'Did you come through Bombay?'

'Yes.'

'I have friends there.' She gave the menu a token glance. 'It never changes, the food in this place.'

Her name was Gabrielle Bouchard, and the most notable thing about her was her dark, deep-water blue eyes. Flockhart hadn't mentioned them in his instructions. When you reach the Royal Palace Hotel, ask for the room number of Gabrielle Bouchard, a French photo journalist from Paris, and phone her to say you 're there. Then let the evening take care of itself. She is a friend, but ignorant of my work, therefore maintain strict cover.

'What will you have?' she asked me.

'Anything with shrimps.'

She looked for them on the menu. I suppose she was early thirties, efficient-looking in her paramilitary khaki slacks and tunic, short sleeves above thin bare arms, the muscles of the left one a degree more developed, presumably because she carried her cameras on that side. French nationality, perhaps, but her looks were Eurasian, had the best of both worlds.

'Sizzling shrimp cashew with lobster sauce?'

'Fine.' She'd asked me to have dinner with her; she was in Mr Flockhart's debt, she said.

There were thirty or forty people in here, most of them in the dining section, the rest lining the long canvas-canopied bar on bamboo stools. Two of the ceiling fans were wobbling on their brackets, and if we'd been sitting under either of them I would have suggested moving. All the serving boys wore rubber-soled flip-flops, and they made the loudest sound in the room as they moved among the tables. There was a television set at one end of the bar but the volume was turned right down; I couldn't see the screen from this angle. Even at the bar there was no talking above a murmur; it was as if someone had just died. They had, of course, somewhere or other in the city. And watch out for trip mines, the Khmer Rouge are still blowing up whoever they can find.