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desk was in front of a large arched doorway. From it, he could look down over the surrounding wall at the track which led up to the house.
    He was going through a batch of magazines and cuttings which had arrived that morning. He had clipping services in London, New York and Bonn. Anything that appeared in any newspaper or magazine which referred to Loccurbie was sent to him. The flow had slowed down a lot over the last three months but was still enough to keep him busy for two or three hours a day. He was reading an article in Time magazine, speculating about a connection between the bombing and Arab terrorist organisations in Germany and Scandinavia. Occasionally, he jotted a note on a pad beside him. More often, he lifted his head and looked down at the track leading up from the village. Each time he did that, he would then glance at his watch.
    It was an hour after the priest had left when he saw the boy far down on the track, walking steadily upwards. He concentrated again on the article. He had left the gates of the house open.
    Fifteen minutes later he heard the gates close. He stood up, moved round the desk and looked down. The boy was standing by the pool, wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt and jeans.
    “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” he called. “Help yourself to a drink and there’s some biltong in the cupboard above the fridge.”
    He went back behind the desk and concentrated on the article.
    They walked around the pool, the boy on the outside. There was a faint south-westerly blowing, rustling the palms. They walked steadily for half an hour. When they finally stopped, they stood, looking at the house.
    The American said, “When I die, this house will be yours and enough money to maintain it.”
    The boy looked at the house for a few minutes, then turned and for another minute looked out at the view of the islands, then back at the American. Almost imperceptibly he nodded his head.
    They resumed walking.
    “What happened with that first couple who wanted to adopt you?”
    The boy spread his hands, “I don’t know. I suppose they just didn’t like me.”
    “Did you like them?”
    “They were all right. The food was better than at the orphanage.”
    Creasy looked down at the boy, “And what about the second couple, when you were thirteen?”
    Michael Said shrugged and said, “He was an Arab.”
    Creasy stopped walking. The boy walked on a few paces, then also stopped and turned. They looked at each other.
    The boy smiled slightly and said in perfect Arabic, “Yes, Uomo, you chose well.”
    They started walking again. And talking in Arabic, a language he had learned during years in the Foreign Legion in Algeria, Creasy said, “So why did you choose to come with me?”
    This time it was the boy who stopped. He was looking at the house again and then at the vista sweeping beneath it. Reverting to English he said simply, “Uomo, you will know that my mother was a whore.”
    At the gate, Creasy reached into his pocket and handed the boy a bunch of keys, saying, “I’ll be leaving tomorrow and will be gone between two and four weeks. Use the house. You will have to sleep at the orphanage until the papers go through in about eight weeks. I will return with the woman.”
    They shook hands and the boy walked down the track without looking back. The American stood by the open gate watching until he had disappeared into the village. Then he went back up to his study. He phoned the airport to make his booking and then spent two hours working through the stacks of magazines and cuttings.

Chapter 05
    She was the seventh out of the fourteen he had interviewed the previous day. This was the second interview, the one where he would tell her the full details of the job and the role.
    They sat facing each other across the table in the drab interview room of the Agency office in London, just off Wardour Street in Soho. He had the open file in front of him. It contained a typical actress portfolio. He guessed that the