‘Thomas,’ said Woolf. ‘Let me put it this way. Some bad people are getting ready to do some bad things. We have a chance of stopping them. Are you going to help us?’ He paused. And kept on pausing.

‘Look, the question still stands,’ I said. ‘What are you planning to do? Just tell me. What’s wrong with the press? Or the police? Or the CIA? I mean come on, we’ll get a phone book and some coins and sort this out.’

Woolf shook his head in irritation, and rapped his knuckles on the table.

‘You haven’t been listening to me, Thomas,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about interests here. The biggest interests in the world. Capital. You don’t take on capital with a telephone and a couple of polite letters to your Congressman.’

I stood up, swaying slightly from the effect of the wine. Or the talk.

‘You leaving?’ said Woolf, without lifting his head. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’ I didn’t really know what I was going to do. ‘But I’m going to the lavatory first.’ And that’s certainly what I meant to do at that moment, because I was confused, and because I find porcelain helps me think.

I walked slowly across the restaurant towards the archway, my brain rattling with all kinds of badly-stowed personal items which may fall out and injure a fellow passenger - and what was I doing even thinking about take-off, and runways, and the beginnings of long journeys? I had to get out of this, and get out quickly. Just handling those photographs had been stupid enough.

I turned into the archway, and saw that Sarah was standing in an alcove by a pay phone. She had her back to me, and her head was tipped forward, until it was almost resting against the wall. I stood there for a moment, watching her neck, and her hair, and her shoulders, and yes, all right, I believe I may have glanced at her bottom.

‘Hi,’ I said, stupidly.

She spun round, and for the tiniest instant I thought I saw real fear in her face - of what, I hadn’t the slightest idea - and

then she smiled and replaced the receiver.

‘So,’ she said, taking a pace towards me. ‘You on the team?’

We looked at each other for a while, and then I smiled back, and shrugged, and started to say the word ‘well’, which is what I always do when I’m stuck for words. And you’ll find, if you try this at home, that to form the ‘w’ sound, you have to pucker your lips into a kind of pout - very similar in shape to the one you’d use for whistling, say. Or, perhaps, even kissing.

She kissed me.Shekissedme.

What I mean is, I was standing there, lips puckered, brain puckered, and she just stepped up and threw her tongue into my mouth. For a moment, I thought maybe she’d tripped on a floorboard and stuck out her tongue as a reflex - but that didn’t seem very likely somehow, and anyway, once she’d got her balance back, wouldn’t she have put her tongue away again?

No, she was definitely kissing me. Just likeinthe movies. Just like not in my life. For a couple of seconds I was too surprised, and too out of practice, to know what to do about it, because it had been a very long time since something like this had happened to me. In fact, if I remember correctly, I was an olive-picker in the reign of Rameses III when it did, and I’m not sure how I dealt with it then.

She tasted of toothpaste, and wine, and perfume, and heaven on a nice day.

‘You on the team?’ she said again, and I realised from the clarity of her words that at some point she must have taken her tongue back, although I could still feel it, in my mouth, on my lips, and I knew that I’d always be able to feel it. I opened my eyes.

She was standing there, looking up at me, and yes, it was definitely her. It wasn’t a waiter, or a hatstand.

‘Well,’ I said.

We were back at the table, and Woolf was signing his name on a credit card slip, and perhaps some other things were happening in the world too, but I’m not sure.

‘Thanks for the supper,’ I said, like a robot. Woolf waved his hand at me and grinned. ‘My pleasure, Tom,’ he said.

He was pleased I’d said yes. Yes as in yes, I’d think about it. Precisely what I was to think about, nobody seemed able to say exactly, but it was enough to satisfy Woolf, and for the time being we all had our reasons for feeling good. I picked up the folder and started leafing through the photographs again, one by one.

Small, fast, and violent.

Sarah was pleased too, I think, although she was now behaving as if nothing much had happened besides a decent meal and a bit of a chat about the new times.

Violent, fast and small.

Perhaps, underneath all that composure, there was a seething maelstrom of emotion, and she was only keeping a lid on it because her father was sitting there.

Small, fast, and violent.

I stopped thinking about Sarah.

As each image of this nasty-looking device passed before my eyes, I seemed to feel myself gradually waking up from something, or somewhere. To something or somewhere else. It sounds fanciful, I know, but the starkness of this machine - its ugliness, its stripped-down efficiency, its sheer pitilessness - seemed to seep from the paper into my hands, cooling my blood. Perhaps Woolf sensed what I was feeling.

‘It has no official name,’ he said, gesturing towards the pictures. ‘But it’s temporarily designated as an Urban Control and Law-enforcement Aircraft.’

‘UCLA,’ I said, pointlessly.

‘You spell too?’ said Sarah, with a kind of almost smile. ‘Hence the working name given to this prototype,’ said Woolf.

‘Which is?’

Neither of them answered, so I looked up, and saw that Woolf was waiting until I met his gaze.

‘The Graduate,’ he said.

Seven

One hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.