'Something major?'

'We wouldn't send Ferris out to wash the dishes.' Perhaps he thought it sounded discourteous, so he said, 'We reserve people like Ferris for people like you.'

'Fane?'

A flash of surprise came into the stare. Fane had betrayed me once, but I'd had the edge and I'd survived, and he was no longer a danger: you're perfectly safe with someone you know you can't trust.

'Fane is down with the flu,' Hyde said.

'Pepperidge?'

'Is available.'

I looked at Tilson. 'Is he in London?'

'Yes.'

'Then I'll take him, if he's willing. He's fluent in Chinese and the dialects.'

'Very well.'

'Do we need to get him here tonight?'

'No. We needed you here because you are the key. If you so choose.'

'If we can't get Pepperidge, who else is available?'

'No one,' Tilson said from across the desk, 'at your level.'

Hyde: 'If necessary, Mr Croder would direct you in the field.'

Croder. He was Chief of Signals. I was beginning to feel the size of this thing.

One of the phones rang and Tilson took it and said all right and rang off and looked up at Hyde. 'They're on their way over there now.'

Hyde angled his watch to the light. 'Very well.' He turned to me again. 'Have you any further conditions?'

Silence in the room.

We can always refuse a mission. It can be in a locale too far away for our liking, or too hot, too cold, too hostile, too dangerous. Or we can simply be too tired, too exhausted after the last time out; or we can feel the tug of intuition not to take it, this one, not to risk it. We grow old, in this trade, before our time; we grow canny, cunning, cynical, steeped in subterfuge, versed in stealth.

We grow obstinate, difficult; we grow intractable. And we grow afraid.