Emergency klaxons, from the direction of Istres. They were closer than they sounded, because of the wind. I knelt in the mud beside him, watching his eyes and waiting; but their dull glaze remained. One leg was badly twisted and he was holding his head awkwardly and it occurred to me that he'd broken his neck. The blood was slowly receding from his face, leaving it translucent white, like the flesh of coconut Klaxons.

'Zarkovic,' I said. 'Can you talk?'

Intelligence came into the narrowed brown eyes and they watched me without bunking.

'I was sent to meet you,' I said, 'from London.'

He watched me, a spasm passing across his face. He didn't take his eyes off mine. Then his thin mouth moved.

'What?' I asked him. It had sounded like 'coder', His eyes squeezed shut and I waited.

A flash of light sparked from the reeds on the horizon, then another. They would be the emergency vehicles along the road beyond the marshland, the sun striking reflections from then- windscreens.

'Listen,' I said against the cuffing of the wind, 'I'm going to-'

'Cobra.'

'What?'

I watched his lips.

'Cobra.'

Another spasm came and I waited but it wasn't any good because the eyes were losing their intelligence: they were staring at me but I wasn't there any more. Nothing was there.

The klaxons sounded urgently as the wind shifted and I tugged at the zip of his flying-suit and found his wallet and felt for other things like that, flat things, any kind of papers, documents. Nothing. Only the wallet I took it and pulled the zip shut and got to my feet and began running. They were coming from the south and would have to leave their vehicles on the road and bring their equipment here on foot across the soggy ground. The Lancia was standing beyond the fringe of reeds north-west of here and I could reach it in ten minutes if I tried and I was going to try. In any case they wouldn't take any interest in me till they'd examined the body, so I had plenty of time.