'Warsaw.'

'Christ, in winter?'

'It would be convenient, I know, if we could choose — '

'It's all I'd get out of it, a bit of sunshine. Send him far enough south and I'll do what you want. I'll go with him and hold his hand.'

He didn't say anything. Maybe I was raising my voice too much: you don't do that till you start feeling you're on a loser. Among all the stuff on his desk I could see my dossier and among all the things it said in there was the fact that I spoke a bit of Polish. Not many of us do: it's like stuffing your tongue in a jar of used razor blades.

I quietened down, so that he'd know I wasn't worried, that I wasn't going. 'You'll have to find someone else.'

He waited five seconds and then said:

'You needn't decide immediately. Not for a few hours yet.'

'Hours? You called me in a bit late, didn't you?'

'Everyone else has refused.'

I looked away.

It wasn't in my dossier. Or if it was, it was written between the lines. That was where he'd been busily reading. It said if you want to find Quiller look for the man who stands facing the wrong way in the bus queue just to show the world he can do without a bus, look for the man who wants the window open when everyone else wants it shut. The awkward bastard who's going to kill himself one day trying to prove he's bullet proof. And if you want him for a job that he'd normally throw back in your face, tell him that everyone else has refused it.

I was looking at the little electric fire. The coiled filament had broken in two or three places and someone — probably Egerton — had twisted the ends together; the joins were glowing brightly, absorbing so much of the current that the rest of the filament wasn't more than cherry red. I knew he wouldn't speak next.

'What sort of mission have you given him?'