Axel said, 'You received a letter, Miss Parsons, please bring it with you.'

She rocked, quick, fast. Her eyes blinked. She swayed, but she did as he asked her because he had the domination and authority. She picked up the letter and the torn-open envelope and she walked past her mother and father, her own person. She went past him as if he did not exist, and her face was set. She led into the living room and snapped on the light in the standard lamp and cleared the morning paper off the sofa, waved for him to sit. She took the chair beside the fire. She held the letter and the envelope tight in her hands. He tried to judge her, to measure whether it was bravado, whether it was an inner toughness.

'Well?'

'You are Charlotte Eunice Parsons, teacher?'

'Yes.'

'You are twenty-three years old?'

'How's that of interest to the American embassy?'

'I'm asking the questions, Miss Parsons. Please answer them.' 'I am twenty-three years old. Do you need to know that I have a mole on my backside, and an appendix scar?'

'In the summer of 1992 you worked for eleven weeks as a home help and child-minder in Rome for the family of Giuseppe Ruggerio?'

'I don't see the importance-'

'Yes or no?'

'Yes.'

'This afternoon you have received a letter from that family inviting you to return?'

'Who the hell are you?'

Out of the hip pocket of his trousers, he took the squashed wallet. He flipped it open, exposed the identification badge in gold-veneer metal of the Drug Enforcement Administration, thumb half covering the title of Special Agent, fingers masking the rampant eagle.