'I came alone.'

'Excellent.' He looked around quickly. 'Let's shut the door, shall we?' He had a restrained Oxford accent and his speech was jerky, a little breathless. 'This is Captain Krairiksh of Interior Security, and Major-general Vasuratna of Military Intelligence.' He crossed his legs. 'We shall understand perfectly, Mr Jordan, if your knowledge of the political scene in Southeast Asia happens by chance to be slight. It's a small corner of the world, of course.'

'I don't take long to learn.' Pepperidge hadn't put any political briefing in the envelope and there was no point in taking a crash course because even that would need several weeks. Kityakara would have to pick the flesh off and give me the bare bones.

'Excellent.' His hand dipped quickly to a pocket and tugged out a small inhaler, whisking it across his mouth and slipping it back. 'I'll endeavour to give you the essence, then. Do you want to take notes?'

'No.'

'Very well. We'll do what we can to put things into perspective.'

He spoke for more than an hour, asking Krairiksh and Vasuratna to fill in the picture from their points of view and breaking for questions on the way. It didn't seem, I thought, to be much different in Southeast Asia than anywhere else, a scenario of territorial fear at the brain stem level and a general atmosphere of dog eat dog.

'Now let me try to put all that in a nutshell, Mr Jordan.' Kityakara got up and limped across to the black marble fireplace, using sleight of hand again with the inhaler. 'Soviet Russia is at present subsidising the Vietnamese armed forces in Laos and Cambodia to the tune of five billion US dollars a year. In return the Vietnamese permit the use of the naval bases in Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay by the Soviet Pacific Fleet.' He let a moment go by. 'Those bases are vital to the Soviets. Vital.''

I tilted my chair back until I was balanced comfortably, listening to Kityakara and at the same time wondering about the asthma and the limp and the tinted glasses. A lot of people of his age in this area had been lucky to come out of the Khmer Rouge holocaust alive, even those in power, especially those. He was one of them and he'd come through a nightmare, so how paranoid was he, about the Vietnamese, about the Soviets? I'd need to find out, because paranoia always distorted the facts.

'Now, since the Soviets took over those two former US bases in 1979, they've added five submarine dry docks and installed underground fuel-storage tanks and anti-aircraft batteries, so that in terms of its sophisticated electronic arrays the base at Cam Ranh Bay is one of the most important Soviet communication and intelligence-gathering facilities outside Russian territory. The aircraft carriers Minsk and Novorossiysk have made port calls, and those two bases alone offer the Soviets all the elements of a naval warfare strategy in Southeast Asia - torpedo and cruise missile strikes from aircraft, submarines and surface ships, linked by a land-based communications centre. Would you care for some tea?'

'Yes.'

Vasuratna opened the door and spoke to the guard outside.

'The Soviets, then,' the Prince said when the door was closed, 'are holding a very strong position in Indo-China, bearing in mind the estimated number of "advisers" here -seven thousand in Vietnam, three thousand in Cambodia and two thousand in Laos. But the main concern of my government - given this background - is that by invading Cambodia, Vietnam has moved its borders west, right up to our doorstep.' He whipped the inhaler across his mouth, and it confirmed what I'd noticed since he'd first come in here: that he used it whenever he was saying something that made him anxious. 'That makes us nervous, Mr Jordan. Very nervous. The disastrous failure of the summit conference last month - with its critical heightening of international tension - and the increasing accord between the United States and China, where three US ships of the 7th Fleet actually made port calls last October, together with the first signs of nationalistic restlessness of the Vietnamese as erstwhile hosts to the Soviet fleet, all threaten the Soviet position in the Pacific.'

He broke off as a white-jacketed steward brought in a massive silver tea tray and put it down. Prince Kityakara lifted the lid of the heavily-chased teapot and sniffed. 'Lapsang Souchong - would that suit, gentlemen?'

I tilted my chair back again and watched the ceremony of pouring. A Soviet connection in Indo-China? I hadn't been ready for that.

'Lastly, Mr Jordan, there is this. Thanks to the increasing supply of arms reaching the rebel forces in Laos and Cambodia, those countries are approaching the brink of civil war. This, of course, would normally be seen as advantageous; we would hardly view the overturning of communist power as undesirable. But no one can predict the extent of the bloodshed that would ensue, or the critical increase of Soviet power in Indo-China. Sugar?"

'No.'

