‘British?’ He unpeeled his glasses and flopped them on the desk.

‘To the core, Mr Barnes,’ I said. ‘To the core.’ I knew that what he meant was British army. We exchanged wry military grins that told each other how much we hated those flyblown pieces of shit who tied the hands of decent men and called it politics. When we’d had enough of that, I said: ‘David Solomon.’

‘What can I do for you, Mr Solomon?’

‘As I think your secretary mentioned, sir, I come from Mr O’Neal’s Ministry. Mr O’Neal has one or two questions that he hopes you might be able to answer.’

‘Shoot.’ The word fell easily from his lips, and I wondered how many times and in how many different contexts he’d said it.

‘It concerns Graduate Studies, Mr Barnes.’

‘YUP.’

That was it. Yup. No ‘you mean the scheme whereby an unspecified group of people conspire to sponsor a terrorist action with the aim of boosting sales of anti-terrorist military equipment?’ Which, I must admit, I’d sort of been banking on. If not that, then a guilty start would have sufficed. But ‘yup’, on its own, was no help at all.

‘Mr O’Neal was hoping that you might care to enlighten us with your latest thinking on the subject.’

‘Was he now?’

‘Indeed he was,’ I said firmly. ‘He was hoping you might favour us with your interpretation of recent events.’

‘What recent events might those be?’

‘I’d rather not go into any details at this juncture, Mr Barnes. I’m sure you understand.’

He smiled, and there was a flash of gold from somewhere at the back of his mouth.

‘You have anything to do with Procurement, Mr Solomon?’

‘Absolutely not, Mr Barnes.’ I tried a dollop of ruefulness. ‘My wife won’t even trust me to do the supermarket shopping.’

His smile faded. In the circles Russell P Barnes moved in, marriage was a thing decent fighting men did in private. If they did it at all.

A phone on his desk buzzed softly, and he yanked the receiver to his ear.

‘Barnes.’ He picked up the fountain pen and clicked the top on and off a few times while he listened. He nodded and yeahed a few times, then hung up. He kept looking at the pen, and it seemed to be my turn to speak.

‘I think I can say, however, that we are concerned as to the safety,’ I paused to acknowledge the euphemism, ‘of two American citizens presently residing on British soil. Woolf is their given name. Mr O’Neal wondered whether you had come by any information that might assist our Ministry in ensuring their continued protection.’

He folded his arms across his chest and sat back in his chair.

‘I’ll be goddamned.’

‘Sir?’

‘They say that if you sit still for long enough, the whole world will come by.’

I tried to look confused.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Barnes, but I think you may have lost me.’

‘Been a long time since I’ve taken this amount of bullshit in one glass.’

Somewhere a clock ticked. Quite fast. Too fast, it seemed to me, to be counting seconds. But then this was an American building, and maybe Americans had decided that seconds were just too goddamned slow, and how’s about a clock that can do a minute in twenty seconds? That way, we get more goddamned hours in a goddamned day than these faggot limeys.

‘Do you have any information, Mr Barnes?’ I asked, doggedly.

But he wasn’t going to be rushed anywhere.

‘How would I come by that information, Mr Solomon? You’re the one with the foot-soldiers. I just hear what O’Neal tells me.’

‘Well now,’ I said, ‘I wonder if that’s strictly true.’

‘Do you?’

Something was wrong. I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was, but there was something very badly wrong here. ‘Leaving that aside, Mr Barnes,’ I said, ‘let us suppose that my Ministry is slightly under-staffed with foot-soldiers just at the moment.Lot of ‘flu about. Summer holidays. Let’s suppose that our foot-soldiers, owing to their depleted numbers, had momentarily lost track of these two individuals.’

Barnes cracked some knuckles and leaned forward over the desk.

‘Well, I don’t see how that could happen, Mr Solomon.’

‘I’m not saying it’s happened,’ I said. ‘I’m offering it as a hypothesis.’

‘All the same, I don’t agree with your premise. Seems to me that, if anything, you’re over-staffed just now.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you.’

‘Seems to me you’ve got staff all over the place, chasin ’ your own tails.’

The clock ticked.

‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘What I mean exactly is that if your department can afford to employ two David Solomons to do the same job, then you got a budget I wouldn’t mind having.’

Whoops.

He got to his feet and started moving round the desk. Not threatening anything, just stretching his legs.

‘Maybe you got more? Maybe you got a whole division of David Solomons. Is that it?’ He paused. ‘I put a call into O’Neal. David Solomon is on a flight toPrague right now, and O’Neal seems to think that’s the only David Solomon he’s got. So maybe all you David Solomons just share the one salary.’ He reached the door and opened it. ‘Mike, get an E team up here. Now.’

He turned and leaned against the jamb, arms folded, watching me.

‘You got about forty seconds.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘My name isn’t Solomon.’

The E team consisted of two Carts, one either side of my chair. Mike had taken the place at the door and Barnes was back at his desk. I was playing the dejected loser.

‘My name is Glass. Terence Glass.’ I tried to make it sound as dull as possible. So boring that no one would ever think to make it up. ‘I run an art gallery inCork Street.’ I dug into my top pocket and found the card the well- brung-up blonde had given me. I handed it to Barnes. ‘Here. Last one. Anyway, Sarah works for me. Used to work for me.’ I sighed and slumped a little lower. A man who’d gambled everything and lost. ‘The last few weeks, she’s been behaving… I don’t know. She seemed worried. Frightened, even. She’d started talking about some strange things. Then one day, she just didn’t show up. Disappeared. I rang round. Nothing. I tried ringing her father a couple of times, but he seems to have disappeared too. I went through some things in her desk, odds and ends, and I found a file.’