'Ambassador Qiao probably thought the same.'

He looked down again, not knowing he didn't have to, not knowing I couldn't see his eyes behind the glasses. 'In all probability,' he said, 'the poor chap was marked down by Beijing.' Looking up at me suddenly, 'He had a brother, you know, mixed up in the event of last week, and they arrested him. Talked too much, wouldn't you say, about Qiao?'

Instant chill.

The poor chap had been totally false, totally out of character, and he'd looked up like that so suddenly, almost jerking his head as he realized he'd have to face me if it were to ring true, this thing about Qiao; and when he threw in the placatory wouldn't you say? I didn't have any doubts left, none at all. I've lied myself so often in the field, lied to save my life, and I know how difficult it is to do well.

And there was the other thing, when we'd first met this evening — How is London?… I miss London… Not everything happens, of course, in London. One has to peregrinate…

'I'm sure you're right,' I said.

Signal to Control: I believe Sojourner was in London and either killed Ambassador Qiao or arranged it.

'And after all,' he was saying, 'it suits our purpose rather well, don't you feel? One grieves, of course, but what if Qiao had been got at by the people on his staff at the embassy, and grilled? We wouldn't have had any operation left.'

I said, 'That's true.'

He seemed satisfied, and looked away again, down into the courtyard, and gave a slight nod. The boy in the white robe came away from the wall and into the hotel.

'The purpose of our meeting,' Sojourner said in a moment, 'was to become acquainted.' He was back to his mannered speech patterns, feeling relieved, reassured that his lies about Qiao's death had appeared to stand up. 'And I think we've accomplished that.' He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and straightened it out. 'You've had your instructions from your desk officer and I've told you that you'll be in contact eventually with «our» general through his aides. They'll tell you precisely when we need Dr Xingyu flown back into Beijing, and that will be your responsibility. It might help you to know that we don't anticipate any major problem, once the general's task force has moved into the Great Hall of the People and placed the Chinese leader under restraint. That will be arranged to take place at a time when he is due to appear on nationwide television in order to vilify the intellectuals for their insurrection last week. Instead of doing that, he will be obliged to make the following brief announcement, at gunpoint — though the viewers will not of course see the gun.' He tilted the sheet of paper to catch the light.' "A military detachment has this evening moved into Tiananmen Square to establish control there while certain negotiations proceed between my government and a spokesmen for those intellectuals seeking reform. I ask the people to remain calm. There must be no demonstrations and no disorder in the streets that might cause bloodshed. You will be informed as the situation becomes clarified. Meanwhile I will repeat: there must be no provocation offered the security forces. Calm must prevail."'

He folded the paper and put it away. 'Do you have any questions?'

'It's going to need careful timing.'

'Very careful timing, yes. We need senior leader Deng Xiaoping, Premier Li Peng, and Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin together in the Great Hall of the People at the same time as our general moves his tanks into the square and Dr Xingyu Baibing is brought forward under close protective escort to take over from Deng Xiaoping in front of the TV cameras. But I envision no difficulty. It's a matter of efficient coordination.'

'Do I fly Xingyu into Beijing?' I'd been briefed on this but I wanted Sojourner to think I didn't know. I wanted him to think I knew as little as possible.

'No. You'll hand him over to a special military escort that will land at whatever location you designate to pick him up. He'll be met at Beijing by a stronger contingent, which will escort him to the Great Hall of the People.'

'Understood.'

I asked him a few more questions and then he put some notes on the bill the server had left and we got up and went through the main dining room to the hall.

'Just a word,' Sojourner said, and lowered his voice. 'You'll only make things difficult for yourself if you don't decide to trust me. Your people have checked me out quite thoroughly, as you must know. I wish you a pleasant night.'

It was not quite eleven and I took a turn in the courtyard for a while and then went upstairs to my room. I had the key in the door when the screams came and I took the passage at a run and heard where they were coming from and found the door locked and broke it open and saw Sojourner writhing on the floor half erect and the naked and terrified boy flattened against the wall and on the bed the cobra with its black hood spread.

The rain was hitting the deck in a deluge as I dropped onto the flooded boards from the jetty and went below and saw Pepperidge sitting there watching me.

Traffic?'

'Solid.'

'Hong Kong for you.'

I shook water off my raincoat. 'It took forty minutes, so I'll want an hour and a half when I leave here.' Xingyu was landing at 9:12 tonight from Beijing and it was now 6:31. 'Has anything changed?'

'No.' Pepperidge got up and helped me off with my coat. There's no rush.'

He said it to relax me, part of his job.

'How's Gladys?'

'Fine. Spot of tea?'

I said no. I wanted an empty bladder by the time I was back at the airport to meet the objective. 'Are they lined up?'

'Yes.'

That was one of the things I liked about him as a director in the field. Others — Cone, Fane, that bastard Loman — would have said 'Of course,' meaning that I shouldn't have asked, should have trusted them to line up the people, get everything ready. But I didn't trust anyone. It can be fatal, if anything goes wrong or the mission starts running hot. You can-

'Have a pew.' He touched my arm. 'It's a piece of cake.'

Showing my nerves. The thing was, I'd spent the time on the flight from Bombay going over the whole thing and I'd worked it out that when the action started at Kaitak airport I was going to take exactly nine seconds to do what I had to do. Nine seconds.

'I had to go through Rangoon,' I told Pepperidge. 'Nothing but bloody delays.'

'Thought you were cutting it fine, but here you are and you've lots of time. Bit of shuteye?'

'No. I had seven hours, slept in.' I hadn't planned to sleep on the plane: you don't hit the same delta waves.

'Food?'

'I'm okay.'

'Calcium?'

'I forgot.' He got a glass of milk from the fridge while I opened my flight bag and found the stuff.

'Feel like debriefing?'

'Go ahead. Did you get my cable?'

'Yes.' He went to the end of the cabin and sat down by the phone and I joined him there. All I'd put in the cable from Bombay was Contact down. It couldn't mean anything else. I suppose it must have shaken him. Sojourner had been pivotal to the mission and if we couldn't find another coordinator the mission was dead in the water.

I watched him at the telephone, his yellow eyes shadowed by the cowl of the lamp, its light etching the mass of fine lines on his face, making it look like crumpled tissue paper. The scrambler was as big as the telephone itself, and he'd switched that on first and then dialled. I didn't know how he was sending this stuff but there were plenty of ways: he could go through Government House in Hong Kong to the Secret Services communications mast in Cheltenham and on to London, or direct to the mast or direct to London — it would depend on the degree of urgency. When he'd got my cable today he would have hit London direct.