So he couldn't have saved the Ambassador. He hadn't known.

"You're giving me ideas," I said easily.

"What? Oh balls, you don't do it for the money." He gave a slight burp. "You ever walk out on a mission, did you?"

I'd been waiting for that. "One day I will."

He lowered his eyes. "Wise man. You'll learn. I learned."

The tension had gone out of him, but I waited, because if I rushed him now he'd close up and there'd be no information and the next time it'd be the British Ambassador or someone else in the US team: whoever the opposition were, their target was the West, and somewhere in Pekin there was a third marked man and this time we'd have to stop them if we could. London was waiting for Ferris and Ferris was waiting for me and for the next few minutes I'd have to go on waiting for Spur; it was the only hope.

"Who's running you," he asked me after a time, "for this one?"

I think if I'd hesitated I'd have blown it, because he needed my trust.

"Croder."

"Croder?" He lifted his glass. "And the best of luck. But of course that's your style, isn't it? You want them to flay you alive. Don't give yourself a chance, do you? Not exactly your own best friend."

Quickly I said: "Is anyone?"

"What?" He watched me for a while, trying to see if I meant it; and I knew how close I was to losing the mission. I was certain now that he could give us enough information to lead us to the opposition and show us how to go in there and destroy them before they could destroy anyone else in Pekin. He wasn't just playing hard to get; he was suddenly in a position where he could make them beg, in London, make them crawl to him, so that he could face himself again and with this much power over them get rid of the guilt that was giving him no peace. You ever walk out on a mission, did you?

They'd never forgiven him; but now they were in his hands.

"You mean," he said in a moment and still watching me, "I'm not my own best friend?"

"Not if you're like me. What is it, Spur? Standards too high? Why do we have to expect more of ourselves than we expect of anyone else?" In the dim light of the shop I went close to him. "You know something? One day I'm going to walk out on a mission just to see what it feels like. You know? Just to make those bastards in London know they're not God Almighty every time."

The reflection of the lamps in the square was on his glasses and I couldn't see his eyes; all I knew was that he was watching me in the silence, going over what I'd said and testing it for flaws. But that was all right; I didn't like London either, and he knew it; we all know it; we're all the same. I went on waiting, looking into his pale and shadowed face while the children out there went on laughing in the game they were playing, and somewhere a horse and cart went rattling through the square. Then Spur turned slowly away from me and drained his glass of wine, putting it onto the stained counter so carefully that it didn't make a sound.

"There is only one man in Asia," he said softly, "who would have ordered the assassination of the British Secretary of State in that particular way. His name is Tung Kuo-feng, and I'd better tell you about him."

At the top of the wide staircase there was a metal grille in the doorway and Spur opened it, ushering me into the room and closing it after him. The place was large and cavernous, the result of knocking down a couple of interior walls to make one room. Three bamboo chaise-longues with Thai silk coverings; two enormous tapestries on the walls showing a lion hunt with Burmese riders and mounts caparisoned in gold brocade; a whole series of carved teakwood tables crowded with jade and ivory; and the thick brown coils in the corner where a stick of incense was burning.

"Don't sit there," Spur said with his silent laugh, "he doesn't like it. Name's Alexander, but he doesn't answer to it; he's deaf, of course."

I went in the other direction: I hate anything without legs, and this bloody thing was fully grown by the look of it, strong enough to strangle an ox.

"This is the only house in the whole square without any rats, you see. Besides, he'd be lonely without me. Tung Kuo feng, yes, a Chinese, scion of a family traceable to the early Ch'ing dynasty. You can sit here, if you like. Kim's bringing us some tea."

Kim was the boy he'd summoned from nowhere, clapping his hands, telling him to look after the shop below. "It's a pity we haven't got Youngquist here with us — I could have briefed you both." He was lighting a couple of arabesque lanterns, and they began throwing mottled patterns across the rugs.

"Who's he?" I asked him and he looked round at me with a sudden jerk of his head.

"Youngquist? Oh, chap in Pekin. Useful as a contact." He turned away again to adjust the lantern flames. "I picked up the scent of Tung Kuo-feng on the frontier, in the Demilitarized Zone at Panmunjom. There's rather a lot of spook traffic between there and Seoul, as I'm sure you know, and that's why the CIA finds me so useful."

Youngquist? I'd never heard of him, and I didn't like the way Spur had closed up. I would ask Ferris.

"Tung isn't a young man any more," he said reflectively. "I'd put him at sixty or more. But extremely fit. Lots of ki, you know, the real thing. Lots of meditation. He was running one of the very exclusive tongs in Shanghai in the good old days, not totally disconnected with the opium trade. My information on him is rather on the thin side, but up to date. Not many people like talking about him, you see; it's not healthy. Put it down there," he said as Kim brought in a black lacquer tray with tea things on it. That bloody thing in the corner had started moving, its shadow creeping along the wall. "Have you fed Alexander yet?"

"No," the boy said in English.

"Well we won't do it in front of our visitor. Just leave him alone for the moment." He turned to me again. "It's absurd — we have to buy him frozen rats, when in fact he's here to clean up the real thing. There's a lesson there, my dear fellow — if you're too bloody efficient you risk losing your job. Tung," he said as he poured the tea into the rice-grain china, "has got some very superior people working for him, twelve at the latest count. He's —»

"Eleven," I said.

"What?"

"I ran across some of them in Pekin."

"Ah." His pale eyes studied for a second or two. "And one of them wasn't quick enough, yes. But they wouldn't have been Tung's people; they would have been hired for the rough work, you see. If you'd run across Tung's people, you wouldn't be here now. You ought to watch that. If those bastards in London are putting you solo into the field with Tung Kuo-feng, you don't stand a chance. And I know a good deal about you. Not a chance in hell. Lemon?"

"Yes."

He cut a slice for me. "Lapsang Souchong. They dry the leaves on wooden racks, and to protect the wood they soak it in tar. That's where a lot of the flavour comes from. Tung's people, you see, comprise a hit team, for the most part; but they're used for special operations, like the one in Pekin. And when they hit, they don't miss. They're utterly loyal to him, and regard him as a living Buddha. They began in the usual way: he trained them as terrorists, and as soon as they'd made their first kill they couldn't go back to their normal lives as students. One was a computer technician and three had got their PhD in social science at Pekin University; but, as you know, the creature man is not driven by his brain but by his emotions, which aren't all that different from those of a well-educated baboon."

He was maddeningly slow, but I couldn't hurry him. The information I wanted was coming on stream now and nothing must interrupt. He wasn't doing this for London; he was doing it for a fellow slave of the Sacred Bull, which is the name we have for the Bureau, the dispenser of so much sacred bullshit.