There was no moon, but the streets had the stark look of a lunar landscape, with patches of glaring neon and black shadows between where the lamps had gone out. Through the windscreen of the Peugeot I could see the curved roof of a temple, decorated with the great eye of a god outlined in red with a gilded pupil.

Nothing moved in the street; it was more than an hour after curfew. The air pressed down from a hazy sky, its sticky warmth moving through the open windows of the car; it must still be eighty degrees across the city, less than an hour before midnight.

They were waiting in the Russian Zhiguli that was parked nearer the main street, Achar Hemcheay, where it ran diagonally across the centre of the town. The agent I'd followed from the Royal Palace Hotel had got into the front passenger's side of the Zhiguli; the driver had already been there behind the wheel.

The Minister of Defence had got into the black Chevrolet at the comer, nearer the hotel, less than a minute ago. His driver had started the engine and I saw the lights come on. The agent's driver in the Zhiguli had had decent enough training: he'd stationed it between two other cars and facing away from the Chevrolet, relying on the mirror to keep it in view; there was quite enough room available for a U-turn.

I was out here, really, just to keep my hand in after six weeks' absence from the field; there'd been an obvious surveillance set-up in progress so I thought I'd move into it and practise the routine. I knew now what that man Flockhart had sent me into Cambodia to do, but he must be clean out of his mind. I would have signalled him from the hotel after I'd left Gabrielle, and told him to pull me out of the field, but I wanted to go through with this little exercise now it had started.