I didn't say anything. Flockhart was fly fishing with me, flicking his lures across the surface waiting for me to rise; but I wasn't in the mood: if he had a mission for me I'd look at it and if I liked it I'd take it — but I'd have to like it an awful lot if this man was going to be my control in London.

'Discretion,' Flockhart said carefully, 'is of course our daily bread at the Bureau. But this — '

'And for dessert, signori, we have an excellent Gelati di Napoli, anointed with just a soupcon of Punt e Mes — '

'For you?' Flockhart asked me as Luigi took our plates.

'No.'

'Just espresso, Luigi. For both — is that right?'

I said yes.

'The linguini was acceptable?'

'Your best, Luigi. Your very best.'

A small dark boy with eyes by Michelangelo swept the crumbs from our bread into a scoop and darted away. 'Discretion,' said Flockhart again, 'is our stock-in-trade, yes, but what I need would be discretion within discretion, if you follow.'

'The ultimate clam.'

'How well you put it.' He waited, then said, 'But you haven't asked any questions yet. Lack of interest?'

'Not really. Just put the proposition on the line for me and we'll take it from there. I don't like piecemeal information.'

'Quite so.' He looked down for an instant.

Behind me that clod Corbyn laughed. You can set your watch by him.

'I need, then,' Flockhart said carefully, 'someone capable of total discretion to look at certain things in Phnom Penh for me, leaving tomorrow and reporting back to me personally through my private lines at the Bureau and at my home.'

In a moment I said, 'I'm actually looking for a mission. The real thing.'

The espresso arrived and Flockhart dropped the sliver of peel into his cup. 'Yes, I understand that. I didn't bring you down here to waste your time. Let me put it this way: if you are prepared to follow my instructions with reasonable fidelity, and to work — at least for the moment — with no signals board or transmissions through Cheltenham, and with no supports, couriers, or contacts in the field, I can guarantee you a mission. The real thing.'

I suppose it's the way it goes, isn't it — if you lust after something a bit too long you're not sure whether you want it after all when it lands in your hands. But it wasn't really that, I think, this time. I didn't trust this man, and if I let him run me through a mission I would have to trust him with my life.

'I would be operating, then,' I said in a moment, 'under a total blackout?'

'Yes.'

That too was suspect. I'd never known it happen before at the Bureau, and that could simply mean that none of the other shadow executives had ever told me about it, but I didn't think so. There's a grapevine in that place, as in most organizations, and this was something I'd never picked up.

'Why?'

Flockhart was ready for it, and said at once: 'You would learn why, as the mission progressed.'

His eyes watched me steadily, their pale blue ice reflecting the red-shaded lamp but gaining none of its warmth. It didn't worry me too much that he wouldn't answer my question: at the outset of any mission we are told only as much as we need to be told, on the sound principle that the less we know of the background the less we can give away if the opposition should ever bring us down and throw us into the cell and get out the bamboo shoots and the shocking-coil and the rest of the toys.

'When you say you can guarantee me a mission,' I told Flockhart, 'there would have to be a director in the field. At least that.'

He gave a nod. 'Pringle.'

The man he'd been trying to sell me. Pringle is young, yes, but he has style. Which is something you'd understand, I rather think.

I dropped my own sliver of peel into the cup and watched it floating, saw one of his ice-blue eyes, Flockhart's, reflected there on the dark surface.

Corbyn laughed, behind me.

When I felt ready I said, 'When do you want my decision?'

I looked up as I said it, to see if I could catch any reaction in Lockhart's eyes: I wanted to find out how much it meant to him to know that I was actually considering the mission, how much he needed me, how indispensable I was, whether I could dictate arms. But of course his eyes didn't show anything.

Except the anger.

'I want your decision now,' he said evenly.

I didn't say anything right away, partly because I wasn't sure of the answer, not at all sure, with a man like this as my potential control.

But I'd placed it at last, the vibration I'd been picking up since we'd started talking down here, the faintest whisper of something in the tone of his voice, in his breathing, the way he sat, his chin tucked in by the smallest degree and the head down;the attitude — on a minuscule scale — of a bull preparing to charge. And yes, perhaps it was also expressed in the very iciness of the eyes, which I hadn't noticed in the past, the few times I'd run across him. There was anger here, and of a high order, finely controlled, barely contained, as Flockhart sat watching me across the table.

'That's rather soon,' I said, simply to give myself time. Because this anger of his was also something I should take into account, perhaps, before I made my decision. It wasn't directed against me: we were virtual strangers, had had nothing to do with each other before tonight. But anger in a man like this, directed at no matter whom, was a potent form of explosive.

'Time,' he said evenly, 'is of the essence.'

I heard that idiot Corbyn laugh again, but the sound was faint this time; the hum of voices in the room had seemed to die away as I let my mind fold into itself to seek guidance. I wasn't worried by the instant deadline Flockhart was giving me; with comfortable time to make any kind of decision we tend to cloud the issue with pros and, cons, and are never quite sure, when we've cast the die, whether we've done right or wrong. Whereas intuition is as fast as, light, flashing up from the subconscious with all the facts marshalled and the answer ready, if we're prepared to listen.

'All right,' I said.

Because the only fact that really mattered was this: when I'd been prowling those dreary corridors for weeks on end I would have taken on any mission for anyone.

And nothing had changed.

'You'll do it?' Flockhart sounded, if anything, surprised.

'Yes.'

He left his eyes on me, leaning forward a little across the table. 'You'll do well,' he said quietly. 'You'll do very well.'

The next morning the drizzle had given over and a pale sun was trying to show through the clouds, with a March wind rising.

Flockhart saw me in his office not long after nine, giving me a chair and going behind his desk again, throwing some papers to one side. They fell across a silver-framed photograph, and he left them there; I couldn't see it clearly at this angle because of the reflection on the glass, but it looked like a woman's face.

'You can do your medical clearance,' he said, 'with your own doctor, or mine if you prefer. Your expense account is open as of now, and I shall be personally responsible.'

He looked much the same as I'd seen him last night: cool, very controlled, expressionless. But the anger had gone. His speech and the movement of his hands were faster; anger had gone and left room for energy.

'Fair enough,' I said. 'What about briefing?'

'None, officially.' He turned his head to look from the window on my left, where a pigeon was waddling on the sill; then he looked back at me and said, 'There's nothing official about this at all, you must understand. Let me put it this way: your mission would not necessarily meet with acceptance by Administration, if I proposed it to them. That is why I didn't.' He watched me carefully. 'Does that bother you?'