"I've been out of action for three months and I'm fed up with refresher training and Sinclair's dead and if you bastards can't find me something to do I'm going to lose my grip. Put it that; way."
"Now that sounds much more like my old friend. So you'd better finish clearance while there's time." He produced more papers and a wad of currency. "You heard about the death of Jiang Wenyuan, the Premier of the People's Republic of China, two days ago. The UK is sending the Secretary of State to represent Her Majesty at the funeral, and you'll be joining his two official bodyguards."
"That's my cover?"
"Cover and access." He gave me the papers and I looked at them in the half-light. Detective-Sergeant William Charles Gage of New Scotland Yard, seconded to the Foreign Office on temporary overseas duties. The wad of notes was marked 1,000 yuan and die-stamped by Lloyd's Bank. And now my hands were growing cold and a lightness was coming into my head because I'd been too groggy to realise how close I was to the new mission, after three months of debriefing and recuperating and trying to relax with the saunas and the girls and the long bracing tramps across the Downs at Brighton while the thought hovered in the back of the mind, the same thought we all have, in between missions — the thought that perhaps we ought to get out now before it's too late, before the luck runs out and we're cast up in a Gulag labour camp or lashed blindfold against a post in Beirut or by the grace of unknown gods spreadeagled against the mountainside with a ripped parachute for a shroud and one last intimate friend plucking strength from us with his bone-white beak.
Suddenly, this time, it was too late to get out: they were already pitching me headlong into the dark and I was letting them do it, because who the hell, after all, wants to die in a pensioner's home with the veined hand limp on the tartan rug and a torn bingo ticket for an epitaph?
But Lord, I was afraid.
"I see we're on time," Tilson said, and we got out.
Five men were standing in a group below the rotors of the RAF helicopter and one came a few paces to meet us, and I recognised Croder.
"Has he been briefed?" he asked Tilson softly.
That was typical of the man. He'd spoken as if I weren't there. Croder can get me to hate him instantly, the moment we make contact.
"No, sir."
"Cleared?"
"Yes."
Croder turned to me, standing hunched in his dark blazer with his thin head down and his eyes lifted to watch me in the lamplight. "What have you decided?"
"I want the mission."
"With me as your Control?"
"No."
His thin mouth tightened; or perhaps I imagined it; Croder isn't a man to give anything away, anything at all.
"You can't have it both ways," he said, and glanced down at his watch. "And I can't give you very long." His dark expressionless eyes were raised again to watch me.
I wanted to turn and walk away from him; I think I tried. I sensed Tilson near me, and heard the four men talking together below the slanting rotor of the machine. I said:
"Give me someone else."
They wanted me for this mission, or they wouldn't have dragged me out of hospital with the shock still in my nerves and the drugs still clouding my brain. So it would have to be on my terms.
"I am already in control of this one," Croder said, his tight mouth nibbling at the words like a rat. "And I am inviting you to join me as the executive in the field. I believe you're the most appropriate man for the job, and so do my advisers."
"I'm not fit," I said. I was going to make him ask.
"There's no immediate action foreseen, in Pekin. And you can rest on the flight out."
"The notice is too short." I was going to make him ask me outright.
"You don't like delays. They don't suit your temperament."
"But this is too rushed. I've had no London briefing."
Then he asked me. "Why won't you accept me as your Control?"
"Because of Moscow."
His hooded lids closed for an instant as he fought for patience. I knew how much patience he was having to use; he was extremely high in the London echelon, a controller who could pick his missions and his executives and his directors in the field without any competition, and any executive would work with him simply for the prestige. He wasn't used to refusal.
"You did well," he said, "in Moscow."
"I broke the rules."
With impatience coming into his tone for the first time he said, "You showed compassion for Schrenk as a fellow executive and as a result he nearly killed you. I would assume you've learned from it." He looked at his watch again. "I would also assume you'd want to do something about the people who wiped out Sinclair last night. It's the first time the opposition has broken right into our field and made a killing — tried, indeed, to do it twice. I'd expect someone of your calibre to — shall I say — react." He inclined his head slightly. "However, there's no more time left, and I must accept the fact that you can no longer be counted on."
The bastard was working on my weakest point: my professional vanity. He knew that if I turned this mission down I'd have to face myself afterwards.
As he turned away I said: "Has anyone else been cleared?"
"Of course. We're pulling Fox out of Hong Kong. He'll be in Pekin by noon tomorrow, their time."
"Fox? You can't be serious."
"Unfortunately he's the only reserve."
He was lying, of course. Fox had done only five missions and he'd run two of them into the ground. But I believed him, because I had to, because I wanted to. I'd tried everything else.
"Croder."
"Well?"
"Who would you give me, to direct me in the field?"
"Ferris. I wouldn't give you anyone less." He was making it difficult.
"Where's Ferris now?"
"In Tokyo, waiting for a signal."
"Would he be directing Fox?"
Croder was silent for a moment, facing me with his shoulders hunched and his hooded eyes on me; then suddenly he brought his guard down and I heard despair in his voice. "I don't think it would matter who directed Fox, would it?" With more urgency he said, "This is the first time we'll be operating in mainland China, liaising with the Chinese, and we were rather hoping we could count on you to go in and break new ground for us."
The last of my own defences came down, as he knew they must. He was offering me a top controller, a top director in the field and virgin ground to break open for the Bureau. And he was showing me his despair. I had the wry thought that to go on refusing would amount to bad manners.
"If I took this on, I couldn't guarantee not to break any rules, if I had to."
"I realise that. I'm prepared to take the risk."
My head seemed suddenly clear.
"All right," I said.
"You accept the mission?"
"Yes. With you as my Control."
He turned quickly. "Mr Toms, you can start up as soon as you like. Tilson, get the bag from the car, will you?"
"What about briefing?" I asked him.
He came to stand close. "You'll be briefed in the field. At this end we know nothing except that Sinclair was bringing us information of some kind — information so vital that he couldn't entrust it to signals or a courier; and so vital that he had to be silenced."
"Is there a specific objective, at this stage?"
He stood closer still as the helicopter's rotor began chopping rhythmically at the air. "We want you to find out what Sinclair was trying to tell us. That's a high-risk objective, I know."
Tilson was hurrying past us, giving my bag to the flight lieutenant to stow in the freight bay. The girl was turning the car and moving it clear of the downwash area.