'You're on call, aren't you?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Well, I wouldn't let a little thing like this put you off your stroke. He simply didn't have what it takes, that's all.'

He wandered off to see if there were any more signals for him, and I stayed where I was for a minute, looking into the shadows of the stairwell and thinking it wasn't the sort of epitaph we'd ever want to be landed with… he simply didn't have what it takes… We'll fight like hell to go out respectably when the crunch comes and the last gate slams, then tell us who your contacts are, the bright lamp burning into your eyes and the bruises throbbing, I've told you already I haven't got any contacts on this operation, the night-stick again on flesh already aching for peace, but you were seen using a letter-drop, the big white light coming through your eyelids and into your head and burning there, you mistook me for someone else, the stick or the flame or the jerk of the current or whatever it was they were using, tell us, using so expertly, there's nothing, their foul breath heavy and excited, tell! the light in your head, screw yourself! and reason beginning to go, tell us! the jerk of their hands, no! Always the answer, the same answer, for as long as you can — No! No! No! Till it's over.

Not because of any loyalty to the Bureau, nothing like that, because by this time you're quite beyond any thought of alma mater and the team spirit and what-not, all you're trying to do is get yourself a half-decent epitaph out of sheer stinking pride, deceased during mission, nothing spectacular, found with security intact, just something we can live with in the last few minutes before we die. Unlike that poor bastard, we hope to prove to the clerks and the accountants and the operations staff and the whole bloody bunch in this building that when the crunch came and the last gate slammed we'd got… after all… what it took.