Someone else came out of the signals room and I heard a lot of beeping going on, more than usual at this time of night.

Holmes turned his head. 'How much sleep have you had?'

'Few hours.'

'Look in on me later if you want to. I've got to put a fire out in here.'

He went into Signals and I kept on going. Not strictly a fire: someone had come unstuck in the field, Beirut, Sri Lanka, Bogota, you name it, and he was lighting up his mission board for help.

Tilson was alone in Hyde's office, talking on one of the phones; by the look of him they'd dragged him out of bed too. I felt the adrenaline flushing the skin because I hadn't seen this kind of panic at the Bureau for months, but I was not going out again after only ten days, and they couldn't insist. Tilson nodded for me to have a chair but I stayed on my feet and went across to the window and looked at the street three stories below, deserted in the lamplight.

'I don't know,' Tilson said on the phone, 'it's only just come up. Quiller's here now, you should know; better tell Mr Shepley.'

I looked up at the reflection of Tilson's bland lopsided face in the window. In this place Shepley was another name for God.

'Do you want him briefed and cleared first, or is he to go along to the FO right away?'

I didn't really mind what the answer was, since I was going back to bed in any case. I was technically at rest, which meant I'd got another twenty-one days before they could sign me up again and send me out, and I was going to spend at least a week at Norfolk wallowing in the luxury of sauna baths and Swedish massage and meditation to bring the nerves down to their normal pitch, plus a bit of refresher training with Kimura-sensei in the dojo and some close combat work to get the reflexes back in tune.