I tied the second lace.

'You ought to get married.'

'Oh futz, spare me the suds and the sink.'

'Someone with a sack of loot.'

I got my coat and we kissed and I opened the door and looked back and she was standing perfectly still in the small airless room, the after-rain smell coming in and the light striking obliquely across her, across a thin willowy girl with blue-veined breasts and a slowly-dying smile as she watched me go, a girl called Corinne whom I'd met only twice before and wouldn't, maybe, ever see again.

Room 43 was on the fifth floor and I was standing by the window when he came in.

'Sorry I kept you. You're Mr Gage?'

'Yes.'

'I'm Eastlake.'

'You've got quite a birdseye view from up here.'

'Appropriate word.' He was going to add something but the phone buzzed and he picked it up. 'Squadron-leader Eastlake. Yes, I told him to get three while he was at it. Well,tell him to pull his finger out, and listen, I'm going along to Projection and I don't want anyone to come barging in, so put someone on the door.'

I came away from the window and he gave me a slow probing look, wondering what a nondescript civilian was doing in here with a code-introduction. I'd used the name Gage because that had been stuck on for Tokyo and if they'd changed it when they'd arranged this meeting Tilson would have told me.

'Let's go along. Nobody with you?'

'No.'

In the small room smelling of acetate and overheated guide mechanism he introduced me to a WRAF operator and three flight lieutenants: 'Hinchley was piloting this sortie, Pierce was navigating, and Johnson's the photographic interpretation officer responsible for the analysis of the imagery material. Can we have those curtains drawn, someone?'