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do that by dropping off an envelope and posting someone to watch who opened it. Then they’d know who I was and I wouldn’t know who they were. I walked toward one of the armchairs in the lobby where every afternoon tea was served. There was glass paneling on the far wall and I sat in a chair facing it so I could look in the mirror. I had on my sunglasses and I peeked out from behind them at the mirror while I opened the envelope. It was thin and unsuspicious. I doubted a letter bomb. For all I knew it might be a note from Flanders inviting me to join him for high tea at the Connaught. But it wasn’t. It was what I wanted. The note said, “Be at the cafeteria end of the east tunnel near the north gate entrance to the London Zoo in Regent’s Park tomorrow at ten in the morning.” 
    I pretended to read it again and surveyed the lobby from behind my shades as far as the mirror would let me. I didn’t see anything suspicious, but I didn’t expect to. I was trying to memorize all the faces in the place so if I saw one again I’d remember it. I put the letter back in the envelope and turned thoughtfully in my chair, tapping my teeth with a corner of the envelope. Pensive, deep in thought, looking hard as a bastard around the hotel lobby. No one was carrying a Sten gun. I went out the front door and strolled up toward Green Park. It is not easy to follow someone without being spotted, if the someone is trying to catch you doing it. 
    I caught her crossing Piccadilly. She’d been in the hotel lobby buying postcards, and now she was crossing Piccadilly toward Green Park half a block down the street. I was still in my sweat pants and I didn’t have a gun. They might want to burn me right now right quick once they had me spotted. 
    In Green Park I stopped, did a few deep knee bends and stretching exercises for show and then started an easy jog down toward the Mall. If she wanted me she’d have to run to keep up. If she started running to keep up, I’d know she didn’t care about being spotted, which would mean she was probably going to shoot me, or point me out to someone else who would shoot me. In which case I would bang a U-turn and run like hell for Piccadilly and a cop. She didn’t run. She let me go, and by the time I reached the Mall she was gone. 
    I walked back up to Piccadilly along Queen’s Walk, crossed the street and walked down to the Mayfair. I didn’t see her and she wasn’t in the lobby. I went up to my room and took a shower with my gun lying on the top of the toilet tank. I felt good. After a week of watching the sun set on the British Empire I was working again. And I was one up on somebody who thought they were one up on me. If she was from Liberty then they thought they had me spotted and I didn’t know them. If they weren’t, if they wanted just to see if they could screw me out of the thousand pounds and were taking a look at how hard I looked, I was still even. I knew them and they thought I didn’t, and moreover they thought that’s where they were. There were drawbacks. They knew all of me and I only knew one of them. On the other hand, I was a professional and they were amateurs. Of course, if one of them laid a bomb on me, the bomb might not know the difference between amateurs and professionals. I put on jeans, a white Levi shirt, and white Adidas Roms with blue stripes. I didn’t want the goddamned limeys to think an American sleuth didn’t know color coordination. 
    I got a black woven-leather shoulder rig out of the suitcase and slipped into it. They aren’t as comfortable as hip holsters, but I wanted to wear a short Levi jacket and the hip holster would show. I put my gun in the holster and put on the Levi jacket, and left it unbuttoned. It was dark blue corduroy. I looked at myself in the mirror over the bureau. I turned up the collar. Elegant. Clean-shaven, fresh-showered, with a recent haircut. I was the image of the international adventurer. I tried a couple of fast