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performance. Percy remembered, the morning after the rowdy musical performance, unhooking a sheet of paper from the barbed wire of the compound fence. In Bulgarian
and
English it had complimented the British on their performance. Much enjoyed. And would they please supply them with the words for the song “Boris the Bulgar”?
    Percy was glad that Merriman was back in his life again. He just hoped it wouldn’t fall to him to push the charming firebrand under a bus.
        Andrew Merriman bade a cheery good-bye to his refound friend, exchanging addresses and promises of further contact. With narrowed eyes, he watched the tall figure of the inspector shouldering his way along the avenue through the crowds. Merriman resented surveillance, even from someone as congenial as young Montacute. A bit of a thug, the professor remembered, and a bonnie fighter. A man you’d want at your shoulder, not at your back. Well, the best place for an undeclared foe was within range of your sword arm. Andrew would keep him close.
    He made his way back to his grand double-fronted house overlooking Kolonaki Square. “Finished my research, my dear,” he said to his wife, putting his head round the door of the morning room, where Maud was taking a late breakfast on a tray. She’d clearly had another of her bad nights. “I’ll justpop up to the library and put a few last touches to the translation while it’s fresh. The second act I thought was a little stilted, didn’t you? Could do with a bit of polish before we go public with it. Oh … by the way … I met an old friend while I was communing with Agamemnon. I’m quite certain the meeting was predestined! I asked him to dinner on Saturday. Scholar. You’ll like him. I haven’t mentioned it to him yet—and perhaps I’ll leave this to you—but I’ve marked him down for a part in the play. Wonderful voice! See if you aren’t enchanted when you meet him.”
    Neatly sidestepping any of Maud’s attempts to engage his attention further, he bustled off.
    The professor had been telling nothing less than the truth when he complained to Montacute of a suspicion of scrutiny. Any malignant interest directed at him, whether from inside the house or external to it, raised the fair hairs on the back of his sunburnt English neck. And his hairs were telling him that he was at this moment being overlooked.
    His reaction to the unseen stimulus was a purely physical one, the mind somehow being left out of the circuit: the chill between the shoulder blades, the tension in fingers that crept, undirected by him, towards his waist, where he’d grown used to feeling the reassuring weight of a gun belt. He was experiencing the same feeling that, more than once in the war years, had drilled into him like a phantom bullet and sent him diving for cover. It had earned him a reputation for luck with the men—the most valued attribute in battle—along with a ready following and a rude nickname. His years of soldiering had honed this natural protective mechanism to a fine edge but it had always been there from his childhood, a gift, not to be called on, but calling him.
    He was eager to get started. His desk stood ready: research texts; dog-eared books in German, French, and Italian; maps and photographs in orderly piles; a ream of fresh paper laidout, awaiting his pen. The feeling of foreboding struck him again as he closed the door, and he held tightly to the handle until the shudder passed. The order had been delivered to his household along with his regular daily instructions: “no interruptions until two o’clock.” The servants would respect it but his wife never paid attention to requests or commands.
    He’d told her a cheerful lie when he’d announced he was busy with the
Agamemnon
. He’d brushed aside her offer of help. Maud was reasonably happy for him to slip off to work on the play; you could say she was heart and soul behind the project. She saw it involving her with the cream of the