He'd probably picked up some ticks in London because the Liaison 9 people can hardly avoid it: their routine travel pattern takes them from one intelligence base to the next and they're fair game, and when they board an aircraft for anywhere abroad they're liable to be overtaken by signals and find someone on the peep for them wherever they land. But he'd obviously flushed them, and I could believe he was clever at it because people like Steadman dislike human contact.

'It's for tomorrow morning,' he said.

'They can't do that.'

'I think they can, old boy.'

There was something wrong and I didn't like it because there just wasn't enough time to set me up overnight: they had to brief me and push me through Clearance and drop me into the target zone and set me running with everything I needed — communications, access channels, escape lines, so forth. And there wasn't enough time for that: I couldn't even make London before midnight unless there were a flight with a delay on it Then I saw I was missing the obvious, too bloody impatient to think straight. This was local.

'This chap's going into Istres,' he said, Local.

'You know where that is?' he asked me.

'Bouches du Rhone.'

'Yes. There's an airfield there. Have you got a Michelin 84 in your car?'

'I've got the whole set.'

'Well I never, they don't do that at Hertz.'

We stood for a minute watching the rollers breaking white across the stones, the spindrift catching the light of the tall Lamp-standards.

'His name is Milos Zarkovic, and he-'

'Name, or cover name?'

'What? I don't know. I'm just repeating what they told me on the phone, so please try not to interrupt, or I might forget something.' He gave a little smile with his chin tucked in. I'm only joking, of course. This chap is using a Pulmeister 101 single seat interceptor, which is apparently the longest-range machine he can pinch without anybody noticing too much.'