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between the lid and the body was all but invisible. There was no brand or manufacturer’s mark on the anthracite-black shell – only the smudges of her own finger-prints. She opened the e-mail program, the way Destrier had shown her.
    93 new messages.
    But I only just started
. Apart from Blanchard, she didn’t recognise any of the senders.
    The door blew open without a knock. A man in a blue suit and a pink shirt barged through and deposited three more inch-thick files on the front of her desk. His eyes were puffy, his cheeks raw-veined from drink. His hair was parted down the middle and swept back, clustered into fronds by the gel.
    ‘Lockthwaite,’ he barked. ‘I need two copies of each by lunchtime.’
    Without elaborating, he spun on his heel and walked out.
    Ellie stared at what he’d left, at the wall of folders already barricading her desk, then back to her computer screen.
    99 new messages.
    She felt the blood rising in her cheeks again.
Calm down
, she told herself. But her pulse only raced faster.
Think
.
    The photocopier had its own room down the corridor. It didn’t seem to be on; Ellie wasted several vital minutes trying to open it, until she noticed the slot just under the rim. She slid her card in. Red lights flashed on the console; a green glow seeped out from under the lid as the machine growled into life, like a dragon woken in its cave.
    Whoever put the file together hadn’t meant it to be copied. Most of the papers were stapled together; many were irregular sizes, small notes or flimsy carbons that blew off the copier if Ellie so much as breathed. She had her laptop balanced on theedge of the machine to work on her e-mails, but it was impossible. The copier devoured the paper and spat it out faster than she could keep feeding it. After twenty minutes she’d hardly dented the first file, while rereading the same paragraph of the same e-mail three times over.
    ‘What are you doing here?’
    Blanchard stood in the doorway. He had a cigar in his mouth; a small mound of ash at his feet suggested he’d been watching her for some moments. He looked angry.
    ‘Who told you to do this?’
    ‘I think his name was Lockthwaite.’
    ‘Sachervell. Lockthwaite is the client. Can’t you read?’ Blanchard pointed to the label on the front of the folder. He swept it up one-handed and stormed out of the room. By the time Ellie had grabbed her laptop and followed, he was in an office halfway down the corridor delivering a furious lecture about the proper use of resources. Ellie hung back. A minute later, Blanchard reappeared.
    ‘Come with me.’
    Through the open door, she saw the man whose name wasn’t Lockthwaite standing behind his desk. His face had grown several shades redder. He shot her a murderous look as she passed.
    Blanchard marched her to the lift.
    ‘Many things have changed in our profession, but some unenlightened attitudes persist. They will make things difficult for you; they will see you are a woman and assume you must be a secretary. They are conditioned to think that way: you cannot change it, any more than the mouse can charm a cat. So you must resist them. Force them to accept that they cannot dictate to you. Power is the only language they understand.’
    They’d come out in the lobby. Blanchard’s car sat waiting outside.
    ‘We’re late for the meeting.’ He saw Ellie’s blank look and gave an exasperated click of his tongue. ‘Didn’t you read your e-mails?’
    Luxembourg
    Once, the city had been called the Gibraltar of northern Europe. From the moment in the dark ages when Count Siegfried built his castle on the cliffs above two dizzy ravines, eight centuries of human ingenuity had made it impregnable. Now most of the walls were gone; tourists manned what was left. The city’s best defences were the invisible ramparts that protected its banks, complex laws and absolute discretion, hoarding the riches safe inside.
    But the ravines remained. Pleasure parks filled the bottom,