I could hear Tilson's voice from the receiver, so they were talking about Styles, just in from Ankara, a sticky de-briefing session because we all knew that Styles was in it for the money and one fine day the Rusks or the Turks or the Arabs were going to make him an offer he couldn't refuse and he'd blow the whole network if they didn't watch out 'Not in my opinion.'

Or he'd be found floating.

'I can't see him at the moment, I'm sorry.'

He put the phone down and looked at the stuff in the folder again and sat back and said: 'There's nothing concrete yet.' He expected me to say something so I didn't. 'Things are a little confused over there.'

'Over — '

'In Pekin.' He folded his thin raw hands, studying the scars of the winter's chilblains for a moment. 'Have you been briefed on China?'

I got off the Louis Quinze chair and he looked up in surprise and I said: 'I haven't had a mission for two months and they put me on a ten-day call and brought me in after six days and nobody's told me a bloody thing except that Tilson says you're my Control.'

He gave me a bleak smile.

'I know how you feel? He didn't.

'Look,' I said, 'have you got a mission for me?'

'Oh yes.'

I hadn't expected that. I sat down again, and a thought came at a tangent: the second voice on that tape, the one with the right idiom and the wrong tone, I am afraid so, could possibly be an educated Chinese.

'The problem,' Egerton said apologetically, 'is that they got the timing wrong. It wasn't their fault.' He checked a sheet in the folder, looking down through the lower lenses of his glasses and trying to get used to the focus. 'We were all ready to send you in, and now we're not.' He shut the folder and slid it to one side.

'Oh, for Christ's sake.'

I got up again and squelched around in my leaky shoe.