Ricky was a terrorist. That was how the Americans thought of him, and that was why they hated him. They hated all terrorists anyway, but what made Ricky special, what made them hate him more than most, was the fact that he was an American terrorist. And that just didn’t seem right. UntilOklahoma City, the average American had looked upon the letting-off of bombs in public places as a quaint, European tradition, like bull-fighting or Morris dancing. And if it ever spread out ofEurope, it surely went east, to the camel jockeys, the goddamn towel-heads, the sons and daughters of Islam. Blowing-up shopping malls and embassies, sniping at elected officers of the government, hijacking 747s in the name of anything other than money, was downright un-American and un-Minnesotan. ButOklahoma City changed a lot of things, all of them for the worse, and, as a result, Ricky was being made to pay top dollar for his ideology.

Ricky was an American terrorist, and he’d let the side down.

I was back inPrague by dawn, but I didn’t go to bed. Or at least, I went to bed, but I didn’t get in. I sat on the edge, with a filling ashtray and an emptying packet of Marlboro, and stared at the wall. If there’d been a television in the room, I might have watched that. Or I might not. A ten-year-old episode ofMagnum,dubbed into German, isn’t much more interesting than a wall.

They’d told me that the police would come at eight, but in the event it was only a few minutes after seven when I heard the first boot on the first step. That little ruse was presumably meant to guarantee bleary-eyed surprise on my part, in case I was unable to affect it convincingly. No faith, these people.

They numbered about a dozen, all of them in uniform, and they made an over-cooked meal of the whole business, kicking in the door, shouting and knocking things over. The head-boy spoke some English, but not enough, apparently, to understand ‘that hurts’. They dragged me down the stairs past the white-faced landlady - who probably hoped that the days of tenants being hauled off at dawn by police vans were gone for good - while other tousled heads peeked nervously at me through the cracks of doors.

At the station, I was held in a room for a while - no coffee, no cigarettes, no friendly faces - and then, after some more shouting, a few slaps and pokes in the chest, I was chucked in a cell;sansbelt,sansbootlaces.

On the whole, they were pretty efficient.

There were two other occupants of the cell, both male, and they didn’t get up when I came in. One of them probably couldn’t have got up if he’d wanted to, seeing as how he was drunker than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life. He was sixty, and unconscious, with alcohol seeping from every part of his body, and his head hung so low on his chest you almost couldn’t believe that there was a spine in there, holding him together.

The other man was younger, darker, wearing a tee-shirt and khaki trousers. He looked at me once, head to toe and back again, and then carried on cracking the bones in his wrists and fingers while I lifted the drunk out of his chair and laid him, not too gently, in the corner. I sat down opposite the tee-shirt and closed my eyes.

‘Deutsch?’

I couldn’t tell how long I’d been asleep because they’d taken my watch as well - in case I managed to work out a way of hanging myself with it, presumably - but the numbness of my buttocks suggested at least a couple of hours.

The drunk had gone, and the tee-shirt was now squatting at my side.

‘Deutsch?’ he said.

I shook my head and closed my eyes again, taking one last draught of myself before stepping into another person.

I heard the tee-shirt scratching at himself. Long, slow, thoughtful scratches.

‘American?’ he said.

I nodded, still with my eyes closed, and felt a strange moment of peace. So much easier to be someone else.

They kept the tee-shirt for four days, and me for ten. I wasn’t allowed to shave or smoke, and eating was actively discouraged by whoever cooked the food. They questioned me once or twice about the bomb scare on the flight from London, and asked me to look at photographs - two or three in particular to begin with, and then, when they started to lose interest, whole directories of wrong-doers - but I made a big point of not focusing on them, and tried to yawn whenever they slapped me.

On the tenth night, they took me to a white room and photographed me from a hundred different angles, then gave me back my belt, laces and watch. They even offered me a razor. But as the handle looked rather sharper than the blade, and my beard seemed to be helping me towards metamorphosis, I turned it down.

It was dark outside, cold and dark, and it was trying to rain in a feeble, oh-I-can’t-really-be-bothered-with-this sort of a way. I walked slowly, as if I didn’t care about the rain, or much else that life on this earth had to offer, and hoped that I wouldn’t have to wait long.

I didn’t have to wait at all.

It was a Porsche 911, in dark-green, and there was nothing particularly clever about spotting it, because Porsches were as rare on the streets ofPrague as I was. It trickled along beside me for a hundred yards, then made up its mind, spurted ahead to the end of the street and stopped. As I got to within ten yards or so, the passenger door was pushed open. I slowed down, checked behind and in front, and ducked my head to look at the driver.

He was in his mid-forties, with a square jaw and successfully greying hair, and Porsche marketing men would happily have pushed him forward as ‘a typical owner’ - if he really was the owner, which was sort of unlikely, considering his occupation.

Of course, at that moment, I wasn’t supposed to know his occupation.

‘Want a lift?’ he said. Could have been from anywhere, and probably was. He saw me thinking about his offer, or thinking about him, so he added a smile to close the deal. Very good teeth.

I glanced behind him to where the tee-shirt sat, folded up on the tiny rear seat. He wasn’t wearing a tee-shirt now, of course, but a lurid purple thing that had no creases in it. He enjoyed my expression of surprise for a few moments, then nodded at me - part hello, part get in - and when I did so, the driver blipped the throttle and let out the clutch all in a playful rush, so that I had to scrabble to close the door. The two of them seemed to find this very entertaining. The tee-shirt, whose real name was most definitely not and never had been Hugo, shoved a packet of Dunhill in front of my nose, and I took one and pressed the dashboard lighter home. ‘Where are you headed?’ said the driver.

I shrugged and said maybe the centre, but it didn’t really matter. He nodded and carried on humming to himself. Puccini, I think. Or it might have been Take That. I sat and smoked, and said nothing, as if I was used to this kind of thing happening.

‘By the way,’ said the driver eventually, ‘I’m Greg.’ He smiled, and I thought to myself, well of course you are.