I nodded. “I’ve been keeping busy, that’s all.”

“Quite. And employment bureaus – oh, that’s possible, of course, but somehow I don’t think you’ll have much luck. It’s rather a case of going around Robin Hood’s barn, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I agreed.

Julia drew up a chair and sat down between us. “Have you thought of going to Baghdad?”

“That’s ridiculous,” her brother said. “Where would he begin looking in Baghdad?”

I closed my eyes. He was right – it would be quite pointless to try looking for Phaedra in Baghdad. And Julia, for her part, seemed able to read minds, because I bad been thinking of doing just that, ridiculous or no.

Nigel stroked his moustache. “Perhaps I’ve been seeing too many films, but – Evan, let me see that letter again, will you?” I quoted it to him by rote. “Yes, I thought so. You know, I get the impression of some sort of cloak-and-dagger operation here, don’t you? Spies and such, midnight rides on the Orient Express. What do you think?”

“Mmmm,” I said neutrally. The same thought had occurred to me, but I had tried to suppress it. Some time ago I found myself working for a nameless man who heads a nameless U.S. undercover operation. I’m not being coy – I don’t know his name or its. Since then he’s been under the impression that I work for him, and now and then I do. For that reason, thoughts of cloaks and daggers come to mind rather more often than they ought to, and in this case I had discounted them.

But-

“Evan?” I looked up. “Now here you have a girl who’d come to London, where as far as we know she didn’t know a soul. She might make friends, but-”

“But they wouldn’t make her,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“Quite. Now I can’t see MI 5 knocking on her door in Russell Square, can you? Nor do I think she’d have gone the rounds of the employment agencies, and I don’t suppose she had much money-”