'When did they start the tag?'

He turned his back on the room again, blocking his free ear because of the band.

'When did they what?'

I suppose he wanted it straight from the book: maybe he was college-trained, Norfolk. 'When did the subject come under opposition surveillance?'

He didn't say anything for a bit and I began getting worried because it wasn't possible for me to tell whether he couldn't hear properly or whether he was having to think something out. There wasn't anything for him to think out: I'd asked him a perfectly simple question.

'D'you mean,' he said, 'she's being -'

'Don't look round.'

I said it sharply because he'd begun turning his head the other way and for a second I didn't believe it. He turned back to face the wall and I hoped he'd begun sweating as hard as I was. In a minute I said:

'You mean you didn't know?'

There was a short silence, then he said: 'Oh shit . . .'

It was about all he could say because he was obviously straight out of training so they'd given him the simplest job on the list and London had sent him a top-ranking shadow-executive all the way to Hong Kong to tell him he'd mucked it up, I felt for the poor little bastard but that wasn't the point, he was dangerous.

I looked for a waitress and let my eyes pass across the table for two on the far side from the bar. The man hadn't moved. He glanced at the Tewson woman every five seconds, away to the dance-floor, back to the woman, every five seconds, police-trained, possibly Special Branch, but Macklin had told me the enquiry into Tewson's death had been closed. I was waiting for him to look across, just once, at Flower. He was the thin tubercular Chinese with glasses I'd noted in the lobby of Jade Imperial Mansion and again in the four-door Honda that had been three cars behind Flower when we'd turned into Gloucester Road and again when I'd been waiting in cover across the street from here.

'Shut up,' I told Flower. He was trying to talk.

I gave it another full minute. The man was like a robot, every five seconds and never varying, never interested in anyone else, never looking at Flower, a professional amateur with precise instructions - don't let her out of your sight - and doing his job to the letter.

'Flower.'

'Yes, sir?'

'You're off the hook. They haven't seen you.'

He said bitterly: 'That isn't my fault.'

Give him credit at least for knowing what he'd done. But he'd been lucky and that was what made it potentially dangerous: if that little police-trained robot had got on to him he wouldn't have stood a chance - they could have roped him in and put him under intensive questioning and blown his cover, finis. Worse, they could have tagged him to any rendezvous that he and I might have made, putting surveillance on me and forcing me to show my hand by throwing them off. Of course there were built-in fail-safe factors and even if they'd caught him and put him under the lamp he couldn't have exposed the Bureau or anything to do with it because he'd never been there; they don't let a raw recruit go anywhere near the place till he's proved he's safe. And I hadn't on principle gone near him myself when I'd seen him stationed outside Jade Imperial, any more than I'd gone near him when I'd come in here. But it doesn't matter how hard you try to keep the safety mechanism operative: you can make a mistake or have some bad luck and then all you need is someone like Flower and the whole thing's going to blow.

'Are you here in the club?' Flower was asking me. He'd asked me before and I'd told him to shut up.

'Just keep on looking at the wall.'

But I was ready to drop the receiver and put the phone on to the banquette below table-level in case he took it into his head to look round anyway because with his lack of experience I didn't want him to be able to recognize me at any time or in any place until I was ready.

'All right, Flower, I want a quick breakdown on her travel-pattern.'

A couple of seconds went by and I wondered if he was normally as slow as this or whether it was nerves. 'She goes quite a lot to jewellers and places like -'

'Which ones?'

'Erm-- the House of Shen, that was this morning. And a place called Constellation "144" - that's in -'

'Where else?'

'Kaiser's, and - I think that's all. She -'

'Does she always buy something?'

'You mean jewellery?'

'Yes - come on, Flower -'

'Well, I can't be sure whether she -'

'Then you bloody well ought to be, they've got windows, haven't they? Where else does she go?'

He didn't get any faster but it was no good my taking the pressure off because I wanted to know things, a whole lot of things, this wasn't really my kind of operation, Macklin had told me, he must have known I'd have Flower to deal with.

'She's been to the Bayside Club, the Danshaku and Gaddi's.' He was speeding up a little now and by the way he was standing I thought he'd got a notebook. 'She's had dinner twice at the Eagle's Nest - that's at the top of -'

'Hilton, right. Companions? Contacts?'

'You mean--'

'Who does she meet?'

'Oh. Nobody.'

'Nobody at all?'

'Not that I've seen.'

I was looking across at her. They had a can-can number warming up on the floor and she was leaning back, one arm lying along the top of the banquette, her bare shoulders pale and luminous in the low-key light and her small head poised as she watched the dancers. I wasn't surprised the elegant Chinese had risked a snub by going over to speak to her, and not surprised he'd got it. From Flower's observations she was avoiding men, avoiding people altogether, still upset by Tewson's death two months ago but not wanting to wilt alone in her apartment. Maybe this was where they used to come together, here and the other places.

'What's her usual time-pattern?'

'She never leaves her pad before ten or eleven a.m. and she's usually back before midnight, unless -'

'Away all day? Lunches out, dines out?'

'Yes, she never goes home before eleven or twelve, once she's left there in the morning. She -'

'You'd say she drifts around, spending money or window-shopping, killing time, that kind of thing?'

'Yes, sir, I'd say that. I-'

'Never takes a trip -'

'Only Kowloon -'