He'd blow it, the whole thing. He wasn't an experienced agent, not even an agent at all; he might know the chemical composition of Jupiter but he wouldn't know what to say when they asked him what his reason was for going to Tibet. He'd remember what we'd told him to say, of course, that he wanted to study the language, but it wouldn't be the truth, and he'd been used to shouting the truth from the rooftops all his life, it was in his character, in his bones, and he was going to tell these peak-capped robots his precise reasons for going to Tibet, he was going there to implement the overthrow of the Communist Party in Beijing and let freedom ring throughout the land, so forth, while I stood here listening to the orders for the police to close in and take him away, milling around him like a pack of starving dogs that had found a bone.

Nothing you can do now, it's too late. Just stand here and wait for it, stand here and wait.

Sound of Bedlam, like bloody Bedlam in this place because there was no carpeting, no acoustic ceiling, only the peeling paint of the walls and the scarred concrete floor and the vast dirt-filmed windows throwing the echoes across and across the hall, with somewhere the tinny sound of music from the loudspeaker system or someone's radio, a Chinese singing a Bing Crosby song, 'I'm in the Mood for Love,' a hilarious thought, a hilarious thought, my good friend, in a place where any kind of love had long since fled, or died, like a butterfly caught in a machine.

'George, are you going on with the rest of us?'

'Look, for God's sake don't give them any lip, you'll drop us all in the shit.'

'Where's Jimmy, then? He said he'd be here.' The United Kingdom contingent, not from Hong Kong, doing the Tibet trip, a change of pace from Majorca.

'Show them everything, mate, don't try any tricks.'

'Everything all right?' A face close to mine suddenly, the voice very quiet, the eyes looking nowhere.

'Tell him,' I said, 'to stop scratching his face.'

He turned away and wandered about again, passing close to Xingyu ahead of me in the queue and then moving away, standing at a distance, looking around him for some lost sheep according to his cover, Aurora Travel on the red plastic disk pinned to his lapel, the man from the Bureau, sent here to signal London that he'd seen the shadow executive and the subject land safely at Chengdu and present themselves to immigration, or of course to report that the subject had in point of fact been smothered suddenly in a scrum of policemen and hustled into a van outside, it would depend, wouldn't it, on what the most wanted man in the People's Republic of China said to the smartly uniformed officer behind the desk, on how he said it, and on whether he was going to stop scratching his face until he tore a hole in the mask and finis, all fall down, he must be out of his mind.

'Marjorie's not coming.' Scared blue eyes.

'But she was on the plane.'

'She's not coming with us. She wants to go back to Hong Kong.'

The queue shuffled forward again. Dr Xingyu Baibing was the next in line at the desk. Not, perhaps, out of his mind, no, in the sense that he didn't realize the danger, just being driven out of his mind by the itching under the mask, itching can do that, yes.

'What on earth for?'

'She says she can't get her mind off what they did that time in Tianen — Tia — you know, that square.'

'God, that was ages ago. Tell her — '

'She says she's frightened of them. She's never been in China before.'

'Tell her she's all right with us. I can't leave — '

'She's being sick in the lavatory.'

'Then for God's sake go and help her. Tell her the plane goes in ten minutes.'

Shuffled forward again, and Xingyu got his papers out, clumsily, dropping one of them, picking it up — would they notice the blood hadn't gone to his face after he'd bent down like that? — showing them the papers now while the man over there with the Aurora Travel badge swept his eyes across the crowd and didn't let them stop at Xingyu. One of the policemen took a step forward, a step toward the desk, stretching his legs, perhaps, but his eyes were watching the desk, watching the little man there from the shadow under the peak of his cap, the shadow thrown by the bleak neon lights that hung from the iron rods under the ceiling while the noise went on, the din of so many voices, of so many people trapped in here like cattle in a slaughterhouse but we must not, must we, let our imagination get out of hand, we must not be sick in the lavatory.

'Joyce, who's going to take her back to Hong Kong, then, if we can't stop her going?'

'Could ask Harry.'

'God, not Harry.'

'She's not in the mood for anything like that.'

'Harry wouldn't care.'

Presenting his papers, our little messiah, the only hope for a billion people out there in the rice fields and the factories and the universities, living their daily lives in the shadow of the tanks. The only hope.

Shepley must have had a brainstorm when he'd set this thing up, instructing us to take a man like Xingyu through three airports, Hong Kong and Chengdu and Gonggar, under the eyes of the Kuo Chi Ching Pao Chu, gone clean out of his mind, and not much better ourselves, Pepperidge and I, we should have rehearsed this poor little bugger, told him what it was going to be like when he landed back inside his beloved country, what they would ask him at the immigration desk, what he should tell them, rehearsed him until he could have gone through this checkpoint word-perfect, but in fact we couldn't, I suppose, have done that to him, he would have told us we were playing spies, being melodramatic, knew his galaxies, didn't know his codes, no go, my good friend, it's going to be no go, because the officer at the desk is beckoning the man over there, the plainclothes supervisor, and he is going over to the desk, his steps measured.

'What's holding us up?'

'I don't know.'

'Look, go and help Kate with Majorie. I'll keep your place.'

'You can't do that here. You — '

'Wait a minute. Excuse me, but do you mind if my friend just went to the toilet?'

'Shen me shi?'

'My friend here, oh God, he doesn't — '

'Let me help. Zheiwei nushi xiang qu cheshuo, ramhou huidao queue.'

'Xing.'

'Oh, I'm much obliged. Go on, Doris, get her back here so I can talk to her, for God's sake. We're going to miss that plane.'

The air cold in in here, with the harsh reek of the factory smoke creeping in under the doors, the lights clouded, some of the tubes flickering, some of them dark, they don't run a good ship here, my friend, they do not run a good ship, their methods are crude and their thinking is proscribed, conditioned, and they will throw him into the van like a common criminal while I go on shuffling forward like a puppet, not daring to leave the queue and follow him, follow them, hoping to do something miraculous and get him away, get him to ground, not daring to do anything except shuffle forward and go through the charade and get out of here, because this was no place for miracles.

Get out of here and signal London, let the hand pick up the piece of chalk and change the board. Executive reports subject lost to KCCPC, Chengdu airport, 12:16 l.t.

The man from the Bureau was watching the desk, his dead stare fixed now. I couldn't see much of Xingyu because he was shorter than the three girls in front of me and they were moving around, anxious for Marjorie.

I watched the man over there instead: we had, in this instant, established signals. He would swing his head and look at me when anything important happened there under the immigration board, under the flickering lights, would let a smile touch his mouth if all were well, or leave his stare on me and move his head to and fro by the smallest degree if all were not well, if the trap slammed shut, finito.