That was why they glanced over nervily at the whispered exchange-all of them, all the ones with secrets to hide. When in fact the partner’s message had been “Dulwater’s outside,” and Allerdyce’s reply had been “I’ll be a few minutes.”

As Allerdyce got up slowly from his chair, feet shuffled forward, showing their owners were only too willing to help him to his feet should their help be needed. And when he walked across the floor, the various conversations lost their thread, or trailed off, or became more hushed. And when the door had closed behind him, they all felt the need for another drink.

Dulwater was sitting in a chair near the single elevator. Only one of the building’s several elevators had access to the penthouse. The chair he sat in was reproduction Louis Quatorze, and looked like it might break at any moment. Dulwater was quick to rise when his employer appeared. Allerdyce pressed the button for the elevator, and Dulwater knew enough to be silent till it had arrived, they’d entered it, and the doors had closed again. Allerdyce turned his access key, quickly pressed some digits on the small keypad with dexterity, so Dulwater couldn’t recognize the code, and stood back. They began the descent to the basement.

“Well?” Allerdyce asked.

“I’m not sure what it adds up to,” Dulwater began.

“That’s not your concern,” Allerdyce snapped. “I merely ask for your report.”

“Of course.” Dulwater swallowed. There was nothing on paper-his employer’s instructions-but he knew it by heart anyway, or hoped he did. There was perspiration on his upper lip, and he licked it away. “Kosigin had brought in some muscle from Los Angeles, an Englishman. They twice had meetings outside the CWC building: once in a downtown café, once on the waterfront. Even with the long-range mike I had trouble picking up the conversation.”

From the way Dulwater was speaking, Allerdyce knew he was curious to know why Alliance was now spying on its employers. He admired the younger man’s curiosity. He knew, too, that no answer he could give would be satisfactory.

“Both were good choices,” Allerdyce mused. “Café… waterfront… A babble of background noise, other voices…”

“And on the waterfront they kept moving. Plus there was tourist traffic.”

“So, you’ve told me what you did not learn…”

Dulwater nodded. “There was a death, an apparent suicide of the reporter who’d been looking into CWC and whom we had been asked to investigate. The man’s brother came to town. That seemed to bother Kosigin. You know Kosigin has a detective in his pocket?”

“Of course.”

“The detective tailed the brother. Looked like he was calling favors from half the department.”

“And the muscle from L.A., as you so described him?”

Dulwater shrugged. “I don’t have a name, not yet. I’ll get one.”

“Yes, you will.” The elevator reached the basement, which housed an underground parking garage. The limos the guests had arrived in were parked in neat rows, their liveried drivers enjoying a smoke and a joke.

“No smoking in the building!” Allerdyce barked before letting the elevator doors close again. He keyed in the penthouse. “Interesting,” he said to Dulwater, his voice a dull ripple once more.

“Should I continue?”

Allerdyce considered this. “Where is the brother?”

“Our agents report he’s heading out today.”

“Do you think we’d learn anything more in San Diego now that he’s gone?”

Dulwater gave the answer he thought was expected. “Probably not, sir.”

“Probably not,” Allerdyce echoed, tapping a finger to his thin, dry lips. “They were watching the brother because they perceived in him some threat. The threat of discovery. Now that he’s flown home, does he still pose a threat?”

Dulwater was stuck for an answer. “I don’t know.”

Allerdyce seemed pleased. “Exactly. And neither do they. Under the circumstances, Kosigin might just want to know more about the brother, more than we’ve already been able to tell him.”

“We weren’t able to find out much about him,” Dulwater confessed.

“Kosigin is a careful man,” Allerdyce said. It was part of the man’s attraction. Allerdyce had not managed to build up much of a dossier on Kosigin, though he knew just by looking at the man, just from a casual conversation with him, that there were secrets there to be discovered. He was a challenge.

And, of course, one day Kosigin might rise to the very pinnacle of CWC. He was already close, and still so young. “I’m not a chemist,” he’d told Allerdyce, as though imparting some confidence, and so perhaps hoping to satisfy Allerdyce’s celebrated curiosity. “I don’t have to be to know how to run a company. To run a company, I need to know two things: how to sell, and how to stop my competitors selling more than me.”

Yes, he was a challenge. That was why Allerdyce wanted him, wanted a nice fat dossier of secrets with Kosigin’s name on it. Kosigin had made a mistake coming to Alliance again. Allerdyce had known that CWC employed its own security department. Why hadn’t Kosigin used them? Why the need for an outside agency to follow the English journalist? Allerdyce was beginning to form an answer: Kosigin had something to hide from his superiors. And Alliance had worked for Kosigin once before. Allerdyce knew now that the two cases were connected, even if he didn’t know why.

The elevator arrived at the penthouse. While Dulwater held the doors, Allerdyce keyed for the elevator to return to the lobby. Then he stepped out, leaving the young man inside, still holding the doors, awaiting instructions.

“This intrigues me,” Allerdyce said. “Is your passport up to date?”

“Yes, sir,” Dulwater said.

“Then come to my office tomorrow morning at seven. We’ll have a further discussion.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dulwater, releasing the doors.

Allerdyce walked back to the dining-room door but did not open it, not immediately. Instead he pressed his ear to the wood, the way he used to when he was a young boy, tiptoeing downstairs from bed to listen at the living-room door or at his father’s study. Listening for secrets, for things that could not be said in front of him. Happiest then-when nobody knew he was there.

LONDON SEEMED EVERY BIT as alien to him as San Diego.

He actually found himself carrying out evasion procedures at Heathrow. After depositing his single bag in Left Luggage, he went down to the Underground terminal and moved along the platform, watching, waiting. There were good reasons for not taking his car into London of course, reasons anyone would understand: he was only going into town for a short while; his destination was close to a Tube stop; he’d have to be crazy to drive through London, especially jet-lagged. But also he wanted to know if he was being followed, and this was more easily accomplished on foot.

When a train pulled in, he walked onto it, then came off again, looking to left and right along the platform. Then he stepped in again as the doors were closing. The other passengers looked at him like he was mad. Maybe he was. He looked out of the window. There was no one on the platform. No one was tailing him.

He’d been the same on the airplane. His fellow fliers must have thought there was something wrong with him, the number of times he got up to walk the aisles, visiting the bathroom, or going back to ask the stewardesses for drinks he didn’t really want. Just so that he could study the passengers.

Now he was on his way into London, with keys in his pocket he had taken from his brother’s motel room. The train ran on the Piccadilly Line and would take him all the way to Finsbury Park. But he came off two stops short on the Holloway Road and took his time finding a taxi, then watched from the back window as the driver talked football at him. He got the driver to take him past Jim’s flat and drop him off at the end of the road.