"Then it was something big." I said:

"They killed Sinclair to shut him up. But why did they try to kill me? They couldn't have — " then his thin dark-suited body span against the wall and the lights blacked out and all I could hear was a kind of buzzing, and after a very long time his voice fading in.

"… the doctor here?"

"What?"

"Do you want me to get the doctor here?"

He was standing over me with his dark hollow eyes watching me closely. "How long was I out for?" I asked him.

"Only a few seconds."

I looked at the wall clock, but couldn't focus. "No. No doctor. Only Koyama."

"He's on his way here now. I'll stay with you till he arrives."

I hitched myself up again, feeling weak and furious and afraid. "Listen, they didn't go for you, or Tilson, or anyone else out there. Only me."

"They recognised you. They know you as one of our field executives. They might have thought you'd be replacing Sinclair."

My skin crawled.

"Am I?"

Impatiently he said, "Someone's got to."

We don't like doing it. We're made superstitious by the life we lead, outside society and often isolated, often in danger and often afraid. We don't like the feel of a dead man's shoes.

"Did you have me down," I asked him, "for this one?"

"That's academic now. You're not fit enough."

There was an edge to his tone and I knew he blamed me for what had happened. I shouldn't have let them get at me like that; I should have been more alert. But they hadn't come up on me from behind, because I always know what's in the mirror; they must have come at me at a right angle from Dolphin Square, because the other side was the river; they must have come at me on my blind side and very fast but he was right: I should have heard them, and done something.

"Give me a couple of days," I told him.

If they had a mission lined up, I wanted it. I wanted to go back into that strange limbo and find out who they were, and hit them, and hit to kill. Then I'd be safe again.

"Time is too short," Chandler said.

The throbbing in my rib cage reached my skull, hammering there.

"One day, then. Give me one day, you bastard." But he and his shadow were tilting against the wall, dancing together weirdly into the dark.

"I'm not refusing the mission. I'm refusing Croder."

He didn't ask why.

We can refuse anything we like and we don't have to explain, because it's our life, or our death, and they know that.

"Then he might give you someone else," Tilson said gently, and went on checking the papers as our driver went through the red lights into Parliament Square. "In any case we might as well clear you, to save time." He held the papers up to the window at an angle to catch the light from the street. "No next of kin, sole bequest to St Dunstan's — you want any changes? And five hundred roses."

The man beside him was digging in his pocket, and held out a Walther P.38.

"He doesn't want anything like that," Tilson said. "Put it away."

They're always changing the staff in Firearms.

"Sign here, old horse, when you've read it."

"Cross out five hundred," I said, "and put one."

"One rose?"

"Yes."

"Right you are. One rose for Moira."

I'd had time to think about that in Moscow, when that bastard Ignatov was following me through the snow.

I signed the form and sat back, watching the rush of green leaves as we passed Victoria Tower Gardens. The driver went through the red again past Lambeth Bridge and we heard a siren start up but she didn't take any notice; they'd seen our plates now, and the siren died away.

"Croder's all right," Tilson said as he put the papers into his briefcase. "He looks after his people, you know that."

I let it go. The swinging of the street lamps past the windows was beginning to sicken me and I didn't want to talk, least of all about Croder. Koyama had taken all morning to straighten me out, working on the nervous meridians and concentrating on the spinal column; but the lingering influence of the phenobarbitone was still fogging the system and throwing me off balance.

"Slow down a bit here, would you?" Tilson asked the driver, then turned to me again, talking quietly. We were going along Grosvenor Road now and I could see the flat expanse of the Thames. "The thing is to see how you feel when you arrive there, old fruit. You're not committed, after all; I mean we all realise you're still a bit groggy."

I couldn't look at him. The scene through the windows was hypnotic, with the lights from across the river flowing in reflection beyond the dark swinging trunks of the trees.

"What's the area?" I asked him, not wanting to know.

"Pekin." His voice had gone faint, but I still couldn't look at him. The sound of the engine had died away and we were moving in a kind of vacuum while the trunks of the trees went flickering past the flow of lights, just as I'd watched them before, somewhere before. "That's all I know."

"What?"

"That's all I know," Tilson said, and when I turned my head at last I saw he was watching me steadily. "That's all any of us knows. Don't worry, old horse, just relax."

"Those bloody drugs," I said, and looked through the windscreen past the driver's dark hair.

"Not entirely. That was the spot where you crashed last night." He told the driver to speed up again. "I just thought it might stir the old memory; we're a bit desperate for clues, because the witnesses said it was anything from a black Mercedes to a red Jaguar. Never mind."

I looked back through the rear window at the long perspective of the trees, at the area of limbo where memory had given way to shadows. "I'm getting nothing," I told Tilson.

"Maybe it'll come back to you later. No hurry."

"That Humber," I said, "was behind us when we left Whitehall."

"True. And there's another unmarked car ahead of us. We don't want any more larks."

This evening they'd smuggled me out of hospital in a dry-cleaner's van.

"What happened to Chandler?" I asked him.

"He was going to run you. Then Croder moved in."

I had to make an effort to think, to try patching some sort of future together for myself. All I knew at this moment was that they needed me badly: with Sinclair dead less than twenty-four hours ago they were dragging a half-doped executive through the night to try setting him up as a replacement.

"Where are we heading, Tilson?"

It was about time I began taking an interest: it might be dangerous not to.

"Battersea. The heliport."

"Are you going to fly me somewhere?"

"We're going to meet Mr Croder." His tone became more gentle still, more amiable, and I was warned. "Just so that we all know what's going on, old horse, tell me one little thing: do you really want this mission?"

"It depends on what's involved."

"I didn't mean that," he said carefully. "I mean do you want it regardless?"

I began waking up, because the driver was swinging left into the park. "You know bloody well I do."

"But of course you do," he nodded comfortably. His plump hands began moving again on the briefcase. "Those nasty people tried to smear you all over the Embankment and you can't wait to find out who they are and rub their horrid little noses in the mustard, and quite right too. Now you'd —»

"I've been out of action for three months and I'm fed up with refresher training and Sinclair's dead and if you bastards can't find me something to do I'm going to lose my grip. Put it that; way."

"Now that sounds much more like my old friend. So you'd better finish clearance while there's time." He produced more papers and a wad of currency. "You heard about the death of Jiang Wenyuan, the Premier of the People's Republic of China, two days ago. The UK is sending the Secretary of State to represent Her Majesty at the funeral, and you'll be joining his two official bodyguards."