Am . . . Am ... Am .. . Am.. , Afraid . . . Afraid . .. Afraid . .. Afraid..., So... So ... So ... So ...

Idiom all right but an Englishman wouldn't say 'I am afraid', he'd say 'I'm afraid', it didn't sound like a speech, more like an intimate conversation.

'How many have we done?' Egerton asked.

'Seventy-four, sir.'

'You mean altogether?'

'Well, the whole series of matching spectograms, and then the fixed contexts. We did the randoms yesterday.'

Egerton sat like a quiet thin-legged bird on the edge of the table, looking at nothing, saying nothing, until after half a minute the man behind m5 gave a little embarrassed cough and in the silence I heard the cloth of his sleeve rustling as he moved his arm, fingering his hair back, probably not used to Egerton's holy silences.

'What?'

'I didn't say anything, sir.'

'Ah yes.' He got off the table. 'Yes, well, that's fine. Do those again, will you, and double check?'

The man with the headphones took them off slowly. 'The whole seventy-four?'

'Yes. And let me have the report from Williams.'

Somebody whispered oh Jesus and flipped a switch rather sharply, but Egerton didn't seem to notice anything because he wanted the whole seventy-four comparisons done again so they were going to have to do the whole seventy-four comparisons again and that was the only thing that had the slightest interest for him, 'Did you want to see me, Quiller?'

'I'm called in.'

He'd taken to wearing glasses recently and his dull brown eyes wandered around the edge of my face as if he was trying to find the middle.

'Oh yes. Why don't we go upstairs?'

In the corridor I asked: 'What were the voice-prints?'

'Ah. Well they'll be working on those.'

So I shut up and we took the main stairs because the lift in this building gets jammed between floors twice a week and we just can't afford the time.

Egerton had possibly been an owl in a previous life because he'd picked a room on the top floor and turned it into a sort of nest, lined comfortably with maps and books and posters of Edwardian bicycle advertisements, furnishing the rest of it with cherished objects - a skull, an abacus, a bulb-horn, that kind of thing, possibly flying through the small high dormer window with them in the dead of night.

'Make yourself at home,' he said, and draped his body behind the desk like a pile of bones. 'When did you get back?'

'Where from?'

'Cyprus, wasn't it?'

'I haven't been out,' I said slowly, 'for close on two months.'

He reached over and dropped a folder on to his desk and said absolutely nothing for three minutes. I threw my trench-coat across the fire-guard he used in winter and sat down on the Louis Quinze chair that years ago had been filled with stuffing. The phone rang and Egerton answered it.

'Well?'

There were streaks of rain on the window and the glow from the street sent their shadows trickling on Egerton's face as if he were quietly crying, and it suited him, I thought. They said his wife had committed suicide at some boarding-house on the south coast, not so long ago; but nobody know if he was miserable because she'd done it or if she'd done it because he was miserable.

'Has Mildmay seen him yet?'

I could hear Tilson's voice from the receiver, so they were talking about Styles, just in from Ankara, a sticky de-briefing session because we all knew that Styles was in it for the money and one fine day the Rusks or the Turks or the Arabs were going to make him an offer he couldn't refuse and he'd blow the whole network if they didn't watch out 'Not in my opinion.'

Or he'd be found floating.

'I can't see him at the moment, I'm sorry.'

He put the phone down and looked at the stuff in the folder again and sat back and said: 'There's nothing concrete yet.' He expected me to say something so I didn't. 'Things are a little confused over there.'

'Over -'

'In Pekin.' He folded his thin raw hands, studying the scars of the winter's chilblains for a moment. 'Have you been briefed on China?'

I got off the Louis Quinze chair and he looked up in surprise and I said: 'I haven't had a mission for two months and they put me on a ten-day call and brought me in after six days and nobody's told me a bloody thing except that Tilson says you're my Control.'

He gave me a bleak smile.

'I know how you feel? He didn't.

'Look,' I said, 'have you got a mission for me?'

'Oh yes.'

I hadn't expected that. I sat down again, and a thought came at a tangent: the second voice on that tape, the one with the right idiom and the wrong tone, I am afraid so, could possibly be an educated Chinese.

'The problem,' Egerton said apologetically, 'is that they got the timing wrong. It wasn't their fault.' He checked a sheet in the folder, looking down through the lower lenses of his glasses and trying to get used to the focus. 'We were all ready to send you in, and now we're not.' He shut the folder and slid it to one side.

'Oh, for Christ's sake.'

I got up again and squelched around in my leaky shoe.

'Not, anyway,' he said, 'for a few days.'

'A few days?'

He looked surprised.

'Yes.'

The thing is that after two months you get the feeling you'll never be able to do it again unless you do it soon, and it bring the nerves to the boil. I thought he'd meant weeks, not days.

'Look, if it's Pekin - is it Pekin?'

'Yes.'