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had on the desk the photographs that showed Harry and his contact on the grass and the pavement. Every goddam way they had taken Harry's picture, so that he saw the part of Harry's head that was intact, and the part that was blasted.
    They had given him one written statement. It was a photocopy and the name and address of the eyewitness had been omitted.
    He copied into his notebook all that his interpreter dictated.
    Harry and the contact walking and talking in 28th October Street.
    No traffic. Twenty-eight minutes to nine o'clock in the morning.
    The silver grey Opel Rekord pulling onto the grass verge, braking 20 yards away. No description of the driver. A fair-haired man getting out of the passenger seat, front. A shout from the fair-haired man. The targets turning. The fair-haired man opens fire.
    Pistol plus silencer. The contact hit. Harry blundering into the field of fire. The second shout, the driver's shout, "Colt". The car turning in the road, getting the hell out. Harry dead, and the contact dead when the first police and ambulance crew had arrived . ..
    He left his desk as bare as he had found it.
    He took a taxi to the Embassy.
    He had to wait for fifteen minutes before he was admitted to the Agency's annexe.
    Erlich told the Station Chief what he had. He was seeking to trade information, and he was going to be disappointed.
    " I ' m not opening up our file to you, Bill. It's nothing personal . . ."
    " A n d it's not co-operation."
    "It's the facts of life. I give you a file, it goes into your system.
    You nail a guy, weeks ahead, months, and my file is evidence.
    My file gets to be prosecution material. Any asshole who wants it gets to read my file."
    " I s that final?"
    " A s I said, it's nothing personal."
    Erlich stood. He had the cigar butt in the plastic sachet in his pocket. He had not spoken of the cigar butt to the Station C h i e f . . .
    "Bill, look at it our way, do me that favour. Harry Lawrence was your friend and I appreciate that, but Harry Lawrence was not the target. An Iraqi was the target, and it's your assessment and it's mine. We are in deep stuff, real deep. We have a big mission down in Iraq, during the war we did all we damn well could to make certain those boys didn't go under to the Ayatollah's shit-pushers. We gave them A . W . A . C . S . material, we put up satellites just for them. The enemy of Iran is our friend, got me?
    But we keep our hands dirty, we stay in touch with the regime's enemies. We don't make any noise about that . . ."
    "Investigating a murder is making a noise?"

    "You've a job to do, O . K . , but don't make waves."
    "I want to know the identity of a man, I want to reach him, I want to put him in handcuffs and read him a charge of First Degree murder."
    "Beautiful."
    "With or without help."
    "Brilliant. You're a detective, you don't mix easily in diplo-macy, neither does hustling for commendations . . . You go on like this and you'll find yourself short of help."
    "With respect, what I'm after is a result."
    Erlich walked out. Didn't even bother to close the door behind him. He walked straight through the outer office and out past the security gate and the Marine guard.
    He headed for the main building, and the area of the basement where secure matter could be despatched back home.
    As she filled in the forms for him, the girl in Despatch, big and black and at last a friendly face, told him she was from Mississippi, and sure as hell she hated Greeks, Athens, moussaka and retsina. In front of him, she sealed the cigar butt in the plastic sachet into a small tin box and then into the padded envelope. The package was addressed to the Laboratory Division of F . B . I . H.Q. Erlich, like every other Fed, had plenty to grumble about in the running of the Bureau, but the Laboratory was the best.
    " Y o u okay, Mr Erlich?"
    He'd slept poorly. He hadn't eaten breakfast. The coffee at Counter-Terrorism was ditch water, and he had been poleaxed twice. He should have been at