'Yes. That is to say, no.' He looked into the shadows behind him and touched my arm. 'Let's go and sit over there.'

Every table had a small brass lamp on it, burning dimly; between them it was almost dark. You didn't come here to be seen, or to see anyone. I nearly said I'd got to go, but changed my mind, in case there was any small thing I could do for him - because in the last ten minutes I'd been chilled, appalled. Pepperidge had been first class in the field before he'd come home to the Asian desk. He'd never touched booze, he'd kept in training at Norfolk and he could take on anything they gave him - a totally shut-ended checkpoint situation without papers or contacts - and get away with it; he could stalk, infiltrate, kill if he had to, and get out with the product. Ferris had run him in Sapphire, Croder had run him in Foxtrot, two of the major ones, and now he was sitting here with his thin blue hands restless on the polished oak of the table, his eyes needing time to focus, his memory slow, a burnout, finished, and not yet forty.

This wouldn't happen to me, I knew that; but I'd have to find a good reason for going on, a new direction. And it would have to take me back to the only life I could live with.

But there is nowhere, of course. ..

Pepperidge had his shoulders against the panelled wall, even this dim light bothering his eyes. The attempt at wry humour was done with now; it had been an act I'd seen through, and he'd dropped it. 'Not from Scobie, no. This came from Cheltenham.'

Government Communications HQ, out in the West Country, the nerve-centre for international classified traffic. So he'd been keeping his ear to the ground, at least.

'It was offered to me personally,' he said, 'under the desk.'

'When?'

'Last week.' His yellow eyes watched me steadily, defiance in them. 'It surprises you, of course, that anyone should offer this . . . this ship-wrecked fucking sailor any kind of mission. I see that. I quite understand. But -'

'Spare me the violins,' I told him, and finished my drink. One more minute, and out. I'd joined him here at the table because the poor bastard had started talking business, but it couldn't add up to anything; he was just wandering in the wastelands of the lost, to pick over the shreds of his pride.

'I will spare you the violins,' he said with heavy articulation, 'yes, of course.' There was a light in his eyes now that carried a warning, and I noted it. But if the poor devil tried coming at me in his besotted rage I'd only have to subdue him, and that would make things worse, humiliating. 'It so happens, you see, that a certain party knew of my accomplishments out East, and thought this one might catch my interest. It's for me to accept or turn down, as I think fit.' He sat with his back straight again, watching me with a dreadful steadiness, waiting to see if he was getting the message across - that he was still on his feet, still in the running, well thought-of.

'Then you're in clover,' I said, and tried to make it sound genuine.

There was a moment's silence and then he gave a kind of sob, squeezing his eyes shut and just sitting there without moving, his fists pressed onto the table to keep him upright, their tremor conveying itself to the brass lamp and setting up a vibration. Then it was over.

Not much above a whisper: 'Don't humour me, you bastard. Spare me that.' Aware suddenly of his clenched fists, he opened them and brought his hands slowly together, as if for comfort. 'Of course you're perfectly right. There's no kind of action I could take on now without getting killed.'

In a moment I said, 'Dry out somewhere.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Go into a clinic and dry out. Then do a bit of training. You'll soon get it back.'

'Yes. Yes, of course. I shall do that. One day.' He drew a slow breath. 'Meanwhile I shall find someone to take this thing over, because it's too good to miss and I'm buggered if I'll give it to the Bureau. They couldn't touch it anyway; it's too sensitive. Have another drink, if that's what you call it.'

'I've got to be going.' It wasn't the first time I'd seen a wrecked spook pushing his doom. He was only just this side of a breakdown, and I didn't want to be here when he pulled something out and blew his head off with it, as North had done.

'You've only just come, for God's sake.' He lifted a hand for the barman. 'You know Floderus, don't you?' he asked me.

'Which one?'

He gave a wintry smile. 'Good question. Charles, of course. Charles Floderus.'

The other one, I remembered, had broken up a courier line through Trieste and wiped out a Queen's Messenger before the Bureau caught a whiff of something rotten: the man had been doubling for five years before he blew his own cover because of a woman. Charles was different; they were distantly related but the blood was thin, and Charles was known for his total integrity throughout the secret services. He was also a very high-echelon director of operations for the SIS.

'What about him?' I asked Pepperidge.

'He was the one who made me this proposal.' He watched some people coming in, behind me. 'I'd done him a bit of good, you see, at one time. Decent of him to remember.'

I'd begun listening. Floderus had approached him? That had been decent of him, yes. He was very cautious, very demanding.

'I got it over the phone,' Pepperidge said. 'We didn't actually meet.' His eyes dipped away. 'He didn't know I was ... not quite at my best. Just the main drift, you see, over the blower, no names or anything, absolute security." When the barman came over Pepperidge asked for the same again, and then told me, 'Also, as I said, he knew I'd done quite a bit in Asia.' His head swung up. 'You were out there too, weren't you, a couple of times?'

'Yes. Are they anyone we know?'

'What? Nobody 7 know. Are you worried?'

'No.'

'It's just a man and a woman, holding hands across the table.'

'As long as you're happy.'

He frowned. 'Am I talking too loud?'

'Everything's relative.' If Floderus had really offered him an operation then he should keep it well under cover. A lot of people who came to the Brass Lamp were from the corridors of codes and cyphers, together with a few second or third secretaries of foreign embassies.

Pepperidge kept his eyes on the other table for a bit longer and then said, more quietly, 'They're just spooning. But anyway, old boy, this one isn't for you.' The barman came with their drinks and Pepperidge said, 'Cheers. What've you got, an ulcer or something?'

That's right.'

Reflectively he said, 'It'd mean working for a foreign government, you see, and I'd hardly imagine you ever doing that.'

'Which one?'

'Friendly to the West. Does it matter?'

'Not really.' I shook a few more drops of Angostura into my tonic and watched it fizz. Working for a foreign government would be totally strange. I was used to the ultra-sophisticated services of the Bureau: meticulous briefing, prearranged access to the field - even across the Curtain -a signals board in London with only my name on it and a 24-hour staff and a director in the field who could get me anything 1 needed; contacts, couriers, papers limitless and progressive briefings as the phases of the mission changed, and liaison through GCHQ Cheltenham with the Chief of Control in London and his decision-making authority, which gave him immediate access to the Prime Minister, wherever she might be.

'Fabulous money, of course,' Pepperidge said.

'That's what Loman told me.'

He gave a derisive grunt. 'Loman? He couldn't get you enough to buy a bag of chips. I mean the real thing.'

'I wouldn't know what to do with it.'

'Buy some more Jensens. Aren't they what you use?'

'I mean, apart from toys.'

'Then give it to the dog's home and do it for kicks.' He was watching me steadily again. 'You've got me interested, you know that?'

'What in?'

'Handing this thing over to you.'

'Forget it.' I wouldn't work for Floderus or a foreign government.'