Of course Karolyi, raised in the hotbed of Carpathian legends, would believe, or be ready to believe.

I am ready to do whatever my Emperor requires... He'd imitated the glowing-eyed gallantry of all those other young fools in the officers' corps, but even then Asher had known that Karolyi had been speaking the absolute truth. It was just that some people had a different view of that word, whatever.

Nothing really changed, he thought. He didn't know how many times he'd sat in this discreet town house within walking distance of the embassy during the years in which he'd ranged all over Europe, going out ostensibly in quest of moribund verb forms and variant traditions about fairies and heroes and coming back with German battleship plans or lists of firms selling rifles to the Greeks. Those years seemed hideously distant to him, as if it had been someone else who risked his life and traded his soul for matters that had been obsolete in a year.

Streatham folded his hands, white as a woman's and as soft. With a kind of perverse relish, he said, "Of course, having been out of the Department, you wouldn't know about the reorganization since the end of the war and the old Queen's death. After South Africa, the budget was drastically cut, you know. We have to share this house with Passports and the attache for Financial Affairs now. We certainly can't ask the French authorities to order the arrest of an Austrian citizen just on your say-so- certainly not a member of one of that country's noble houses, not to speak of the diplomatic corps. And we can't spare a man to follow Karolyi around Paris, much less trail him to Vienna or Buda- Pesth or wherever else he'll be going on to."