Good enough reason for a party. He stood by the window. He watched, he was amused. He was not a part of the cheerful talk that was fake, the tinkling laughter that was fraud. He knew them all, except for the new secretary. One man had been a minister in the penultimate government appointed by Shah Reza Pahlavi as the roof was caving in over the Peacock Throne. One was once a para troop major who now drove a mini-cab, nights, and he was on orange juice which meant he couldn't afford one evening off to get pissed.

One was a former judge from Esfahan who now collected Social Security payments and who went to the Oxfam shop for shoes. One had been a policeman and now went every two weeks to the offices of the Anti-Terrorist branch at New Scotland Yard to complain that he was not given adequate protection for someone so obviously at risk.

They had all run away. They weren't the ones who had ripped off the system and come out with their dollars folded in their wife's underwear, if they weren't far sighted enough to collect them from banks in Switzerland. They were all pleased to be asked to Mahmood Shabro's parties, and they would eat everything within reach, they would drain every bottle.

Charlie always had a good laugh out of Mahmood Shabro.

Mahmood Shabro was a rogue and proud of it. Charlie liked that. The rest of them were pretence, talking of home as if they were off to Heathrow next week for the flight back, talking about the regime as if it were a brief aberration, talking about their new world as if they had conquered it. They had conquered nothing, the regime was in place, and they weren't going home next week, next year. Mahmood Shabro had put the old world behind him, and that was what Charlie Eshraq liked. He liked people who faced facts.

Charlie was good on facts. Good enough on facts last month to have killed two men and made it clear away.