'Well, what shall we talk about?'

I said I wanted to know who my director would be if I took job on.

'It depends who can get there first.'

'Where?'

' Tunis.'

'Who's been sent for?

'I’m not really — '

'You're a liar — '

'Now why should I want to — '

'Oh for Christ's sake stopponcing me about, will you?'

He sighed gently. 'They asked for Loman.'

'As my director in the field?'

'That's right.'

He looked at his pink shiny nails.

I got up and walked about and thought of saying no, I'm working with that bastard, but he was waiting for me to do that and I didn't want to give him the pleasure of being right.

'What's the mission, Tilson?'

Tm not sure I — '

'Oh come on, don't waste my time.'

He looked up amiably and said: 'Are you in a hurry?'

I turned away and did some more walking and thought of saying no, I'm not in a hurry, but he'd got me and we both knewit and I was fed-up because they'd hijacked me into a new mission the fastest way possible: by holding back and keeping off and letting me get interested without anyone coming to interfere.

Yes I was in a hurry.

We can refuse a mission. We can refuse to work at the kind of thing that's not our speciality or the kind of thing that we've proved in the past to be beyond our particular talents. We can say no, this one sounds too political or complex or dull or dirty or dangerous and we can say we don't like the director or we don't like Bangkok or Warsaw or Tunis. We can say we've got a cold or we can just tell them to go and find someone else without even giving a reason. It works all right because if a shadow executive lets himself be forced into an assignment he's a dead duck and they know that and it doesn't suit their book.

But if we refuse a mission it means we have to hang around and wait for another one to come up and it gets on the nerves, the waiting. So in the end we'll take almost anything if it looks as though there's a break-even chance of getting out alive. Today I wasn't interested in that because the chances are always as good as you want to make them. They knew what I was interested in today.

The ash-grey smudge on the photograph.

It was just a medium twin-prop short-haul commercial transport and all it had done was to come down in the desert but the nearest anyone had got to it was sixty-five thousand feet and nobody else had dared to go any closer.

So I wanted to.

And they'd known I would.

'What's the timing on this?'

Tilson raked for a folder.

'Immediate.'

'You mean when I'm ready.'

'That's right.' He was opening the folder. 'So long as you're ready immediately.'

'Fill me in, will you?'

He looked up patiently. 'I'm afraid I can't, old horse. All I know is they want you to go and take a look at that thing you saw at the Air Ministry. Loman will spell it all out for you when you reach Tunis.'

'How long have I got for clearance?'

'There's a plane at 13.50 so you'll just have to do everything as quick as you can.'

On my way through the building to Credentials I passed Napier, one of our Admin. types.

'Hallo, Quiller, I thought you were in Tokyo.'

'So did I.'

'We're leaving your cover name as Charles Warnford Gage but there's a change in the cover itself. Excuse me.'

While she answered the phone I checked the papers.

C. W. Gage, geophysical consultant attached to Societe Petrocombine's South 4 drilling-camp in the Tunisian complex. specific contract, exploration and preliminary assay, until October, optionally renewable, previous contracts with platinum-prospecting consortia, UK and Belgium. Returning from month's routine leave.

When she'd got off the phone I asked who'd designed this one.

'Mr Egerton.'

'When?'

'It came through late last night.'

They'd been so bloody sure of me.

'It's a new camp, is it?'

'First assays, yes.'

Egerton had his faults but I'd take any cover he worked for me. This one was very smooth because a geophysical consultant attached to a prospecting company hoping to strike oil was going to keep his mouth shut: it was the perfect excuse not to talk and that was fine because I didn't know anything about survey work.

In Firearms they wanted me to try out a new club-snout rapid loader they'd just had in from Italy and I told them where to put it.

'Take one of these compacts, then. Slung holster.'

'How long have you been here?'

'Me? Three weeks.'

'Look, there's my signature, so just putWeapons drawn none.’

'Ohyou'rethe one.'

Codes and Ciphers gave me a third-series seven-digit duplication set-up with normal contractions, transferred numerals no blanks. The alert phrase was 'wherever possible.'

'Christ, don't they know that one by now?'

'It's never been blown.'

'There's a first time for everything.'

Accounts had passed their stuff on to Travel and I picked up the Caledonian air ticket, two hundred dinars, travellers' cheques and an American Express card. The existing will and testament to stand as it was, no new codicil.

Then I went back to Field Briefing but Tilson said nothing fresh had come in.

'Has Loman arrived in Tunis yet?

'There's been no signal. '

'Where's he coming from?'

'Nobody said.'

Tilson wouldn't necessarily tell me. He'd tell me precisely what Admin. wanted me to know and nothing more. Sometimes we bitch about this but it's based on logic because if an executive goes out on a mission with his head stuffed full of background info that doesn't directly concern him it'll take his mind off the job in hand and that can be dangerous. Last year Webster was found mixed up with the propellers of a Greek coaster in Trieste because he'd got himself involved in the political aspect of a perfectly straightforward penetration job and blew his cover by sending signals when he should have been concentrating on a fast in-and-out documentation snatch.

If you work for the Bureau you've gotto work to the rules and they're strict. The Bureau doesn't officially exist. If it existed it couldn't do the things it's been designed to do: things that could never be countenanced even at Cabinet level. So if you get into a jam in the course of a mission you can count on London to help you but only up to a point: the point where theysee there's a risk of exposing the Bureau, of letting it be seen to exist. Then they'll cut you off and you'll know it because the set's gone dead or the contact doesn't show up and then God help you because London never will.

Up to that point they'll look after you and one of the ways they do it is by keeping you short of information that you don't really need at the time.

'What made them pick Loman for this one?'

'No idea.'

Loman was a bastard but he was third in the ranks of the really high-echelon directors simply because he was brilliant at his job. The ash-grey smudge on that photograph must be hellishly important for them to send a man like Loman in.

'Did he ask for me?'

'Everything's been so quick,' Tilson said apologetically. 'No-one's had time to tell me anything.'

So I asked the only kind of questions he'd be able to do anything with.

'What contacts in Tunis?'

'None. There'll be an Avis car waiting for you at the airport, dark blue Chrysler 180.'

'Rendezvous?'

'Hotel Africa,Les Caravaniers Bar on the 5th floor, 18.00 today. No code, just recognition.'

'What do I do if he's not there?

'Rdv at hourly intervals till twenty-four hundred and then send us a signal. Code name for the mission isTango.'

'Noted.' I belted my mack. 'Got any transport?'

'Car and driver standing by for you below.'

I turned away and an odd thing happened.