'I'm Chandler, and this is Elliott,' one of them said — the shorter one with the trimmed military moustache — and pushed open a swing door and got us into the Customs and Immigration hall. 'We shan't be delayed very long, just a formality.'

They guided me right past the end booth and told me to wait on the cleared side while Elliott spoke to a plainclothes immigration officer and flashed his identity and signed something and came back and joined us.

'Terribly cooperative chaps,' he said briskly, by which I suppose he meant we were sailing through the formalities under the NATO flag.

Just to debrief me on Hubbard?

'Car outside,' Chandler said. He spoke like a very quiet machine gun. 'Shan't be long now.'

'You're wasting your time,' I told him.

They both gave me a half-glance and Chandler coughed discreetly and no one spoke again until we'd got into the black 420 SEL outside and driven to the corner of the east car park and stopped and waited with the engine off but the side-lights still burning.

A cold drizzle blew around the overhead lamps and frosted the bonnet of the car.

'Wasting our time?' Chandler.

'Whatever kind of mess Hubbard left out there in Bombay, you'll have to get someone else to wipe it up.'

They've done that too often — pushed me into one red sector or another with a checkpoint blown apart or a body in the street with dangerous papers on it or a courier line scattered and one of them sitting under a bright light with his brains being picked. Not this time. Not again.

'We've got a few minutes,' Elliott said, and pulled out a mini-Sanyo and slipped a cassette into it and snapped the cover shut. 'Let's just do a little debriefing on that one, shall we?' Smoother than Chandler, not a machine gun at all, more like a soft shoe shuffle, almost apologetic.