He still wouldn't answer because he hadn't been given enough time to work out the initial phase of the operation, but that was his problem and I wanted to know the score so I said:

'How bad is it?'

He turned on me fussily.

'There's no need to panic.'

'Just let me in, Loman.'

I knew I shouldn't rush the poor little bastard but it was the hangover from the Tokyo-London bounce and maybe the wind here, disturbing me. That was for Loman too: it's part of a director's job to kick out any kinks in his executive's psyche and set him running straight when the whistle blows.

'You've seen the reconnaissance photographs?'

'Yes,' I said.

'We want you to go and inspect that aircraft. You knew this, of course.' He began haltingly, but already I could see he'd decided to shoot me the whole thing before he'd got it set up in his own mind, because yes, I was panicking, and hehad to dosomething about it. 'It's a medium cargo machine and its call-sign in the phonetic alphabet code is Tango Victor. After a routine take-off in the UK one of the Customs and Excise officials noticed what appeared to be a false signature on the freight declaration form. An.enquiry was made and subsequently the Special Branch was called in. By this time Tango Victor was reported missing.'

Wind gusted across the atrium and the green sword-blades quivered. I watched Loman thinking. He thought with his feet, placing them neatly together, turning and taking short steps as he square-searched the data and decided how much to tell me, how much to leave out: because the executive in the field has to go in with his nerves tuned like a cat's and his wits light and if he's been overloaded with too much info on the brink of the mission he's going to sprain his brain when he needs it most.

'The findings deriving from the Special Branch enquiry were significant enough to persuade the Minister that the RAF should attempt to locate the aeroplane, put a fix on it and take photographs. This, as you know, was accomplished.' He talked like a bloody schoolmistress.

'How did they know where to look?'

He spread out the map on the dais.

'Its course was known, and it was last heard of in an area where a violent sandstorm had been reported. The RAF made their initial reconnaissance sortie on the assumption that Tango Victor had been forced down by it. This was proved to be correct.'

Carte Internationale du MondeSheet NH-32-Hassi Messaoud Area — Scale 1/1.000.000 — Longitude 6-12, Latitude 28-32-Elevations, dunes, rock outcrops, reefs, wells, oases, camel-tracks, so forth.

'Is this the sandstorm area?'

'Yes. The cross is the site of the wreck.'

South in the Great Eastern Erg. Nearest camel-track almost thirty miles away, Tunisian frontier ninety miles, nothing else but sand, not an oasis, not even a well, not even a palm-tree. 'No wonder they didn't survive.'

'The conditions were unpropitious, highly.' His manicured finger whispered across the map. 'This oasis, Sidi Ben Ali, is the nearest point of habitation in Algeria itself. Control sent O'Brien there to assess the local situation and report. He was briefed to find out whether. any other party knew where Tango Victor had come down, and if so, who that party was and whether it had any intention of going out to examine the wreck. Unfortunately London received no report.'

He turned away as he said that. Not that he had any scruples: his tone was petulant. It had been remiss of O'Brien to fail in this most elementary of tasks and there was no excuse for clumsiness.

'Was he actually found?'

We always hope that when it comes it'll be short and sweet, a bullet in the brain or something.

'His incinerated remains were found on a rubbish tip. Some Arab boys had heard a disturbance and told the police. Despite the condition of the body there was evidence that O'Brien had been subjected to interrogation — ' he turned to me quickly — 'but the most exhaustive checks throughout the network have established that this was ineffective. All signal matrices are intact and codes, access facilities, safe-houses and personnel-monitoring units reveal no indication of surveillance, blowing or penetration. This aspect, at least, is satisfactory.'

I went on looking at the map.

There were six of us at the Bureau with the suffix 9 to our code name: Reliable under Torture. Now there were only five. That's not many. It's not many because there's only one way of earning a 9 and nobody ever sets out to get it, I mean it's not a basket of fruit or a marble clock, and they don't add it to your dossier posthumously because the whole record goes into the shredder once you've bought it. All the 9 means is that you've got yourself in a jam at some time and been grilled and got out again without blowing your cover or the mission or the whole network and with enough of you left in one piece to go on working. It also means that those bastards in London are going to pick you for the jobs where there's a high risk of the opposition treading all over your face when they want to know the time, and that sort of selection makes for a brisk mortality rate and that's why there aren't many of us. Five.

'Am I taking over from O'Brien?'

We often have to do it but we don't like it. We like to make our own mess of things, not clear up someone else's.

'No. They sent Fyson in next. He blew his cover.'

'Oh for Christ's sake!'

'Of course I realize — '

'You call this a mission? What kind of — '

'I wasn't directing it when these — '

'That's bloody obvious.'

'Thank you.'

Then we both shut up while he worked out an argument good enough to keep me in the act and I tried to decide how much it was worth shoving my head right down the barrel just because I'd accepted the mission.

He wiped the sweat off his face with a spotless linen handkerchief, not looking at me, and when I knew I couldn't do anything else about it I asked him

'Did either of them get any info on the opposition before they folded up?'

'Very little.' He was trying to keep the relief out of his voice: if I ducked this one he'd have to call someone else in and there wasn't enough time. 'But at least we know that thereis another party interested in Tango Victor and that they'd prefer we didn't go near it.'

'Did Fyson see any sign of their trying to reach the wreck overland?'

'You can ask him yourself. He's here in the hotel, at your disposal.'

'Is he still in the operation?'

Slight pause.

'No.'

I looked at him but he was gazing at the map.

'Why not?'

'You prefer working alone. Don't you?'

The bastard was lying but I let it go. When you're working alone you can still have a dozen people manning the base or the radio or the access-lines and there was some other reason why Fyson wouldn't be doing it and Loman wasn't going to tell me and I wasn't going to ask him again.

I didn't like it, anything about it, the whole thing stank, the activity killed off right in phase I and a cover blown without any real info coming in and the situation so desperate now that they'd had to call in a man like Loman to try holding the roof up while I ferreted around in the dark.

'You know something, Loman?' He looked up from the map. 'I think you've lost me.'

He didn't say anything.

I knew half a dozen first-line executives who'd turn this thing down flat — Simmons, Cockley, Foster, people like that — because you don't spend three years in training and the rest of your time working your way through the elementary intelligence-assessment fields with a Curtain embassy military attache cover to the major assignments at M-Classified level and then risk all your experience, all yourcapability, all your professional expertise to a chancy job in the dark that someone else has mucked up for you on his way in.