'I've told you, all I want is some sleep.'

'I'm sure you do.' He turned his head and watched me with his bland yellow eyes. 'But there's the other thing: the demands are rather high, and Egerton knows that.'

'For Christ's sake, I blew it in Cambodia didn't I? So now I want to give him Kobra. The complete works, and on a plate.'

'He doesn't expect that'

'No, but I do.'

A series of soft thuds.

I woke.

The airframe was settling, and plastic creaked, 'Was that the undercarriage?'

'Yes,' Ferris said.

The sun was high in the windows opposite my berths Los Angeles?'

'Yes.'

I checked my watch. 06:00 hours.

Nine hours' sleep.

'What's the local time?'

'Fourteen hundred.'

We bounced twice.

'Do we change planes?'

'Yes.'

I went along to the lav.

A roaring began outside and there was a lot of deceleration.

'Have you altered your watch?' Ferris asked when I went back.

'Not yet'

There'd be extensive jet lag to take up when we reached the east coast and I wanted to know my own metabolic time for a while in case there was a chance to adjust.

'They're having a bad day,' Ferris said.

'What?'

I still had some buzzing in the ears, 'Look at that lot.'

The smog was mud-brown, hazing out the tops of the buildings, and we caught the Euston Station smell of it as we left the aircraft.

'How long have we got?'

'Ninety minutes.'

'Call or take-off?'

'Take-off.'

We went along to the men's room and had a wash and linen Ferris disappeared for a while and came back to our rdv in the coffee-shop and sat down on the next stool and ordered buttermilk.

'They've still got the road up,' he told me, I supposed he meant in Whitehall.

'Taking their time.'

I didn't see why he'd decided to get into signals with London from Los Angeles when he hadn't done so in Taipei.

I certainly couldn't ask him now.

'How's Charlie?'

Not his correct name. Correct name was Diego.

'Trouble with his dentist. Suing him.'

He crouched over his buttermilk, using a straw.

Diego was our man in downtown Hollywood and that was the only way Ferris could have signalled London in the limited time he'd been away: by phoning Diego and getting him to crank up the short-wave radio. That was partly what he was for. I assumed Ferris had just been reporting our travel pattern but it seemed a bit superfluous.

'How the hell,' I asked him, 'did our chum over there manage to screw the price of first-class berths out of those poxy old tarts in Accounts?'

'He looks after people.'

His straw made a sudden sucking noise as he got to the bottom.

On our way back to the departure gate we had three or four minutes in an open space and he said:

'Your interview in Washington is arranged to take place in the White House. The contact's name is Robert W. Finberg and he's an adviser to the US Secretary of Defence. You'll be put through a routine screening by the EPS at the British Embassy some time before noon tomorrow, all going well Questions?'

'EPS?'

'Executive Protection Service. They provide security for the White House and the diplomatic missions in Washington The actual screening won't take long because there's only the question of identity to be taken care of: the purpose of your visit and the nature of the interview are both subject to very strict hush.'

He was watching the passengers coming across to the gate and so was I. So far, three of them had been on the Pacific flight with us, two of them in the coach class and one in the first.

'I'll brief you first thing in the morning but it might be as well to get one fact memorized straight away: at this point only one man in the whole of the United States has any knowledge of our mission to counter the Kobra operation, and only one man knows that you and I have arrived in the country. That man is of course Robert W. Finberg. Questions?'

There wasn't a lot of time: a Pan Am official was taking up his station at the departure gate. To be noted in passing was a man in a white shirt standing next to him and using a walkie-talkie and looking everywhere except at the passengers. He didn't look like a boarding inspector and I would put Mm down tentatively as FBI.

'Did Finberg come to us, or did we go to him?'

'I don't know that,' Ferris said.

'These people we've got surveying Satynovich Zade: do they know we're here?'

'No. They won't be told.'

'Not when I take over?'

'No. We're going to put out disinformation that they've lost their objective.'

'They don't know about the interview?'

'No. They won't be told. The minute you take over the surveillance on Zade they'll start for the airport. Anything you're unhappy about?'

'Not so far.'

'Fair enough.' He turned his sandy head and gazed at me for a moment like an owl. 'You look in good form.'

'The shave helped.'

'I told London you were fit for operations.'

'I should bloody well hope so.'

'And I told them you've no intention of coming in.'

'Not really.'

It was raining when we got into Dulles International Airport.

My watch read eleven in the morning Taiwan time and in Washington it was ten at night but I'd slept the whole way across the Pacific and some of the way across the States so the jet lag was minimal.

By the time we'd gone aboard in Los Angeles I'd noted a total of four people who were in transit from Taiwan and we stayed in the baggage claim area and saw them out of the building before we went over to Avis and picked up a dark grey Mustang. Ferris was touchy about checking the transit passengers: he said there was absolutely no chance of any kind of surveillance in this travel phase and I said there'd been absolutely no chance of the opposition getting on to me so early in Phnom Penh but they'd hit me with a wall just the same.

It rained all night Some of the time I slept again but Ferris used the phone in the next room at midnight and three a.m., initiating the first call and receiving the second: I could hear the bell.

I called him at eight o'clock and the line opened at once.

'Yes?'

'All in order?'

'Perfectly.'

'Thank Christ for that,' I said and hung up.

I'd been worrying more than I'd realized: three people were more than enough to hold down one objective but the opposition had been fighting all along the line and what had happened in Milan and Geneva and Phnom Penh could happen in New York. The three a.m. call to Ferris must have been from one of them, reporting progress, and they must have Zade still in their sights or Ferris would have got me out of bed for a crisis briefing.

But he'd picked up the phone so fast, just now.

Maybe he'd been close to it Discount.

The nerves always start jumping a bit at the start of a new phase and this one was ultra sensitive because the mission now hung on a fine thread. If they lost Zade in New York it would finish us: Ferris had said this objective was the last hope. Despite this I was briefed to delay travel in Washington for an interview with the only man in the whole country who could help us.

The rain had stopped by half-past eight and when I went out at nine the sky was clearing for spring sunshine.

I took an hour, re-kitting. The bush jacket I'd bought in Phnom Penh wasn't the right image for a White House meeting and in any case it was streaked with wall plaster and one shoulder was blackened. I was back in the hotel soon after ten and Ferris was waiting for me by the time I'd changed.

'Briefing,' he said.

'I'm ready.'

'You're due at the British Embassy at 11:00 hours and the screening will take some fifteen minutes. You'll use your present cover and if they try to shake you on it I want you to phone me at this hotel. All they need to know is who you are, not what you're doing in Washington. Finberg has told them he wants to interview you and that's enough for them. The Executive Protection Service does exactly what it says: it protects executives in the White House, and all they need to know is that you're not going to assassinate Finberg at the meeting — or anyone else. Questions?'