'It might have been the sandstorm,' said Fyson. 'It can cover things in minutes, then uncover them again.'

'Loman can tell me that part of the thing.' I didn't want to drain the last of his strength before I'd put the only few questions that were important. 'Listen, did you get an actual sight of the opposition?'

'Nothing recognizable.' He was trying to pour himself another drink and I did it for him and he bit on to it and looked better and said: 'There was always that bloody gun, you see — I kept catching sunlight on it and once I just walked Into range and he chipped some brickwork away. It slows you up, doesn't it?'

'D'you know if — '

Then the phone rang.

It was right next to him and after a kind of jerk he just slid off the chair and the glass smashed before I could catch it and try to prop him up and answer the damned thing at the same time, it was very awkward.

At 19.15 I checked out of the Hotel Africa and went across where the Chrysler was parked. It had been Loman on the telephone. 'I have just talked to London and we have another directive urging us to hurry.'

'The opposition's making progress?'

'That is the inference.'

'Then we'll hurry.'

Now that I'd let him sell me the mission I wanted to bring off and that sand-covered wreck out there had suddenly become personal to me: Tango Victor was mine.

'It is now 18.51 and I've booked you on Tunis Air Flight 16 to Jerba, depart 19.45, and instructed Avis to have a car standing by for you at your ETA, 20.30. I shall take the later fight at 21.15 to Jerba and proceed independently to Kaifra. At Kaifra you are booked in at the Hotel Royal Sahara Room 37, and I shall telephone you as soon as I arrive. My ETA Jerba is 22.00. In this season the Jerba-Kaifra route can be driven in five hours and this will be quicker than trying for air connection to Garaa Tebout, because Tunis Air don't fly there in any case. Do you have any questions?'

'What are you doing about Fyson?'

'He's been withdrawn from the mission, as I told you.'

'But I mean his nerves are shot.'

'I see. Then I'll send a doctor along.'

We hung up.

So at 19.15 I checked out of the Hotel Africa and went across to where the Chrysler was parked and they said later at the hospital that the glass had been the worst trouble because some very small fragments had got stuck in my face and they'd been difficult to find.

There weren't any bones broken but they were worried by various signs of physiological shock that were still hanging about, and the bruises where I'd been flung across the pavement. I didn't remember much, but there'd been no actual retrogressive amnesia: I checked on that right away. I was just walking towards the Chrysler and then the senses went partially dead through overloading: very bright flash, a lot of noise, smell of burnt aromatic nitro compounds and the feel of the pavement sliding around under me.

They'd made a silly mistake, that was all. They wouldn't have risked installing an ignition detonator linkage right outside in the street: they'd had to put something quick onboard and it was probably a rocking activator and a bus had passed close and the slipstream had rocked the Chrysler enough to trigger the thing at the wrong time, three or four seconds too early.

Loman came as soon as I rang him and found me in the casualty room with bowls and bandages and blood everywhere.

'Listen, get me out of here and fix another plane.'

Speech sounded a bit sloppy because the mouth had got cut up by the glass and it had begun puffing.

'Do they want to keep you under observation?'

'Yes, there's the odd bit of glass left in but it'll work itself out, they know that. And for Christ's sake signal Fyson.'

He knew what I meant. There'd been no tags on me since I'd left London — every routine check I'd made had come up negative — but when I'd called on Fyson in his room I'd walked right into a red sector because they'd had him under surveillance and he didn't know and now we'd have to tell him.

'They're established agents,' Loman said

'Of course.'

Because they had a dossier on me. Fyson had blown his cover and thought he'd got clear but they'd tagged him from Sidi Ben Ali to Tunis and put static surveillance on him and when I'd shown up they'd checked their data and said yes this one's for neutralizing. But they'd only had forty-five minutes to find and fix the car and rig the bang and that could be why they'd mucked it.

The nurse came back with another hypodermic and I said not now and left it to Loman, it was his job, and he was signing some kind of form accepting responsibility when I got my flight-bag and took a taxi and double-checked for ticks all the way along the Khaireddine Pacha because we didn't want any trouble down at our base and I had to get there clean.

The taxi seemed to be swerving a bit down the long perspective of the eucalyptuses, either because of the crosswind or because the driver kept looking at me in the mirror and trying to pluck up the courage to ask me what brand of razor I used because he didn't want one, or maybe it was the hangover from the blast-wave upsetting the semi-circular canals: there was still some head-noise.

But I could focus all right and there were no tags and the airport was negative and at 21.15 I was airborne on Flight 917 with Loman's ticket and the girl was asking me what I wanted to drink.

There was a flight on the board at Jerba scheduled in at 22.35 and I knew Loman would be on that one because of the hurry directive from Control: he wouldn't hang around in Tunis with his executive already homed in at base.

They had a Mercedes 220 lined up and it had an air-conditioner but I didn't switch it on: the day's heat still pressed down on the island from a stifling sky but there wouldn't be any encapsulated environment for me in the desert so I let the organism start adapting as we ran through Houmt Souk and took the causeway to Zaizis.

Starlight and the black plumage of date-palms rushing overhead, the screen pocked and silvered by the death of insects and the heat corning on progressively as the road ran south until I had to start breathing consciously to keep awake.

Hit something once, a bump and the lights swinging and thewheel floating and more difficult, quite a job, much more difficult than I'd thought, than it should be, to keep traction and pull her back straight, worried me and we slowed, of course they'd been perfectly right, twenty-four hours' observation, it was just that those fidgety pimps in London wouldn't give us a break.

Through midnight at Remada and slowing again to seventy-five along the sandy track to Bj Djeneiene to avoid the turn-off at the Libyan frontier, the bruises burning now and the eyes trying to sort out the fast-incoming data without losing focus through fatigue: but the mirror was clear and if Loman didn't pick up a tag we'd have a safe base to jump from in the south.

Kaifra 02.50.

Sandy streets buried among dark massed palms, a few naked bulbs at the crossings, the headlights swinging over the humped shapes of Arabs sleeping below white walls, a mosque with a candle burning, the wind dead and the heat thick on the air and the nerves uncertain, a longing for sleep.

Royal Sahara.

Mais qu'est-ce-que vous avez, m'sieu'?

Rien, un petit accident sur la route.

II vous Taut des soins?

Non, c'est fait. Du sommeil, c'est tout.

In Room 37, air-conditioning, wonderfully cool: I turned it off and opened the window and let the heat in, like opening an oven door, get used to it, be worse out there in Longitude 8°3′ by Latitude 30°4′, start adapting and don't bloody well gripe.

Sleep.

Loman dragged me out of dreams of flying glass and Corinne swathed in bandages, it's the strain on the arms she was saying.