I let him think about that, and turned to Gabrielle, saying in French, 'Even if you could understand us you'd be just as bored, business being business in any language.'

'I'm not bored,' she said with a smile. 'I'm playing a game, picking out the das and the nyets, which are the only words I know. He seems a very nice man,' she added.

I'd briefed her at the mission that Slavsky spoke French but might pretend otherwise. She knew he understood what she'd just said, and that was why she'd said it.

'He's interesting,' I nodded, 'yes. Women find him attractive. Excuse us again.' I looked at Slavsky and switched to Russian. 'She's quite taken with you, I think. And by the way, you know who I ran into last week in Madrid? Little Fifi Dufoix! She married that awful matador fellow, did you hear?'

His eyes changed now. He could have killed me. Some men might have laughed it off, seen the funny side of it by this time, but not this one, not Boris Slavsky; he didn't like to have people picture him wallowing among the ripe and reeking contents of a Spanish garbage truck. But the mention of little Fifi had done its job, as I knew by the next thing he said.

'If you people turned down my client's offer in the first place, why has Dmitrovich sent you to Cambodia?'

Gloves off now.

'I wasn't actually sent. It was my own idea to come here.' Leaning forward again: 'As I say, we have every confidence in you, but as you know as well as I do, accidents happen — the source suddenly dries up, or official suspicion is aroused, supply lines are compromised, even the weather can be a problem: remember when our group was trying to deliver some goods to Serbia a couple of years ago and the transports ran into mud slides because of the rain?'

'That was Plechikov?'

I looked at him steadily, frowning.

'Plechikov?'

'Running that assignment.'

I shook my head. 'We haven't got any Plechikov with us.'

We watched each other. He'd left it late, and I'd started waiting for it, listening for it — a word or a name thrown in to check me out. I was on to it at once because it was a stock trick: he knew there was no one working with Dmitrovich called Plechikov, and so did I.

'Someone else,' he said at last.

'Actually,' I said, 'it was me. Mud up to our ears, I can tell you — and you know what those fucking Serbs tried to do to us? They gave us counterfeit German Marks!'

He lifted his head an inch, levelling his eyes. 'So somebody got shot?'

'How well you know us,' I said softly. 'Two of them, in fact, the minister and his aide. Dmitrovich offered me the pleasure of taking care of it personally.' In a moment he looked down, having seen enough of what I'd put into my eyes for his attention. 'But anyway,' I said, 'you get my point, I'm sure: in any enterprise, however well-managed — as I know yours always are — there can be problems. And I am here, with Dmitrovich's approval, to offer you our full support should you need it at any time.'

In a moment: 'Why?' He didn't like this. The door-to-door megadeath salesmen don't support one another, they cut one another's throats, and everybody knows where they are.

I shrugged. 'If you fall down on it, we'll pick it up and deliver. At your price.'

'Why at my price?'

'Because we want this man to succeed, so we don't mind losing a little on the deal. If he succeeds, he won't stop there. With Beijing's encouragement he'll catch North Vietnam vacillating between sucking up to the Americans for favoured-nation status, with all it implies, and going ahead in the caves and cellars concocting their very first little nuclear bomb. Then there'll be South Vietnam in your client's sights.' Hands flat on the table again, my voice almost down to a whisper. 'Can you imagine how much joy it would give that man to destroy the very nation that drove him out of Cambodia?' I sat back. 'But you know all this, Slavsky. As a lackey of Beijing this client of yours could create a Communist block in South-east Asia at a time when the West is desperate to establish democracy here on China's doorstep. We don't see this man as just another sadistic terrorist still ambitious to kill off another million peasants; once he's got real power in his hands he'll rise to the occasion politically and of course ideologically — and he'll need real toys to protect his new territories, not just the bundle of surface-to-surface missiles you're selling him now. And with the huge treasure-chest of merchandise still stockpiled in Russia and Ukraine — conventional and nuclear — we're looking at a brand new and rapidly-developing market, and that is what interests Dmitrovich.'

Above us the ceiling fans stirred the tobacco smoke, and moths began tracing the air with gold under the flickering lights; through the windows the sky was blood-red as the long day neared its end. I hadn't taken much of a risk when I'd talked about a bundle of surface-to-surface missiles: if Pot Pot wanted to take over this country again he could only do it by threatening the capital, and since he'd failed to do it politically he had to do it by a show of force and from a distance, and a cluster of short-range missiles was the perfect tool.

Slavsky drained his vodka and I signalled the boy. Gabrielle's glass was still full, and so was mine — something that Slavsky hadn't noticed yet, but if he did, he'd comment: for a Russian to sit in front of a glass of vodka for more than five minutes was almost an outrage. I would tell him, if necessary, that I'd eaten some uncooked vegetables here and my stomach was queasy. Tonight I had work to do.

'Will your friend,' Gabrielle asked me, 'be staying overnight?'

'I'm not sure, but I should think so. He can't get a plane to Phnom Penh at this hour in any case, otherwise I'd be on it myself — regrettably.' I gave her a rueful smile. 'He might speak a bit of English, by the way — would you like me to ask him?'

'Perhaps.'

The boy was coming up in his rubber flip-flops, and I ordered a single vodka. Slavsky was staring into his empty glass, his strong thick fingers turning it slowly round. I didn't interrupt him, and in a moment he looked up.

'It sounds like a threat,' he said.

'What does?'

Your offer to "pick things up and make a delivery" if I can't manage it.'

I leaned back, raising my hands to shoulder-level, palms towards him and fingers spread. 'My dear Boris, if we'd wanted to move in on your deal we would have done so before now. Be logical.'

He turned his large head away to watch the sundown in the windows, turned it back to watch the innocence in my eyes. 'How soon could you deliver the merchandise,' he asked, 'if something went wrong with my own plans?'

I shrugged. 'Almost immediately. We've got underground stockpiles of stuff like that all over the place, as I'm sure you know. But you don't need to worry yourself over — '

'And what kind of accident would you think I might have, that would prevent delivery?' He was forgetting to leave his eyes blank now, was concerned, defensive.

I leaned forward. 'Look, all you need consider is how much my group stands to profit in the long run from your client's success, and you'll understand — I very much hope — that Dmitrovich is more than happy to see you deliver on time by the nineteenth, without impediment. Tell me, have you ever met him?'

'Dmitrovich?'

'Yes.'

'I've not had that pleasure.' His sense of humour was surfacing, and I noted it.

'He's tough,' I said. 'Dmitrovich is very tough. You know that. But he's prone to indulge himself, and for him to watch over your successful enterprise out here as a kind of benevolent patron is rather attractive to him. The bear that refrains from cuffing the badger is simply demonstrating his greater strength — if you'll forgive the analogy.'