'Dead?' I asked O'Rourke.

He looked up. 'What?'

'Did they find him dead?'

'Who?'

'Shapiro.'

'I don't know.'

'Who found him?'

'I don't know.'

I shut up. Tilson wasn't looking at either of us; he was just listening, with his face down over his tea. O'Rourke didn't know anything. Nobody in this place knows anything, because that's the official policy: the staff has to have an overall view of operations but there's always a handful of field executives hanging around between missions or waiting to be sent out, and the less we know of what's going on, the less we can tell the opposition if we make a mistake out there and they pull us in and throw us under the bright white light and keep us there till it burns through to the brain while they're asking us questions.

'You did a bit of work,' Tilson said conversationally, 'with Shapiro. Didn't you?'

'A couple of times.' Cyprus, Tenerife.

He nodded and looked down and drank some more tea while I sat there trying not to think about Shapiro, trying not to remember him too well. There wasn't anything definite about that bit of news I'd just overheard; he could still be alive, and if he wasn't, there was nothing I could do about it. We come and go.

'I wonder if I can find anyone,' Tilson said plaintively, 'to look after you until Mr Croder shows up. I don't like your having to hang about like this.' He got up and wandered off and I noticed his tea wasn't finished; he just wanted to get me away from Wallis and O'Rourke before I overheard anything else. That suited me; the more we hear, up and down these bleak green-painted corridors, the more we become involved, the more we become exposed. We don't want that to happen. The Bureau doesn't exist, so we don't exist either, if we're wise. It's less painful like that, and infinitely less dangerous.