"Wiggins, sir."
"Oh yes, Flight Lieutenant Wiggins, thank you. Your pilot is Squadron Leader Toms. Gentlemen, this is Detective-Sergeant Gage, the reserve security officer."
We all nodded and Wiggins helped the Secretary of State up the metal steps. The man from the Yard followed him on board and made room for me as the flight lieutenant squeezed between us and swung the door shut; through the window I thought I saw Tilson out there lifting a hand — good luck, I suppose — and then the pilot gunned up and the last I saw of London was the thin hunched figure of Croder standing with his feet together and his face tilted to watch us with the downwash tugging at his clothes as we lifted off and swung towards the west across the lights of Fulham and Chiswick.
3: Funeral
I had worked with Ferris before.
He'd been sitting on the stairs with the gun on his lap in the Hong Kong snake shop while I'd fought for a kill with the hit man they'd sent from Kowloon to wipe me out. He'd pulled me out of Morocco with the coastguard cutter's searchlight sweeping the sea as we lay prone on the afterdeck of the fishing boat and Sandra's jewelled revolver sank below the waves to the bottom, where no one would ever find it. He'd been with me when Alitalia Flight 403 had hit the runway too short in Beirut and we'd lost two back-up executives but saved the mission because the documents weren't on board.
And now he was walking with me from the Beijin Hotel along Wangfujing Street in Pekin, a tall thin man with his body sloping forward and his wisps of sandy hair all over the place in the light breeze coming off the rice-fields to the north.
Dark suits, black ties. Someone from the Bureau had done my packing for me yesterday evening while Tilson had been getting me out of the hospital in the dry-cleaner's van; the other clothes they'd put in were much lighter: the July temperature here was already eighty degrees and it was only ten in the morning.