QUILLER BAMBOO

British superspook Quiller (The Quiller Memorandum, Quiller Barracuda, etc.), weariest of all the sons of Bond, is assigned to protect a potential revolutionary from the Chinese government. The unlikely rabble-rouser is diabetic astrophysicist Dr. Xingyu Baibing, whose charismatic disaffection with the Communists since Tiananmen Square makes him the obvious rallying point for an armed counterrevolution that just might bring democracy to China—and who, expelled from the Party, has sought asylum with British diplomats who are bringing him to Hong Kong. Quiller's assignment: to meet Dr. Xingyu (``the messiah''), spirit him away from the Chinese agents who plan to grab him in Hong Kong (so they can brainwash him and send him back to China to sing a different tune), and smuggle him into Beijing as spokesman for the democratic revolutionaries. Everything that can go wrong does, of course: the operations coordinator is a turncoat; Dr. Xingyu wants to go back when he hears his wife's been arrested; Quiller has to break cover to get insulin in the Tibetan village where Xingyu's insisted on going to ground; and another cadre of free-lance revolutionaries wants to send Xingyu back to Beijing under their sponsorship. Hall's plotting is less intricate than usual, the precisely calibrated dangers little more than a series of riffs. But depressive, sententious Quiller is as good company as ever in this lesser entry in a fine series.