I slipped the gears into neutral again and switched the phone on, because there was nothing else I could do and I knew that. We sometimes play with the idea of goofing off somewhere and not answering the phone, but it's like denying the voice of God and bringing down a whole bloody mountainside of fire and brimstone.

'You can stay here, sir, while you call in. We'll look after you.' The lights were still flashing in the mirror.

'Fair enough.'

His face vanished, and I touched out QU-1 and waited.

'Were you switched off?' a voice came.

'Yes.'

There was a short silence. He was the little shit at the operations switchboard, with enough experience to know that I'd broken the rules but not enough rank to tell me.

'Hold on,' he said.

I waited again.

'Quiller?'

'Yes.'

'We want you to make an immediate rendezvous.'

It sounded like Trench this time: cool, impersonal, the tone a shade touchy because I'd been difficult to contact.

'I can't do that.'

He said carefully: 'This is fully urgent.'

'I'm not on standby, you know that. I've got to meet someone at the airport and I'm already running late.'

'This is from Main Control,' Trench said, and left it at that.

Slight skin reaction: gooseflesh. When you've got your phone switched off and they still tell the police to pick you up and then tell you the instructions are coming direct from Main Control it's not because they can't find where you put the fruit gums.

'Why do they want me,' I asked him, 'particularly?'

'It was Mr Croder who told me to find you.'