'Why?'

Flockhart was ready for it, and said at once: 'You would learn why, as the mission progressed.'

His eyes watched me steadily, their pale blue ice reflecting the red-shaded lamp but gaining none of its warmth. It didn't worry me too much that he wouldn't answer my question: at the outset of any mission we are told only as much as we need to be told, on the sound principle that the less we know of the background the less we can give away if the opposition should ever bring us down and throw us into the cell and get out the bamboo shoots and the shocking-coil and the rest of the toys.

'When you say you can guarantee me a mission,' I told Flockhart, 'there would have to be a director in the field. At least that.'

He gave a nod. 'Pringle.'

The man he'd been trying to sell me. Pringle is young, yes, but he has style. Which is something you'd understand, I rather think.

I dropped my own sliver of peel into the cup and watched it floating, saw one of his ice-blue eyes, Flockhart's, reflected there on the dark surface.

Corbyn laughed, behind me.

When I felt ready I said, 'When do you want my decision?'

I looked up as I said it, to see if I could catch any reaction in Lockhart's eyes: I wanted to find out how much it meant to him to know that I was actually considering the mission, how much he needed me, how indispensable I was, whether I could dictate arms. But of course his eyes didn't show anything.

Except the anger.

'I want your decision now,' he said evenly.

I didn't say anything right away, partly because I wasn't sure of the answer, not at all sure, with a man like this as my potential control.

But I'd placed it at last, the vibration I'd been picking up since we'd started talking down here, the faintest whisper of something in the tone of his voice, in his breathing, the way he sat, his chin tucked in by the smallest degree and the head down;the attitude — on a minuscule scale — of a bull preparing to charge.