He opened the door but not much, just his tense grey eyes in the gap, and I went through the introductions and he let me in and said he was on the line to London so I shut the door behind me and slipped the lock and waited, watching him, an angular man with thinning hair and a straight uncompromising back and expressive hands, using one of them now, cupping the air with his fingers to hold out his explanations until they were ready to accept them, London, Pritchard I suppose, because he was the control for Longshot, or perhaps Croder had taken over and was perched there under the bright lights of the console in the signals room with his metal claw scratching at his knee, the only evidence that he was in a towering rage because there'd be nothing in his voice except the cutting edge of his careful articulation as he skinned this poor bastard alive.

'No, sir. There was no question of that. I just told the support group to wait thirty minutes, and if the executive hadn't reported that the rendezvous was established then they could go in with the utmost caution and find out what had happened.'

Holding his own, not flustered, even with the angel of death at the other end of the line, copybook phraseology, 'rendezvous was established', 'utmost caution', so forth, drive you mad in the ordinary way but he just wanted to show he was still in control, I rather liked him, you give a man like this a jodan-zuki and you wouldn't get feathers out, you'd break your wrist.