That was 3.30 a.m.

It had got smoky in here by now and the MI6 man had gone along the coach pulling the little windows open. Most of us had got through our first cup of tea and were on the second one: the police outside had brought a whole urn, piping hot, with a boxful of plastic cups.

The Chinese ambassador was talking about the People's Liberation Army.

'There is a schism in the military that reflects the political scheme in Beijing. There are bones of contention among the commanders and their troops. As you know, some of the armies surrounding the capital in 1989 showed sympathy for the students in Tiananmen Square, and many officers were shot for refusing to fire on the people. At least fifteen generals are still in prison awaiting court-martial. In the uprising of last week there was, as you know, no military action called upon, though a readiness alert went out to all commanders in the vicinity of Beijing. While the old guard is still loyal to the Communist Party, the young and educated officers now rising from the ranks are impatient for reforms that would turn the PLA into a modern, more professional military machine, with new weapons and new technologies that the United States and other Western countries would be prepared to offer them, once a democratic government was in power.'

Light flashed from the tunnel as the welder used his jets. The plainclothes police on the platform stood at ease with their hands behind them, not moving about very much. Smoke curled from Jarrow's cigarette, fanning out under the ceiling lamps. The MI6 man got himself another cup of tea from the urn and went back to his seat. I didn't think it was likely that anything that could be said in the stale confines of this railway coach buried deep underground in London could have the power to change the lives of a billion people on the far side of the planet.

Dead wrong.

'I will put it simply for you,' Ambassador Qiao said. 'Despite the present unrest among the People's Liberation Army, and despite the growing sympathy of many of its generals for the intellectuals in their underground fight for democracy, I do not believe that any spontaneous military action could be expected in defiance of the government in Beijing. We cannot hope for armed support for any future uprising, based solely on the sympathy of certain generals, But I do believe that given new inspiration, given a leader who could offer himself to the people and lend them his power as a figurehead, we could indeed incite the armed counterrevolution that is needed to bring down the Communist regime." He paused, I think to make sure he was getting our attention. 'Dr Xingyu Baibing could give us that power, if he could leave your embassy unmolested by the security forces.'

I saw Hyde turn his head slightly toward me again, reflected in the window. Objective for the mission, yes Xingyu.

'I should tell you gentlemen,' Qiao said, 'that my decision to defect was not an impulse. I became disgusted in June 1989, when the ghost of Mao rose and brought brutality and bloodshed back into the streets. Since then, I have made it my business to establish contacts and relationships in Beijing that would be called treasonable, and for which I should be shot. Among those contacts is a certain general of the People's Liberation Army. He is now prepared and waiting, with his armoured division, to support the armed rebellion that could be effected under the leadership of Dr Xingyu, who is also waiting — for the freedom in which to act.'

He got out his handkerchief again, this time to wipe his face. He was talking about inciting a coup that could bring his country out of stagnation and despair and into the light of freedom and its fruits; world acceptance, world trade, and an honourable place in the community of nations; and on a personal level, perhaps, he was talking of the hope that there would be time to save his brother.

'After all,' he said in mock innocence, 'we shall only be following the wisdom of the late Chairman Mao himself, who said that power lies in the mouth of a gun. If you, gentlemen, can vouchsafe the freedom of Dr Xingyu Baibing, we shall have that gun in our hands.'

Qiao left ahead of us, his counsellor with him, clutching his big briefcase. Hyde and I stopped for a few minutes to talk to the MI6 man; then we took the elevator to street level and walked into the open air and the wail of police sirens and stood there with the flash of the coloured lights in our eyes and our breath clouding in the chill of the morning as we looked down at the little Chinese ambassador spreadeagled on the pavement with his glasses smashed and his blood trickling across the edge of the curb.

She was very thin, and faded-looking, still pretty, though, perhaps, had been stunning, once, with her large eyes and her cheekbones. She sat decoratively on the worn settee, her thin legs trying, I believed, to cover the patch of cretonne where the cat had sharpened its claws, where perhaps it always did: she looked a cat-lover, a quiet woman, half in hiding.

'Would you like some tea?'

'No,' I said, 'thank you. I haven't much time.'

Half in hiding from life, or from death, hoping it wouldn't find her. They'd told me it was cancer.

'He won't be long now,' she said.

'Supposing I go and meet him?'

'You could try. But I don't know whether he's gone to the grocer's or the post office, and they're in different directions.' She smiled ruefully at the contrariness of life.

'I see.'

The cat was on a windowsill by a pot of geraniums, its fur mangy, their leaves yellowed. It spreads everywhere, if you let it, through the body and into the house, through the house.

'It's so cold,' she said in her pretty voice, 'so early, this year, isn't it?'

'Yes. We could get a white Christmas, though.'

There must be a kind of terrible relief, I thought, in actually knowing you didn't have long, in knowing that it wasn't worth the effort of trying to fight it off, in having time to get ready, and tidy all the drawers, instead of taking your fear with you to a rendezvous with potential death as I did, time after time, carrying it for years like putrefying baggage.

'… last year, didn't we?'

'I said we had a little snow last year, didn't we, for Christmas?'

'Yes, that's right,' I said, 'I remember.'

What would her brother give her for Christmas? A posy for her grave? We tend, as I'm sure you've noticed, to be a trifle morbid when we're waiting to go out.

'What's she called, your cat?'

'Smoky. It's actually a he.' Another little smile.

'He's very handsome,' I said. I like cats myself; I always think of them as female, I suppose because of their grace and their mysteriousness.

'If you haven't got long,' she said, 'you could go and stand outside, to watch for him. Then you could go and meet him.'

'All right.'

But he was coming down the narrow little path between the patches of brownish grass when I went out there.

'Hello,' he said. 'You were quicker than I'd bargained for.' I'd phoned him from the Bureau. 'I had to get some things for Gladys.'

'That's all right." I took one of the brown paper bags and we went back into the house.

Pepperidge had only directed me once in the field, in Singapore; he'd conned me into it at the Brass Lamp, making me think he was a burned-out-spook, too far gone to take it on himself. He'd been very good, before that, as a shadow, first-class at covert infiltration, knew how to kill with discretion when it was necessary; then he'd come in and managed the Asian desk for a while. He'd been a good DIF, getting me through the Singapore thing without any fuss and doing most of it from London, through the signals mast at Cheltenham, before he'd come out to the field and brought that bastard Loman with him. But Loman had done well too, handled me well, give him his due.