There was movement now and I refocused: two figures detaching themselves from the edge of the building, one white, one darker, indistinct because the line of magnolias was in the way. More movement, this time on the far side of the pagoda: two figures again, both white, the same stature, their motion co-ordinated. A slight burst of noise from the launch as the seaman cleared the cylinders.

The darker figure stopped, looking up at one of the first-floor windows, and even at this distance and with no depth of field I could see his awkwardness as he waved his hand. Then they were filing down to the jetty, forming the same kind of procession I'd seen last night.

I estimated that Mandarin had another two minutes to run.

London was six thousand miles away but they'd got a radio hadn't they, got a telephone for Christ sake, this wasn't an alien state, it was a Crown Colony and they could pull some rank, couldn't they, and what the hell was the Minister doing about this, the one they were so bloody proud of because he could cut through the red tape in ten seconds flat, hadn't anyone picked up the blower and got him off the pot?

Sweating like a pig.

The seaman was in the stern, handing his party aboard, and the launch heeled slightly to their weight. Two of the figures were going into the cabin, one of them the man in the bush jacket, George Henry Tewson, the man from London, dead on paper, killed off by bought witnesses at the dictates of clandestine necessity, the man at the centre of Mandarin, alive and well and vanishing from sight as the stern went down and the exhaust note bubbled to a roar. Within thirty seconds the launch was a small indistinct blob half lost in the morning haze, and I lowered the binoculars.

Mission aborted. Am returning to London.

Because there wasn't anything else I could do. Tewson was I being released periodically on some kind of parole and he might come here again but it wouldn't be for another week, unless they changed the pattern. I'd already got as close to Nora as I could without getting killed and if I stayed in Hong Kong for another week I wouldn't have time to do anything but keep out of their way and hope to stay alive: but that wasn't what I was here for. All London could do was send one of their tame mind-benders to work on Nora Tewson and by the time he'd produced results I'd be somewhere else and stuck into a different jumble sale - Helsinki, if I could twist their arm, there was a ministry scandal blowing up and we all knew it was Nikolai again and we'd have to stop him. Aware, at the edge of my thoughts, that the sound of the launch remained steady, even though it was on the horizon now. They were going to go straight through the roof in London because they hated a mission to abort, it meant someone had blundered. I supposed it was something to do with the acoustic properties of the East Lamma Channel, there was an echo coming back from the hills over there, making it seem that the launch was stationary at full speed. So what did we do, we lost yet another of those poor little wretches they always put in the field too early and we had all the paper off the wall at the Hong Kong Cathay and we ran out of toothpaste. London was going to fire Egerton from a cannon every Tuesday at the Horse Guards Parade for as long as they could find anything to put back in the barrel. But the direction of the sound had altered too, and I turned my head.

The damn thing was nosing inshore, losing way, some kind of police boat, I hadn't seen it because the binoculars had been stuck in my eyes, the engines dying to a slow boil, three smart-looking officers in the stern and watching me but not making any sign in case I was the wrong man. I went along the breakwater like a monkey, jumping from pile to pile and trying to keep my balance along the horizontal timbers. The launch was standing off, quite a big vessel, twin screws, couldn't come in any closer, take time to lower the boat, it was up to me, really.

One of them grabbed me as I fell aboard.

'Can you move off?'

'Are you Mr Wing? We received -'

'Can you move off immediately? Look, you see that boat on the horizon?'

His head swung like a perched hawk's when it sights prey. He was a neat young Chinese, thin as a string, all cap-peak and cheekbones, his eyes locked on the distant sea.

'You wish me to follow?'

'If it's not too late.'

He moved a hand in a signal to the bo'sun and nearly had me in the water as the stern dipped and the deck lurched, sending me against the rails. He was calling something to me above the roar of the engines.

'What?' I shouted.

'Are you Mr Wing?'

'Yes.'

'Captain Liu Tse-tung, Narcotics Division.'

The wind was whipping at our faces now and he led me into the cabin. I caught the scent right away and he saw my expression, giving a quick laugh.

'Fifty kilos,' he said. A couple of the bags had burst and the stuff had spilled across the top of the locker. 'We were taking it in when we had the signal about you.'

'When was that?'

'At 05.40. We were north of Green Island.'

'You didn't waste any time.'

Peripheral anxiety: Nora Tewson might conceivably note that two minutes after the launch had left the hotel mooring a police boat had put to sea at full speed half a mile north along the shore. We didn't carry any markings visible at that distance but we had radar and we didn't look like a cabin cruiser. Nothing to be done about it: ignore.

There were some charts framed under glass on the bulkhead and I looked at them. Hydrographic Department, Hong Kong Approaches. The relevant sheet was No. 341: Islands South of Lantau.

'What's your bearing, Captain Liu?'

He looked at the compass. 'Two-four-oh.'

We were heading roughly south-west, passing the north coast of Lamma Island by Pak Kok Point and moving into the West Lamma Channel. I'd assumed that a Pekin-based operation would take the launch north-west towards the South China seaboard but I was wrong, unless it was going to round Lantau from the south and head north after leaving Hong Kong territorial waters. We could see its dark blob through the windscreen, larger now and growing clearer. The sun was almost directly behind us and still only two diameters high, right in their eyes if they looked astern.

'Are we flat out?'

'I am sorry?'

'Are we going at full speed?'

'Yes.'

'All I want is to see where they go. Do what you can to stay up sun of them.'

'To stay-?'

'Stay between them and the sun.'

'Ah yes, understand.'

It occurred to me that London had taken so bloody long because they'd had to screen the whole of the Hong Kong police through local agents in place before they could give me a boat crew I could trust: Macklin had told me to use utmost care in approaching the police or the Special Branch. Egerton must have worked his chilblains to the bone getting me this toy, it was a shame.

In ten minutes we began passing junks on their way out to the fishing banks and I looked at the chart again. Lamma was to port and falling astern, with Cheung Chau Island coming up on the other side. The deck had been tilting a bit and I took a look at the compass. We'd begun heading a few points more southerly at 235 degrees. Five minutes later Captain Liu spoke again.

'You wish me still follow?'

'Yes. Why?'

'We are leaving territorial waters now.'

'What difference does that make?'

'Only if you wish me to put a shot across bows, or go aboard. We have no more authority now.'

He was looking slightly disappointed, and I thought what a dangerous world it was.

'They must not see us, Captain Liu. They must remain totally unaware of our presence. Now is that understood?'

'Oh yes, understood.' He turned away slightly, probably embarrassed, peering with great concentration through the windscreen. I suppose if you're a young ambitious skipper of a police boat you spend a lot of your time looking for an excuse to blow someone out of the water.

There wasn't a lot of shipping about, but enough to give us a bit of cover. Liu went to stand by the bo'sun and we altered course twice in the next ten minutes as he brought us almost parallel with the launch, keeping between it and the sun. Then he ordered half speed.