‘What?’

  ‘I am sorry.’ Smile on his face. ‘Of course I believe your story, but you must understand that we have to pay close attention if persons approach this oil drill. We have very expensive machinery here. I hope you will accept my apologies.’

  Movement of air as he passed me.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Can I go out and take some air on deck?’

  ‘But of course, Mr Cox. It is a delightful evening.’

  I leaned on the rail.

  Below me the sea was amethyst, its haze reaching to the ochre line of the horizon where the sun had gone down. All was still, except where a sea bird wheeled in silence overhead.

  ‘What’s this stuff?’

  ‘It’s a kind of millet gruel.’

  I thought it looked rather wet.

  There was a dish of man-t’ou.

  ‘What about this?’ In public I was keeping the cover.

  ‘Millet,’ he said, ‘corn, squash, potatoes. Not bad.’

  The line shuffled along and we shuffled with it.

  Think they’ve got anything except millet?’

  He gave his quick white laugh but it was just habit: his nerves were pretty bad. ‘There’s some Pekin duck along there.’

  Face and the lamp, swinging.

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  The canteen was very clean and everything shone under the bright lights. Music tinkled soothingly from the speakers Someone dropped his tin plate and there was immediate silence and then the clatter started up again. I didn’t notice any smell of actual food: I suppose they kept it down with Airwick or something hygienic like that.

  I shovelled some duck on my plate for the sake of protein and Tewson had some too. Then we went along the deck to his cabin, carrying our trays.

  ‘Sorry there’s no wine.’

  As we put our trays on each side of the table I noticed his hands were shaking. His brick-red colouring had yellowed since I saw him last.

  ‘This is very welcome.’

  ‘Is it?’ He seemed pathetically pleased. ‘It doesn’t taste too bad. I expect I’ve got used to it.’

  ‘I mean the whole thing’s welcome. The idea of being invited to dine on board with a fellow guest. If that’s quite the word.’

  He looked down.

  ‘They suggested it.’

  ‘Civil of them.’

  ‘I would have asked you myself, of course, if —’

  ‘Of course —’

  ‘I’m glad of a chance to talk to you.’

  He took a sip of water.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  We began eating.

  I didn’t look at him except when he made the odd remark, and he found it difficult to meet my eyes. September was a beautiful month in Hong Kong, he said: the evenings were always like this, very calm.

  I said I hadn’t been in this part of the globe for some years.

  He asked me how the food was.

  ‘Very good.’

  He seemed pleased again and I couldn’t think why. Some exaggerated sense of hostmanship? His eyes went down to his plate, and the light flashed across his thick-lensed glasses.

  ‘They treat me well. Very well.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’

  ‘Nothing to complain of.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  He ate rather hungrily, but I imagined they wouldn’t be rationed on board a first-line missile site. Possibly he was hoping to get to the flavour.

  He put his knife and fork down.

  ‘Did you come here to take me back?’

  I had to think for a couple of seconds.

  ‘That was the idea.’

  ‘What will they do with you now?’ he asked me, and looked up.

  ‘The same as they’ll do with you.’

  He pushed his plate away and folded his arms on the table and leaned towards me.

  ‘I don’t believe it, you know. What you said.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  I left it at that, wanting to know how much he’d need convincing. He stood it for five seconds or so.

  ‘You can’t prove anything.’

  He wouldn’t need much convincing.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘it’s up to you.’

  He let that go because he had to: he knew we couldn’t talk.

  ‘How — how well do you know Nora?’

  Check and re-check.

  I wouldn’t normally have to, but that bloody light had bored holes in my eyes and I was longing for sleep and couldn’t think as fast as I should.

  Situation: I’d blown my cover to him. They hadn’t broken me down but that didn’t mean anything: they knew they were going to, if they kept on long enough. So I could talk to him about anything I chose but not about my warning to him now. He might not realize this and I was ready in case he let a word slip so that I could try covering it.

  It was academic anyway.

  They’d got us both.

  ‘I don’t know her very well,’ I said. ‘Done a bit of shopping with her, you know-House of Shen, Constellation “144” and places like that. Few evenings together at the Orient and Gaddi’s — she’s fun, isn’t she? Loves expensive things. Of course I didn’t know she was married, or — well —’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said with his head going down.

  I don’t often see people suffering — I don’t mean self-pity, I mean suffering. Maybe I don’t recognize it too easily, because in my opinion it’s always their own bloody fault and that’s why I don’t seem to have too many friends.

  But I recognized it now.

  I suppose she’d gone and shoehorned him into this thing.

  Be a pushover in a place like Hong Kong.

  My husband works for the Ministry of Defence.

  How interesting.

  It’s interesting for him all right, but the money’s not much.

  I’m sure the prestige is a compensation.

  You can’t have a fling on prestige.

  Hong Kong is certainly a little expensive.

  So’s everywhere, I find! Excuse me, but are you sort of — I mean fully Chinese?

  I was born here. That makes me a British subject.

  Oh isn’t that nice I Pushover.

  He was staying at this hotel too, and knew London quite well. She ought to look up his brother when she got back, he must give her the address. The Chinese Embassy-just a temporary post.

