"No. He's Bureau. But he must have been overheard when I signalled him to tell him where you'd be in Seoul. Or there's a bug."
"For God's sake," I said quietly, "get it out."
"Yes indeed."
I finished my report, telling him about Sadie.
"Is she safe?"
"No one," I told him, "is safe. All she's got to do is make a slip of the tongue in the wrong quarter. That whole area is a red sector now: the Chonju Hotel, Li-fei's house and Sadie's place are all in the same network of streets and alleyways, and Spur's wine shop isn't far off."
"You need a new base."
"And a new name."
"I've got your papers with me."
"They'll have to be good. I can't avoid a police check forever."
He passed me a fat envelope and I put it away at once.
"A good one," he said. "Made in London."
"There wasn't time."
"They sent me five, the day you arrived. That too is Croder. He obviously knows you've got staying power."
I didn't want to talk about Croder and I didn't want to think about needing three more changes of cover: the statistics are that if an executive gets blown more than twice he's either dead or back in London with the psychiatrists trying to stop him jumping out of windows.
"Have you got a safe-house for me?" I asked Ferris.
"Spur says you can stay with him."
"Civil of him, but he happens to keep a full-grown boa constrictor as a pet. You'll have to find somewhere else."
"Surely it's harmless?"
"Till it wants someone to play with."
"It's going to take time to find somewhere else."
"Then hurry."
"How long," he asked with a shut face, "can you stay at Sadie's?"
"I'm not going back there. These people are only one step behind me and one fine day she's going to have to call in the cleaners to get the blood off the rug, and you know how fussy London is about involving the public at large in our operations. Until you can find me somewhere I'll hire a car and use it as base. I can sleep in it if I've got to. That whole area's a distinct red sector now and I'm going to stay clear of it after I've seen Spur tonight."
Ferris stopped his beer for an instant in mid-air. "He's got something for you?"
"So he told me, on the phone. I'm seeing him at nine o'clock."
Silhouette.
"Then I'll be at the Embassy from nine onwards. Phone me when you've talked to Spur."
"Will do." I watched the silhouette in the entrance, against the glare of the sunlight. Ferris said:
"Until London can dig up something from signals analysis, Spur's our only hope of finding a way in."
The silhouette was wearing a peaked cap and a holstered revolver. I told Ferris: "Give me everything you've got for me. I might have to leave."
His eyes flicked to the entrance and back to me. "There's been a major break in Pekin. The police there suspect Soong Yongshen."
I began listening carefully. "Suspect him of what?"
"The funeral bombing."
"He worked the remote detonator?"
"So they believe. They're keeping us informed."
The man with the peaked cap and the holstered revolver came into the room and the lanterns showed up his uniform and I relaxed; he was a US Navy officer, not a policeman. "Let me know," I told Ferris, "what progress they make with the Soong Yongshen angle."
"Of course. We checked on his sister for you. She's on the records as a bona fide interpreter for Korean Airlines."
"All right." In a moment he was going to ask me where she was located, and I wasn't going to tell him, and he probably knew that.
"The reason," he said a fraction too casually, "why Control has put all that support into the field is because this thing is a lot bigger than anyone thought."
"I see," I said.
He tried again. "No one will get in your way. You've got my word."
I was getting fed up. "I can't take your word for anything, you know that. Croder's making the rules and if he wants you to do something then you do it. Without telling me, if those are your instructions."
In a moment he said: "You're being difficult."
"That's a shame."
The thing was that after six missions together we knew each other quite well, because a mission is like a lifetime; and he knew that if the Pekin police found hard evidence that Soong Yongshen had blown up that coffin, we'd have a way into the opposition: through his sister. I didn't think she was in the Tung Triad, but she knew who they were: possibly her,dead brother and certainly the «friend» who'd lent her a gun and sent her to Room 29 of the Chonju Hotel to kill me with it. But if I went to see Soong Li-fei I'd go alone, without Ferris covering the area with support in case I needed it.
To move closer to Li-fei would be to move closer to Tung, and into danger. But I won't have Control pushing me across the field like a pawn across a chessboard and I won't work for any local director, even Ferris, who isn't given total discretion and total authority to act independently of London if he decides it's necessary.
Croder was sitting at the centre of a signals network in London and getting instant replay of what was happening in Pekin and Seoul, but at a distance of three and a half thousand miles he couldn't sense danger in a glance from cinnamon eyes or feel the hands at the throat on a hotel stairway. The epicentre of Jade One was the shadow executive and it moved with him through the eye of the storm, and that was the way it must be.
"Any other business?" Ferris asked me. His voice was like a stone.
"Look," I told him, "if Croder wanted to send in an executive who could work best with a flock of bloody nursemaids to look after him he should have done that. But he didn't. He sent me. That's simple enough, surely? Any other business? Yes, I think they meant to kill the American Vice-President, not our chap at all."
I like getting a reaction from Ferris because he hates showing any. Not that he shot down the chandeliers or anything on this occasion; he just murmured, "Holy God."
"Amen."
"Tell me."
"It didn't add up," I told him, "until you said the Pekin police suspect Soong Yongshen of doing that bang over there. But now it does. The woman Li-fei told me — her brother had done something wrong, and that it was something to do with 'that dreadful thing over there' — she meant the bombing. Her brother died by ritual murder, from all reports, with his head off. From what Spur told me about Tung Kuo-feng I'd say he's the kind of man who would punish any member of his Triad who made a serious mistake, and probably with death. I think Soong Yongshen might have made a mistake of that order when he pressed the beam transmitter in Tien'anmen Square while our Secretary of State was placing his wreath. If you look at the photos of both those men — Bygreave and the American Vice-President — you'll notice they look rather alike; and to the Asians, one round-eye looks much like the next."
Ferris was quiet for a time, and I waited, watching the oblong of sunlight. The huge sailor at the next table had started singing; it sounded like Greek, and he had quite a good voice; it sounded much better than the hard rock coming out of the wall.
"You mean the original target," Ferris said as he leaned towards me across the table, "was the American Vice-President?"
"And they shot the American Ambassador to compensate for Soong Yongshen's little mistake."
"This wasn't a random attack on the Western delegates, or some kind of terrorist action with no specific target?"
"It was an attack," I nodded, "specifically directed against the United States."
"If you're right."
"If I'm right."