Greg halted the memory and studied the boy's eager, wonder-struck face. There was something not quite right about him. It was as if he was a model; everything about him, the awkwardness, the slight swagger, a designer's idea of teenager.

"She'll eat him alive," Suzi snorted gleefully. "He won't last the night."

"Way to go." Rachel said.

"André, can you get a make on that boy for me, please?" Even as he said it, Greg knew the boy would defy identification, just like the chauffeur. Judging by the apprehensive way André Dubaud was ordering the make, he thought so too.

"What car did they leave in?" Greg asked Claude Murtand. The hotel security manager tapped an order into his terminal's keyboard, and played the outside camera memory on a monitor screen.

Greg and Suzi groaned together. It was the Pontiac.

He got Claude Murtand to run the outside camera memory, and watched the Pontiac rolling up to the El Harhari's front door; the same chauffeur who'd driven it at the Celestious hopped out and opened the doors. Charlotte Fielder and her boy companion climbed in. Greg asked to see it again, a third time. His intuition had set up a feathery itch along his spine.

"Freeze it just before Fielder gets in," Greg told Claude Murtand. "OK, now enlarge the rear of the car."

The image jumped up, focusing on the open door and the boot. Charlotte Fielder's raised foot hovered over the door ledge.

"More," Greg said.

The image lost definition badly, black metal and darkened glass, fuzzy rectangular shadows stacked together. He peered forward.

"Suzi, look at the rear window, and tell me what you see."

She sat in Claude Murtand's seat right in front of the monitor screen, screwed up her eyes. "Shit yes!" she exclaimed.

"What?" Rachel demanded.

Greg tracked an outline down the left-hand side of the rear window, a ghost sliver of deeper darkness. "There's someone else in there."

Greg could sense André Dubaud's growing anger; there was worry in there as well, churning his thought currents into severe agitation.

"It would seem that my office is unable to identify the boy at this time," the Commissaire said.

Greg knew how much the admission hurt him. The Nice sacking was burned into the psyche of Monégasque nationals, everything they'd done since had been structured around safeguarding the principality. Now people were coming and going as they pleased. The wrong sort of people.

"No shit," Suzi said, and there was too much insolence even for her.

"Madame, everyone who comes to Monaco is entered in the police memory core. Everyone. No exceptions."

"Wrong. You squirt my picture into this characteristics recognition program of yours, or Greg's, or Rachel's, or Pearse's. You'll get bugger-all back, just like the chauffeur and the kid. We never showed our passports to anyone, never thumbprinted an Immigration data construct."

"Certainly not," André Dubaud said. "You are here as Madame Evans's guests. I know how much importance she attached to your mission. Though I might question her judgement in your case. Naturally, considering the urgency, you were spared the inconvenience."

"And that's it," Suzi said. "Greg asked me how I'd pull someone from this pissant lotus land. Said I couldn't. I don't have what it takes, I'm hardline and covert deals. What you need for this is money. That's what jerks your strings, Commissaire. Money. You people have turned it into a flicking religion, you fawn over the stuff. Christ, all Julia's got to do is speak, and you roll over and spread your legs. All 'cos she's loaded."

André Dubaud had reddened, lips squashing into a bloodless line, taking slow shallow breaths through his nose.

"Yeah, thank you, Suzi," Greg said. "How about it, André?" Is there anyone else in the police department apart from yourself who has the authority to waive Passport and Immigration controls?"

"There are some others who could sanction such a courtesy. But it could only be done if the circumstances justified it," André Dubaud said sullenly.

"How many people?"

"Please understand, money is not all that is required. The person making such a request would have to be of impeccable character."

"How many?"

"Twenty-five, thirty. Perhaps a few more."

"Oh, great."

Victor's face formed on Greg's cybofax as soon as he entered the code.

"Charlotte Fielder was lifted out of here," Greg said. "No doubt about it. This is a real pro deal; lot of money, lot of talent. The Pontiac that spirited her away from the Newfields ball was hired, the bloke who paid was the chauffeur. There's no trace of him, he wasn't entered in the police memory core. Same result for the boy she left with. As for the other person in the car, I couldn't even tell you if they were male or female."

The other three, Rachel, Suzi, and Pearse Solomons were sitting quietly round Claude Murtand's office, happy to let him summarize. The air conditioner was humming softly, sucking out the accumulated moisture. Claude Murtand and André Dubaud were on the other side of the glass wall, talking in low tones, and casting an occasional unhappy eye in his direction.

"I can't add much," Victor said. "Fielder hasn't used her Amex card for the last three days, so no leads for that. But then she hadn't used it for a ten-day period prior to booking into the Celestious, either."

"What did she use it for ten days ago?" Greg asked.

Victor glanced at something off screen. "It was in Baldocks, that's a department store in Wellington, New Zealand. A bill for forty-three dollars; but it wasn't itemized."

"Not important," Greg said. "So what was she doing for the ten days between Wellington and Monaco?"

"That's what you're supposed to tell me," Victor said.

"Meeting Royan," Suzi said.

"Right. But where?" said Greg. "I have two questions, based on what we've found out so far. Firstly, why take so much trouble over a courier? Given that all she had to do was deliver the flower box to Julia, someone has gone to a hell of a lot of effort to stash her away."

"Because she can lead us to Royan," Suzi said.

"Fair enough. So that means the people behind her, the ones with the Pontiac, don't want us to know where Royan is. Ordinarily, I'd say that pointed to a kidnapping."

"But there's the flower," Victor said.

"Yeah, and also the eight months that Royan's been missing. Holding someone for eight months without a ransom demand is ludicrous."

"Who knows how alien minds work?" Suzi asked.

"Not me," said Greg. "But the chauffeur and the kid were human—" he broke off, remembering the boy's perfection. "Make that humanoid."

"Oh, bollocks," Suzi said. "Fucking aliens walking round Monaco."

"They might have the technological know-how to enter and leave the dome whenever they wanted," Greg pointed out. But he couldn't bring himself to believe it. Too complicated, especially now they had established money could do the job just as easily. "The thing is, someone powerful is moving Fielder around. That's the second question. Why not bring her in to Monaco the way she was taken out? Letting her come in through the normal channels, going through Passport control, thumbprint, the legal construct, then booking into the Celestious, all of that let's us find out who she is. Why? When they could obviously have handed over the flower to Julia, and left us completely in the dark?"

Suzi stretched in her chair. "Go on. You've obviously got an answer."

"Two different groups," Greg said. "She came from Royan, to deliver the flower. Then afterwards, someone else nabbed her."

"If it was a tekmerc squad, could you find out, Suzi?" Victor asked.

"Maybe. But it would take time. Week, maybe two. Then longer to find out who put the deal together."