The financier about to donate Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the New York Met was Jake's grandfather. His donations to the Met, the National Gallery in London, the Paris Louvre and the Prado in Madrid were famous. His donations to competing political parties more famous still.

"You are still American?"

"For my sins," Jake said. "My mother was English," he added, catching Moz's eye. He'd told the boy he came from London. "I went to Westminster."

"It's not true," Moz said.

"Yes it is," insisted Jake. "I lived with my grandmother."

"No," said Moz tearfully. "It's not true that I was here. Malika and I spent the entire afternoon on the roof. She let me get into her knickers," he added desperately, as if that might convince them. "You're both lying."

"Moz." Celia's voice was firm. "You were here."

"No I wasn't." He sounded about twelve, Moz realized. Arguing in a language that wasn't even his own. "You know I was with Malika..." Actually, there was no way they could know that but Moz was beyond caring.

"Look," Celia said. "We know the girl's a good friend of yours but you can't help her. She confessed. When Mr. de Greuze came here we had to tell him the truth. You were with us." Her voice hesitated and something sad flitted across her face.

"With Jake," she amended. "Jake told him everything."

"I had to," Jake said. "It was the only way... And now I'm the one in trouble." He looked between Major Abbas and de Greuze, his eyes troubled, almost apologetic.

"What?" Moz asked. "What did you tell him?"

Although he already knew. Understanding now the look given him by the soldiers on the stairs of the police station, the contempt in the eyes of the Frenchman.

"I showed them the photographs."

What photographs? Moz wanted to shout, but his throat was tight and despair had begun to shake his body. He felt as if the whole world were watching him and the weight of their watching was more than he could bear.

"I'm sorry," Celia said, "there wasn't anything else we could do." Her eyes were huge with tears and she wouldn't look at Jake when he came back from collecting the folder.

There were maybe fifty photographs in all. Most showed Moz sleeping, his head cradled on a thin forearm, his naked body turned on its side and curled around itself like a child suspended in dreams. An upper sheet had been turned down in all of these, sometimes only as far as Moz's hips, although a few showed the sheet turned lower. The last showed him standing naked in a doorway, his head turned towards the camera and a surprised expression on his face.

"You took these?" Major Abbas asked.

Jake nodded.

The spike-haired, gangly boy from the Mellah was beautiful. Not handsome like Hassan or striking as Malika had been but beautiful, a single reed waiting to be broken.

"I'll take those," said Major Abbas, holding out his hand.

"Why?" de Greuze looked puzzled.

"Evidence," said the Major.

CHAPTER 42

Lampedusa, Monday 9 July [Now]

"You know what," said Petra Mayer, fanning photographs out on the mattress in two neat rows. "I can't believe it took me this long to work out. These are you. You're the Arab boy."

The speed with which Prisoner Zero jerked his gaze from the window was impressive.

"Everyone's got it wrong," she said, with a slow smile. "And, as yet, no one has any idea just how badly." Her excitement was almost tangible. "Just wait till Gene finds out."

A large number of people considered Petra Mayer unreliable, badly dressed and unable to cope with the simplest things in life, like driving round the Washington Circle without crashing (right outside the GW Hospital). An embarrassment that happened only once and about which far too much was made, mostly by journalists who could barely read the titles of her later books, never mind understand them. Those who knew the Professor better would have recognized the gleam in her eye.

Entire layers of fact were being discarded and reassembled. She'd taken all the evidence and put it together in the only way that worked.

"They are you, aren't they?"

Prisoner Zero gave a slight shake of his head, while simultaneously mouthing the word "yes"... Conflicted, Katie Petrov would have said and she'd have been right. Although after the drugs, the culture shock and the years in Amsterdam and Paris it was a wonder he knew who he was at all.

"Almost professional," said Petra Mayer, picking up a black and white of a boy about to step into a shower and then making herself put it back. "They show real talent."

The naked man remained silent and after a few seconds his gaze returned to the window. There was something very deliberate about the way he took his attention away from the photographs.

Petra Mayer smiled. She'd won; he just didn't know it yet.

Accompanying the two dozen photographs was a letter from the new Chief of Police in Marrakech which outlined the contents of the envelope to which it had been attached. Inside the envelope had been the photographs, an evidence docket, a typed suggestion that the photographs be burnt and a handwritten note giving reasons why they were to be sealed and marked for storage in a secure vault rather than destroyed.

No mention was made on the docket of the boy's name or where the photographs were taken, and the only name Petra Mayer recognized was scrawled on the first note, the one outlining reasons for the photographs' destruction, which was couched as a suggestion but read like an order.

Claude de Greuze. The man had been infamous.

"This is a good one," said the Professor. She crossed the tiles and dropped to a crouch in front of Prisoner Zero. His nakedness meant nothing to her and as for the stale sweat that rose from his body, it was what she would expect in this heat from any man who hadn't washed for a day or so. Petra Mayer was very pragmatic about these things.

"Take a look." She flipped the photograph round so Prisoner Zero could see a younger version of himself asleep and naked on a bed. When he moved his head she moved the photograph with it.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

The man shook his head, openly this time. And it was all Petra Mayer could do not to grin. Two psychiatrists, three doctors, a Moroccan diplomat and even a top-level military psychiatrist who'd worked Guantanamo Bay, brought out of retirement especially, and she was the one who got a reaction.

"Did Jake take these?" Another photograph, of the same boy sleeping. He looked younger in that one, more vulnerable and, Petra Mayer had to admit it, very obviously under-age.

"Does it matter?"

It was an interesting voice, particularly to someone like Petra Mayer, who had dabbled in social linguistics. Interesting because Prisoner Zero's voice had a slight dissonance, a mere trace of something usually found in those who'd remained silent for a long time, whether voluntary or enforced.

There was a second reason. Most people are defined by their voices -- place, class and education all being easily identified. Languages adopted through the act of learning, however, carried indicators of the person teaching as well as of the person being taught.

The extreme examples were well known. Professor Mayer had met a Zambian physicist who'd read his original degree at a university outside Kiev and come back talking like an elderly Chechen prostitute. A palaeontologist at New York's natural history museum, a self-educated man from Brooklyn, spoke Persian with the Tabrizi accent of a 1950s aristocrat.

In the prisoner's statement were echoes of Moroccan Arabic, Upper East Side New York, received BBC pronunciation and something that could only be Amsterdam-inflected Dutch, which was the Netherlands' equivalent of Brooklyn.