'What about his wife?' I asked Tinsley.

'We've sent someone to meet your flight in Rome and take over the escort. A woman, name of Baker, October parole. How's Corinne doing?'

'All right. Look,' I said, 'I've told her he didn't mess anything up. If he has, don't let anyone tell her.'

'I am not,' Tinsley said evenly, 'a total idiot. And how are you feeling?'

'I'm used to it, and I'm not his wife.' The floor of the deck shuddered slightly as the undercarriage went down and locked in.

'How are you feeling in general?'

This time I didn't let him get away with it. 'I've no information for you if you've none for me.'

'Over a telephone?'

With Tinsley you can't win. 'I'm feeling normal,' I told him, 'whatever that means.' I waited for another question, one that might give me a clue. I was picking up some nasty vibrations in the background and they were reaching the nerves, because they'd been left exposed by the Hubbard thing: I'd known him for five years and worked with him twice and when someone gets blown apart there's always the thought in our minds: it could have been me.

'The two people,' Tinsley said, 'who are going to meet you at Tegel Airport are rather high in the echelon, and they'll handle you extremely well. Total reliance. Is that understood?'

'Roger.' I knew one thing now: Hubbard couldn't have left a clear field, and if high-echelon people were moving in to debrief me I didn't want to think what kind of mess he'd made out there. I also knew another thing: they weren't going to send me back there to clear it up. When I got back to my seat I found Corinne staring up at me with her eyes haunted. 'What went wrong?' she asked me.

'Nothing went wrong.' She was shivering, and I rubbed her hands. 'They want me to switch flights, that's all.'