Gabrielle ordered in Khmer, rapidly and with ease, and the boy took the menus away, his eyes dull, distracted by things on his mind.

'You speak Khmer?' the Frenchwoman asked me.

'Please, thank you and your prices are too high.'

'You've been here before?'

'Yes.'

'As a tourist?'

'Yes.' Or sort of, but I hadn't been able to look at the temples the last time I was here because I'd been trying to locate three of our agents-in-place who'd disappeared after a small hotel had been blown up and the left hand of one of them had been taken along to the police station for identification, a signet ring still on a finger. I'd signalled London, Wilson got it.

'Mr Flockhart is well?' Gabrielle Bouchard asked me.

'In very good form.' The smell in this place was obtrusive, a mixture of rotten fish, kerosene, mangoes and disinfectant. 'He sends his best regards.'

'I took some pictures for him in Paris, and he was generous. He told me you were to arrive here and asked me to settle you down.' She meant settle me in; I'd started speaking to her in French when we'd met in the lobby, but she preferred English, perhaps for practice.

Well now, that had been nice of Mr Flockhart to ask Gabrielle Bouchard to look after me, but in point of fact there must be more than one agent-in-place and a sleeper or two in Phnom Penh who could brief me on local conditions if I needed that; it wouldn't normally be left to a Parisian photojournalist who wasn't Bureau.

The thing was, then, he didn't want even the local AlPs or the sleepers to know I was here.

Invisible man.