The rain was steady, a gray steel curtain with diamonds sprinkled in it.

I was standing next to one of Dr Xingyu's escorts, turned away from him, not looking at him, looking through the rain now, as if waiting to cross the roadway; he didn't have any interest in me: there were other people around, other passengers. I would see to him first, then the man who was swinging the bag into the trunk, then the chauffeur, who had gone back to sit at the wheel of the Mercedes.

The rain had the sound of steel brushes stroking a snare drum softly in the night.

Flashpoint as the bag dropped onto the floor of the boot and I used the right arm from the elbow to keep the strike short and visually discreet and felt the softness of the flesh covering the escort's vagus nerve against my wristbone and saw his hands coming up too late to protect himself. I didn't worry about his hands because his pulse would have begun slowing now and venous dilation would be drawing blood from his brain. His legs were buckling as the second man straightened up from dropping the bag into the boot and I used a knee against his sacral plexus hard enough to incapacitate and pulled him out of the way and slammed the boot shut and went to the side of the car and opened the driving door and worked on the chauffeur's thyroid cartilage, taking my time because he was surprised and hadn't even moved his hands and couldn't move them now because of the numbing effect of the squeeze. I used my other hand to drag him off the seat and onto the streaming roadway and started up and checked the nearside mirror and used a light foot but even then got wheelspin as I took the Mercedes away and saw the black Jaguar pull out immediately and then swing back to block off the Mercedes behind me as it started up and tried to follow. The police whistles were blowing and I'd expected that but I didn't know why the woman over there was screaming and holding her face, perhaps just because there were three people lying on the roadway in the pouring rain and they surely must be ill or something.

I turned my head and told Dr Xingyu to get down low on the backseat in case there was any shooting and he did that. I'd reached the airport road by the time a dark green Volvo flashed me from behind and came past and slowed and pulled into the curb ahead of me. The driver got out and took over the Mercedes, and I put Xingyu into the front of the Volvo with me, and when I was sure we were clean and clear I used the car phone and told Pepperidge we'd got him.

PACE!

I pushed the needle into his hip and aspirated and didn't get any blood, started squeezing the plunger.

'All right,' Pepperidge said, 'what about the next one, the man who was putting the bag into the boot?'

He was making notes, shorthand, sitting at the end of the bench that ran the length of the cabin.

'Still,' I told Xingyu. 'Keep perfectly still.' He hadn't got a lot of patience, we'd found. 'Knee to the coccyx,' I told Pepperidge. 'The sacral plexus would have been affected, where most of the major nerves go from the spine to the hips and the legs. He went down straight away.' I pulled the needle out of Xingyu's muscle and rubbed it for a bit.

Pepperidge: 'What's his future?'

It's a new thing they've started to ask in London: when we're debriefed after any kind of action we're expected to give details. It's all in the book in Norfolk but it's meant to inspire the rookies when they're told exactly what was done in a real situation.

'His life's not in danger,' I said. 'He'll need some spinal surgery, that's all. He'll walk again.'

Dr Xingyu pulled up his black woollen slacks and did the buttons.

'Thank you.'

'Don't mention it.' Saliva in my mouth, I'm queasy about needles but it had been no good asking Pepperidge to do it because I was going to be tied to Xingyu right through the mission and he needed it twice a day, 300 Insuno intramuscular, just my luck. I took the syringe over to the little copper sink and filled it with water.

'The chauffeur?'

'I used a Chin Na grip on the thyroid cartilage to give him enough pain to stop him thinking of anything else, and then pulled him out of the car and dropped him on the roadway.' I took the syringe out to the flooded afterdeck and dropped it over the side and came back. 'Just to give him enough pain, though, that's important, because you can kill like that if you do it too hard. They should understand that. I didn't need to kill anyone.'

Xingyu was putting the bottle of insulin away in the pocket of his sheepskin coat. Pepperidge finished writing and didn't look up as he said: 'They ran over his head. Not your fault.'

In a minute I said, 'Oh, Christ.'

'Don't have it on your mind, but I had to tell you. They were in too much of a hurry trying to follow you.'

Explained, then, why that woman had screamed when I drove away: I'd wondered. Three down already, and we were learning fast: Bamboo was hungry.

'I took trouble,' I said.

'Of course you did. You're always fastidious.'

I sat down on the opposite bench, feeling cold, and Dr Xingyu looked at me and then at Pepperidge and said, 'So what will you do with me now?'

Tone of total cynicism, almost hostility. He was sitting very upright, his big hands on his lap, his feet together and his head lifted, sitting very still, like something to be shot at. Pepperidge came around the end of the teakwood table and sat facing the Chinese, resting his hands in front of him with the fingers spread open, a symbolic posture, I suppose, to mean he wasn't hiding anything.

'Dr Xingyu, you were told at our embassy in Beijing, as politely as possible, that you were becoming an embarrassment to the United Kingdom in our efforts to reestablish normal relationships with your government, and we therefore offered to ensure your freedom if you choose to leave the embassy. You were — '

'I can take care of my own freedom now. This is Hong Kong.' His eyes narrowed, his tone sharp.

'You're at liberty, Dr Xingyu, to leave this boat on your own and go wherever you wish, but before morning you'd find yourself back in Beijing, and no longer free. If you'll — '

'I do not think that. And I do not like all this — this subterfuge. It 'is not necessary. And a man has been killed, you say. That is terrible. Terrible.'

He is known for his extreme openness — Hyde, in Final Briefing — and his compassion. You may find him difficult, therefore, to control. There'd certainly been no subterfuge, I knew from the papers, in his opposition to the Communist Party in Beijing: he'd told them exactly what he thought of their failure to protect the welfare of the people.

'Dr Xingyu' — Pepperidge, his yellow eyes holding the other man's steadily across the table — 'you have a brilliant mind. You must use it now as you've never used it before, because the future of the Chinese people depends on it.'

Xingyu stood up so quickly that he knocked his head against a beam, but didn't flinch. 'I can only help my people if I am with them in Beijing. I should not have come here. I — '

'Since you're here, Doctor, I would ask you to do me the courtesy of hearing what I have to tell you.'

Xingyu stared him back for a moment and then dropped his head and sat down. 'Excuse me.'

It was his wife, I think, who was most on his mind: he'd talked about her in the car on our way from the airport. She'd been meant to join him at the U.K. embassy as soon as she could get there. I would not have gone there myself, you see, if I had thought she could not come. It was a terrible mistake. His wife and his friends, most of them fellow professors at the university, most of them now under arrest and inside Bambu Qiao Prison. Many of the cells have no doors or windows, he'd told me, there is only a trapdoor in the ceiling, and you cannot stand upright, the ceiling is too low.