One of the flight crew, three rings, put his head through the doorway and spoke to a stewardess and went back onto the deck.

'He was good,' Corrine said, 'wasn't he?'

'One of the best.'

'They told me he helped someone get through, once.'

'Yes.' But there hadn't been much point because Thompson had spent the rest of his life — three weeks — in a hospital linked up with tubes and monitors until he'd got someone to smuggle a capsule in to his room.

'Not many people do that,' Corrine said.

Save lives. 'Very few.'

I suppose this was the way her grief was taking her: she had to create the idol she could later venerate, a hero, faithful to the last.

She uncrossed her legs and half-turned to look at me, her eyes puffy from crying. 'If you knew him like you say, this isn't much of a fun trip for you either, is it?'

'Not really.'

'Excuse me, sir.' The stewardess was leaning over me. 'You're Mr Stephen Ash?'

'Yes.' Cover-name for the assignment.

'They've got a call for you on the radio. May I show the captain some kind of identity?'

I gave her my Barclaycard and she went forward and tapped on the flight-deck door, three long, three short. Someone in London was panicking: we were due in at Rome in twenty minutes and they could have paged me there.

'Is something up?' Corrine asked. Her tone was like a robot's, with no feeling in it; the world was going on for everyone else and she was forcing herself to take an interest.

'Could be,' I said. They wouldn't call me in flight just to get my debriefing on Hubbard. They'd sent me to Bombay to see if we needed any smoke out after they'd got him, and to bring Corrine back, look after her. I couldn't see there was any rush to debrief me: I'd sent them a clear-field signal from Santa Cruz Airport.