But I shouldn't have lost my cool so easily.

They note things like that.

The bulbs glowed yellow in the stairwell and I leaned on the banisters for a minute, listening to the raindrops hitting the skylight in the roof. Someone had made a mistake, that was all: the character in Room 6 was running a minor operation in Portugal with the local telephone for communication and a code series no one had used since I'd got back from Tunisa — it hadn't been blown anywhere but C and C had worked out some rather more sophisticated matrices with a computer for the mainline operations and these days the first-to-fourth series were given the trainees to play with.

'It's all right now,' Tilson said.

He was shuffling along the corridor in his plaid slippers, his round pink face radiating reassurance.

'Who is he, anyway?'

'Who is who, old fruit?'

'That bloody fool.'

He gave a slight wince, and looked back along the corridor for a moment, lowering his voice. 'He's from upstairs.'

Now I got it. At the Bureau 'upstairs' is the rarefied territory where Administration has its offices. Normally their lordships leave us alone but sometimes one of them asks the directorate if he can run a minor operation to keep his hand in, and of course the directorate can't refuse. I suppose there's a point in it somewhere but that kind of thing can get out of hand: we could find one of those amateur heroes running a mission the wrong way round and getting the poor bloody executive caught in the works. We don't appreciate that sort of thing: it's our life, not theirs.

'All right Tilson, get me debriefed.'

'Of course,' he said comfortingly. 'What about a spot of tea first?'

'Listen, will you, they told me to make contact and escort on the French coast and the poor bastard killed himself and I've got his papers for whoever wants them and all I'm asking for is some service and I'm asking you to get it for me.'

The tone of my voice was pitching up again and I heard it and was warned. There wasn't anything to worry about: they must have a mission lined up for me or they wouldn't have sent me to Istres like that, through a Liaison 9 cut-out: they'd have told those Monegasque cops I had to telephone London. And if they had a mission lined up for me I'd be sent into the field within a matter of days and then I'd be all right.

Tilson was shuffling along beside me.

'Where the hell are we going now, Tilson?'

'Debriefing,' he said, 'then briefing.'

I could feel the subtle rise in the pulse rate throughout my body. 'They've got something for me, have they?'

'That's right.' He turned a bland smile on me. Thought you'd be pleased.'

We went down the stairs, 'Who's my director?'

'Mr Egerton.'

I slowed. Egerton was a mainliner, one of the top echelon people in the London directorate. So it was something big.

'Look,' I said, 'this isn't the way to — '

'I do wish you'd take your foot off, old fruit, just till I can get you sorted out. The thing is, he's not in his office. I tried, from Firearms.'

'Where is he?'

'I don't know. I've told everyone to ransack the entire building, and I can't do more than that for you, can I?'

We walked under the yellow bulbs, passing the grimy windows where the rain was leaving streaks. There was nothing along here except the Caff and some storerooms.

'Something big, is it?'

I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything. But I wouldn't know anything at all, until they found Egerton.

To judge by the size of the flap,' Tilson said, 'yes.' He wasn't normally communicative: he didn't like committing himself. His job was to shunt people from one department to another, make sure they never got lost in transit, and occasionally brief them on behalf of a director.

'There's a flap?' I said.

'Rather an understatement, old boy. I don't mind telling you, we've got four people out there trying to find access for the executive, and one of them is playing it so close that he's keeping Signals up all night changing codes.' We went through the door at the end of the passage and he said above the clatter of crockery: 'Meanwhile I thought you might like a spot of tea. My treat, of course.'

It was no go.

For fifteen minutes Egerton had sat behind his cluttered desk in the room right at the top of the building, giving me a rough outline of the mission, his voice quiet and modulated, his dull brown eyes wandering about behind his glasses as he sketched in the problems with access, the lack of direction, the uncertainty about objectives. He didn't make apologies for anything, and he didn't try to persuade me. He just hoped, with that wistful smile of his, that I might want to 'have a go', I didn't.

'It's not my field,' I said, 'you know that.'

'Of course.' He gave a shrug of resignation. 'It's just that I didn't feel like handing this operation to — well — someone who might drop it.'

I got out of the Louis Quinze chair and moved about, feeling trapped. The room was claustrophobic, part of the servants' dormitories at the turn of the century when the place was built; and he'd crammed it with tropics from Petticoat Lane — old bulb horns and a stuffed owl and a whole rack of Coronation mugs. The rain beat at the high dormer window, and I could hear pigeons scratching along the ledge below.

'The point is,' I told him, there's no mission lined up. I mean nothing with any shape.'

He knew my field. I'm a penetration agent. We've all got our speciality: Heppinstall likes a difficult objective with a complicated access so that he can work like a slide-rule and use positive and negative feedback to take him to the target. Vickers is a socialite and likes keeping his hands clean: put him in pinstripes and send him into a Palace garden party with white gloves and a carnation and he'll bring out the KGB man we've been hunting for months, and none of the guests will know it's happened. I happen to be a ferret: I want them to specify the target zone and the objective and send me down the hole and leave me alone in the dark. Then I can do something: but only then.

'There's no access,' I told him. 'And no objective.'

'Not yet, no.'

I looked down at him, leaning against the fireplace; he'd covered it with some French tapestry but I could still feel the draught. 'How long will it take?'

'Not long,' he said. His dull brown eyes surveyed my face.

Egerton was a good man to work for: you couldn't hope for a better Control if a wheel came off halfway through a mission and you needed support from London to get you through. He was slow, calculating and ruthless, and if he had to throw you to the dogs he wouldn't do it because he didn't value you or because he'd lost patience with your lack of progress: he'd do it because he had to, because if he left you alive he'd expose the Bureau itself to hazard. I've worked for Egerton quite a few times and come up with a whole skin and a bit of pride still left; but I don't work for anyone who can't give me access, an objective and a free hand.

No go.

'What I should be unhappy to see,' he said gently, 'would be your taking on the next mission that comes up, and missing this one that we are all working hard to put together. Because it's rather substantial.' He blinked twice, still watching me. 'And frankly there's no one I'd prefer to control. No one.'

I knew one thing about Egerton: he'd get me into this thing if he could, provided he wanted me enough: he'd done it before and now he was trying again — it wouldn't 'take long' to find the access; this operation was 'rather substantial' and there was nobody he'd 'prefer to control'; so forth.

But this time I didn't think he could do it because there was nothing about it I liked, nothing at all.