plastic card slowly dissolve. She was dead right: it took a good thirty seconds, not exactly the kind of trick you'd want to leave till the last minute if you found yourself in a shut-ended situation. Most people keep the key on them throughout the whole mission unless they run into problems: it's as tough as a credit card and you can take it through fire and water and it won't break unless you actually stand it on edge at a bus stop but I like to get rid of it early-it gives me the creeps because if they do happen to get to you before you can stop them they can begin reading your signals and sending stuff back and you won't necessarily live to know you've blown the whole operation.

Si pregamo i passeggieri per Bangkok di recarsi all'entrata d'imbarco numero uno.

Final check for messages. Negative.

Bangkok and the heat of a humid noon burnishing the gilded cupolas; palms and tamarinds and somewhere in the reek of kerosene a hint of sandalwood. Inside the building a bunch of people, mainly Japanese, were crowding the Royal Bank of Thailand counter: that would be the devaluazione monetaria featured in La Strada.

Nothing on the message board for Clive Wing.

There was a twenty-minute delay on the screen at China Airlines and I asked about it and they said the plane had come in late from Tokyo avoiding a typhoon that was now moving north-eastwards towards Korea, so I had time to walk around, stiff as a board after twenty-one hours up there and already feeling the disorientation as the metabolism struggled to adjust, the windows full of jade and teak and silk, the smell of incense and a display of gold pieces on black velvet and a board showing the world market: Mexico 50 Pesos 1.21 tr. oz. US $242 Bid, $249 Asked, Austria 10 °Corona.980 tr. oz. US $190 Bid, $797 Asked, the only two that interested me, the prices much lower than in London or New York.

Will passengers for Hong Kong please go to Gate No. 1.

Twelve-twenty-five and the air steamy across the tarmac, tso sun, tso sun, music tinkling from the speakers, no smoking, seat-belts, so forth, the thing was he probably thought I'd blow up in his face if all they'd had for me was a routine investigation into Tewson's death and he was absolutely right, I would have. So he'd had to catch me softlee, softlee, and not the first time, it was Egerton's speciality, and I would have walked out on him flat at London Airport the minute I knew about the reservation except for two possibilities: either George Henry Tewson was a top kick in some kind of specialized field or this operation was just too sticky or tricky or hair-trigger sensitive for anyone else to want to take on. He could have gone right through the list without getting a bite — because we can refuse a mission and there's nothing they can do about it — so he'd come down to the one man who might conceivably be persuaded, the one who'd been out of ops for nearly two months and was ready to take anything, anything, so long as they wrapped it up to look fancy.

Silk and small hands, a cherry-red mouth.

'Would you like some tea?'

Eighteen-forty and a cloth of gold flung across the window where I sat, the humped green hills of two hundred islands growing night-black before their time as the day lingered along the Tropic of Cancer, we hope that you enjoyed your flight, a rhythmic vibration setting in and the weight coming off the seat, and will fly with us again on China Airlines, fishing junks below on the flat gold water, sampans and a submarine and the chalk-white wake of a hydrofoil as it settled to the surface, in from Macau.

'Will you be staying long in Hong Kong?'

'It depends on what business I find.'

'Oh yes, you told me — you deal in coins.'

'Coins and bullion, they're the best hedge against inflation.'

'Ah yes.' He unclipped his seat-belt, smiling. 'In Tokyo we put our faith in transistors…'

The white Tiger Balm pagoda across the window, and Victoria Peak, then boats coming past in a swinging blur as we flattened along the approach path, tankers, freighters, two destroyers of the US 7th Fleet and a group of junks from Canton with the Chinese Communist yellow-starred flag and then the sub again, 'S' class with the Union Jack, belts until the plane has come to a stop, the hollow roar as the jets reversed and then the unaccustomed silence as the power came off, leaving conversations suddenly exposed.

… but heroin's their worst problem, even the schoolkids have started using it…

… they're not really poor, darling, I think they just like living on boats…