'But how would you tell them?' Her hands came away from her face and she leaned across the stained bare-wood table. 'You must not use the telephone, or — '

'There's someone leaving here for Beijing tomorrow, by the morning flight from Gonggar. I would tell him.'

She closed her eyes slowly, compressing her mouth, praying for patience, I think. In a moment, her eyes coming open with nothing in them but fright. 'You do not understand how dangerous this is. You are just a tourist. People speak. People betray, sometimes without intention. One must understand, my country is full of spies, informers. One does not any longer know one's friends, trust one's friends — it is like in Nazi Germany, a child will give away his parents to the police, because he has been indoctrinated. My country is full of fear.' She didn't look away, but she hesitated. 'Do you know what they asked me to do, the PSB men? They asked me to follow you when you left there, and see where you went, and go back and report. I said my mother was very sick, so I had no time to help them. This is how it is, in my — '

'Why are they interested in me?'

'Simply because you are from the West, and might be a journalist. They are most afraid of foreign journalists, because Lhasa is always on the point of rebellion, like most cities now in China, and they don't want the news to get out. All they can do is expel the journalists in time, and that is almost as bad, an admission that something will happen that must not be seen.' Hesitation again, and then, 'Your friend, what does he do?'

Another man came with a tin bowl, already with scraps of food in it, to show how generous others had been, his hands thinned to the bone under the skin, his face whittled by want.

'Zoukai!' she said, 'Zoukai!' He went off, his bowl clanging against the corner of the table.

I think she was afraid of being overheard, more than anything; she couldn't leave it alone, this thing about getting word to her father. I said, 'My friend is Chinese, a lawyer. He knows as much as you do about the danger of indiscretion.'

In point of fact the message would go to her father through the mast at Cheltenham and the signals board in London to the British embassy at Beijing and then to one of our sleepers or agents-in-place.

'Why should you help me?' Her hands had gone to her face again, as if she wanted to hide as best she could from whatever treachery there might be in me.

'In the West,' I said, 'we hear the news from China and we feel great sympathy for the people. It's not often we can really do something to help, and it's a chance for me. I'll be envied, when I go home.'

Not untrue. Harry, the man who looks after things at my flat, had gone out and got drunk after he'd watched the Tiananmen Square thing on the screen that night in June; he can't stand seeing things in cages, told me he'd screamed his head off the first time his mum took him to a zoo.

'You will be envied?' I don't think she believed it, but wanted to, because her eyes were suddenly wet. 'It is difficult for us to understand that we have friends outside our country. We feel alone, and isolated. So when you say you will help me like this, it — '

Then she couldn't stop the tears, and tugged the edges of her mangy fur hood across her face and sat there with her long eyes squeezed shut and her body rocking backward and forward in its shapeless coat while one of those bloody dogs under the table bit my ankle and I gave it a smart kick and got a yelp.

The boy came around again with the teapot and I showed him some money and he peeled off a couple of notes and went away, not even glancing at the girl, I suppose because it wasn't unusual for women to weep in this ravaged city.

'I do not feel well, one must understand,' Su-May said at last, 'it is the high-altitude sickness. Have you felt any symptoms?'

'Bit light-headed sometimes.' Our tour guide had warned us on the bus ride from the airport, the best thing was to rest up for the first two or three days, take it easy, and if anyone had any blood-pressure or chest problems he shouldn't have come here at all, this place was a killer, so forth, he wasn't joking.

'One must take it seriously,' Su-May said, refusing to talk any more about the other thing, lost her pride, crying like that, lost face. 'One must be very careful.'

'So they tell me,' I said. 'Now write down the name and address of your father's friend, the one we have to contact, and give it to me.'

For a moment she pretended not to know what I was talking about, and then found a bit of paper and went over to the counter for a pen and came back and wrote, looking up at me only once with her eyes deep and with an expression in them that clearly said, If you betray me, I shall lose my trust at last in all humankind, then bent her head again and finished writing and gave me the scrap of paper.

Professor Hu Zhibo, The Faculty, Department of Economics, Beijing University.

'And can he get the message to your father?'

'Yes.'

'And the message is that you are safe and well, nothing else?'

In a moment, 'And that I love him.'

'All right. You can — '

'Perhaps I should put the name of the place where I am staying, in Lhasa?'

'No.'

We want nothing in your heads, the executives in training are told at Norfolk, that we wouldn't want anyone to get out.

'I am grateful,' she said with quiet formality.

'Little enough to do.' She'd have a bad time, tonight, not getting to sleep because of the thoughts flying at her in the dark that I wasn't what I seemed, that she'd been out of her mind to trust me; but there wasn't anything I could do about that: the most fervent protestations of good faith are the most suspect.

We drank the rest of our tea and went out into the freezing wind and through the streets to her broken-down guesthouse near the market, and I left her there and found a streetlight and got out the CAAC map. Pepperidge had left the name of his hotel in code for me at the monastery, with a cross-street bearing, and I walked on again with my head down against the wind, not looking forward to seeing him, not looking forward to it at all, because I was going to tell him what I'd had to do at Chengdu airport to stop Xingyu from going back to Beijing, and Pepperidge would realize what it was going to do to the mission, if London didn't abort it straight away and call us in.

Chapter 11: Tea

'I left him in charge of a monk.'

'Will that be all right?' Pepperidge asked.

He meant was I certain that Xingyu Baibing would still be there when I went back, that he wouldn't be got at, that he wouldn't decide to leave the monastery of his own free will.

'Yes,' I said. 'Security's the best we can hope for, and we've reached an agreement.'

Slight understatement.

'Well done. Spot of tea?'

'Not just now.'

'If you haven't got a hot shower where you are, come along here.' He was squatting in a cowhide chair with his long legs drawn up and his heels on the edge of the seat, watching me with his pale yellow eyes and taking everything in.

This was the Barkhor Hotel, Chinese, not Tibetan, no sign of luxury but he didn't want that; all he wanted was a telephone and there was one here.

'Feel all right? he asked me.

'First-class.'

'Altitude's not a problem?'

'I've hallucinated a couple of times, that's all. Wouldn't want to do much running yet.'

'Won't have to.'

He wanted to sound reassuring. In our language, running doesn't mean just around the park.

'You'll need your pad,' I told him.

'Debriefing?'

'Call it that.' I went across to the narrow bed and sat with my back against the wall. 'Mind?'