"Well, sir, what do you have?"

"What do I have? Put simply, Mr Erlich, I have an intelligence agent of a foreign country going about his activities without informing the local authorities of his work… Do you think, Mr Erlich, that if I went to your Embassy to request a detailed briefing concerning the work in my country of Mr Harry Lawrence, Central Intelligence Agency, that I would be shown anything, other than the door…?"

" You have the hit car?"

"Burned out, no help."

A welling frustration.

"We're on the same side." The last time he had been in Athens, when the group that called themselves "November 1 7 t h " had hit the Procter amp; Gamble offices with an anti-tank rocket, he had not been admitted to the presence of this big man. The warhead had not detonated, there had been no casualties. He hadn't been welcome then, wasn't welcome now, but he hadn't pushed his luck as hard when the target had been a corporation and no casualties, as when the target had been an American government servant, dead.

"Are we, Mr Erlich?"

"What do you have?"

"Lawrence and his contact walking in a quiet street. An Opel Rekord, stolen three days earlier in the Piraeus, pulls up 20 yards behind them. One man out, Caucasian, blond short hair. The contact shot. Lawrence blunders into the path of the bullets, is hit..

"White?"

"Caucasian, Mr Erlich, white."

"IN that it?"

"There was a shout from the car driver."

"What was the shout?"

" The word 'Colt'."

"What?"

" The shout was the one word. Please, Mr Erlich, be so kind as to excuse me. The one word shouted was 'Colt'. Only 'Colt'."

He was Colin Olivier Louis Tuck.

Tomorrow would be his 26th birthday, but there would be no cards and no presents.