Twenty, then, at least, and there'd be more of them in the main hall and at the baggage claim and outside the terminal, professionals too but with less training or less natural aptitude, mobsters, if you like, dispersed throughout the environment to make a rush at any time if they were needed, piling themselves like fire ants on the flames if something went wrong.

I'd been on the move since I'd come into the gate area, pacing from one end to the other in my soft grey cap and glasses to establish the image, checking my watch now and then because the flight was late and I was getting impatient. I walked with a soldierly pace, shoulders back and hands behind me, an umbrella tucked under one arm, a copy of the Hong Kong Times folded into a pocket and one end sticking out.

Hong Kong Airlines Flight 47 to Macao will depart from Gate 3 in six minutes from now at 9:20. Will passengers please go to Gate No. 3 immediately.

I could also see the two Chinese agents who would personally greet and escort Dr Xingyu Baibing on arrival. They were the only men in the contingent standing together and talking to each other; they were also immaculate in blue serge suits with lots of linen showing, their smart shoes polished right down to the rubber soles.

I didn't know what their cover story was; they might say they were plainclothesmen from the Hong Kong Police Department, sent here to escort Dr Xingyu through the terminal in case he were recognized, in case the press might pester him; they would show him their official identity. Or they might say they were representatives of the Hong Kong Democracy for China Association, who would be honoured to entertain him during his stay. Whatever they said, he would accept it. Those were his instructions.

Hyde had done a great deal of work, as I'd realized in Final Briefing, liaising by telephone with the British embassy in Beijing and four of the Bureau's sleepers who had gone into the embassy on routine errands. Xingyu had been shown photographs of me and given a detailed description; he'd listened to a tape of my voice. He'd been told precisely what he should do at every stage from his arrival at Gate 7 to taking his seat in the car outside: the car that I would be driving. He'd been put through an exhaustive rehearsal, using a plan of Hong Kong airport and photographs of the outside of the terminal alongside the baggage claim area. He'd been told what he must do if anything went wrong, if I or any of my three support people made a mistake.

That musn't happen, because if it happened, Dr Xingyu Baibing would be kept overnight as a guest of the Kuo Chi Ching Pao Chu, the Chinese Intelligence Service, and given a shot of diazepam or one of the other benzodiazepene derivatives and taken back on the first morning flight to Beijing and put into a psychiatric ward for a few weeks and then propped up in front of the television cameras, I was wrong, declares hero of Chinese democratic movement in dramatic appearance on TV, I now realize that only through our resolute faith in the principles of Communism can we construct the future.

This we must circumvent.

Japan Airlines Flight 343 to Tokyo will depart from Gate 2 in ten minutes from now at 9:34.

I took another stroll the length of the gate area and heard the faint roar of reversed engines from the main runway and tucked my umbrella more firmly under my arm and walked back as far as the telephones, standing within a few feet of a group of women in black silk with coloured beads in their hair and a travel agent holding a board marked Criterion and a pretty girl with calm eyes and wavy hair and a blue plaid rug over her legs in the wheelchair. No one was moving about anymore. The flashing red lamp on the top of the 747's cabin lit the windows as the jet slowed to the passenger tunnel, its thin whistle cutting through the walls.

The timing was accurate: it had touched down at exactly 9:24, as scheduled by its adjusted ETA on the screen. It was a good portent; now that we'd got the head winds thing over, the rest of the evening would go smoothly.

I suppose Pepperidge had watched this flight a few minutes ago, lowering across Chai Wan Bay and his little boat, and now he would possibly be praying. Does Pepperidge pray?

We didn't move, any of us. We had friends to greet, wives, husbands, children, business associates, and Dr Xingyu Baibing. Accord him, Hyde had told me in London, appropriate honours while he is in your care. To the brave and desperate Chinese, he is the anointed one, the messiah.

He was to be the last one off the plane, as agreed between London and Beijing when the deal had been struck; this was in case there were any photographers in the gate area who might recognize him.

The passengers began coming through.

Certain amount of sweat on the skin, and the mouth drying again. I slowed my breathing, brought it under conscious control.

People laughing as they went by, some of them stopping to hug, a little bunch of flowers falling, for a moment unnoticed.

Pepperidge, waiting on his boat. Piece of cake.

A flutter of Chinese schoolgirls in blue uniforms and prim velour hats, their laughter reminding one of bird calls. A thin beak-nosed Englishman in a crumpled tweed hat, just off the grouse moors, 'Hello, Bessie old thing!'

Pepperidge waiting on his boat and in the signal room in Whitehall the kind of silence that always falls at a time like this, when the executive out there in the field has reached the phase when he will do it right or blow the mission off the board.

They'd seen the flowers now, the little bunch of flowers, and someone was picking it up, 'Oh darling, thank you, how terrible of me but I was so excited to see you.'

Then the line of people began thinning, and there were gaps, and a young Chinese came through carrying some kind of stringed instrument made of bamboo, then a lost-looking woman with tired eyes and too much lipstick, and no one to meet her, and then a short man in an overcoat and dark glasses.

The messiah.

The baggage claim area was crowded: Flight 206 had been at least three-quarters full and the KCCPC contingent had moved down here and taken up stations around the walls, watching the carousel but not looking terribly like passengers, though it didn't matter: no one would notice.

As soon as I'd seen the two Chinese escorts go up to Xingyu Baibing and show him their identity cards I'd gone into the toilet and left my coat and cap and umbrella and newspaper in one of the cubicles and then joined the passengers. The bags hadn't started coming through yet; I stood well back from the carousel, six or seven feet away from Xingyu Baibing. He hadn't seen me yet, hadn't looked around for me. Those were his instructions.

One of my support people was in place near the exit doors to the pavement outside the terminal. He was a signaller, that was all.

The two Chinese escorts were keeping close to Dr Xingyu, though not crowding him. They weren't expecting him to make a run for it; he'd convinced them that he believed they were friends. He didn't look like a messiah; he was short and wore an overcoat that sagged at the bottom; his shoes no one would call serviceable. The only thing about him you might notice was that his hands were big for such a short man; they hung at his sides. He talked to the two men, nodding sometimes, giving a little bow as they presumably paid him a compliment. They hadn't told him they were police officers; they were behaving much more like representatives from the Hong Kong Democracy for China Association, courteous to him, deferential. I found it refreshing to watch intelligence agents so sophisticated.

The first bag came through the chute and flopped onto the carousel.