"Will be done."

"Holt, it's a good programme, well presented. I learn more about the life blood of the Soviet Union from these visits than from anything else I do. And, most important, we are on show. We are the representatives of our country. You'll give Miss Canning my respects and request her to accompany us, having first checked with the military attache that he can spare her. You will fix the hotel accommodation, you will sort out the necessary travel permission for her from the Foreign Ministry… Get on with it, Holt."

"Darling, nothing's what it seems… Ben's not an agony aunt … "

"He talked about us getting out of the clutches of the embassy wives."

They were in the bar of the British Club, not up on the stools where the noise was, where the newspaper men and his buisness community gathered, but against the far wall. She was on her second campari and soda, and there was a strain about her that was new to him.

He drank only tonic water with ice and lemon because besides cutting out cigarettes he had forsworn alcohol from Monday to Friday and he was suffering.

''Don't be silly, Holt, don't think he's taking me to Yaltajust so that we can have a cuddle in the corner without anyone knowing."

''Why is he taking you, then?"

''Put your thinking cap on, Holt. I'm a hell of a good linguist. At East European and Slavonic I actually had abetter mark in the oral than you did. Had you forgotten that? I 'm in Moscow. I'm personal assistant to the brigadier who is the military attache. An excuse has been found to take me down to the Crimea."

He stared at her. She was taller than he was. She had fair hair to her shoulders. She had gun-metal grey eyes that he worshipped. She wore a powder blue blouse and a severe navy blue suit.

''Asi said, Ben's not thinking of you and me, Ben's thinking of the job."