He snapped the door open. He went out into the corridor and rapped gently on Jane's door. The ambassador led the way down the corridor, no glance backwards, the Viceroy's procession, and Jane exploded out through her door, thrusting her small Olympus Into her handbag. Down the staircase, the ambassador leading, and Jane happily in pursuit.

Thanks be to God that we didn't forget our camera,"

Holt said. He was always useless at sarcasm.

"Don't be childish, Holt," she said coolly, quietly so that His Excellency would not hear.

Down the stairs, across the foyer. The ambassador smiled warmly at a group of exhausted tourists speaking German and attempting to check in, and none of them had the least idea who it was that smiled at them.

Holt reached the door first, pulled it open and stood hack. He saw the driver moving to open the rear door of the vehicle. He saw a young man, dark-skinned, long hair, ambling across the road towards the hotel and holding a windcheater across his stomach. Distraction, because the ambassador had passed, playing the old-world gentleman, ushering Jane through first. Jane was out onto the steps, and hesitating, as if the light of the Crimea's lunchtime sunshine were too bright for her, as if she needed to adjust. Slow, stilted moments, and each slower than the last. Jane going forward and giving her winning grin to the driver, and the driver bobbing his head in acknowledgement, and the ambassador beaming, and Holt coming through the door. Each movement, each moment, slower. And the man who was dark skinned, with long hair, coming off the road and onto the pavement, and the windcheater falling past his knees and past his shins and past his ankles. And something black and stubbed and squat in his hands, something that he was lifting to his shoulder, something that was a protuberance from his head and mouth and nose, something that was a gun, for Christ's sake.