Garamond dropped to his knees beside the small body and knew, on the instant, that Harald was dead. His skull was crushed, driven inwards on the brain.

“You’re not a good climber,” Garamond whispered numbly, accusingly, to the immobile face which was still dewed with perspiration. “You’ve killed us both. And my family as well.”

He stood up and looked towards the entrance of the main building, preparing to face the officials and domestics who would come running. The terrace remained quiet but for the murmur of its fountains. High in the stratosphere an invisible aircraft drew a slow, silent wake across the sky. Each passing second was a massive hammer-blow on the anvil of Garamond’s mind, and he had been standing perfectly still for perhaps a minute before accepting that the accident had not been noticed by others.

Breaking out of the stasis, he gathered up Harald’s body, marvelling at its lightness, and carried it to a clump of flowering shrubs. The dark green foliage clattered like metal foil as he lowered the dead child into a place of concealment.

Garamond turned his back on Starflight House, and began to run.

two

He had, if he was very lucky, about one hundred minutes. The figure was arrived at by assuming the President had been precise when she told Garamond to wait an extra two hours. There was a further proviso — that it had been her intention to leave her son alone with him all that time. With the full span of a hundred minutes at his disposal, Garamond decided, he had a chance; but any one of a dozen personal servants had only to go looking for Harald, any one of a thousand visitors had only to notice a bloodstain…