There were eleven men here, all of them armed. This was excluding Tung Kuo-feng. He was the key.

His quarters were at the far end of this passageway and across the courtyard where they'd taken me out and stood me against the wall. I went in that direction now, moving on my bare feet in total silence. Not far from the pagoda there was a small fountain in a basin carved from the solid rock, and I stopped to lean over the water's surface and plunge my face where the moon's reflection lay afloat, opening my mouth and cleansing his blood from it, drinking deeply and slaking my bruised skin with its cooling touch, my body hunched at the basin's rim like a beast at a waterhole, easing the ravages of the hunt before moving on.

There was a guard mounted outside Tung's quarters, the white stripes of his tracksuit showing up against the stones of the building; I could see the blunt shape of the submachine gun slung from his shoulder as he moved into full moonlight towards the parapet that overlooked the mountain slopes, tossing a cigarette-end across the wall and standing there for a moment and then moving on, stalking his own squat shadow, his track shoes making no sound. A patch of light shone from a grilled aperture in the building, catching the hammered brass of a gong against the wall inside. I couldn't see Tung Kuo-feng but he would be there, because the guard was there.

I listened. From the reaches of the slopes an owl gave voice, and I could hear the faint ringing of bells as goats moved; but they were far away. Behind me the small fountain splashed, and I listened to that sound particularly: it was between where I was standing and the distant arches of the monastery where Sinitsin and his aides kept their vigil at the radios. If they were talking, their voices didn't carry this far; I stayed for minutes, because this was important, and as I listened I watched the Korean pacing between the parapet and the lighted aperture; sometimes he looked up at the moon and halted, staring as if he'd only just seen it there; his face was white and shadowless in the flat light, a clown's face.

There was no way of reaching him from where I watched, in the shadow of the stone Buddha. I waited until he turned his back to retrace his steps towards the parapet; then I moved nearer, crossing the open space and risking his turning and seeing me; at this stage risks had to be taken, and they were not small; they had to be taken because Tung was the key.

I waited again, in shadow; when the guard turned and paced back, towards me, I drew fully into cover and watched the edge of his own shadow flowing in rhythmic patterns cross the uneven flagstones as he came nearer. During the time I'd been watching him he hadn't come as far as the corner of the building here, but he might do it now, and if he did there wouldn't be time to reach deeper cover; I'd have to confront him, and there wouldn't be much chance: his hand was near the trigger of that bloody thing and he'd only have to swing it towards me and there'd be nothing I could do.

I watched his shadow as it neared; his movement was no longer soundless; I could hear the soft wincing of his rubber soles and the faint brushing of his legs as the inner seams of the track suit rubbed against each other. He was so close now that I could smell gun-oil. If he came right to the corner here I wouldn't have time to jump him before he put out some shots, and even if he missed me the sound would bring the others.

Wincing of the rubber soles, smell of oil, and the thought that I shouldn't have taken a risk so big so soon, that being suddenly free had made me overconfident: it was a classic syndrome. His shadow came on, and when an owl called from the belltower my scalp shrank and I drew a breath sharply, and then the barrel of the gun swung in a half circle as he turned and his shadow moved away, flowing across the ones obliquely in front of him and becoming smaller. Then I broke cover and stood there watching his back and judging the distance and the terrain and the state of its surface and its acoustic properties and the number of steps it would need for me to take him down at this precise point and in silence without the heavy gun hitting the stones and alerting the other guards; then I moved back into cover because it was no go; the distance and the terrain and the acoustics were all in my favour but I would have to go for him alone and I couldn't do that, because of the moon; I'd have to take my shadow with me and he'd see it before I was close enough and when I jumped him I'd be jumping straight into the gun, no go.

From here he looked smaller.

A minute ago the owl that had called earlier from the bell-tower had lifted, beating its wings three times and then dropping in a long slow glide to the rocks below the parapet, uneasy about my presence.

The Korean looked smaller because from this height his body was foreshortened, twelve feet or so below where I crouched on the roof of the pagoda. It had taken me some time to reach here, climbing the thick flowering vine and testing each glazed tile of the roof before I put my weight on it. The time was now 12:06 and I was sweating uncomfortably because the gap was narrowing and there was so much to do, yet I mustn't hurry: to hurry would be dangerous.

To delay, also, would be dangerous.

The man below me paced with his gun. All the salient factors were the same now except one. The terrain was the same and from this height I could take him down and even more easily, and do it without the gun hitting the stones if I got the angle right; and now I could do it alone, before he saw my shadow: if I could do it blind. This was my worry now, and it was in the form of a linear pattern: at the precise place where I could most easily drop on him, the moon and my head and the flagstone immediately in front of him would be lined up, and he'd see my shadow. I would have to watch him nearing below me, then move back and wait, judging the time and then dropping at once and almost blind, seeing him only as I went down.

I didn't like that, and the sweat was prickling on me as the watch on my wrist pulsed indetectably; to hurry and to delay were both dangerous, and for the first time since I'd left London I wondered if I were losing my nerve. It can happen, during a chain-action mission when there's no time between phases to relax; stress is cumulative, and these people had been hounding me from the minute I'd seen Sinclair fished out of the Thames eight days ago; stress is also at its highest when there is frequent killing: the theory is that when we go into the field we know we're moving into hazard and we've done it before and we know how to cope and we're ready to kill if we have to, rather than not go home; but in practice it doesn't work like that: when they come at us and we get away with it there's no relief, but just the feeling of Christ, that was close, while the stress builds up in the nerves and that bloody little pest somewhere deep in the organism starts snivelling, we ought to go home now, raising the small and trembling voice that we learn to loathe because we know it's the voice of cowardice, and you can call it caution if you like but we know better — if we'd got any sense of caution in our souls we wouldn't be out here at all.

It's like that when they come at us and we get away with it: there's no relief. And when we've got to go for them and make a killing it's no different, because they are our opposite number and we understand them, sometimes more than we can understand ourselves, and underneath the scaly carapace that shelters us and our conscience we know we're brothers, and when we've got to do it to them we don't do it lightly; we do it with pain, however subdued, and the stress goes on building and there's no relief, just the feeling of Christ, there but for the grace, so forth, it could have been me, and in a way, it was.