He always led from the front. He pulled his weight in routine enquiries and on a surveillance he mucked in as one of them. But he and I had been friends for a long time. Between us were even stronger links, forged from when we had met at eighteen and shared a legionary posting to one of the grimmest parts of the Empire while it was earning dismal fame – Britain, in Nero's time, with the Boudiccan Rebellion as our special treat. Now, although for long periods we often failed to meet, when we did we could pick up straight away, as if we had shared an amphora only last Saturday. And when we entered a wine bar with others it was understood that we two would sit together, very slightly separate from the rest.

Petro gulped his wine, then visible regretted it. `Jupiter! You could paint that on warts and they'd fall off by dinner time… So how was the East?'

`Wild women and wicked politics.'

'Didius Falco, the world traveller!' He didn't believe a word of it. `What really happened?'

I grinned, then gave him a neat summary of five months' travelling: `I got my ear gnawed by a few camels. Helena was stung by a scorpion and spent a lot of money – much of it my father's, I'm delighted to say.' We had brought a quantity of stuff back with us; Petro had promised to help me unload in return for my assistance tonight. `I ended up in a hack job scribbling Greek jokes for second-rate touring actors.'

His eyebrows shot up. `I thought you went on a special task for the Palace?'

`The bureaucratic mission rapidly fell through – especially after I found out that Vespasian's Chief Spy had sent a message ahead of me encouraging my hosts to lock me up. Or worse,' I concluded gloomily.

`Anacrites? The bastard.' Petronius had no time for officials, whatever smooth title they dressed themselves up in. `Did he land you in bad trouble?'

`I survived.'

Petronius was frowning. He viewed my career like a kind of blocked gutter that needed a hefty poke with a stick to shift the sludge and get it running properly. He saw himself as the expert with the stick. `What was the point, Falco? What's in it for Vespasian if he destroys a first-class agent?'