I switched to receive. 'Hear you.'

'I've had no response yet.'

There wouldn't have been time. With the signals board in the state it was, they'd have to call in Bureau One, the all-highest, and he'd have to confer with Croder and possibly that bastard Loman and decide which way to go, leave me out here in the hope that I could make another move or call me in and replace me.

'Did you tell them I'm asking for a few hours more?'

'Of course. But I assume nothing has changed.'

He waited.

You cannot lie. You can lie to every single human being you meet in the field, you can lie like a trooper, like Satan himself, because your life will often depend on it, and that is understood. But the shadow executive cannot lie to his director, because he is his link to London, to Control, and to the signals board and the mission screens in the computer room and finally to the decision-making process that is the crux and fulcrum of the entire operation. That too is understood.

'No,' I said into the radio. 'Nothing has changed.'

Someone else came through the doorway across the street, a man wrapped in rags with some kind of basket on his back. I watched him until he was out of sight past the vegetable stall. I was sitting in the truck, the new one, the Dongfeng, bloody thing reeking of yak dung.

'But at least we are now in constant touch,' Pepperidge said.

That was like him: he'll always find the remnant of a silver lining in the darkest reaches of despair and bring it into the light.

Said yes.

'Location?'

It would be very dangerous to give it to him: there was no scrambler on these things. 'I can't do that.'

'Very well. I had a signal,' he said, 'through Beijing, an hour ago. The deadline has been moved up a little.'

Mother of God.

The briefing was that Premier Li Peng was due to address the Chinese nation on television from the Great Hall of the People at ten o'clock on the morning of the 15th, and that was the governing factor that fixed the timing of Bamboo: the premier was to be removed by force from his desk and Dr Xingyu Baibing installed in his place. The briefing had noted that if the deadline couldn't be met, we wouldn't get another chance for months: Premier Li wasn't scheduled to speak again until the spring.

I asked Pepperidge: 'By how much?'

'The speech was going to be made at ten hundred hours on the fifteenth, as you know. It's now down for eighteen hundred hours the previous evening, which means that the bomber will have to pick him up at Gonggar at three tomorrow afternoon, instead of midnight.' Short silence. 'Bit rough, I know.'

I watched the doorway.

Nine hours.

'What's London telling the coordinator?'

'In what way?'

I think he knew, but didn't want to get it wrong. This was sensitive ground. 'Is the coordinator being told that the subject is now missing? That we can't have him ready for the rendezvous at Gonggar in any case?'

In a moment, 'No.'

A gust of wind rocked the truck, blew dust along the street. 'When will they tell him?'

'I think they'll leave it to the last possible moment. There's not much to lose, after all. The bomber's scheduled to leave Beijing at fifteen hundred hours Beijing time, thirteen hundred hours Lhasa. If we can't make the rdv, all we have to do is put through a signal for them to cancel the flight, five minutes before takeoff. It gives us a slight edge, if there's anything we can do in the meantime.'

Meant find Xingyu.

'All right,' I said.

In a moment, 'Have you any plans?'

'I'm going to follow up whatever I can find.' Couldn't tell him what I'd asked Chong to do for me; we weren't scrambled. But I think he knew what I was going to do. I think he knew.

'Very well.' A note of cheerfulness, I wished he wouldn't do that, it was like whistling at a funeral.

Meant to be kind, he meant to be kind, God knew how this man had got through all the missions he had — major operations, three of them Classification One to my knowledge, global scale — with this much humanity, this much compassion. Simply because, perhaps, he could preserve enough heart in his executive to keep him running on, give him the feeling he wasn't alone, take enough tension out of his nerves to let him see a chance he might otherwise miss, and muster the strength to take it.

Miracles do not always come easily, do not burst upon us with the holy light of revelation; they must sometimes be conjured from the sickly flame of despair, the hands held close to keep the draft away and the gaze steadfast, bringing to bear upon the matter the grace of faith, until through the dark of disaffection the small flame thrives, leaping at last to burn with a light that holds the very soul in thrall, by which I mean, my good friend, that one must not go limping home, must one, when all is wretchedness, no, one must sit here in this stinking truck and watch the doorway over there, not for an instant taking the eyes away, in case there is a last chance, however thin, of conjuring that little flame within the hands, and there she is.

Su-May.

She was alone, coming through the doorway of the little broken-down hotel, first looking to her right and then to her left in the way they do, the amateurs, when they want to take care they are not watched, making her way past the vegetable stall, a small figure bundled against the freezing wind, soon to be lost among the blade-edged shadows of noon.

Hit the button — 'Breaking, stay open, out.'

She was at a table in the far corner.

I could only just about see her: large luminous eyes set in a small pale face above the fur collar of her parka; something had gone wrong, I suppose, with one of the stoves in here, the cafe was thick with smoke. This was a bigger place than the one I'd gone to before with little Su-May and later Pepperidge; it was crowded, people hungry in the middle of the day. My stomach was empty but I hungered not, had ordered tea. Fear doth not prick the appetite, and Lord, I was afraid.

The oil lamps flickered against the walls like warning beacons across a foggy sea, and dark figures moved through the smoke, servers, customers, beggars, and monks; dogs darted between their feet and under the rickety bamboo tables and out again, seeking scraps for their hallowed stomachs.

They are sacred, she had told me, little Su-May, believed by some to be the reincarnation of departed monks, I think she'd said, believed by some but not by me, kicked at one of the little buggers and felt it connect, they'll start gnawing on your bloody ankle if you don't watch out, sitting with my hands around the cup of tea, nursing my nerves.

Because it had come to this. When a mission has crashed and the opposition has gained the field and there is nothing you can do, almost nothing, we will correct that, almost nothing you can do, there is always a last desperate play that you can consider using, and it has never failed. It will give you access again, a way in through the wreckage, and if you get it right you will once more confront the enemy, and with luck and the blessing of every saint in Christendom you may even, finally, prevail.

Men moved like shadows in this ghostly place, women too, I suppose, though it was difficult to tell because most of them were swathed in robes or skins or coats and big fur hats, the drab plumage of their winter hibernation here on the bleak roof of the world. Someone was coughing his heart up in the drifting smoke, and a door was banged open behind me to let some of it out.

There were no mirrors in here.

It's not in the book, the ploy I was talking about, even though it has never failed. You'd think a thing like that would be a dead ringer for the Manual of Procedures, which is the Bible rewritten for the shadow executives of the Bureau, and I've tried to get it put in, but their lordships of the hierarchy won't have it, and the best I can do is spell it out for the — neophyte spooks whenever I give an instruction class between missions at Norfolk.