When Sadie had gone out I rang Spur. "Do you know speech-code?"

He tried some but it was out of date and I didn't want any confusion. I asked him if he spoke Russian.

"Niet." His speech was slow: I'd woken him up. "Chinese, bit of Japanese, bit of French."

I tried out his French but it wasn't good enough.

"There isn't a chance in hell," he told me in English, "that this line is bugged. Or have you got someone with you?"

It was mission paranoia and he'd spotted it. I said:

"So far they've tried to get me four times, do you want me to spell that?"

There was a silence; I suppose he was giving that soundless laugh of his. Then he said: "Time you retired, old boy, like I did. Make some money."

"Have you got any information?" I asked him.

"Yes. Are you ready?"

"No," I said quickly. "I'll come over."

"Just as you like. But not before tonight. I'm still working for you. Say about nine, all right?"

It crossed my mind to take the risk and ask him for it now, but I remembered how strong their magic was, the way they knew where I was moving, the way they'd been making one move ahead. Paranoia isn't all negative: it can keep you from getting too careless or too bold. By this time the police working over the Chonju Hotel would be asking the desk clerk for my description; last night they would have gone the rounds, knocking on every door and questioning the guests, getting their alibis and asking what they'd seen, what they'd heard. I'd left my things in Room 29 as a matter of routine procedure for a skip, to let them assume I was simply out for the evening, giving me time to use if I needed it. That time was now up, because I hadn't returned, and by now there'd be an all points bulletin posted for me throughout the city: Clive Thomas Ingram, British nationality, full description, wanted for questioning.

"All right," I told Spur, "nine tonight."

Then I rang off. It had been tempting to ask him to come and talk to me here, but that too would have been a risk: I didn't know how clean he was; he could be under constant or intermittent surveillance without knowing it, in spite of the care he'd taken to arrange the bottles like that in the window; he was tapping the spy rings in this city for the CIA and he was in place and without support; he'd once been in the field for the Bureau but that was over now and it doesn't take long before you lose your cunning. If he came here to see me he could bring my death.

Nor could I go to see him before I was ready to break cover: going to ground means exactly that and I couldn't leave here until Ferris had produced new papers for me and a change of identity; and even then I'd have to move by night and cross the street every time I saw a policeman. The longer I was missing from the Chonju Hotel the more they'd suspect me, and before this day's end I would become the subject of a manhunt.

While Sadie was still shopping for me I rang the Embassy and asked for the cypher clerk and we spoke in speech-code.

He told me that Ferris had signalled three times during the night to ask for my present location and an urgent rendezvous when he arrived in Seoul at noon today; and such is the loneliness of the ferret in the labyrinth, and such is his need for the support and comfort of his director in the field that the tension in me broke as I put the phone down and thought Christ, I've still got a chance.

"You American?"

This table was against the wall between the entrance and the door to the toilet on the opposite side. From here I could watch the entrance and if necessary get up and turn my back on it and reach the toilet before anyone coming in could get to me across the crowded room; I'd checked the windows in there: they were narrow but low down and opened onto an alley; also, anyone coming in here from the street would be half-blinded by the near-darkness after the sunshine outside. But I would have to recognise them.

"No," I said.

I'd walked here from Sadie's through the steaming streets, where the sun was heating the puddles and the choked gutters after the rain; this place was more than a mile from where I was staying; it was a long low building half lost among the derelict houses between the railway and the Han River, and to look for me here would be to look for one fly on a flypaper. The room was nearly full, two-thirds of them customers and one-third working them over. Hard rock came from the cobwebbed gratings along the wall.

"You want hashish? Coke?"

Technically I was safe here, a good distance from the main entrance and the corners of the room; but there would be nothing I could do if they came for me: I was watching the entrance but if anyone came in here to kill me I wouldn't recognise them; I didn't know them, as they knew me.

"No," I said.

This was what it was like, and going to be like, fighting Tung Kuo-feng. It was like, and going to be like, fighting the unknown.

I hadn't told Sadie where I was going: I hadn't even known myself; I'd walked for an hour, double-tracking and making absolutely certain that I wasn't followed, until I'd found this place, the type of bar the police left alone because it would be a waste of time to do anything about it. The moment I'd got here I'd telephoned the Embassy.

A dozen small emeralds hit the table in a shower from a black velvet bag, and the man watched my eyes.

"Direct from the mine," he said, but I went on watching the entrance, and in a moment he swept the stones back into the little bag and moved on to the huge sailor sitting with a girl at the next table.

The entrance was a bright gold oblong, a cave-mouth with the black silhouettes of people passing through. I went on watching it.

Sadie had done well for me: a good shirt, manila suit, tan shoes, Thai silk handkerchiefs to match. "You look real sharp, honey. I sure hope I don't go an' lose you to another woman."

A man came in and stopped, his thin stooping figure outlined against the hot bright street, his glasses throwing a spark of reflected light. I didn't move. But now I was ready to buy emeralds, or hashish, or anything they wanted to sell me. You wouldn't believe what it feels like, when your operation has been immobilised and you've been blown and gone to ground, to see your director in the field show up at the rendezvous.

By the time he'd seen me and made his way through the crowd my mood had swung in the opposite direction to something like anger; it happens like that when things are chancy: you suddenly wonder where your nerves have gone, and there they are all the time on the roller coaster.

"Did he know about this?" I asked Ferris the moment he sat down. I meant Croder and he knew that.

"About what?"

"Those assassinations. Did he know the targets?"

"Not till it happened."

"For Christ's sake, he knew it was something big. Why —»

"How's everything?" he asked me cheerfully and I shut up and just sat there while he ordered a beer and watched me for a minute with his narrow head tilted, his pale eyes hidden by the reflection on his glasses. "Been rough, has it?"

I didn't like the way he was having to play it so very cool, to cover his own gooseflesh.

"Does London want me called in?" I asked him.

He made me wait, simply because it was good for discipline. He had to get me back to where I'd started out, with lots of reserve control.

"Not so far," he said. I felt myself slacken off a little; it had been one of the fears that had run with me through the dark of the last four days: that when they saw that the opposition was closing in on me and certain to kill, London would call me in.

"Then who's Youngquist?" I asked him. It was a name Spur had dropped, and failed to cover convincingly.