‘I think I…’

‘I said go home,’ said Barnes. ‘I’ll call you.’

Nobody moved until Mike leaned across and opened O’Neal’s door for him. In the circumstances, he had to go. ‘Well, goodbye, Dick,’ I said. ‘It’s been an unquantifiable pleasure. I hope you’ll think nice thoughts about me when you see my body being dragged out of the river.’

O’Neal tugged his briefcase out behind him, slammed the door, and set off up the steps toWaterlooBridge without looking back.

‘Lang,’ said Barnes. ‘Let’s walk.’ He was outside the car and strolling down the Embankment before I could answer. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that Lucas was watching me.

‘Remarkable man,’ I said.

Lucas turned his head to watch Barnes’ retreating back, then looked to the mirror again.

‘Be careful, will you?’ he said.

I paused, with my hand on the door lever. Mike Lucas didn’t sound happy. Not at all.

‘Careful of what, specifically?’

He hunched his shoulders slightly and put his hand up to his mouth, covering the movement of his lips as he spoke.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I swear to God, I don’t know. But there’s some shit going on here…’ He stopped at the sound of car doors opening and closing behind us.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

‘Thanks,’ I said, and climbed out. A couple of Carls ambled up alongside the car, and puffed their necks out at me. Twenty yards way, Barnes was watching, apparently waiting for me to catch him up.

‘I think I preferLondon at night,’ he said, once we’d got ourselves in step.

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘River’s very pretty.’

‘The fuck it is,’ said Barnes. ‘I preferLondon at night because you can’t see it so well.’

I laughed, and then stopped myself quickly because I think he meant it. He looked angry, and the notion suddenly hit me that his posting to London might have been a punishment for some past transgression, and that here he was, seething and smarting every day at the injustice of his treatment, and taking it out on the city.

He interrupted my notionalising.

‘I hear from O’Neal that you got a little theory,’ he said. ‘A little idea you been working on. Is that right?’

‘Certainly is,’ I said.

‘Take me through it, will you?’

And so, having no particular reason not to, I went ahead and repeated the speech I’d given O’Neal in The Shala, adding a bit here, subtracting a bit there. Barnes listened without showing much interest, and when I’d finished, he sighed. A long, tired, Jesus what am I going to do with you sort of sigh.

‘To put it bluntly,’ I said, not wanting there to be any misunderstanding about the way I felt, ‘I think you’re a dangerous, corrupt, lying piece of nine-day-old mosquito shit. I’d happily kill you now if I didn’t think it would make Sarah’s position even worse than it already is.’ Even that didn’t seem to bother him overmuch.

‘Ah huh,’ he said. ‘And what you’ve just told me.’

‘What about it?’

‘Of course you wrote it all down? Gave a copy to your lawyer, your bank, your mother, the Queen, only to be opened in the event of your death. All that shit?’

‘Naturally. We do have television programmes over here, you know.’

‘That’s fucking debatable. Cigarette?’ He pulled out a packet of Marlboro and offered them to me. We smoked together for a while, and I reflected on how odd it was that two men who hated each other very deeply could, by sucking together on some burning paper, engage in a fairly companionable act.

Barnes stopped and leaned against the balustrade, gazing down into the slick, black water of theThames. I stayed a few yards away, because you can take all this companionable nonsense too far.

‘OK, Lang. Here it is,’ said Barnes. ‘I’ll say it all once, because I know you’re not an idiot. You’re slap bang on the money.’ He tossed his cigarette away. ‘Big deal. So we’re going to make a little noise, kick up some trade. Boo- hoo. How’s that so terrible?’

I decided that I would try the calm approach. If that didn’t work, I’d try the throwing him into the river and running like fuck approach.

‘It’s so terrible,’ I said slowly, ‘because you and I were both born and bred in democratic countries, where the will of the people is thought to count for something. And I believe it’s the will of the people, at this time, that governments do not go around murdering their own or anyone else’s citizens just to line their own pockets. Next Wednesday, the people may say it’s a great idea. But right now, it is their will that we should use the word "bad" when talking about this kind of activity.’ I took a last drag and flicked my own dog-end out over the water. It seemed to fall a very long way.

‘Two points occur to me, Lang,’ said Barnes after a long pause, ‘out of your nice speech. One, neither one of us lives in a democracy. Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy. Not at all. Two, who said anything about lining our own pockets?’

‘Oh, of course.’ I slapped my forehead. ‘I hadn’t realised. You’re going to give all the money from the sale of these weapons to The Save The Children Fund. It’s a gigantic piece of philanthropy, and I never even noticed. Alexander Woolf will be so thrilled.’ I was beginning to stray from the calm approach. ‘Oh, but wait a minute, his intestines are being scraped off a wall in the City. He may not be as fulsome with his thanks as he’d like. You, Mr Barnes,’ and I even went so far as to point a finger, ‘need your fucking head examined.’

I walked away from him, back down the river. Two Carls with ear-pieces were ready to cut me off.

‘Where do you think it goes, Lang?’ Barnes hadn’t moved, he just talked a little louder. I stopped. ‘When some Arab playboy drops into the San Martin valley and buys himself fifty M1 Abrams battle tanks and a half dozen F-16s. Writes a cheque for half-a-billion dollars. Where d’you think that money goes? You think I get it? You think Bill Clinton gets it? David fucking Letterman? Where does it go?’

‘Oh tell me, do,’ I said.

‘I will tell you. Even though you know it already. It goes to the American people. Two hundred and fifty million people get a hold of that money.’

I did some not very quick arithmetic. Divide by ten, carry the two…

‘They get two thousand dollars each, do they? Every man, woman and child?’ I sucked my teeth. ‘Now why doesn’t that ring true?’

‘A hundred and fifty thousand people,’ said Barnes, ‘have jobs because of that money. With those jobs they support another three hundred thousand people. And with that half-a-billion dollars those people can buy a lot of oil, a lot of wheat, a lot of Nissan Micras. And another half-million people will sell them the Nissan Micras, and another half-a-million will repair the Nissan Micras, and wash the windshields, and check the tyres. And another half-a-million will build the roads that the Nissan fucking Micras run on, and pretty soon, you’ve got two hundred and fifty million good democrats, needingAmerica to go on doing the last thing it does well. Make guns.’