"When they step out of line, sure, why not?"

Erlich drew the sheet back over his friend's wretched face.

He would get autopsy details later. He didn't need more time in this chilled room. From what he had seen he estimated that the low-velocity rounds had been fired at a maximum of a dozen paces. It probably didn't matter whether his calculations were right or wild. A good man and his good friend was dead.

" A s long as I am allowed to, I will follow this, Elsa. That is my most solemn guarantee, no backing off. If it takes a month, a year, ten years… Elsa, I promise."

His friend's wife sat on the sofa. The two kids were against her, one on each side, and she had her small and narrow arms round her kids' shoulders and she pulled them to her.

It was five months since he had last seen her, since he had last been in Athens. Barbecue time late on a Sunday night on the balcony, and another Embassy staffer from the floor above leaning over his parapet and complaining about the smoke. She might have understood him, and she might not. She wasn't a pretty woman, but to Erlich's eye she was about the best there could be. Okay, so he didn't have a wife of his own – but of the wives of the men he knew, Elsa Lawrence was the first in line. She had been weeping, he could see that, but there was no chance that she would cry now because the apartment was filled with Agency staff, four men moving through the small apartment, packing the family's belongings. In the fifteen minutes Erlich had been there, not one of the men had come to Elsa to ask her what case which clothes should go in. They were shadow walkers, emerging every few moments with a suitcase, bulging, from one of the bedrooms, stacking it in the cramped hallway.

" A s long as it takes, Elsa."

She took her arms away from round her kids' shoulders and held them out for him.

Erlich came close to her, kneeling on the rug he knew that Harry had brought back from a fast run to Beirut. Her arms were round his neck. He kissed her cheek. He could feel the wetness of his own tears.