The two motards had got their hee-haws going and the whistles began shrilling ahead of us as the traffic police began pulling the line of cars to one side to let us through. Marianne lit a cigarette and leaned her head back and closed her eyes and we didn't talk until the cops had taken us in a loop along the Boulevard des Moulins to the frontier by the bus terminal. A pair of French motards were waiting for us there with their bikes ticking over and the Monegasques peeled off and left us to it. The main street through Beausoleil was almost deserted because everyone was down there by the sea, and the French cops put on a bit of speed, using their klaxons on the rising 'hairpin bends to the Grande Corniche.

'Will you have to go?' asked Marianne. She was leaning her dark head sideways, watching me.

'Probably.'

Because London doesn't grab you just for a giggle. I didn't know who Monsieur Steadman was because it'd be a code name and it could be Ferris or Loman or Comyngs or anyone at all: it didn't have to be a director in the field at this stage; it could simply be a contact. During the last few hours something had come up on the board and they'd flown this man out and asked Interpol in Paris to pick up the driver of the car with the number I'd given them and tell him where the rendezvous was: the Negresco, Nice, That is a shame,' Marianne said.

She always tried to speak English to me, because I said I liked her accent.

'Yes.' I turned to look at her, then away again.

We'd planned three more days together before she had to go back on duty handing out trays at thirty thousand feet and I wouldn't have let anything bust into a situation like that in the ordinary way, but this wasn't the ordinary way: it looked as if the Bureau had a mission for me and all I could think about now was what I was going into and whether I was going to get out.