But past is past. No changing it. I dithered, drank, broke up with Ellen, drank some more. Bill finally weaned me off the bottle in his own inimitable way — he dragged me out of my apartment one drunken night and stuck a gun in my mouth. Told me his father drank himself to death. Said he wouldn’t let it happen to me. He’d rather kill me himself. Quicker that way. I stared into his eyes, found not even the ghost of a bluff, and went cold turkey the next day.

I had a long talk with Tasso once I sobered up. Told him I was thinking of quitting. Spilled my fears. He listened silently. Doubtless he’d heard it all before. When I finished, he shrugged his impossibly broad shoulders and sighed.

“What do you want me to say? Promise not to send you out to kill one of your friends? I can’t. Killing’s what you’ve been trained for. It took a long time to make a Troop of you, Algiers. If you want out, fine, you’re out. But if you stay, you carry on the same as before. You don’t get to choose your targets. You kill who you’re told, and if you don’t, you’ll be killed too.”

Tasso always served it to you straight.

I thought it over, weighed up the options and decided I was better off here than anywhere else. At least in the Troops I knew the score. So I carried on as normal and prayed I’d never have to go face-to-face with Bill or any of my friends.

I spent lunch in an underground canteen watching sports on the TV. One of those world-sports programs, cutting from surf trials to beach buggies to cliff-diving. It was on most days around this time and was the only kind of regular show on my itinerary — I didn’t have a TV at home.

Frank turned up toward the end of my break. Three-quarters of the people present sprang to their feet and started back to their posts, but he waved a hand at them and smiled ruefully. “It’s OK. I’m back to normal. No need to rush off.”

There were some cheers and everybody sat down again. That was the good thing about Frank — his moods passed quickly.