'I can't help that,' Macklin was saying on the phone, 'the whole unit has to get airborne at the same time. Do without the navigator if you have to, and find a pilot who knows his maps.'

It never occurred to me that it was a bit odd giving me a briefing officer like Macklin to spell out this little job I was going to do for Egerton, strictly a gumshoe number. Maybe he was just filling in for someone, as I was.

Nora Millicent Tewson, nee Harmer, now legally designated widow, still in Hong Kong, now resident. Present address 'Listen,' I said, 'I can read the rest of this stuff on the plane.'

'What plane?'

'That's what I mean, there could be an early flight.'

His glass eye looked at me dully, slightly off-centre. I remembered it was the left one you had to look at.

'What's the rush?'

'I can't stand this interminable bloody rain.'

He gave a sudden lopsided laugh and the scar went pink, 'Can't ever wait, can you — '

'Listen, I've been out for two months — '

'Shagging yourself to a standstill — '

'Oh balls, listen, fill me in, will you, give me the main outline.'

He flipped a switch and said: 'How soon can you put a man in Hong Kong?'

They said they'd call him back.

He looked at me again. 'We just want to know a bit more about what happened to Tewson. On the face of it everything seems to be quite okay: he and his wife were on a package tour holiday, the third time they'd been to Hong Kong in three years, and he went in for sport fishing. It's shark water and that kind of accident sometimes happens if they don't lash themselves to the boat. All the same, we've had a request to check on it and make quite sure it was an accident.'

I didn't ask who'd requested it. After a few years at the Bureau you learned the language, and in Field Briefing their job is to tell you everything you ought to know and if they seem to be missing a few things out you don't ask questions because it'd be a waste Of time. The mission controllers work on the principle that if you know too much it'll get in your way. Some of the crudest operations, like busting an opposition cell or getting a man across a frontier, can carry the most complex political significance: you can be quietly picking the lock of a dispatch case in an embassy in Zagreb without the slightest knowledge that the imminent East-West summit depends on whether you get it open or not; and the people who structure policy feel that if you realized your responsibility you'd probably break the hairpin.

We don't argue. At times this sort of built-in reticence can be a bloody nuisance but in the long run they're probably right.

'What did Tewson do?'

'Isn't it in the file?' Macklin asked.

'No.' I'd read that far.

He gave a shrug, spreading his hands. So there it was again, and I shut up.

'Mrs Tewson is under — ' Then a buzzer went and he opened the circuit. 'Yes?'

'Travel.'

'Right.'

'Depart Heathrow 04.10 by British Airways, arrive Rome 06.35. Depart Rome 08.22 by British Airways, arrive Bangkok 05.27 following day. Depart Bangkok 06.15 by China Airlines, arrive Hong Kong 10.18 London time, 18.18 local time.'

Macklin said all right and cut the switch and I looked at my watch. It wouldn't exactly be cutting it fine but I didn't have to stroll.

'Can I do it that way?'

'If you can get cleared in time.'

I spun the file around so it faced his way and he opened it and started flipping through the stuff but I could see he wasn't having to read any of it and I noted this.

'Mrs Tewson is still very cut up, started drinking now and then — '

'Has our lot talked to her?'

'No. But we've had her under surveillance, just routine — name of our man is Flower. Specific — '

'Who?'

'Flower. Specific instructions: share the surveillance, advise and control Flower. Report at discretion, treat as highest priority, preserve all cover, utmost care in approaching Hong Kong Police Department or Special Branch: certain officers suspected of links with Communist China. You can use — '

'Are they satisfied it was an accident?'

'The enquiries are closed. Coroner's verdict misadventure.'

'Any valid suspicions of foul play?'

'None whatsoever.'

Of course I could have read all this for myself on the plane but he knew what I wanted: the bare bones of the thing so that I could put any relevant questions on the spot. You can't get cleared satisfactorily until you know what you're going into.

He still wasn't having to read anything, just the odd heading to jog his memory: he knew this material pretty thoroughly and I thought again about that. An executive of Macklin's status and experience shouldn't be handling a minor operation like this one, wouldn't have enough time to give to it. The top briefing officers at the Bureau don't work regular hours; they won't even show up unless there's a big mission breaking, but once they show up they won't go home again till the whole show's ready to run. To look at him, I would have said Macklin had been working twenty-four hours at a stretch and he could have gone home and left a second-stringer to brief me on this squib-sized assignment. He hadn't.

With Egerton it was different: he was a top controller but would handle anything that came along, up to half a dozen operations unless there was something really critical on the board.

'You can use a safe-house,' Macklin said, 'if you need one.'

I didn't ask him where. It would be in the material.

'There's a local contact?'

'At the safe-house.'

'What's his rating?'

'Total reliability but not well informed. He's all right on topography, of course — he's been there fifteen years.'

'Can I have something again, Macklin? Something in specific instructions.'

He went back to page two, the paper making a soft scuffing tattoo until he pressed his hand against the desk.

'Report at discretion, treat as highest priority, preserve all cover,' but his eyes weren't moving quite as fast as he was meant to be reading. 'Utmost care in approaching — '

'Fine, that's what I thought you said.'

What the bloody hell did they mean, highest priority?

'Signals through the Admiralty, and you'd better pick up a cypher.'

'Fair enough.'

It was no good asking him. And no good asking Egerton — who'd probably gone home by this time, past midnight.

Macklin was a top briefer and shouldn't be handling this one and they'd used the very circumspect phrase 'highest priority' for a distinctly low-key operation but there was a plane for me, take off in four hours from now, get out of London and head for Hong Kong and stand by for Egerton's signal, the real one that'd trigger the mission he'd got lined up for me, so don't start asking silly questions or they'd say we thought you were keen on going, well you don't have to, be doing it on my own doorstep.

'Fair enough,' I said again and got up.

'You'll be briefed on Mandarin when you get out there.'

'That's the big one?'

'Yes.'

'Who's going to be my director in the field?'

'We don't know.'

'Oh, come on, Macklin — '

'Really,' he said. 'We'll probably fly someone in from Pekin.'

Oh, will you, I thought. There was only one place in Pekin where they could get me a director and that was the Embassy, so they must have a man in place, narrowed it down a bit, I could even find out for myself if I got my phone-numbers right. It was very important and normally it's one of the first things you' re told, Because you can refuse any given director if you don't feel you can work with him: your life's usually involved and you can get someone like Loman, brilliant but desperate for personal kudos, talk you into a suicide bid if it'll get him a medal, it wasn't his fault I'd come out of Tunis alive; or someone like Thornton, totally dependable, pull you out of the gates of hell if he can get there in time, but short on Rusk-think patterns and mission sense and therefore dangerous; you can refuse anyone they want to give you and you don't even have to say why. Otherwise I suppose the insurance company would never stand for it.