I could tell the difference, now, between excitement and fear.

I was afraid. But there burned the flame, bright and beckoning. There are various forms, as I'm sure you know, of madness.

But there was still a chance. Conditions, Hyde had said.

'You would be my control, at the board?'

'Yes.' His bright stare rested on me.

'No support in the field unless I ask for it.'

'We can do that.'

'In terms of my being expendable-' I said, and stopped right there. I'd tried this once with Shepley and he'd refused. It's something you don't have to sign your name to, but it's implicit in your general terms of service: if you're out there in a red sector and you're blown and there's nothing you can do, London will try to get you out, but if it hasn't got the manpower or the firepower or it can't raise support or send specialists in or if there's a risk to the Bureau, to the mission, then they'll leave you there, crouched against a wall or sprawled on a rooftop right in the line of fire or trapped in a building with every door covered, wherever you are they will leave you there, and all you owe them, if there's time to pay, is to pop the capsule and protect the Sacred Bull, the Bureau, and go in silence and in peace. In terms of our being expendable, there is nothing we can ask. So I told Hyde, 'Ignore that.'

'Ignored.'

Conditions.

'I pick my own DIF.'

'There aren't very many,' he said, 'available.'

'Ferris?'

'We sent him out to Tehran," Hyde said, 'straight from your debriefing on Barracuda.'