'A few days?'

'What?'

'A few days to recuperate,' Pepperidge said, 'or to make up your mind?'

'I've made up my mind, but I've also had a bit of surgery.'

'What did they do?'

'Sewed up an artery.'

'Then you'll need more than a few days.' He sounded worried.

'That's my problem.'

There was a short silence. I watched the two Europeans giving their bags to a boy and trudging after him to the stairs.

'You said you've made up your mind.' He sounded cautious. 'You mean to do it?'

'If they'll still take me on.'

'Why shouldn't they?'

'I haven't made a terribly good start.'

'From what I was told, you did rather well. Four dead on the field, that right?'

7 walked straight into a fucking trap, don't you understand?''

In a moment, calmly, 'Steady as you go.'

I took the warning. Even anger could blow those delicate stitches around that tube.

I gave it a few seconds, trying to centre. 'I need some information. All I know that means anything at the moment is my objective for the mission.' A thought occurred to me. 'Do you know what that is?'

Short silence. 'Not objective. Target, actually. Yes, I do.'

'Can you tell me anything about her?'

'Bit of a bitch, so they say.'

'I think she's got someone inside the Thai Embassy.'

I heard a grunt of amusement. 'She's got people inside every embassy in Southeast Asia, old boy.'

'This one's in the Thai secret service.' The man on the flight out, the one I'd had to get rid of. I knew now that on the night of the embassy party he hadn't looked embarrassed when he'd seen me again: he'd just wanted to avoid eye contact with a man he'd set up for the kill.

'Are you going to tell them?' Pepperidge asked.

'No. I'll leave him intact.' If I blew the man he'd only go underground and work from there while the opposition sent in someone else whom I couldn't identify.

'Look,' Pepperidge said hesitantly, 'I could get you someone out there to protect the rear. I mean, she's going to try again, and next time she'll want to make sure. I don't like -'

'No shields.' They could be dangerous unless they were first class material and I didn't imagine this burnt-out spook could find me anyone like that.

'I know someone who's very good.'

He was catching my thoughts. 'It's safer for me to work alone. But I can use some information.'

''What sort?'

'Any kind of close-focus analysis of the Thai secret service. I think I know who set me up, but it could've been someone else in their ranks.'

'Just takes one little mole, doesn't it? I'll work on it for you. Anything else?'

'Nothing I can't dig up here.' I'd be doing a massive research job in the field as soon as I could find the right people to work with.

'Fair enough, old boy. Now take care, won't you? Take a lot of care.'

An hour later I set up the night defense system I'd worked out since I'd got back from the hospital, blocking one of the narrow beds against the door with the other one jammed sideways between it and the chest of drawers, clear of the only exposed vector through the window and across the alley where anyone could use a rifle from the rooftop.

It was too early to go to ground. Normally I would do that, drop into the shadows and operate from there, from safety. Pepperidge was right: they'd try again and the next time they'd want to make certain, driven by their pride and their Oriental fanaticism. I had a rough idea of what Mariko Shoda would expect of anyone who failed her - I'd heard in the hospital that a woman in a black track-suit had been brought in soon afterwards, found with a knife buried in the heart and her fingers still locked round the hilt. They'd come for me again, yes, but I'd still have to operate above ground until I'd got the information I'd need to reach the target. Until then I'd have to move through the open, exposed.

I'd be as safe here at the Red Orchid as anywhere. I'd spent the whole day sniffing the place out like a fox in a badger's burrow, going from floor to floor and onto the roof and down the fire-escapes and into the basement, memorising distances, blind spots, alcoves, dead ends, doorways, until I could go through the building at a run and with five seconds' head start get clear and survive, if they came for me here.

It was midnight before I slept, lying on my left side because of the long knife-wound that had slashed across my back from the right shoulder to the spine, the heel of the right hand swollen from the thrust to the driver's face, the other wrist throbbing under the dressings where the walls of the artery were slowly knitting, the blood pumping rhythmically through it to sustain the life in me that was already running out if she had had her way, Shoda.

A last thought before sleep, trying to betray me: Kityakara knew what had happened, and he wouldn't now expect me to take on the mission, so why not accept that, and go home, and live?

Because this was home, lying curled like a fox in the dark, unnerved and bloodied but with cunning still left for the morrow.

6 KATIE.

He was an absolute shit. Fantastic in bed, but that was all, and that was the trouble, I suppose' she leaned across the little bamboo table, her thin shoulders moving forward, her eyes intense - 'I mean, sex isn't enough for a relationship, is it?' She forked some more satay off the skewer, dropping a piece of pork. 'Do you think so?'

The girl in the green silk dress, today in khaki with a beaten gold necklace, her light hair swinging as she moved, moved constantly, restlessly, watching me hard, wanting to know what I thought. 'Am I talking too much?'

I'd been coming out of the Thai Embassy an hour ago and she'd seen me and swung round. 'Oh, hello, look, I'm sorry I was so - well, I don't know, brusque the other night.' The night when she'd asked me to escort her to a taxi and then slammed the door on me without any thanks.

'I didn't notice.' Then I'd suggested lunch because it looked as if she worked at the embassy or had some kind of connection with it, and that could be useful. I was parched for information and as soon as I could get what I needed I could go to ground, where it was safe.

'Love to.' Her blue-grey eyes narrowed, focusing, taking me in. 'What about Empress Place, on the river?'

Sitting next to me on the torn plastic seat of the cyclo she'd filled me in. 'The divorce was only a couple of months ago and he still thinks I'm ready to hop into bed with him again - taking it in turns with his bloody mistress, thank you very much - and that night he was half-seas over and if you hadn't got me into that taxi he'd have pushed me into a corner and torn my clothes off - God, doesn't that sound sordid! But that's why' - twisting round on the seat and putting a thin ringless hand on my knee - 'that's why I didn't even have the grace to thank you, because I was furious. Or scared, I'm not sure which.' She took her hand away. 'I'm Katie McCorkadale.'

'Martin Jordan.'