  She’d found his brother charming, and discreet, and extraordinarily generous. Because of his love for the British.

  Then Hong Kong again for their next vacation and this time a prearranged contact and a blazing row in their hotel, what did she think she was doing, she wasn’t doing anything except wasting the best years of her life tied to a man who couldn’t even do it more than once a month and couldn’t give her any money so she could at least buy a few new dresses and try to look like a woman somebody loved, but this would be treason, oh don’t be so bloody dramatic, the Chinks haven’t got anything against us, it’s India they’re scared of now it’s got the bomb, he told me, they’re a poor country and this thing you’re working on would cut their costs of defence down to a tenth, oh all right, we’ve talked quite a lot together, so what, and listen, will you, do you know how much they’d pay us for a. few months’ work, just as a technical adviser? Better get ready for it, George. A hundred thousand pounds.

  He sat with his head down, toying with some kind of fruit mush in a waxed hygienic cup.

  ‘I haven’t had time to think,’ he said quietly.

  He meant he hadn’t had time to think about what I’d told him out there on deck with the riveter hammering away.

  I haven’t had time to think.

  You’d have to give me longer than that.

  How much longer?

  I don’t know. I’d have to think.

  Egerton sitting there on the edge of the table by the voice spectograph, telling them to do the whole series again and double check.

  Tewson’s voice.

  I wondered where they’d bugged him. Somewhere in Hong Kong.

  They’d been getting serious about George Henry Tewson, maybe a long time before they’d sent for me and put me down the hole. They wouldn’t be too worried about the Chinese Republic setting up a cheap missile system: the UK was a small island at the wrong end of the telescope and the first targets in any kind of pre-emptive nuclear showdown would be the Soviet Union and India. But Tewson didn’t have to stop at China. He’d got goods for sale and there were other potential buyers and some of them were in Europe and he could go from door to door a hundred thousand a knock and she’d think he was the most wonderful man in the world and that was what he wanted, all he wanted.

  He didn’t want money. None of us do. We want what it can buy.

  He wanted his wife.

  They didn’t know about that in London or maybe they did and maybe that was why they wanted him back there to put away and lose the key. He was a bacillus at large: a one-man do-it-yourself bubonic plague.

  He hadn’t spoken for five minutes.

  ‘That was very nice,’ I said, and pushed my plate away and got up and took my knife and prised the second wall-plug cover off and dragged out the wires and pulled down the portrait of Mao and neutralized that one too and got the fire-extinguisher off the wall and shot foam into the ceiling ventilator grille that didn’t have any dust accumulated around the vanes and threw the extinguisher on the bunk and said:

  ‘Listen, they don’t want anyone to know they’ve got this thing because people are going to feel pressed into developing their own systems in retaliation, particularly India, and if you’re let loose across the frontiers everybody will know. They’ll even know if you’re caught and sent back to London and shoved in clink, because of the trial proceedings.’

  He was watching me from his chair and the light wasn’t across his thick-lensed glasses and I could see his eyes and I could see they were looking at something he’d known would happen to him one day. So he didn’t look surprised and he didn’t look afraid. He looked destroyed.

  ‘There’s only one way they can make sure you keep your mouth shut about the work you’ve done for them. They’re going to do it for real this time, Tewson: they’re going to take you to Tai Tam Bay and leave you long enough for the fish to pick you clean so they can show you’ve been there since your fishing accident and they’re going to take a leg off to show it was a shark but they’ll leave your head on so the dentist can prove it’s you. And don’t tell me I’ve given you a load of cobblers — work it out for yourself.’

  No one had come to the cabin yet Maybe no one would.

  It depended on their thinking: they knew the three mikes were dead and they knew I’d done it and they knew why. But they also knew they could break this poor bastard open and play the whole thing back. They wanted to know what we were talking about and they couldn’t do that if they came along here because we’d shut up. The only thing they could do by coming in here would be to show themselves up as a bunch of lemons, and there’s this face thing they’re all so fussy about.

  ‘How much longer is this job going to take, Tewson?’

  He stared at me through the lenses.

  ‘What did you say?’

  I’d dragged his thoughts back, God knew from what particular hell.

  ‘This job you’re doing for them. How long’s it going to take?’

  He tried to concentrate.

  ‘About two weeks.’

  ‘All right. You’ve got two weeks to live. Thought I should tell you.’

  Chapter Eighteen : OBJECTIVE

  His silhouette came into the window again.

  This was a different one: they’d changed the guard at midnight. His ears stuck out from a rather thin neck. I couldn’t see his eyes. The window was narrow and I’d taken a lot of time measuring it to see if my body could pass through it. In the end I gave it up.

  That was before he’d started again. Not this one, the one with the red-rimmed eyes.

  Why did you destroy the listening devices?

  I’ve told you.

  Why did you destroy the listening devices?

  Gave me three hours.

  Three hours can be a long time. I could still see the lamp.

  What did you say to him?

  Leave me alone you bastard!

  What did you say to him?

  Screw yourself.

