Van Eyck waved me away. “Talk to Nolan, major. I’m i not responsible for his air piracy.” He stood in the cockpit, gazing over the cars as the shreds of fabric fell around him.

I walked back to my car, deciding that the time had come to disband the cloud-sculptors of Coral D. Fifty yards away the young secretary an the

Rolls-Royce had stepped from the car and beckoned to me. Through the open door her mistress watched me with her jewelled eyes. Her white hair lay in a coil over one shoulder like a nacreous serpent.

I carried my flying helmet down to the young woman. Above a high forehead her auburn hair was swept back in a defensive bun, as if she were deliberately concealing part of herself. She stared with puzzled eyes at the helmet held out in front of her.

“I don’t want to fly-what is it?”

“A grace,” I explained. “For the repose of Michelangelo, Ed Keinholz and the cloud-sculptors of Coral D.”

“Oh, my God. I think ‘the chauffeur’s the only one with any money. Look, do you perform anywhere else?”

“Perform?” I glanced from this pretty and agreeable young woman to the pale chimera with jewelled eyes in the dim compartment of the Rolls. She was watching the headless figure of the Mona Lisa as it moved across the desert floor towards Vermilion Sands. “We’re not a professional troupe, as you’ve probably guessed. And obviously we’d need some fair-weather cloud. Where, exactly?”

“At Lagoon West.” She took a snake-skinned diary from her handbag. “Miss Chanel is holding a aeries of garden parties. She wondered if you’d care to perform. Of course there would be a large fee.”

“Chanel… Leonora Chanel, the…?”

The young woman’s face again took on its defensive posture, dissociating her from whatever might follow. “Miss Chanel is at Lagoon West for the summer. By the way, there’s one condition I must point out-Miss Chanel will provide the sole subject matter. You do understand?”