'I've spent most of my career,' I said, 'doing things totally unacceptable to Administration.'

'Yes, I've heard it rumoured. That's why I selected you.'

'There was a chorus line?'

'Only in my head,' he said quickly. 'I've spoken to no one else, be assured. No one.'

The pigeon flew off the sill, and through the gap in the window I heard the soft beating of its wings. 'All right,' I said. So if there's no briefing, what about instructions?'

'You'll find them at the office of Trans-Kampuchean Air Services in Phnom Penh; I've already sent them on ahead of you. Here's their address. Your sealed envelope also contains rather substantial funds in US dollars and local currency, together with your hotel reservation and identity papers as an agent for Trans-Kampuchean.'

'Are they Bureau?'

'Shall we say, associated. Totally secure, but not a safe-house.'

He pushed his chair back and got up, taking an envelope from a drawer and handing it to me. 'Air tickets and visa. You're on Air France Flight 212, routed through Kuwait and Bombay. Departure is 1:05, which will give you time for the medical and packing. Any questions?'

'When will Pringle be there?' I asked him. In Phnom Penh.

'Not for a day or two. You won't need him. He'll contact you when he arrives.' He let his eyes rest on mine for a moment. 'Pringle is young, as you say, and hasn't carried out as many missions as you. But I have the utmost confidence in him and I want you to treat him accordingly. He's shown himself capable of resourcefulness, imagination and cool-headedness in difficult times. We're clear on that?'

I heard the warning. Pringle was Flockhart's man, and I wasn't expected to bitch him about if things got rough. 'Quite clear,' I said.

Flockhart came with me to the door. 'I'm not opening a signals board for you at this stage, as you know, but for the purposes of identification, the code name for the mission is Salamander.'

The sky was still clearing when I went through the door behind the lift and into the street, with Big Ben chiming three quarters of the hour at the far end of Whitehall. I'd committed myself and the die was cast and all that, but I wasn't feeling any regrets. I suppose it was just Flockhart on my mind, and the question of whether I could really trust him, trust him with my life, because when I walked across to the car and pressed the door button there was a sudden flash of memory and Fane went through the roof again and left his blood all over the video screen. Then it was gone, and I opened the door and got in.

We came down through black overcast across the Gulf of Thailand with a glimmer of light below us to the east of the mountains where the city of Phnom Penh lay sprawling across the land. A cloud of water vapour started filling the cabin as the Tupolev 134 settled into the approach path and the landing gear went down with a thump.

'Tout va bien, vous croyez?'

I said yes, everything was fine, you often got fog on board these things, par for the course. He was a jeweller from Paris, out here to look at some silver, and was actually wearing, he'd told me, a bullet-proof vest.

There was the normal chaos inside the main hall at Pochentong and it was gone eight in the evening when I walked into the Trans-Kampuchean Air Services office, my shoes squelchy from the puddles in the street. Office? Call it a shed, tucked against the wall of what looked like a maintenance hangar.

'I'm here to pick up an envelope,' I told the man behind the chipped plastic counter. 'Name of Jones, David.'

'Jones, David, yes. Right-o.' But he didn't move yet, just sat looking at me with his head turned slightly as if he were deaf in one ear, English, pale, sweating — touch of malaria? I waited.

A phone was ringing somewhere but he didn't seem interested. 'Jones,' he said, 'now that's a good old name. All the way from the Valley, are you?' He'd put on a Welsh accent, not a very good one. He was pissing me off a little by now.

'I'm in a hurry,' I told him.

'But of course you are.' He dropped the magazine he'd been reading and got up and went across to a dented metal filing-cabinet and hit it with the palm of his hand to get the top drawer open. 'The same with all of us, isn't it? Always in a hurry. How's Daisy?'

'She's fine.' I'd got it now: he hadn't just been chatty: he'd been fishing around for a code introduction because I hadn't given him one. And he wouldn't give me the envelope marked David Jones until I'd done that. 'Arthritis still bugging her,' I said. Not quite your traditional code intro, but it was telling him I knew my way around that rotten dump in Whitehall and must therefore be strictly kosher.

Why hadn't Flockhart given me a code intro to use? Because Salamander was so ultra-clandestine that the normal routines didn't apply? But that was plain bloody dangerous.

The man started whistling tunelessly as he went through the top drawer and fished out a manila envelope and came back and dropped it onto the counter. 'Jones, David.'

'Thank you.'

'When were you out here last?'

'Couple of years ago.'

'Things have changed for the worse since the UN cleared out, if that sounds possible, but the basics are still there. Don't drink the water or go with the girls or eat anything raw, and if you need medical attention keep clear of the hospitals, they still haven't heard of sterilization and if you ever needed an operation you'd have to take along a can of diesel fuel to run the generator for the lights.' The telephone began ringing again, and again he ignored it. 'We've still got one doctor for twenty-seven thousand people, so the thing is to play it safe. And watch out for trip mines, the Khmer Rouge are still blowing up whoever they can find — military, civilians, women and children, you name it, they'll kill it.' He gave a sudden bright smile. 'Enjoy your stay in exotic, sunny Cambodia.'

I stowed the manila envelope into my flight bag and walked down the steps into the street.

The black cloud cover was still spread across the sea to the west, but above the mountains there were starfields clinging to the night sky. The air was pale gunmetal blue as the lingering heat of the day pressed down across the boulevards, and I felt the tension here in Phnom Penh, dangerous and oppressive, as I splashed through the puddles to the Peugeot 604 that Flockhart had left for me to pick up at the airport. I pulled a door open and threw the flight bag in.

'Did you come through Bombay?'

'Yes.'

'I have friends there.' She gave the menu a token glance. 'It never changes, the food in this place.'

Her name was Gabrielle Bouchard, and the most notable thing about her was her dark, deep-water blue eyes. Flockhart hadn't mentioned them in his instructions. When you reach the Royal Palace Hotel, ask for the room number of Gabrielle Bouchard, a French photo journalist from Paris, and phone her to say you 're there. Then let the evening take care of itself. She is a friend, but ignorant of my work, therefore maintain strict cover.

'What will you have?' she asked me.

'Anything with shrimps.'

She looked for them on the menu. I suppose she was early thirties, efficient-looking in her paramilitary khaki slacks and tunic, short sleeves above thin bare arms, the muscles of the left one a degree more developed, presumably because she carried her cameras on that side. French nationality, perhaps, but her looks were Eurasian, had the best of both worlds.

'Sizzling shrimp cashew with lobster sauce?'

'Fine.' She'd asked me to have dinner with her; she was in Mr Flockhart's debt, she said.

There were thirty or forty people in here, most of them in the dining section, the rest lining the long canvas-canopied bar on bamboo stools. Two of the ceiling fans were wobbling on their brackets, and if we'd been sitting under either of them I would have suggested moving. All the serving boys wore rubber-soled flip-flops, and they made the loudest sound in the room as they moved among the tables. There was a television set at one end of the bar but the volume was turned right down; I couldn't see the screen from this angle. Even at the bar there was no talking above a murmur; it was as if someone had just died. They had, of course, somewhere or other in the city. And watch out for trip mines, the Khmer Rouge are still blowing up whoever they can find.