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identity, as if he knew that one day someone would come looking for him.
    Vandam said aloud: “Alex Wolff, who are you?”
    He got up from the chair and left the study. He walked through the house and across the hot, dusty courtyard. He climbed back over the gate and dropped into the street. Across the road an Arab in a green-striped galabiya sat cross-legged on the ground in the shade of the olive trees, watching Vandam incuriously. Vandam felt no impulse to explain that he had broken into the house on official business: the uniform of a British officer was authority enough for just about anything in this town. He thought of the other sources from which he could seek information about the owner of this house: municipal records, such as they were; local tradesmen who might have delivered there when the place was occupied; even the neighbors. He would put two of his men on to it, and tell Bogge some story to cover up. He climbed onto his motorcycle and kicked it into life. The engine roared enthusiastically, and Vandam drove away.

3
    FULL OF ANGER AND DESPAIR WOLFF SAT OUTSIDE HIS HOME AND WATCHED THE British officer drive away.
    He remembered the house as it had been when he was a boy, loud with talk and laughter and life. There by the great carved gate there had always been a guard, a black-skinned giant from the south, sitting on the ground, impervious to the heat. Each morning a holy man, old and almost blind, would recite a chapter from the Koran in the courtyard. In the cool of the arcade on three sides the men of the family would sit on low divans and smoke their hubble-bubbles while servant boys brought coffee in long-necked jugs. Another black guard stood at the door to the harem, behind which the women grew bored and fat. The days were long and warm, the family was rich and the children were indulged.
    The British officer, with his shorts and his motorcycle, his arrogant face and his prying eyes hidden in the shadow of the peaked uniform cap, had broken in and violated Wolff’s childhood. Wolff wished he could have seen the man’s face, for he would like to kill him one day.
    He had thought of this place all through his journey. In Berlin and Tripoli and El Agela, in the pain and exhaustion of the desert crossing, in the fear and haste of his flight from Assyut, the villa had represented a safe haven, a place to rest and get clean and whole again at the end of the voyage. He had looked forward to lying in the bath and sipping coffee in the courtyard and bringing women home to the great bed.
    Now he would have to go away and stay away.
    He had remained outside all morning, alternately walking the street and sitting under the olive trees, just in case Captain Newman should have remembered the address and sent somebody to search the house; and he had bought a galabiya in the souk beforehand, knowing that if someone did come they would be looking for a European, not an Arab.
    It had been a mistake to show genuine papers. He could see that with hindsight. The trouble was, he mistrusted Abwehr forgeries. Meeting and working with other spies he had heard horror stories about crass and obvious errors in the documents made by German Intelligence: botched printing, inferior-quality paper, even misspellings of common English words. In the spy school where he had been sent for his wireless cipher course the current rumor had been that every policeman in England knew that a certain series of numbers on a ration card identified the holder as a German spy.
    Wolff had weighed the alternatives and picked what seemed the least risky. He had been wrong, and now he had no place to go.
    He stood, picked up his cases and began to walk.
    He thought of his family. His mother and his stepfather were dead, but he had three stepbrothers and a stepsister in Cairo. It would be hard for them to hide him. They would be questioned as soon as the British realized the identity of the owner of the villa, which might be today; and while