Ferris stopped his beer for an instant in mid-air. "He's got something for you?"

"So he told me, on the phone. I'm seeing him at nine o'clock."

Silhouette.

"Then I'll be at the Embassy from nine onwards. Phone me when you've talked to Spur."

"Will do." I watched the silhouette in the entrance, against the glare of the sunlight. Ferris said:

"Until London can dig up something from signals analysis, Spur's our only hope of finding a way in."

The silhouette was wearing a peaked cap and a holstered revolver. I told Ferris: "Give me everything you've got for me. I might have to leave."

His eyes flicked to the entrance and back to me. "There's been a major break in Pekin. The police there suspect Soong Yongshen."

I began listening carefully. "Suspect him of what?"

"The funeral bombing."

"He worked the remote detonator?"

"So they believe. They're keeping us informed."

The man with the peaked cap and the holstered revolver came into the room and the lanterns showed up his uniform and I relaxed; he was a US Navy officer, not a policeman. "Let me know," I told Ferris, "what progress they make with the Soong Yongshen angle."

"Of course. We checked on his sister for you. She's on the records as a bona fide interpreter for Korean Airlines."

"All right." In a moment he was going to ask me where she was located, and I wasn't going to tell him, and he probably knew that.

"The reason," he said a fraction too casually, "why Control has put all that support into the field is because this thing is a lot bigger than anyone thought."

"I see," I said.

He tried again. "No one will get in your way. You've got my word."

I was getting fed up. "I can't take your word for anything, you know that. Croder's making the rules and if he wants you to do something then you do it. Without telling me, if those are your instructions."

In a moment he said: "You're being difficult."

"That's a shame."

The thing was that after six missions together we knew each other quite well, because a mission is like a lifetime; and he knew that if the Pekin police found hard evidence that Soong Yongshen had blown up that coffin, we'd have a way into the opposition: through his sister. I didn't think she was in the Tung Triad, but she knew who they were: possibly her,dead brother and certainly the «friend» who'd lent her a gun and sent her to Room 29 of the Chonju Hotel to kill me with it. But if I went to see Soong Li-fei I'd go alone, without Ferris covering the area with support in case I needed it.

To move closer to Li-fei would be to move closer to Tung, and into danger. But I won't have Control pushing me across the field like a pawn across a chessboard and I won't work for any local director, even Ferris, who isn't given total discretion and total authority to act independently of London if he decides it's necessary.

Croder was sitting at the centre of a signals network in London and getting instant replay of what was happening in Pekin and Seoul, but at a distance of three and a half thousand miles he couldn't sense danger in a glance from cinnamon eyes or feel the hands at the throat on a hotel stairway. The epicentre of Jade One was the shadow executive and it moved with him through the eye of the storm, and that was the way it must be.

"Any other business?" Ferris asked me. His voice was like a stone.

"Look," I told him, "if Croder wanted to send in an executive who could work best with a flock of bloody nursemaids to look after him he should have done that. But he didn't. He sent me. That's simple enough, surely? Any other business? Yes, I think they meant to kill the American Vice-President, not our chap at all."

I like getting a reaction from Ferris because he hates showing any. Not that he shot down the chandeliers or anything on this occasion; he just murmured, "Holy God."

"Amen."

"Tell me."

"It didn't add up," I told him, "until you said the Pekin police suspect Soong Yongshen of doing that bang over there. But now it does. The woman Li-fei told me — her brother had done something wrong, and that it was something to do with 'that dreadful thing over there' — she meant the bombing. Her brother died by ritual murder, from all reports, with his head off. From what Spur told me about Tung Kuo-feng I'd say he's the kind of man who would punish any member of his Triad who made a serious mistake, and probably with death. I think Soong Yongshen might have made a mistake of that order when he pressed the beam transmitter in Tien'anmen Square while our Secretary of State was placing his wreath. If you look at the photos of both those men — Bygreave and the American Vice-President — you'll notice they look rather alike; and to the Asians, one round-eye looks much like the next."

Ferris was quiet for a time, and I waited, watching the oblong of sunlight. The huge sailor at the next table had started singing; it sounded like Greek, and he had quite a good voice; it sounded much better than the hard rock coming out of the wall.

"You mean the original target," Ferris said as he leaned towards me across the table, "was the American Vice-President?"

"And they shot the American Ambassador to compensate for Soong Yongshen's little mistake."

"This wasn't a random attack on the Western delegates, or some kind of terrorist action with no specific target?"

"It was an attack," I nodded, "specifically directed against the United States."

"If you're right."

"If I'm right."

Four Koreans came through the crowd and stood in a circle round the big sailor and for a moment I thought they were going to form a chorus, but they were asking him to leave. He didn't make any fuss; he embraced two of them heartily enough to leave bruises, knocked over the chair and hit his head on one of the lanterns before he blocked the entrance on his way out and put the whole place into eclipse.

It was easier to talk now, but there wasn't much else to say.

"Haven't you got any way in for me?" I asked Ferris

"No."

He said: "I'm hoping Spur can set you running. We all are."

"Good old Spur."

I paid the bill and asked him to send someone round to Sadie's place with two hundred thousand won and a bunch of flowers and he said he'd do that. He told me to maintain signals by phone through Spur until he'd trod on the bug in the Embassy and I told him I would. We didn't mention Li-fei. A few minutes later he got up and I watched him walk through the bright doorway into the street, with the thought in my mind — one of those thoughts that cling to the psyche like a limpet mine when the mission goes badly-that I might never see him again.

8:51.

John Victor Miles, journalist, the Far East representative of Political Scene, a left-wing independent quarterly published in London. Passport, entry visa, WHO smallpox certificate, four letters of reference, photographs of wife, two children, international driving licence, ticket for the violin recital at the National Theatre in two days' time, various credit cards, other material.

Datsun ZX, dark blue, hired from the Korean Tourist Bureau's Arirang service. The passenger's seat tilted back flat for reclining and the speedometer dial showed a top speed of 220 kph.

I parked it off Toegye Street and walked four blocks through the alleyways to the wine shop in the square, doubling twice and using random cover as a routine exercise and halting for a moment to look around, uncertain of my way, as I reached one of the sightlines through the wine shop window display, giving Spur a chance to recognise me and to note, during the next half minute as I approached, that I wasn't bringing anyone with me.

The air was perfectly still after the monsoon and last night's deluge; gutters still ran glittering in the lamplight as water from higher ground found its way into the square; in the far corner two dogs fought over scraps in a blocked drain.