I finished the debriefing and filled him in on the village out there in the jungle and the way it was run. Then I went over the whole of the material and found something I'd missed.

'On the Chen bug, there's something else that points to Sayako. I was at his place when he said I should take Flight 306, and the next day she got me paged at the airport to stop me going. At the time I couldn't understand how she'd known.'

'And now perhaps we do. I wonder,' he said, 'just horn useful Sayako could be to us, if we really explored the question? We've got her phone number now, by the way.'

Got my attention very fast.

'How?'

'She gave it to us.' He pulled out the little recorder again and changed the tapes. 'She phoned Chen today and gave him the number and asked him to pass it on to you. He didn't know where you were, so he phoned McCorkadale with it and she contacted me. I phoned Sayako and taped it for you.'

He switched the thing on.

Yes?

My name is Pepperidge. Mr Chen passed on your number to me, since I'm a close friend of Mr Jordan's. Can I give him any message?

Where is he now, please?

I'm not quite sure, but I shall be seeing him soon.

A break as she hesitated.

Very well. I wish to talk to him, if he wishes also. It is very important to me personally. Also he should know that Mariko Shoda is very angry because of car bomb happening, which allow .Mr Jordan to escape Kishnar. She order execution of person who placed bomb. I will tell him more, if he wish to talk to me by telephone. Please tell.

I will. But he has my confidence, Miss Sayako, so you can tell me anything that Please? Confidence?

I mean, you can tell me anything that you can tell him. It is safe to do that.

She hesitated again, this time for longer.

I very much wish to talk to him. Please tell.

Click on the line.

'She rang off," I asked him, 'not you?'

'Right. She's protective.'

'D'you think I should phone her?'

'Yes. Unless she's got some kind of official status she can't have your number traced.'

There was the sound of shoes on the wet grass, then a woman's voice.

'I'm sorry, but it's nine o'clock.'

Curfew.

'Thank you,' Pepperidge told her.

The rectangle of lawn went dark before we reached the verandah; they'd switched off the main lights and now there were only pilot lamps going.

'Can we go along to your room?'

'Yes.'

'They don't allow visitors after curfew, but I'll fix that if necessary. The thing is, what Sayako said on the phone means quite a bit more, maybe, than you realise.' The corridors were quiet, and he brought his voice down. 'We've been hoping to find Shoda's Achilles' heel, and I think we've done that. And I think it can give us the mission.'

'It's the bug?'

'No. It's you.'

23 OBSESSION.

I want his head. The smoke from Dr Israel's thin cheroot hung on the humid air, floating in the glow of the pilot lamp in soft grey skeins.

You have exactly twenty-four hours. I want his head, do you understand that?

Mine. My head.

'Tell me,' I asked Dr Israel, 'about obsession.'

He was quiet for a while. He'd had a busy day. There'd been two more suicide attempts during the evening and I'd seen three male nurses at a steady jog-trot along the north verandah twenty minutes ago, heading for the room where a woman was screaming.

* 'This isn't a rest home,' Pepperidge had told me earlier, 'it's in the front line. Try not to let it worry you.'

The place was quiet now, and Israel sat with his short legs crossed and his white jacket hanging open and the end of his little cigar glowing in the half-light. In front of us the expanse of lawn was dark.

'Obsession..." he said, and smiled. 'What can I tell you about it? Well, it's real. I mean' - he waved a thin, angular hand - 'people say their husband's got an obsession about golf, you know? Or they say their wife's got an obsession about her diet, something like that.' He shook his head. 'That is not obsession.'

Wanted to ask: what about heads? My head?

Didn't ask.

'It has an infinite number of presentations, you see. One can be obsessed about so many things, but the real obsessions are focused on abstracts. Hate. Revenge. Life. Death. Sex. Sickness. Health.' He shrugged. 'There was a man who was convinced he had cancer of the stomach, you see, and they gave him all the tests and they were negative. But he wasn't satisfied! He was sure he had cancer of the stomach. Why? Probably - we never found out - probably because his father had died of cancer of the stomach and this man had been unkind to his father so when the old man died the son felt so much remorse that he wanted to suffer the same fate, you see - not on a conscious level, of course, not at all.' Another weary smile. 'Not much of what we do is ever done on the conscious level. So* - another shrug - 'he walked into a telephone kiosk and called the hospital and pulled out a gun and shot himself in the stomach and told them to come and get him. They'd told him, you see, that he didn't need to undergo exploratory surgery, which he'd asked them for. So now he had to have surgery, and he knew they'd find the cancer.'

Soft shoes. 'Dr Israel?'

'Yes?'

'Is Mary all right?'

He didn't look round. 'Yes. Until she tries again. Don't let her try again."

Rustic of a skirt as the girl moved away.