  One hundred and eighty minutes and five repetitions every minute and the light making pools at the back of my empty skull, blazing its way right through the sockets. One hundred and eighty temptations to tell him.

  The light was still in my eyes.

  They were shut but it was still there.

  I would like to sleep. I would like to sleep. I would like to see the light go out and hear the dark and feel the silhouette turning slowly, the tape running through the bright metal dishes, anything else but millet? Of course if I’d known you were married, she laughed and opened her legs and the blood was there in a long smear down the road, a man flower, what is a man.

  Watch it.

  Mouth dry and the breath pumping, happened, what happened?

  Bloody well wake up.

  Window was blank he wasn’t at the window.

  Check.

  00.55.

  Don’t do again. It again. Tired that’s all, haven’t had any sleep since eight o’clock last night, last no, night before, yes, a long time.

  I raised my head off the pillow and waited.

  He came again.

  Very regular. Every five minutes. Assumption was that he paced the width of the deck and took station at the rail and surveyed and paced back. The door was locked from the outside and he’d remain within earshot and I couldn’t do anything with the door and if I tried the window it’d make a noise.

  What did you say to him?

  Oh Christ don’t you start.

  Very well. In the morning you will be escorted to Pekin.

  Down the long narrowing tunnel.

  The silhouette left the window and I got off the bunk again and picked up the twist of newspaper and lit the end and held it to the air extractor. The grille was getting sooty: this was the fourth time and there didn’t seem to be much reaction. I shut my eyes, standing there with my arm raised. My eyes wouldn’t stand the light of the flame.

  The night was quiet. I listened but the night was quiet.

  Don’t you face it, hope in hell.

  The heat of the flame on my fingers.

  I blew it out but didn’t take it away till the last of the smoke was drawn through the grille. There was another twist of paper ready because I’d found I could light two within the five-minute period when the guard was absent. I lit the second one and the light of the flame pushed into my skull through the eye-sockets. I could smell the paintwork burning around the grille.

  O Jesus Christ you’re in a locked room and the guard’s armed and there are four others out there, at least four others, you saw them last night and you’d get fifty yards in the sea if the drop didn’t kill you, fifty yards before they started firing and you wouldn’t even float because of all the lead so what are you doing here lighting bits of bloody paper off your rocker or something?

  Heat on my fingers.

  Sleep.

  Bells.

  Quite loud bells, don’t you go to sleep on your feet, I’m warning you. Bit of action to wake you up. Whole place full of bells, more noise out there than a fleet of fire engines. They must have smelt smoke somewhere.

  I hadn’t really expected it to work and it took a second or two to get the brain-think going again. The ball of newspaper was in the corner with the cheap cardtable over it, three-ply, go up a treat.

  I lit the newspaper.

  There were voices outside. A lot of shouting. Time I went.

  It wasn’t really a refinement. The thing had to be credible and if I’d just started a fire in here and banged on the door they’d see what I was doing, trying to get out. But if the alarm system went off they’d take it seriously. So I broke the window and shouted and went to the door and started hammering and the place filled up with smoke and the heat was on my back and I began wondering if he’d get here and open up before the fumes knocked me out. I didn’t want to try the window till there was nothing else for it, because it was so bloody narrow that I might get stuck halfway and the whole thing would turn into a barbecue.

  Eyes running and the fumes burning in my throat, table was crackling, some sparks flying off. I kept on hammering but I couldn’t shout any more, couldn’t breathe. Everything red behind me now and roaring.

  Then the door fell down and I went on top of it and the flames came blowing in the air rush as he got me by the wrists and dragged me across the deck. Hands beating at my back, slapping my shoulders, got me there I suppose, the flames had got me there. Bells.

  Bells and feet running and the clang of a fire bucket Shouting.

  They dropped me against the bulkhead below the derrick and I let my head sag. One of them had got the hose from the nearest point and they were in business now and I watched them but you haven’t got time to watch them, couldn’t see too well because eyes streaming and everything blurred but come on for Christ sake come on!

  They were forming a group, watching the blaze, some of them bringing another hose, and I crawled as far as the iron ladder and got on my feet and knew I couldn’t do it and then did it, still there where I’d left it but sweet Jesus be careful, be careful.

  Thing weighed a ton.

  One of them was coming now and when he saw I was on my feet he pulled his gun and I brought my arms up high, lifting the thing above my head, ready to throw it.

  He stopped.

  And the man behind him stopped.

  The man behind him was naked to the waist, just out of bed.

  He was my interrogator.

  ‘Tell the guard,’ I said, ‘to drop his gun.’

  He stood still, staring above my head.

  The thing weighed a ton but only because I was so bloody tired. Normally it wouldn’t take a lot of lifting, a lot of holding up.

  ‘Tell him —’ but my throat was too sore.

  So I brought it forward suddenly and he made a shrill sound to the guard and repeated it and the guard dropped his gun. I raised my arms again to make it easier to hold there. The big deck lamp was behind me and I could see the shadow, enormous, with the horns sticking out from its sphere. They’d be gleaming quietly in the light above my head, copper coloured, copper red. I couldn’t see them.