'Have you got a card on you?"

'No.'

'Well, here's mine.'

I took it out of courtesy, and pushed my chair back. I wanted to be out of there before he got down to the bottom of his drink again and swallowed that bloody worm.

You 'II go mad, out there.

Holmes.

Dead right.

It was eight o'clock and a lot of the options had run out: Giselle was playing at Covent Garden but I'd never get in without booking. It'd be the same thing at the theatres: the only shows I could get a ticket for wouldn't be worth seeing. I didn't want to go down to the club because the only people I'd see there would be talking shop, and I'd just had a gutful of that with Pepperidge. Eating out alone was a bleak enough thought: food was a celebration of life and had to be shared. Moira was in Paris and Liz on her way to New York again; Yvonne was in London and might be available, but what was it coming down to - that I had to find a girl because I'd got nothing else to do? Better not tell her that.

I could go along to the dojo and hope to find Tanaka there and knock some of the rough edges off Kanku Dai, but even though I could use the exercise he'd see I was out of condition and that would embarrass me because he wouldn't say anything. I could go up to Norfolk and ask for a session at the long-distance night range and blast Loman's face all over the sandbags - they'd let me in, even if they knew I'd left the Bureau; the bastards would let me do anything I liked in the hope of getting me back. But there wasn't any point in going to Norfolk, as if nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

I'd known it would feel like this in the first few weeks. I'd cut myself off from a way of life that had exposed me to the most deadly risks, time after time, and pushed me into that frightening, ethereal zone where I had to face those things in myself that in cold blood I'd never have the stomach for: weakness in one form or another, cowardice, a blind eye to the need for mercy, lack of grace. I'd expected, yes, to feel like an electric circus with the plug pulled out, the tension gone and the noise dying away and the dark coming down; but I wasn't ready for this sense of loss, of loneliness.

Bloody shame. Get used to it.

Some time after nine I made some toast and opened a tin of sardines and got out The Too of Physics and wrestled with it, no sound in the room but the occasional muted horn of a taxi and the fretting of a casement as the night wind got up. The phone hadn't rung since I'd got back from the Brass Lamp, and at some time or other I went across and checked to see it was still working. Later I went to the safe behind the sliding Japanese-lacquered panel and took out the experimental cypher grid that Tilney had asked me to evaluate, and slipped it into its black self-destruct container and broke the seal and let the acid go to work. Then I found myself standing in the middle of the room with the book in my hand again, not knowing why I was trying to read it. The weight of the most appalling depression was pinning me down, so at last I forced myself to move, and it was then that I did what I must have known I would do, sooner or later, and dropped the book onto the sofa and picked up the phone and rang Floderus.

3 DUCKS.

'Perfectly true. Absolutely.'

Floderus grabbed the strap as the cab lurched past a bus. He'd asked me for a mobile rendezvous with maximum security and I'd picked him up in Carlton Street. Last night on the telephone he'd kept the conversation down to careful monosyllables; now he was more relaxed, though not much.

'I offered it to him because this is something we can't possibly touch ourselves, since we're government. So is the Bureau, of course, What on earth made you -'

'The Bureau can't touch it either?'

'Absolutely not. But what made you leave?' I went on looking out of the window. Floderus tugged a sleeve back, shooting cuff. 'Sorry. Not my business. Coming in with us?'

'Not bloody likely.'

A brief laugh. 'Things aren't that bad, you know. We leave the top level people more or less alone, and you'd be one of them, naturally, I personally run Chepping and Shahan, among others. They're pretty wild.'

The cab slowed as a troop of the Household Cavalry rode past, plumes bobbing, sabres bared, breastplates flashing in the pale sunshine. In a moment I asked, 'Have you seen him recently?'

'Who?'

'Pepperidge.'

'Not for a month or two. Why?' His horn-rimmed glasses caught the light as the cab swung into Piccadilly, and for a moment I couldn't see his eyes.

'He wants to give me the mission.'

Floderus watched me thoughtfully. 'You could do it, of course. It's rather' - head on one side - 'exotic. But why not come in with us and do something we could help you with? I'd look after you personally.'

'Nice of you.' Floderus was the assistant chief of his department, and notoriously choosy about the people he ran. 'But your operations don't go near enough to the brink.'

'We try to please,' he said drily.

'It's a different kind of field. I need' - I shrugged - 'you know what I need.'

'You'll get yourself killed, one day.'

'I don't want to the in bed.' I gave it a moment. 'Which foreign power is involved?'

He clasped his thin pale hands and stared down at them, the shadows of leaves in the early light washing over them as we neared the park. Then his head came up suddenly. 'Look, if you want to take this one on, you'll have to do it exclusively through Pepperidge. He's -'

'With your sanction?'

'Absolutely. It's there for anyone to pick up. Anyone of your capability. But we've got to keep right out of it. Our department. It's the kind of thing the UK daren't get involved in - or be seen to get involved in.'

'What makes it so sensitive?' I wanted to get as much out of him as he'd let me. He was the source.

He glanced round to make sure the dividing window was shut, then leaned closer. 'It's not only because there's an element of drug-running and the international armaments trade. Southeast Asia is terribly complicated politically, and what you would be doing, Quiller, would be making an attempt to remove - or render neutral - certain elements threatening the balance of power in that region, including the potential risk of a confrontation between Western and Soviet forces in Thailand. We -'

'An armed confrontation?'

'In these days,' he said bleakly, 'nothing is impossible, after the disastrous failure of the summit conference. This isn't just the cold war any more: it's the freeze.'

'Potent stuff. Where did this thing come from?'

'My department was approached by a foreign power in that region via the diplomatic bag. You would be working for that power, but the success of the mission would benefit the UK, and, of course, our ally the United States. Not to say world peace.' He leaned back.

'It doesn't sound like my kind of operation. It's too geopolitical.'

'The background is a geopolitical, yes, but that wouldn't concern you operationally. In fact it's very much your kind of thing - the very careful, clandestine infiltration of a major opposition network.' He tugged a sleeve back. 'But why don't you go and talk to Pepperidge again before you decide? I'm due at the Travellers' in ten minutes, and you'll want to be on your way.' He turned to the window to find out where we were, and slid the glass panel open. 'Driver, you can put me down anywhere here.' He turned back to me and said softly, 'We haven't made contact, as I'm sure you understand.'

'I've booked you out,' Pepperidge said, 'on Singapore Airlines Flight 297, change at Bombay, first class.' He threw another crust for the ducks. 'All expenses paid, though not by me. The hotel in Singapore isn't very posh, but there's a good reason. It's tucked away in one of the market streets, and you might want to make it your base.'

Crouching beside him, I held the paper bag while he dug for another crust. A light wind came across the lake, ruffling the surface; in the distance the flags above St James's Palace made patches of crimson and gold against the gunmetal clouds.

'Not that one, you silly little bugger, you'll choke yourself. Wait till it soaks a bit.'

'What about cover?' I asked him. 'Access, liaison, comunications?' I was instantly sorry, but couldn't take it back. This wasn't the Bureau sending me out. This was just the remnant of a once-talented shadow executive, shrugging off a mission he couldn't handle himself. 'Never mind -'

'I'm rather afraid,' he said quietly, 'you'll be pretty much on your own, old boy, this time.'

'Of course.'