He looked down into the courtyard again. Someone had called a policeman, but the man in the rumpled white suit was still protesting, pointing up at the two-story hotel. I had thoughts again about security. I was also having new thoughts, of course, about Sojourner. He was a great deal more than just a coordinator.

'What's happening?" I asked him.

'The man says his wife is in the hotel, and he wants her to come home. Presumably he means with the money, though he doesn't understand that she has to finish what she's doing before she can be paid. When I say to "buy up" the People's Republic of China,' turning his masked face to watch me again, 'I mean of course to pay for the ousting of the doddering octogenarian clique at present in power and for the installation of a young and enlightened intellectual administration eager to embrace the capitalist way of life.' He was leaning toward me a little now, I believed, though in the shifting shadows it could have been an illusion. But what I was quite certain about, as I went on listening, was that he wasn't talking so freely to me in order to give me information, but in order to celebrate his own ingenuity. 'In ten years from now,' he said softly, 'Beijing will still be the capital of China, and Hong Kong will be its flourishing commercial center, closely comparable, if you will, with Washington and New York.'

He waited until the server had taken away the plates. 'Some fruit? Some preserves?'

'Not for me,' I said.

'Main kuche phal pasen karta hoo,' he told the man, 'shaaid ek a-am.'

A bell had begun tolling from a temple some way off, its bright-edged sound cutting through the softness of the voices in the street beyond the archway, and the scuffing of sandals and shoes.

'It amuses me,' Sojourner said, 'to think that the remarkable changes about to take place in China — if you'll forgive the understatement — will have been initiated by the aforementioned doddering clique of octogenarians at present in power. It was they, after all, who announced m the People's Daily in 1989 that not engaging in activities to overthrow the Chinese government was a precondition for allowing Hong Kong to retain its capitalist system following its adoption. Warning enough, don't you think? Mr Szeto Wah put it rather well when he said, "The force of the wind tests the strength of the grass." That was when it happened. That was when Hong Kong realized that in a few years from now it could become either an impoverished little island with the rubble of abandoned commerce littering the streets, or the economic hub of a new world power. You must have realized this yourself; you saw the papers like everyone else, and read between the lines. It was there for all to see, but no one did anything. Now we are to do something, and within a few days. You must surely feel… excited to be playing a part in all this.'

'I do my job,' I said.

He dipped a glance across the courtyard. 'You do your job. Well, that's all we ask of you.' Then he was watching me again in the gloom. 'And what have you been told, specifically, to do?"

'I've been told, specifically, to do what you require of me.'

He let it go, but it worried me. If he'd had any experience in intelligence he would have known he shouldn't ask me questions like that. The only confidence I had in this man was based on Hyde's telling me I could trust him. It wasn't enough.

In a moment Sojourner said, 'When the time is right, you will be put into contact with a certain general of the People's Liberation Army, through his aides. This general was one of those who refused to have his troops fire on the civilian population — one of the few, in fact, who recognize that they are members of the People's Army. Others of like mind were shot for refusing to attack the students in 1989, and three, to my certain knowledge, preempted retribution by taking their own lives when they refused orders to use arms against unarmed civilians. It was my good fortune,' he said carefully, 'to have been in personal touch with our particular general a little time before the uprising of last week. Sensing the color of his inclinations, I made one or two trips to Hong Kong, where some of my friends have access to the top executive officers of the big American, Japanese, and Hong Kong corporations. Then I went back to the general. Have you ever played chess, by any chance?'

'Do it all the time.'

'Then you'll understand my gratification that I was fortuitously in the right place on the board, at the right time, with the right people.'

'And were offered the right money.'

The light flashed across his glasses as he looked down quickly, interlacing his fingers and putting his hands palm down onto the tablecoth. It had sounded rude, I suppose, but I wanted to know where this man's loyalties lay. It was important, because if money were his only incentive it could be dangerous, and I'd have to signal London and tell them I was dropping the mission if they couldn't find another coordinator. I didn't expect Sojourner to be an altruist, but he'd have to show at least a degree of personal commitment to the Bureau, and to me. Mercenaries can change sides at the drop of a doubloon.

In a moment he raised his head. 'Are you looking for a cut?'

'Not really.'

'You don't imagine I'm sticking my neck out for the sake of a few million Chinese peasants, I hope.'

I noticed he'd forgotten his studied manner of speech, and knew it was his guard coming down. This too was worrying: I hadn't said much to provoke him. How would he stand up to Chinese intelligence, if they asked any questions?

'The price you put on your services,' I told him, 'doesn't concern me, though I imagine it's in the region of ten or twenty million U.S. dollars, which is very nice. What concerns me is whether you might at some time sell yourself to the opposite camp for a higher figure and leave me swinging in the wind.'

'They couldn't possibly afford it,' he said. I think it was meant to be a joke. 'But surely your desk officer told you I could be trusted?'

'He may have.'

He turned his head, and I saw that the boy Patil had come back into the courtyard. He was leaning against the wall under a lamp, watching the veranda.

'So what are you going to do about it?' Sojourner asked me.

'Take a few precautions.'

In a moment, 'Precautions.'

'Don't worry, you won't notice them.'

'I've often considered,' leaning back now, needing more distance, 'that you people think rather — oh, I don't know — rather boyishly. Cloaks and daggers and so on.'

'Have you now.'

'But I'd expected you to be like this. It doesn't disturb me.'

'Jolly good show. But it disturbs me a bit that you might have been followed here tonight, and sitting in your company I might be at risk, and that Patil down there might be working as an informer. Boyish, I know, but it happens. I can show you the scars.'

He didn't answer for a while, and as I sat there among the restless shadows and the oil lamps flickered to the movement of the moist night air I felt a sense of foreboding. Beyond the courtyard the night pressed down across the city, the few visible stars half lost in the haze. Voices out there in the street sounded hushed now, and I thought I heard the fluting of a snake charmer near the marketplace. The smell of incense came from the dining room through the doors behind us, sweet and heavy and oppressive. It wasn't a case of nerves, this: I was out of London and halfway to the field, and the jitters had gone. I was reacting on a level of the psyche infinitely more sophisticated than the nerves, to vibrations in the moist and perfumed night, a trembling of the spirit's gossamer web.

'I think,' Sojourner said at last, 'that you exaggerate the circumstances. For someone as experienced as I'm told you are, this isn't a very dangerous operation.' Clasping his hands, spreading the fingers, 'No one is likely to get killed.'