'Did they find cancer?' I asked Israel.

'All they found was a bullet. That is obsession.'

'A killing disease.'

'Sometimes, yes. Often. A patient of mine was obsessed with his lack of attractiveness to women. He wasn't bad-looking and he was gentle with them and he was rich, yoy, isn't that attractive to women? But no, someone had said in his childhood that he was a little runt, something like that, it happens all the time - kids are cruel, brutal, to each other, sometimes. So this man spent all his money on screwing one woman after another to prove how attractive he was and finally he got AIDS and hung himself. That is obsession.'

The movement of a white coat in the gloom on the far side, a woman's soft laughter. Christ, how could anyone laugh in a place like this?

'It's something you can't stop,' I said.

'Yes.' He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. 'It starts at ten miles an hour and gets to fifty and then to ninety and you can't stop it. You crash.'

Twenty-four hours. Her voice had gone onto the tape three hours ago. Twenty-one.

'But someone very powerful,' I said, 'someone clever, intelligent, authoritative, say, given an obsession, what you call the real thing - they can finally lose control, and crash?'

He blew out a curl of smoke. 'You have heard of Adolf Hitler?'

The smoke straightened into a long skein under the lamp.

Has Gunther been dealt with?

Not her actual voice: a translation, accented English.

'There was a man on the hit team,' I'd told Pepperidge, 'watching the Red Orchid, a European, Teutonic. He could have been the one who rigged the bomb. Gunther.'

Pepperidge had nodded, concentrating again, releasing the pause button.

Where is Kishnar? I want your report on him. Tell him I will give him twenty-four hours. 1 want that man's head.

The translator put emphasis on the last word.

'We have not found the body of the third agent, but his head was delivered to my office in a cardboard box.' Major-general Vasuratna, Thai Military Intelligence.

'Part of their culture,' Pepperidge told me, trying, I suppose, to make light of it.

'Once you're snuffed, you won't care where the bloody thing is.'

He switched off the recorder and ran the tape back. 'Bit poky, this room, isn't it?' Looking around, bed, chest of drawers, upright chairs, rush mat, lamp, small mirror and that was it. 'You want me to get it changed?'

'I shan't be spending any time in here.'

His yellow eyes brooded on me. 'So what I mean is, I think we've found her Achilles' heel, and it's you. Agree?'

'You mean she's obsessed?'

'Yes. That is exactly the word.'

'It's beginning to sound like it.'

This was why I'd got hold of Dr Israel later, to gen up a bit.

'As I told you,' Pepperidge said, 'I've been doing quite a lot of homework, some of it with Kityakara - personally, in view of a possible mole. He agreed that there was absolutely no need for Shoda to order the bodies of those agents sent back to the palace and the police headquarters and so on. She took it personally. He says it's because of her childhood experiences - she's intensely vulnerable to challenge.'

Also a clock, a tin clock by the bed, a loud tick, getting on my nerves. I tried to tune it out.

'She was absolutely incensed, you know, by your going into that temple to face her out.' Head tilted, 'why did you do that, exactly?'

'I thought it'd be useful to -' then I stopped because I'd caught what I was saying and we don't always do that; we trot out a convenient rationalisation and leave it at that, a stand-in for the truth we'd rather not talk about. I started again. '1 thought it'd be useful to try talking to General Dharmnoon, because he was the man Lafarge wrote to about the Slingshot, but that was just a reason I'd cooked up.'

After a bit I realised I hadn't finished, still didn't want to talk. Pepperidge was waiting patiently. 'I wanted to see Shoda,' I said at last.

Silence again.

'To "see" her.'

I started walking about, feeling trapped. 'I think it's becoming a bit obsessive on my side, too. Becoming personal. And I think it's because she scares the shit out of me, so I want to confront her, face the bitch.'

In a moment, 'I see.'

He didn't.

'I've been scared plenty of times. Life on the brink's like that - you know what I'm talking about; you've been there too. And I've been pretty certain I've had it, too, often enough. But this is the first time I've felt -' I couldn't find the right word, so I threw in something close, though it was appallingly melodramatic, 'the first time I've felt doomed.'

Pepperidge said nothing. The word hung around like a whiff of cheap scent. I began wishing to Christ he'd break the silence, say anything he liked to cover the ticking of the tin clock.

Finally I stopped pacing and stood looking down at him; he was sitting in one of the upright chairs with his feet together and the tape-recorder on his knees and his head tilted as he watched me, and I was suddenly looking at a new dimension in the man, and it shook me. It was as if the Pepperidge of the Brass Lamp in London had been an act.

'Doomed,' he said, because he knew what I'd seen and he wanted to cover it, not give it any attention.

I took a step away, a step back, touched by anger. 'I suppose you're playing straight with me, are you?'

'Yes,' at once and with emphasis. 'You and your mission are my total concern.'

He wasn't lying. I would have known.

'I've no choice,' I said. 'I've got to believe you.'

'Oh, you've got a choice, old boy. You could just tell me to fuck off, couldn't you?'

Deadly serious.

'I suppose I could.'

'But you're not going to, and of course you're perfectly right.' Tilted his head straight. 'Doomed, you were saying.'

I let out the tension on a breath. 'Yes, I mean, we've faced situations, you and I, in whatever mission, and we've had to deal with them and get them behind us and go on, since we're still alive. We've had periods of relief, in between, when we can breathe again.' I leaned my back against the wall, feeling its coolness in the warm room. 'It's different, Pepperidge, this time. For the last week I've begun to feel I've walked into a shut-ended operation that's going to be the death of me whatever I do.'