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boy?’
    ‘All in due course,’ said Pauline. ‘First let me introduce you. You know Richard Barker. And I think you’ve met Chris Donaldson from Section Six. The man beside him is Douglas Ross. Douglas is a field agent in northern India. The boy is his discovery. He’s been interviewed before this by P. J. Dennison.’ 
    ‘Why isn’t Dennison here?’ 
    Ross answered the question for her. ‘He’s in London pow-wowing with your boss, Anthony Farrar. He may come down later today.’ 
    ‘Is this a border problem?’
    David Laing was Britain’s leading intelligence expert on Chinese military activity in the western province of Sinkiang. Sinkiang, which was inhabited mainly by Uighur Muslims, was separated from India by the Karakoram Mountains, and the border region had long been a bone of contention between the two countries. A frontier problem would explain why Ross and Dennison from the India Desk would be here. But it didn’t make sense of Donaldson, whose section dealt with Iraqi nuclear capacity. And it didn’t explain the boy or his strange greeting. What had that meant, ‘recognized you’?
    ‘Not in the sense you mean,’ said Ross. ‘Nevertheless, I think there may be a problem with another border entirely.’
    ‘Meaning what exactly?’
    ‘Meaning the border between this life and the next.’
    The man said the words flatly, without affectation of any sort. As though he meant them. It was as if they had stepped out of the ordinary world of intelligence-gathering into one of mediumship and astrology.
    ‘Like the X-Files?’
    Barker chuckled, looked at David, and resumed the expressionless face he had worn until then. He’d be the boy’s minder, thought David, there to make sure his charge was treated well.
    ‘Why don’t you sit down, David?’ Pauline gestured to a chair next to her. She was a small woman, whose neat, nimble movements always surprised David by their delicacy. Her formidable intellect frightened him, and when in her presence he could not help feeling like a small schoolboy brought to explain himself to his headmistress. He sat down and waited.
    ‘Mr Barker, would you please leave us now?’ she asked. ‘You’re welcome to monitor proceedings on the screen in the next room, but the rest of this discussion is above top secret.’
    Barker made no protest. That wasn’t part of his job. He made his departure in silence.
    ‘Exactly who’s in charge here?’ David asked when Barker had gone.
    ‘At the moment, I am,’ said Pauline. ‘By the time we’ve finished, you will be. Or so I hope.’
    ‘What about Farrar?’
    ‘He has overall responsibility. But this is your baby.’
    ‘Why wasn’t I notified before this? If it’s to be my baby, as you put it?’
    ‘The boy’s story had to be checked,’ said Pauline. ‘There was no point in pulling you off vital work on the off chance something might come of this.’
    ‘But now?’
    ‘Something will come of it. We’re fairly certain of that.’
    ‘And this nonsense about the afterlife?’
    ‘It may not be nonsense. Mr Ross will explain.’
    Ross was fresh-faced and nervous, almost juvenile. His imperfectly tanned skin implied a tour of duty that had some years to go.
    ‘It started back in May,’ he said. ‘I received a message from an Indian intelligence officer in Srinagar, a man called Dubey. He didn’t tell me much, just that there was someone he thought I should meet. I went up and was introduced to Yongden here and his parents. Yongden said they had recently arrived in Kashmir from Ladakh. He claimed - this is not easy to explain - that he was the reincarnation of a British intelligence agent named Matthew Hyde. The name meant nothing to me, of course. I’m new in the service, and I believe Mr Hyde worked in quite a different area.’
    ‘And you swallowed this story?’
    ‘Of course not. I swallow nothing I might have to throw up again. Believe me, I took care. I questioned him closely. The interview did not go