We all nodded and Wiggins helped the Secretary of State up the metal steps. The man from the Yard followed him on board and made room for me as the flight lieutenant squeezed between us and swung the door shut; through the window I thought I saw Tilson out there lifting a hand — good luck, I suppose — and then the pilot gunned up and the last I saw of London was the thin hunched figure of Croder standing with his feet together and his face tilted to watch us with the downwash tugging at his clothes as we lifted off and swung towards the west across the lights of Fulham and Chiswick.

I had worked with Ferris before.

He'd been sitting on the stairs with the gun on his lap in the Hong Kong snake shop while I'd fought for a kill with the hit man they'd sent from Kowloon to wipe me out. He'd pulled me out of Morocco with the coastguard cutter's searchlight sweeping the sea as we lay prone on the afterdeck of the fishing boat and Sandra's jewelled revolver sank below the waves to the bottom, where no one would ever find it. He'd been with me when Alitalia Flight 403 had hit the runway too short in Beirut and we'd lost two back-up executives but saved the mission because the documents weren't on board.

And now he was walking with me from the Beijin Hotel along Wangfujing Street in Pekin, a tall thin man with his body sloping forward and his wisps of sandy hair all over the place in the light breeze coming off the rice-fields to the north.

Dark suits, black ties. Someone from the Bureau had done my packing for me yesterday evening while Tilson had been getting me out of the hospital in the dry-cleaner's van; the other clothes they'd put in were much lighter: the July temperature here was already eighty degrees and it was only ten in the morning.

My ribs were still painful but I'd slept off the lingering effects of the drugs on the long flight out, and my head was clear enough to warn me that London must have been desperate, to have moved me into the field without warning and without a home briefing.

"They must have been desperate," I said.

Ferris turned his honey-coloured eyes on me, watching me for a moment from behind his glasses. "I wouldn't disagree."

"Desperate to get me into Pekin, or out of London?"

"You were a target there."

"I'll be a target here, once they pick up my trail."

We turned left towards the huge crowded square, edging past a group of uniformed school children carrying white posies for mourning. The street was roped off and all traffic had stopped.

"You didn't leave a trail," Ferris told me. "You came out here under RAF security." He noticed a cockroach at the edge of the pavement and moved to his left slightly, and I heard the faint cracking sound under his black polished shoe.

"Oh for Christ's sake," I said.

"Another little soul saved for Jesus." He gave the soft dry laugh I remembered so well, the sound of a snake shedding its skin. "The thing is, London believes Sinclair had something rather important to tell us, and they don't want things to get cold. Logical, for London."

A squadron of military jets was passing overhead, in salute to the dead premier. When it was quieter I asked Ferris: "Who was Sinclair's main source, do we know?"

"A man called Jason."

"One of ours?"

"A sleeper, yes, based in Seoul."

"He's there now?"

"No. He flew into Pekin last night."

"To rendezvous with us?"

"That's right. He was told to meet you when you landed."

"Why didn't he?"

"I rather think," he said, "they got to him first."

I slowed, and he waited for me to come abreast again. "Fill me in, will you?" He'd been letting me ask the questions, according to routine procedure. The director in the field tells the executive only what he specifically needs to know, but will answer most questions; the idea is to leave the executive's head clear of data that isn't essential, and data that could be dangerous.

"Jason checked into our hotel soon after ten o'clock last night," Ferris told me. "We had a secure rendezvous set up for thirty minutes later, so that he could tell me what kind of information Sinclair had been carrying, and hopefully where he'd found it." He combed back his pale wispy hair with his fingers. "So it's not really our day, is it?"

I didn't answer. The Sinclair information was my objective for the mission and after two hours in the field I was being told that the only contact was lost. In a moment I asked:

"You think Jason is dead?"

"I would think so, yes."

"They're working so fast."

He nodded. "These people are different."

"Who are they, Ferris?"

"I don't think they're political, and I don't think they're intelligence. But I think they might be a paid political instrument — a hit group — with access to intelligence sources. They seem too efficient for a government agency; they don't have to wait for orders before they move. As you say, they move very fast."

"Here and in London."

"Just so."

We passed a thin ragged boy kneeling on a newspaper, his head down in prayer. A lot of the people standing at the base of the buildings were in the same attitude, all of them wearing black armbands. A huge military band was pushing its way through the crowd at the end of the square, with the police trying to help them.

"Is this a wildcat group we're up against?" I asked Ferris.

"You mean terrorists?"

"I suppose so." What worried me most was that the opposition was already hitting us without leaving a trace.

"I don't think they're terrorists, exactly. They're not trying to terrorise anyone. So far their action's been focussed on the Sinclair information: they killed him to silence him; they tried to kill you because they realised you were connected with him; and they got at Jason because he too was a connection. There could be something they've got to protect, without counting the cost. Some sort of — " he waved a vague hand, "some sort of project."

"A big one."

"Certainly on an international scale. Otherwise Croder wouldn't have come in as Control."

It was getting more difficult to make our way through the crowd; at the hotel I'd been told that an estimated half-million people would gather in Tian'anmen Square.

"How long," I asked Ferris, "were you and this man Jason together at the hotel?"

In a moment he said: "The name's Ferris. Remember me?" He'd decided to make a joke of it but I heard an edge to his tone.

"Sorry," I said.

"Don't mention it."

He was my director in the field and responsible for my safety and in the next few days or the next few weeks he was going to steer me through the mission and try to get me out alive, and he was telling me now that he hadn't been so careless as to make contact in public with Jason, who was the known source of the information that had led to Sinclair's death and nearly to mine.

The military band was now assembled opposite the Palace Museum and playing "The East is Red", the Chinese Communist anthem.

Ferris pitched his voice above the noise. "I made the rendezvous with Jason over the phone when he landed at the airport. I've never met either Sinclair or Jason, so that at the moment I'm clean, and so are you; but we're only one step ahead of the action and I want to make high-security rendezvous and use contacts; there are quite a lot of Occidentals here for the funeral but in a few days' time we'll be standing out in a crowd." He looked at his watch. "You've got five minutes to join your group before the cortege comes into the square from the other end. Make for the dais under the portrait of Jiang Wenyuan and do whatever the security man tells you — and don't forget you'll be under scrutiny."

The military band was now playing the «Internationale», and there was movement beginning in the crowd packing the far end of the square.