'There's no need to swab it. Haven't you got any plaster?'

I watched her cutting it and wondered who she was, what had happened at home to make her break loose and work abroad and get hijacked into a hit-and-miss undertaking that hadn't proved anything so far except that life was cheap.

'Was it the bomb?'

'That's right.'

Her eyes were serious, concentrating on fixing the thing straight, a fine dew of sweat above her tender mouth, a strand of light hair lying curled in the hollow of her shoulder, the nearness of her reminding me of all I stood to lose if tonight I walked into shadows without watching, or made a sound when silence held the only hope of life.

'Were they trying to kill you?'

'Not very hard.'

Her warm fingers pressed, smoothing it flat.

'Don't you find it odd, to be still alive?'

'I find it quite comfortable.'

She stood back and looked at me steadily, her quiet eyes preoccupied with working something out for herself, maybe the feeling of oddness she expected me to have, because she didn't know that in my trade the risk of extinction carries its own anodyne: familiarity. There's always of course the question suddenly in the mind when the glass comes fluting through the nitro fumes or the headlights burn in your skull while you sit there staring them out: is this the one? But afterwards, when the shrill of the nerves has quietened, the only answer is no,it wasn't the one.

She looked away and put the reel of Elastoplast back into the tin, seeing my blood on her fingertips and for a moment considering it and then doing nothing about it, shutting the tin and putting it back on the shelf, her movements slow, reflective.

'Where's my gear?'

She turned.

'Your what?'

'The radio and the camera.'

'Oh yes. We had it picked up at a rendezvous. It should be on board by now.'

The time-gap closed with a bang and the mission was there in front of me, ready to run.

I waited for him.

The street was silent and nothing moved.

Naked bulbs stuck out here and there from the corners of walls, their yellow light defining the perspective of the street and the turnings from it. The curved fronds of the palms hung piled against the minarets and the filigree of window-grilles, their tips burned brown by the heat of never-ending noon; in them I could hear rats rustling.

10.25.

This is the moment, in the last phase of pre-mission activity, when we wonder why we do the things we do: psychologically the brakes are coming off and we are gathering speed and soon we shall be pitching headlong into the dark and it's unnerving and we try to busy ourselves while the deadline closes on us, so that we don't have to think too much. So it's uncomfortable to have to sit in a car and do nothing, while the last minutes run out. It's not a good time to think.

There was a handbasin in the corner so why the hell didn't she rinse them there, I didn't like it, the way she'd looked at them, what was she saying, that it was here on her fingers by grace of whatever gods had decreed that I shouldn't be too close when the thing went off, bloody nonsense, they'd cocked it up that was all, tuned the rocking-mechanism till it was too sensitive and then a bus had made a draught or something like that. It doesn't do, at a time like this, to think you're being looked after by some kind of providence: start walking round ladders and you'll only get run over because survival begins in the brain, not the navel.

Soft-eyed little philosopher with her downy arms, two hands to hold the bloody thing and no training for priority ops, Loman ought to be shot.

The street was narrow, running thinly into the dark of trees at its very end. That was where I would be going soon, accelerating through the perspective of the known into the unknown dark.

I would wait here another two minutes and then I'd have to take the first of the risks that I must run between now and the rendezvous. He was very good of course but he wasn't an executive in the field and therefore didn't have the training or even the experience: it's a weak point and we think it's dangerous and we're always asking the Bureau to do something about it but you might as well try selling a jockstrap to a eunuch.

The scent of mimosa was on the air, adrift in the starlight from blossom I couldn't see from here, and the sky dripped diamonds, Andromeda and Cygnus and Vega and a million more, their reflection ablaze in the gilded cupola where she was, we'll miss a lot of things, oh a lot of things, if we're not careful.

Sweating like a pig and cursing him now for not coming, checking too often — 10.29 10.29.15–10.29.30 — time you learned to count without looking all the time at the dial, risk it anyway and if the whole thing blows up you can say it was his fault, didn't leave me enough time to check him for ticks.

Front-end configuration amorphous, colour dark blue or dark green in this light, coming rather fast but that was normal, Capri, no. Taunus, no, Chrysler 160, the lights dipping over the sandy hollows, driver alone, the dust flying up in his wake — 10.30.15 — give him a minute and then go, running it close, blast his eyes.

He passed the Yasmina and did a square loop and parked in the side-street and walked, short neat steps like a bird's, looking from side to side in case he missed anything, the last time I'd be seeing him for a while or forever if I didn't watch out: and then I found myself admiring the little bastard just for still being on his feet because this time they'd really blown an egg all over him and for the last forty-eight hours he'd been busting a gut to set up an op and he'd done it and we were ninety minutes to the off and I suppose you could say that was something, you could rank him among the elite: the professionals.

Negative.

Distant throb of a truck on the highway south, somewhere a starved dog baying. No other sound but the rats among the leaves, no movement anywhere along the street's narrowing channel.

10.31.15 and still negative.

I got the engine going and the nerves quietened a bit because he was a director, not an executive, and he could have picked up a tag and led him to base without knowing and that would have blown it, the lot. But it was all right and whatever happened now I'd have the comfort of knowing that base had been intact at the moment when the brakes came off.

The lids of the bins banging back and the tumble of empty skins and the bones of birds, steam rising and swirling into the air-conditioning vents, the boys in bow-ties and the trays volplaning on their raised hands, the din of cutlery in the metal sinks.

'Je m'excuse — je suis trompe de porte!'

'Comment?'

'Je cherche le restaurant!'

'Passez par ici m'sieur — allez-y!'

The doors swinging and the trays coming back loaded with the detritus ofMelon glace, Canard a l'orange, the drillers dining late so as to get some drinking done first.

The restaurant full, the lobby empty except for a few staff. Check, double-check. Negative.

'M'sieur?'

'Trente-sept.'

Door-boy, desk clerk, telephonist, a man from Hertz.

I used the main stairs. It was possible that I could now be seen through the glass facade above the entrance but the panels were solar-tinted and it had to be risked and in any case there was no alternative route. I'd gone through the kitchens because they were nearer where I'd left the car, below the third lamp from the group of yuccas where I could see it from my room, and if they were watching the main entrance for me they'd draw blank.