'All right. At least we know the score.'

I felt Katie's eyes on me. She was Bureau and she'd probably worked with shadow executives before and she knew what we were going to have to do to get out of the shut-ended situation we were in: we were going to have to take one hell of a risk in the hope that it'd come off and leave this little ferret still alive - bloodied, perhaps, but still with its whiskers on, and listen, I'm putting it lightly as I'm sure you've noticed, because at this particular moment I'd started feeling scared and it wasn't very long since the Kishnar thing and my nerves were on a roller-coaster and there wouldn't be a chance of getting them off it until something conclusive was done, something terminal, finis, one way or the other, Shoda or me.

It all came down to that.

And everyone knew it: Loman, Pepperidge, Katie, and halfway round the world in London, Croder, Chief of Control.

However, nil desperandum, so forth, try a few more knee-bends, rough on the left thigh but we need to keep the adrenalin down.

'How long will it be,' I asked Loman, 'before you hear that your second unit has found the Slingshots and taken them over? If they can, in fact, do that?'

'We shall be informed at once.' He seemed surprised.

'Not through London?'

'Either through London or direct, or both. Why?'

'I'm not absolutely sure.' He came and looked down at me; I was at the bottom of a knee-bend, bouncing on the muscles. 'But I think it's very important.' Sounded lame, but the left brain had started working on something and this was one of the components. 'It's important,' I tried again, 'that we should know as soon as possible if and when that consignment has been seized - that's to say, has been removed from any danger of Shoda's getting hold of it. That's important.' I got up and moved around. 'It's also very important that if the Slingshots are made safe and brought out of Shoda's reach, she doesn't know about it until she and I are face to face.'

I listened to the echo of what I'd just been saying and tested it out and found some flaws and tried patching them up and ran it through again, sensing I was getting close to some kind of overkill action but not quite knowing what it was or how it would work.

When I stopped and looked around I saw they were all watching me, not moving.

'There's a time thing,' I told Loman, 'that's got to be thought about. There's a narrow margin of time involved.'

In a moment Loman asked over-casually, 'Have you got anything potentially constructive in mind?'

'What the fuck does that mean?'

Quite a long silence. Yes, I know what potentially means and I know what constructive means but I'd been way out in the right brain and words like those lose most of their meaning because they're so bloody long that you've got to stop and think what they're trying to say.

'Sorry.'

'Not at all.'

Toujours la politesse and all that, but you know I do wish that little snit would speak the queen's bloody English when we're all trying to think out how to destroy the objective.

'Let's start from this,' I said. 'I can't make a hit.' Silence again. They needed more data. 'I'm not a hired gun, you know that. The only time I killed anyone in cold blood it was because he'd betrayed a woman and she was trapped and shot dead. I'm not -' I found myself staring at Loman, wanting the little bastard to get the point - 'I'm not a hit man for the Bureau. Is that understood?'

'Of course.' Tone icy.

'So what I've got to do is destroy the objective, Shoda, without killing her. The mission you're running is aimed at the destruction of the Shoda organisation and I'm the executive in the field' - began walking around again - 'and we've got our faces shoved right up against the end-phase and we haven't got a bloody clue as to how we're going to bring this thing off.'

In a minute Pepperidge said very quietly, 'I rather think you have, old boy.'

'What?' I swung round. 'Possibly. A very small one. I'm just thinking aloud, trying to get feedback.'

I went across and poured some more coffee and put it down again without drinking any because we were in the extreme end-phase of the mission and I was on a collision course with a woman who'd got a small army out there waiting for me and I didn't want to be caught at the wrong end of a caffeine curve; that sort of thing can kill you.

'Another thing' - and I was, yes, thinking aloud but that was good - 'is that I can't confront Shoda without getting her isolated somehow.' And I knew when I said it that it was a key word, isolated, though I didn't know why. 'I don't mean separated from her bodyguards, I couldn't hope for that. I think I mean away from the public somewhere, in case people get hurt. It's not going to be a tea-party.'

Long silence, but this time useful, potentially constructive, so forth. And something had got through.

I 'Isolated,' Pepperidge said. He got off the couch and stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking through the wall. 'Not in her house.'

'No. I'd never get in there alive.'

Loman was staring into the middle distance too but he didn't say anything for a minute, couldn't hit on anything. Then he turned and started walking again and said, 'We've got the full cooperation of the Singapore police, but there's nothing they can do against Shoda. She's politically untouchable. Diplomatically. She could bring almost any democratic government down in Asia simply by hitting its economy or exposing any one of the half-dozen corrupt officials in high places.' He gave me a direct look. 'We can't help you there.'

'I understand that.'

In any case I couldn't see us going into the end-phase with any kind of police action. They couldn't touch Shoda. The government couldn't touch her. It wasn't a question of an operation; it was a question of infiltration, very focused, very specific, just one man going in.

'Would anyone like some lunch?'

Katie.

Loman stopped pacing as if he'd hit a wall and stared at her as if he didn't understand the word. Perhaps she should have said luncheon.

'Good thinking.' Pepperidge.

'Some kind of protein?' I said.

She passed close to me on her way out, saying softly, 'and a little zabaglione?' And left her scent on the air, my God, there's nothing like a woman's presence to bring the tension down, she doesn't even have to touch you.

'Look,' Pepperidge said, and didn't finish it because Flood came through the doors just then and told Loman there was a call from one of the contacts in Cambodia and Loman went out to take it and from that minute the final action of the end-phase started running and we were pitched into it headlong.

30 MR CRODER.

'Where ?' Loman asked them.

We were in the smoking-room off the main salon, reproduction antique brass telephone and plush armchairs and gilt ashtrays and a thin Chinese nude on the wall with exaggerated nipples.

'When?'

Loman looked very calm. One of the things I dislike least about him is that when a mission's in a slow phase he's like a fart in a collander and he can drive you stark raving mad but when it swings into momentum again he quietens down and starts running like a well-oiled dynamo. Flood had told him the signal was from our second unit in Cambodia.

'What time tomorrow?'

Pepperidge was hitched on a bar stool, his yellow eyes deceptively sleepy. Flood was standing under a lamp, plaster cherub holding the shade aloft. Flood behaved like a subordinate and called me sir but that was just because he was a bit younger and he probably found the presence of a top control from London intimidating. But I knew who he was now.

I'd asked Pepperidge a bit earlier, 'Is this man Flood my replacement?'

Pepperidge had looked away, looked back again. 'Yes, old boy. But he'll never get the job, of course.'

It didn't actually bother me. In fact there was a certain comfort in the knowledge that if I got things wrong in the next few hours and bought the Elysian fields thing at least I'd know they'd got someone standing by to take over.