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hard slap. The kid was crumbling. His heavy glasses had fallen off.
    ‘What did you do with them?’
    A choke. ‘Do with what? I didn’t find the mobile. I—’
    A fist caught his collar from behind and lifted him easily. The kid was lightweight and didn’t do exercise or steroids. He was a bag of bones in his T-shirt and jeans. The Major slapped him again. He had done extreme violence, in Herat province. He had refined it in the chaotic days when the Soviet Union had fallen apart and the scramble for wealth had begun. He had learned more of the art when he had quit the employ of government for work that was hidden and better paid. He could hurt and he could kill. More slaps to the face. The Gecko squealed and wet himself.
    All the big players needed a Gecko to ensure the safety of their communications. The French agencies were said to be good, the Italians sophisticated and the Germans had fine equipment. The British had listening posts in Cyprus that covered the Middle East, the Caucasus and the frontiers of Afghanistan. The Americans hunted the big players – the Major was among them – with the resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. He needed the Gecko, his own geek, to preserve the security of his communications. He slapped him once more, hard enough to hurt but not to damage.
    The warrant officer was in the door that opened on to the corridor, and shook his head. Nothing found. The master sergeant pulled the Gecko upright and the Major did a fast body search. He probed into orifices, then checked the belt and the trousers.
    ‘Did you take her earrings?’
    ‘No.’ A grunt.
    His fist was raised. The anger was less from the certainty that the Gecko had taken the earrings than that his session had been disrupted, and that his two good men understood he had fucked up by bringing the Romanian whore on the trip.
    She stood in the doorway that led to the bedroom. The light was behind her, silhouetting her head. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders and made a bright halo around her ears. The back light caught the stones. She had a towel knotted precariously above her breasts, reaching halfway down her thighs. ‘I was about to run the shower. I found them.’
    He loosed the Gecko, let him find a chair to hold on to. He asked where they had been.
    ‘I had a shower this morning, left them in the soap tray.’
    She turned, as if it was the end of the matter, and the door closed after her.
    The Major gave a short smile, neither amused nor concerned: it showed that a matter of controversy was resolved. Through the door he could hear the shower running. He gave the Gecko a sharp hug and might have squeezed the air from his lungs. It was a month more than three years since he had pulled the kid from an Internet café, on a valued recommendation. He paid him a thousand dollars a month, fed him, housed him and let him ride in the executive aircraft. He had come to depend on the kid’s computer abilities. He slapped the Gecko’s back – the big gesture that showed he harboured no ill feeling, that the accusations made against him were forgotten. He picked up the kid’s glasses, straightened the metal arm that had bent. He wiped the lenses on his shirt front and replaced them on the kid’s face. He did not look at the crotch of the kid’s jeans, or glance into the Gecko’s eyes and take the chance of reading them. The papers came out and were spread again on the table. The next day they would be in Baku, and from there they would go to Constanta where the girl would trip away from the airport with a bulge in her purse and the chance of a new conquest. He would be with her tonight. In Baku he might give her to the master sergeant or the warrant officer, whichever wanted her most, not to the kid. Abruptly, he chuckled.
    He went back to the figures. No man ever reached the heights he had climbed to if he did not concern himself with detail. He looked up to ask what time they