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come to blows with the senior examiner,” he said loudly. When Mark Stamford looked at him in petrified astonishment, he grabbed his friend’s arm and marched him forward, almost shouting. “I said I couldn’t see what—Leila! For heaven’s sake. Leila Hanif, my God.”
    Now everybody was looking at him, each coping with his or her own brand of fear: Leila, dreading the next blow; the two Arabs, aware only that they had been caught out in a crime, not yet realizing the weakness of the forces ranged against them; and Mark, who knew in his heart what Colin also knew: that the object they both had seen at the second man’s waist was in truth a gun. Colin had the initiative. It was for him to decide how the scene played.
    “Leila, we were talking about you only this morning.”
    As if through a fog Colin recognized Mark’s voice speaking those words, he knew his friend was recovering faster than the opposition, and his heart lifted.
    “Hi, youse guys.” Leila’s smile, unforced and serene, would have launched more ships than Helen’s. “Long time no see. Thought you must have gone down, or something.”
    Her contralto voice wrung something deep in Colin’s guts, but he could not concentrate on that, for pace and timing would dictate the outcome of this scene. He was director, star, and scriptwriter rolled into one. He called the shots, and if he called them wrong….
    “No, no,” he said confidently. “I’m staying up for the vac. Mark’s going home next week. Friends of yours? Hi… I’m Colin Raleigh.”
    He turned to the Arab who had struck Leila, offering his hand. The man stared at it, then his eyes flickered toward his companion. After what seemed an interminable pause, he said something like “ha.”
    “And this is my friend, Mark Stamford. He’s been to your part of the world, haven’t you, Mark?”
    The Arab’s hand briefly touched Colin’s before leaping away as if stung.
    “Oh, yes, absolutely,” Mark said. “Tabriz. Know it, do you? Persia, actually.”
    “Leila, can you do us a huge favor?” Colin smiled into her eyes, giving his co-star direction in the only way he knew how. “Mark and I’ve got an appointment with the Dean and we’re going to be hideously late…. ”
    “Of course, I can drive you back into town.” She shot a furious look at the two Arabs, whose livid faces were more than a match for hers. “The keys are in the ignition, Colin, why don’t you drive?”
    “Mark?” Colin nodded in the direction of the barrier blocking their exit to the main road and Mark hurried off to dismantle it. Colin took Leila’s arm—it was surprisingly muscular, for a woman’s—and escorted her to the car. He did not know what the two Arabs were doing behind his back.
    It seemed a long walk, the longest he’d ever taken.
Don’t
throw yourself on the door and wrench it open, he told himself; don’t look weak. But still his fingers crushed the handle hard enough to leave a bruise.
    The engine started first time; Colin heaved a short, jerky sigh of relief. Leila was in the front seat next to him. Ahead, he could see Mark standing beside the logs, their exit clear. Colin put the car into gear.
    He knew at once that they weren’t going to make it.
    The Arabs’ Mercedes was parked just inside the clearing, perhaps a quarter of its length still blocking the short driveway. Colin stared through the windshield at Mark, who raised both hands from his sides in a forlorn gesture of helplessness. Strain on Mark’s face…. Oh
God, on mine too; relax!
    His brain wouldn’t work. He had a first in law and he couldn’t have told you his own name to save his life. Leila was staring at him. She expected him to come up with the solution. There was no solution.
    His hands tightened on the wheel. They were shaking. He banged the wheel in sheer frustration, then, very slowly, wound down the window.
    “Excuse me.” He forced himself to look at the Arab with all the gold. It amazed him to hear how