The easy way to indulge the temptation would be to ask the Suriname authorities directly, via the U. S. Embassy on Redmondstraat, but that would trigger Surinamese curiosity. They would want to know why. They would pick him up themselves and start asking questions. The man called Avenger could arrange to be set free and start again. The Serb, already becoming paranoid at the thought of going to Peshawar, could panic and call the deal off. So Devereaux paced and prowled and waited.

Down in Paramaribo the tiny consulate of San Martin had been tipped off by Colonel Moreno that an American pretending to be a collector of butterflies might apply for a visa. It was to be granted immediately, and he was to be informed at once.

But no one called Medvers Watson appeared. The man they sought was sitting at a terrace cafŽ in the middle of Parbo with his last purchases in a sack beside him. It was August 24th.

What he had bought had come from the town's only camping and hunting shop, the Tackle Box on Zwarten Hovenbrug Street. As the London businessman, Henry Nash, he had brought almost nothing that would be useful across the border.

But with the contents of the diplomat's crate and what he had acquired that morning, he could think of nothing he might be missing. So he tilted back his Parbo beer and enjoyed the last he was going to have for some time.

Those who waited were rewarded on the morning of the 25th. The line at the river crossing was, as ever, slow, and the mosquitoes, as ever, dense. Those crossing were almost entirely locals, with pedal bikes, motorcycles, and rusty pickups, all loaded with produce.

There was only one smart car in the line on the Suriname side, a black Cherokee, with a white man at the wheel. He wore a creased seersucker jacket in cream, off-white Panama hat, and heavy-rimmed glasses. Like the others he sat and swatted, then moved a few yards forward as the chain ferry took on a fresh cargo and cranked back across the Commini.

After an hour he was at last on the flat iron deck of the ferry, handbrakes on, able to step down and watch the river. On the San Martin side, he joined the line of six cars awaiting clearance.

The San Martin checkpoint was tighter, and there seemed to be a tension among the dozen guards who milled around. The road was blocked by a stripped pole laid over two recently added oil drums weighted with concrete. In the shed to one side, an immigration officer studied all papers, his head visible through the window. The Surinamese, here to visit relatives or buy produce to sell back in Parbo, must have wondered why, but patience has never been rationed in the Third World nor information a glut. They sat and waited again. It was almost dusk when the Cherokee rolled to the barrier. A soldier flicked his fingers for the needed passport, took it from the American, and handed it through the window.

The offroad driver seemed nervous. He sweated in rivers. He made no eye contact but stared ahead. From time to time he glanced sideways through the booth window. It was during one of these glances that he saw the immigration officer start violently and grab his phone. That was when the traveller with the wispy goatee panicked.

The engine suddenly roared; the clutch was let in. The heavy black 4X4 threw itself forward, knocked a soldier flying with the rearview mirror, tossed the stripped pole in the air, and burst through, swerving crazily around the trucks ahead and charging off into the dusk.

Behind the Cherokee there was chaos. Part of the flying pole had whacked the army officer in the face. The immigration official came out of his booth shouting and waving an American passport in the name of Prof. Medvers Watson.

Two of Colonel Moreno's secret police goons, who had been standing behind the immigration officer in the shed, came running out with handguns drawn. One went back and began to gabble down the phone lines to the capital, forty miles east.

Galvanised by the army officer who was clutching his broken nose, the dozen soldiers piled into the olive-drab truck and set off in pursuit. The secret policemen ran to their own blue Land Rover and did the same. But the Cherokee was around two corners and gone.

In Langley, Kevin McBride saw the flickering bulb flash on the desk phone that linked him to the office of Colonel Moreno in San Martin City. He took the call, listened carefully, noted what was said, asked a few questions, and noted again. Then he went to see Paul Devereaux.

"They've got him," he said.

"In custody?"

"Almost. He tried to come in as I thought, over the river from Suriname. He must have spotted the sudden interest in his passport, or the guards made too much of a fuss. Whatever, he smashed down the barrier and roared off. Colonel Moreno says there is nowhere for him to go. Jungle both sides; patrols on the roads. He says they'll have him by morning."

"Poor man," said Devereaux, "he really should have stayed at home."

Colonel Moreno was overly optimistic. It took two days. In fact, the news was brought by a bush farmer who lived two miles up a track running off the righthand side of the highway into the jungle.

He said he recalled the noise of a heavy engine growling past his homestead the previous evening, and his wife had caught sight of a big and almost new off-road going up the track.

He naturally assumed it must be a government vehicle, since no farmer or trapper would dream of being able to afford such a vehicle. Only when it did not come back by the following night did he trudge down to the main road. There he found a patrol and told them.

The soldiers found the Cherokee. It had made one further mile beyond the farmer's shack when, trying to push onward into the rain forest, it had nosed into a gully and stuck at forty-five degrees. Deep furrows showed where the fleeing driver had tried to force his way out of the gully, but his panic had merely made matters worse. It took a crane truck from the city to get the 4X4 out of the hole, turned around, and heading for the road. Colonel Moreno himself came. He surveyed the churned earth, the shattered saplings and torn vines.

"Trackers," he said. "Get the dogs. The Cherokee and everything in it to my office. Now."

But darkness came down. The trackers were simple folk, not able to face the darkness when the spirits of the forest were abroad. They began next morning at dawn and found the quarry by noon.

One of Moreno 's men was with them and had a cell phone. Moreno took the call in his office. Thirty minutes later, Kevin McBride walked into Devereaux's office.

"They found him. He's dead."

Devereaux glanced at his desk calendar. It revealed the date was August 27th.

"I think you should be there," he said.

McBride groaned.

"It's a hell of a journey, Paul. All over the bloody Caribbean."

"I'll sanction a company plane. You should be there by breakfast tomorrow. It's not just me who has to be satisfied this damn business is over for good. Zilic has to believe it, too. Go down there, Kevin. Convince us both."

The man Langley knew only by his code name of Avenger had spotted the track off the main road when he flew over the region in the Piper. It was one of a dozen that left the highway between the river and the capital forty miles to the east. Each track serviced one or two small plantations or farms, then petered out into nothing.

He had not thought to photograph them at the time, saving all his film for the hacienda at El Punto. But he remembered them. And on the flight back with the doomed charter pilot Lawrence, he had seen them again. The one he chose to use was the third from the river. He had a start of half a mile over his pursuers when he slowed in order not to leave visible skid marks, and then eased the Cherokee up the track. Around a bend, engine off, he heard the pursuers thunder past.