Andr`e changed to French and dropped his voice.

"I'm fine now, the best I've ever been. Can't tell you how happy I am and the girl, well, she treats me like a king--best I've ever had.

No more wandering for me. I have an exclusive."

"Wonderful."

"Listen, talking of that, what about Fujiko?

Raiko's getting nervous and so is she. I hear the poor girl's crushed, cries all the time."

"Oh?" Tyrer felt a shaft in his loins.

"Then your advice was right," he said, hardly noticing that he replied in French--most of the evening he had been speaking to Seratard, Zergeyev and other ministers, English intermingled with French.

"I'd say you've been tough enough and it's time.

No point in hurting anyone, they're nice people.

They're both sorry for irritating you."

A few nights ago Raiko had intercepted him and again asked if he had his overdue payment.

After he had put her off with the promise that he was expecting funds any day--gambling that Angelique would find the money--Raiko had questioned him about Tyrer. "What's wrong with the man?

It would be a service to him, to me, to Fujiko, and to you, old friend, to correct whatever needs to be corrected. Obviously he's been seduced by the whores at the Inn of the Lily. In these bad times it would help us, and you, if you would convince him to return. The poor girl is near suicide."

He had not believed that but Raiko had been ready to twist the knife called Hinodeh.

"Phillip, you've played the game perfectly," he said. "I'll arrange a rendezvous and we'll reopen negotiations."

"Well, Andr`e, I don't know about that,"

Tyrer said. "I, er, I must say I did try another girl, once--the Inn you recommended is not bad at all--and I've been thinking perhaps having a permanent girl is not a good idea. I mean it's a large expense and well, I need a polo pony..."

"There are good points and bad points to having your own girl," Andr`e said, hiding his angst.

"Perhaps the best idea would be to shelve contract talks pending "an improvement in relations."

"You mean have your cake and eat it?"

"Why not? They're all there for our pleasure, aren't they--though Fujiko and Raiko are very special." Andr`e was persuasive, not wanting Tyrer off the Fujiko hook any more than he wanted to be on Raiko's. To be secret partners with her was one thing. To be at her mercy was another. He would make the date, the rest would be up to them to seduce Tyrer back to his previous state of passion. "Leave them to me. How about tomorrow? I can promise your welcome will be enthusiastic."

"Oh, really? Well, all right."

"Phillip..." Andr`e glanced around again.

"Henri is more than anxious to support Sir William in moves to rap this fool Tairo Anjo severely--the cretin went too far this time. Could Sir William have a private discussion tomorrow? Henri has a few ideas he would like to pass on, privately."

"I'm sure he would." Tyrer was at once attentive and pleasantly surprised, his tiredness leaving him. Usually Seratard would launch a French initiative and they would only hear of it when it was in full force. Like the secret invitation to Lord Yoshi to visit the French flagship that they had just heard about through their own sources--Chinese servants in the French Legation had overheard Andr`e and Seratard planning, they had passed it on to Number One Chen, who had told Struan who had told him who had told Sir William. "A council of war? The two of them?"

Andr`e said, "I suggest the four of us--they'll need assistants to put their ideas into motion, but the fewer involved the better. If later they wanted to bring in the Admiral and General, all right. But later, eh?"

"An Entente Cordiale! I'll take it up with the Old Man first thing in the morning. How about eleven?"

"Could we make it ten? I must keep a noon appointment." Andr`e had already cleared the idea with Seratard the moment he had returned from seeing Raiko: "Henri, this meeting could be very important, the more secret we keep it from other Ministers the better. This time we've got to pretend to be a hundred percent with the British.

They have the warships, we haven't. This time we must encourage them to go to war."

"Why?"' "I gather from Tyrer who gets it from his tame samurai Nakama--Henri, Tyrer's Japanese is astonishingly good for the short time he's been here. He has a remarkable aptitude for it so we should seriously watch him, and befriend him. Tyrer has found out that there's no love lost between this Anjo and Toranaga Yoshi, who is a patrician like you, whereas Anjo is more of a commoner."

It had amused him to see Seratard puff up at the flattery--no more a patrician than he was himself. "We secretly encourage the British to smash Anjo while distancing ourselves at the last moment from the actual conflict, while cultivating Yoshi as urgent, secret national policy. We make him an ally, we must, then through him we'll dump the British back in their sewer and control the foreign presence here."

"How do we do that, Andr`e? Cultivate him?"' "Leave that to me," he had said, gambling again that, through Raiko and by providing her with first-rate intelligence, and money, he could make the right contacts to get close to Yoshi. "He's going to be our key to unlock Japan. We'll have to invest some money, not much. But, in the right pocket ..." with a little wandering into mine, he had chortled, "I'll guarantee success. He's going to be our Knight in Shining Armor. We're going to help him become Sir Galahad to wreck Wee Willie's King Arthur."

Why not, he told himself again, standing there on the promenade with Tyrer, another key piece on the chessboard of French dominance in Asia.

Phillip will...

My God! He almost burst out as the wild idea jumped into his mind: If Struan gets killed in his duel and Angelique becomes a free card, could she become a Guinevere for this Jappo Yoshi? Why not? He might enjoy a different tidbit. Through Raiko, perhaps Angelique would--for she would be perilously without funds and therefore vulnerable.

He laughed and put the thought aside as too heady to consider seriously tonight. "Phillip," he said, wanting him to consider him to be his best friend.

"If we can help our masters to arrive at a firm solution and put it into effect... eh?"

"That would be marvelous, Andr`e!"

"One day you'll be Ambassador here."

Tyrer laughed. "Don't be silly."

"I'm not." In spite of the fact they would always be on opposite sides and he needed to be able to influence him, he genuinely liked Tyrer.

"In a year you'll speak and write fluent Japanese, you're trusted by Wee Willie, you've your wild card, Nakama, to assist you.

Why not?"

"Why not?" Tyrer said with a grin. "It's a nice idea to end a night on. Happy dreams, Andr`e."

Almost no one in the Settlement was sleeping as contentedly as Angelique--Struan's bombshell tonight, coupled with anxiety over the coming war here and in Europe and the resultant hazards for business, kept most awake: "As if there's not enough to worry about with our own civil war,"

Dmitri muttered to his pillow in the deep darkness of his room in the Cooper-Tillman Building. News from home was getting worse and worse, whichever side you supported and he had family on both sides.

Dreadful numbers of casualties on both sides, looting and burning and atrocities and mutinies and brutalities and corruptions and monstrous tragedies, on both sides. An uncle had written from Maryland that whole towns were being burned and pillaged by Quantrill's Raiders for the South and the Jayhawkers for the North, and that, by now, most important men in the North had legally bought themselves and their sons out of the army draft: The war's being fought by the poor, the undernourished, the ill-equipped and the half starving.