They couldn't be everywhere.

The street lights were going on and the traffic along the main streets was crowding the signals in the late rush hour. I took three more blocks, rounding each of them and making absolutely certain I was clean before I walked south and found Changsin Street and saw the wine shop at the corner of the small cluttered square. I went across to it.

"How now," Spur said.

He was standing behind the stacked counter, a short plump man with horn-rimmed glasses and an open-necked shirt with food down the front. It was a small place crowded with bottles and crates, with two worn bamboo chairs and a round table no bigger than a stool in one corner. I turned round once and stood perfectly still, watching every open space in the square outside; there weren't many: the place was like a jungle lost in the middle of the city, with small trees and a newspaper stand and bicycle racks and three fruit stalls cluttering the view.

"It's all right," Spur said. "You lost him, as you know perfectly well." He sounded mildly annoyed. I turned round and looked at him, feeling the pressure come off.

"He was your man?"

"He was."

"What was the point?"

"The point," he said with careful articulation, "is that I'm not a bloody idiot. When I'm told to expect someone, I try to make damned sure he gets here without fleas all over him. For your information, you weren't followed from the airport, except of course by my chap Kim, for at least part of the way."

"I know that." I dropped my bag and got out a handkerchief, wiping the sweat off my face; it was as humid in here as it was outside.

"Of course you do," he nodded, and reached for a bottle of wine. "I'd forgotten your reputation. One of the wild bunch, but not totally stupid. I'm Spur, but then you know that too, don't you."

"Ingram," I told him.

"Quite so, and spelt with a Q, if I've got my alphabet blocks in the right order." He gave a slight belch. "And you could do with a little drinkie-poo, I'm sure" He held out one of the glasses, and I took it but didn't drink. "Cheers, my dear fellow."

"Cheers. Doesn't that thing work?" There was an electric fan in the ceiling and I was running with sweat; but it was all right now, they weren't everywhere and I'd got here clean.

"Fuse," Spur said. "What happened to your face?"

"There was a bit of action."

"Ah. And why aren't you drinking? This is a Cotes du Rhone."

"I'm on a diet."

"How bloody depressing." He came round the end of the counter and sat down in one of the wicker chairs, gesturing to the other and putting his glass of wine carefully onto the small rickety table.

I was catching a lot of vibrations now. I could trust anyone Ferris sent me to, but trust wasn't enough; this man was my only link with the nameless and faceless opposition and I wanted to know if he'd stand up to pressure and what he'd behave like if the action got out of hand. One or two things in the environment had caught my attention: a faded sepia photograph of Funakoshi on the wall over the cash register, and the way the bottles of wine were stacked in the window. The photograph was probably there for half-forgotten sentimental reasons: if Spur had ever achieved second or third dan he'd let himself go to seed and I doubted if his reactions were any faster now than an ordinary man's. But the bottles in the window were more interesting; they were stacked in a certain pattern, and from my chair I could sight through gaps at three different angles that revealed strategic points in the square outside: the comers of two streets and the neck of an alley in the far distance.

"I suppose you've heard," Spur said, "the news from Pekin, have you?"

"What news?"

He looked slightly surprised. "Someone shot the American Ambassador dead, not long after you left there. It's been on the radio."

"The American Ambassador?"

"Seem to pick on anyone," he said, "don't they? But I don't think it's like that really. There must be a definite policy, wouldn't you say?"

"For Christ's sake, Spur, were we meant to stop that one?"

He sipped some more of his wine. "Something you ought to know, dear boy. I'm not Bureau. I was once, but not any more. So there's no question of 'we', you understand."

I took a breath and a minute to think. "How well did you know Jason?"

"How well do we know anybody, in this trade?"

I didn't think he was blocking me for any purpose; I think it was the way he worked. I said: "I was with Jason when he died. He only told me two things. One was to see you. The other was to tell the CIA. He didn't say what." I waited.

"Tell them, perhaps, to warn their Ambassador?"

"That's what I mean. From what you knew of Jason, do you think he'd got wind of this? And wanted me to tell the CIA, in time?"

He considered this carefully. The last of the daylight had gone from the patch of sky through the window, and the yellow light of the lamps out there in the square threw shadows under the trees. Two or three children were playing near the newspaper stand with some kind of toy that looked like a diabolo; a lean dog was scavenging among the shadowed doorways.

"I like your expression," Spur said, "had Jason 'got wind of'. Rather apt, for the monsoon season. And it sums up what's going on at the moment. We're not getting any signals that mean anything. We're not getting any real information. We're just, when we're lucky, getting wind of things."

I got out of the chair, going to the open doorway and looking out, coming back, sweating in the heat of the evening and wishing to God that Ferris hadn't sent me to someone whose joy in life was to stonewall. "Look," I told him, "Ferris sent me here because he thinks you know something. Do you?"

"Oh yes," he said sleepily, "I know a lot of things." A faint spark had lit his pale acorn-brown eyes behind their glasses, and gone again. "But I don't owe Ferris anything, you see, or London. They are both desperate, or they wouldn't ask for my help. London doesn't like me, because I walked out of their stinking little sweat-shop right in the middle of a mission, when signals had broken down and my director in the field was holed up in a Hilton Hotel and shit-scared to make a run for the Embassy, and I was stuck on the wrong side of the enemy lines with half the Turkish police force hunting for me with tracker dogs and orders to shoot me on sight. There wasn't, you see, a hope of surviving unless I chose to walk out, and that is precisely what I did, because I'd had enough of those murderous bastards in London. They'll set you up and shove you out there and if you don't come back with the loot then you can fry, haven't you ever noticed?" There was a new note in his voice now and I listened to it and after a time recognised it for what it was: a smothered cry of rage that covered something deeper, something darker in what London had left of his soul. They'd burnt him out, but there was more than that; and I didn't want to know what it was, for his sake, because he was trying to live with it and not doing very well.

"How long," I asked him, "were you in the field?"

"Too long." He drained his glass and got up and looked at me with his eyes naked for an instant. "Too long. You know the signs, don't you?" He reached for the bottle across the counter, and came back with his glass half full again. "Just look at that bloody wind out there. Brings a few more tiles off, every time it blows; you want to watch that, old boy, when you're walking in the street. This can be a dangerous city."

I'd caught enough vibrations now to know there was only one way in.

"But the going was good," I said, "once."

"What?" His pale brown eyes flickered again. "It was good, yes, once. What was that thing? Whatever else may come to me, let fear be never a stranger; let me walk unguarded ways that breed the instant stroke and the flaming deed; let me thrill to the call of a desperate need, and the trumpet tones of danger. But that was for us, my boy, not them. All they could think about was how to screw you out of a pension if you ever got back with your skin. I work for the Yanks now, and I'll say one thing about them, they don't mind paying a man for his honest labours."