She had been sitting alone, but now a man was joining her at the table, his black leather outfit gleaming in the shadows as the light from the oil lamps caught it. He looked young, athletic; he was an Oriental. I didn't think I'd seen him before, though I might have — no one in this smoke was easy to recognize. I hadn't known she'd come here to keep a rendezvous, but I'd thought it possible, by the way she'd checked the street outside the hotel, right and left, in the way they do, the amateurs, the unfortunates in this life who pass too close to the machinery, sometimes with the thought in mind of monetary gain or the perverse excitement of betrayal, sometimes just by accident — as in her case, I believed, little Su-May's — passing too close to the subtle and delicate machinery of international intelligence, fine as the web of that black widow we talked of, you and I, the machinery of subterfuge and treachery, deceit and untimely death.

They were talking, she and the young athletic-looking Oriental, their heads close. She hadn't seen me: I knew this. She would have reacted, would react if she saw me.

They won't allow it in the book, their lordships of the hierarchy, because although this last desperate play has never failed, it is deadly. It is lethal. It has killed.

At first I thought she was all she'd seemed to be, little Su-May, a refugee from the continuing oppression in Beijing, afraid for her father. Then I'd thought — had known — she was something more than that, perhaps working for the private cell that had moved into the field — not, certainly working for the police or Chinese Intelligence: she was totally untrained. Then I'd assumed that she had, yes, simply passed too close to the machinery, to become caught up, her loyalties compromised, fragmented, so that she was grateful to me for the message I'd sent to her father, impressed that I'd killed an agent of the KCCPC, the arch enemy, had protected me from the police in the cafe — perhaps on instructions — but had been working against me for the private cell and even then had become torn both ways and finally had warned me.

You must be careful. When you go down to the street, make sure you are not followed.

By the police?

No. By anyone.

All I knew of her now was that she might provide me with the only link there was to the opposition, to whatever agent or cell she was working for, and could conceivably lead me to Xingyu Baibing.

The man in black leather could have been one of the people who had gone into the monastery last night and seized Xingyu and killed the guard. I could be within touching distance of the subject, the messiah.

It was all that sustained me, this thought, all right, this straw I was clutching at. Without it, nothing could have made me leave the truck and follow this woman here through the bright streets of noon, totally unable to know if I myself had picked up a tag among the people of this place in their robes and skins and coats and big fur hats, their disguise if you will, because that's what it amounted to, totally unable to know if I had been followed here and being watched at this moment through the drifting smoke.

No mirrors, and a door wide open behind me, does that tell you anything? Normal security measures had gone to the dogs: I'd used no cover on my way here, hadn't even looked back, had walked into this place alone instead of waiting for other people to camouflage the image through the doorway, had sat down at a table in the middle of the room, my back to the door, breaking every single bloody rule in the book, chapter and verse, because that is what the ploy demands before it can work for you.

I took another swallow of tea; it was thin, bitter, sharp with tannin, but hot, scalding still from the big black insulated jug they carried from one table to the next; it warmed my hands, burned them, as I sat here with the skin crawling and the nerves flickering along their pathways like liquid fire, a lone spook cut off now from all support, contact, and communication, sitting here like a rabbit on a firing range, divorced from the mission, sequestered in a location unknown to my director in the field, offering myself body and soul to the opposition in the hope that all could be reversed as the hours mounted slowly through the day, to allow me at last a chance, however small, of finding him, Xingyu, Dr Xingyu Baibing, and of bringing him to safety.

You know what it is, the ploy.

She was standing up suddenly, Su-May, at the far table in the corner, still talking to the man in black leather, looking down at him, one hand resting on the tabletop, a bag of some kind slung from her shoulder.

You know what it is, my good friend, if you've soldiered with me before: it is a matter of getting in their way. If you cannot find them, let them find you. Let them see you, let them come for you, let them trap you, and if it becomes necessary let them do the most dangerous thing of all — let them take you.

Voila.

Jason did it in Sri Lanka and got away with it, brought home the product. Tomlin did it in Costa Rica, got in and got out and left a chief of police hanging from his feet in a brothel. Cartwright did it in Tokyo, took on their mafiosi and got a British national home and followed on with a smashed hip and his nerves like a bombed piano — but they were the success stories, the ones we pass around in the Caff between missions to remind ourselves how good we are at this game, how successful, how intrepid, as an antidote to the fear of going out again. There are also the others, the other stories, which are not passed around in the Caff — Brockley tried the get-in-their-way thing in Athens and the colonels had him shot at dawn; Fairchild tried it in Calcutta and went out wearing a garotte; Myers tried it in Damascus and lasted three days and died mad, I was there in the signals room when the DIF reported through a drug runner's radio: executive seized, believed under torture, am pulling out.

So that is the way it is, it sometimes works and then you're in spooks' heaven and hallowed by the name around the tea-slopped tables in the Caff, but it very often doesn't work and you can end up in the scuppers of some stinking hulk with your throat cut or spread-eagled on a trash heap with their heavy bone-white beaks picking at the still-warm flesh, I don't mean, I do not mean to sound discouraging, my good friend, but that, as I say, is the way it is, we must keep our fingers crossed and from the depths of the timorous soul pluck up a prayer that this time it will work for us. She had taken a step, had turned again and was coming between the tables, coughing in the smoke, and I angled my head to make sure she'd recognize me and she slowed at once, almost tripping, then went on past my table without looking at me again, her voice just loud enough for me to catch.

'You are in great danger.'

Swallowed some more tea, didn't actually need telling of course but she'd meant well, could have saved me as she'd done before in the other place, went out, she went out through the wide-open doorway into the street.

He stayed ten minutes, the young Oriental in black leather, then put some money down and left the table, moving along the bar on the far side without coming anywhere near me, though the path Su-May had taken was the more direct. So I had made contact, and must follow up.

Put five yen on the table, the generosity of a man with nothing to lose, got up and went to the door and found the smoke drifting into the sunlit street and some policemen pulling up in a jeep, it looked in fact as if the whole place was on fire, turned my face away and followed the man in black.

He wouldn't carry a gun; the police were fussy here, pick you up on the spot and search you and he'd known that. But he was a senior belt, by his walk, and that was far more dangerous. And he wouldn't be alone: he was walking alone toward the marketplace, but there would be others not far away; this was already a mobile trap they'd got me in — it hadn't, you see, failed; it never does.