'It's not unlikely, you see, that if the Soviets decided to support the Vietnamese in an invasion of Thailand, we might be forced to invoke the terms of the Rusk-Thanat Agreement of 1962, under which America is pledged to support us -militarily. The Agreement is an executive, not a treaty, but it is valid and extant. We have the option of invoking also the Manila Pact, which is a treaty, and extant.' He sipped his tea, and I noted the slight shaking of his hand. 'What we are talking about, Mr Jordan, is a possible military confrontation between Soviet and US forces. The first in history.'

I stopped rocking on my chair.

By the window, Major-general Vasuratna uncrossed his legs, looking at no one. The other man, Captain Krairiksh, was watching the Prince, his hands locked tightly together on his lap. In the courtyard outside the rain fell steadily, ringing on something metal, perhaps the shade of an ornamental lamp. I remembered the quiet, urgent voice of Charles Floderus, inside that London cab. The background is geopolitical, but that shouldn't concern you. This is in fact precisely your kind of operation - the very careful, clandestine infiltration of a major opposition network.

The objective, then, didn't involve making a critical document snatch or bringing a hot spook across a frontier or digging out a mole. It involved defusing an East-West military confrontation in Thailand.

And Floderus had offered a job like this to Pepperidge?

Something wrong.

'And such an event,' Kityakara was saying quietly, 'should, I feel, be energetically avoided.'

I got up and paced, needing movement. Something wrong, yes, or maybe the people in London hadn't realised the size of this thing. Maybe Kityakara had played it close to the chest, and just asked them to send someone out. 'But that couldn't actually happen,' I told him. 'I mean the actual engagement of Soviet and US forces on Thai soil.'

'Not quite that, Mr Jordan.' His cup rattled on the saucer as he put it down. 'But any element of armed confrontation, with East-West tension as high as it is, could bring about a cataclysm.'

'By escalation?'

'Yes. By a naval vessel's going off course at the wrong time and the precipitate order for a carrier to send up its aircraft and finally someone's finger on the button in a missile silo and the sheer lack of time to use the hotline and call a halt.' Inhaler. 'Once inertia has been overcome, Mr Jordan, in whatever field of experience, the momentum is difficult to stop. It has happened before, in two world wars, and it took everyone by surprise. Perhaps this time' - he shrugged uncertainly - 'we can avert the third.'

I waited, then said, 'Does that complete the background, sir?'

'That completes the background. And it seems to me, and to my advisers, that the best way of preventing catastrophe is to re-stabilise the power structure in the region, to discourage the rebel anti-communist forces and render them incapable of overturning the present regimes in Laos and Cambodia. This can be done by cutting off their supply of arms and equipment.' He picked up the teapot again, but got nothing more than a dribble. Captain Krairiksh got up at once and made for the door, but the Prince stopped him. 'It doesn't matter.' He finished the dregs in his cup. 'Unfortunately the supply of arms and equipment has been increasing of late, and substantially. We've been allowing a steady trickle across Thai territory from China, of course, and that will now be stopped. But the greater part of the increasing supplies has been coming from five major international sources, funnelled through one distributor in Southeast Asia. And that distributor is very powerful. So far, we've been quite unable to effect counter-measures.'

'What have you tried?'

'We've tried negotiation, by offering a high government post, with its attendant advantages. We've tried threats, including vigorous legal proceedings. We've tried massive police action in the hope of discovering drug shipments alongside the armaments, without success.' He glanced to the door and away again. 'And we finally tried assassination.'

I moved my head. 'Who was the target?'

'The chief of the organisation.'

'How many attempts were made?'

'Three.'

'And?'

The Prince hesitated, then looked at his chief of military intelligence. 'You know the details better than I do. Would you - ?'

Vasuratna sat to attention. 'Sir.' He turned to me. 'We decided the only way was to make a personal attack on each occasion, but this organisation is extremely capable of defending itself. The first of our agents was dropped off the tailboard of a truck outside the gates of the presidential palace, full of bullets. The second was dumped outside police headquarters with signs of having been rigorously tortured. We have not found the body of the third agent, but his head was delivered to my office in a cardboard box.' He looked down suddenly. 'They were my best men, very experienced, very efficient. I have accepted the blame, of course.'

I realised he was no longer speaking to me, but to Kityakara.

So here was the mission, if I wanted it.

'You're not expected to blame yourself,' the Prince told Vasuratna. 'We're up against someone exceptional this time.'

'Who is it?' I asked him.

'A woman. Mariko Shoda.'

5 YASMA.

'Here for long?'

'I'm not sure yet.'

'Come and see us at the Commission. Always something going on, lots of parties.'

'How nice.' I gave him a nod and turned away, finding a gap in the crowd and using it.