The inquiry agent thought it over. He recalled that this client’s previous assignment had concerned a man who turned out to be Sir James Manson’s aide. He also knew he could find out what Mr. Brown wanted to know within an hour.

The two men agreed on the fee, a modest one, and Shannon promised to mail it in cash by registered mail within the hour. The inquiry agent decided to accept the promise and asked his client to call him back just before five.

Shannon completed his shopping and called back on the dot of five. Within a few seconds he had what he wanted. He was deep in thought as he walked back to his hotel and phoned the writer who had originally introduced him to “Mr. Harris.”

“Hi,” he said gruffly, “it’s me, Cat Shannon.”

“Oh, hello, Cat,” came the surprised reply. “Where have you been?”

“Around,” said Shannon. “I just wanted to say thanks for recommending me to that fellow Harris.”

“Not at all. Did he offer you a job?”

Shannon was cautious. “Yeah, a few days’ worth. It’s over now. But I’m in funds. How about a spot of dinner?”

“Why not?” said the writer.

“Tell me,” said Shannon, “are you still going out with that girl you used to be with when we met last?”

“Yeah. The same one. Why?”

“She’s a model, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Look,” said Shannon, “you may think this crazy, but I very much want to meet a girl who’s also a model but I can’t get an introduction to. Name of Julie Man-son. Could you ask your girl if she ever met her in the modeling world?”

The writer thought it over. “Sure. I’ll call Carrie and ask her. Where are you now?”

“In a call box. I’ll call you back in half an hour.”

Shannon was lucky. The two girls had been at modeling school together. They were also handled by the same agency. It took another hour before Shannon, by then speaking directly to the writer’s girlfriend, learned that Julia Manson had agreed to a dinner date, providing it was a foursome with Carrie and her boyfriend. They agreed to meet at Carrie’s flat just after eight, and she would have Julie Manson there.

Shannon and the writer turned up within a few minutes of each other at Carrie’s flat off Maida Vale, and the four of them went off to dinner. The writer had reserved a table at a small cellar restaurant called the Baker and Oven in Marylebone, and the meal was the kind Shannon liked, enormous portions of English roast meats and vegetables, washed down with two bottles of Piat de Beaujolais. He liked the food, and he liked Julie.

She was quite short, a little over five feet, and to give the impression of more height she wore high heels and carried herself well. She said she was nineteen, and she had a pert, round face that could be innocently angelic when she wanted, or extremely sexy when she thought no one else was looking.

She was evidently spoiled and too accustomed to getting things her own way—probably, Shannon estimated, the result of an overindulgent upbringing. But she was amusing and pretty, and Shannon had never asked more of a girl. She wore her dark brown hair loose so that it fell to her waist, and beneath her dress she evidently had a very curved figure. She also seemed to be intrigued by her blind date.

Although Shannon had asked his friend not to mention what he did for a living, Carrie had nevertheless let it slip that he was a mercenary. But the conversation managed to avoid the question during dinner. As usual Shannon did less talking than anyone, which was not difficult because Julie and the tall auburn-haired Carrie did enough for four between them.

As they left the restaurant and climbed back into the cool night air of the streets, the writer mentioned that he and his girlfriend were taking the car back to his flat. He hailed a taxi for Shannon, asking him if he would take Julie home before going on to his hotel.

As the mercenary climbed in, the writer gave him a slow wink. “I think you’re on,” he whispered. Shannon grunted.

Outside her Mayfair flat Julie suggested he might like to come in for coffee, so he paid off the taxi and accompanied her up to the evidently expensive apartment. Only when they were seated on the settee drinking the appalling coffee Julie had prepared did she refer to the way he earned his living.

He was leaning back in the corner of the settee; she was perched on the edge of the seat, turned toward him.

“Have you killed people?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“In battle?”

“Sometimes. Mostly.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. I never counted.”

She savored the information and swallowed several times. “I’ve never known a man who had killed people.”

“You don’t know that,” countered Shannon. “Anyone who has been in a war has probably killed people.”

“Have you got any scars from wounds?”

It was another of the usual questions. In fact Shannon carried over a score of marks on his back and chest, legacies of bullets, fragments of mortar, and shards of grenade. He nodded. “Some.”

“Show me,” she said.

“No.”

“Go on, show me. Prove it.” She stood up.

He grinned up at her. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” he taunted, mimicking the old kindergarten challenge.

“I haven’t got any,” Julie said indignantly.

“Prove it,” said Shannon shortly and turned to place his empty coffee cup on the table behind the sofa. He heard a rustle of cloth. When he turned back he nearly choked on the last mouthful of coffee. It had taken her less than a second to unzip her dress at the back and let it slip to a pool of crumpled cloth around her ankles. Beneath it she wore a thin gold waist-chain.

“See,” she said softly, “not a mark anywhere.”

She was right. Her small nubile teenager’s body was an unblemished milky white from the floor to the mane of dark hair that hung round her shoulders and almost touched the waist-chain.

Shannon swallowed. “I thought you were supposed to be Daddy’s sweet little girl,” he said.

She giggled. “That’s what they all think, especially Daddy,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Sir James Manson sat at the same hour in the library of his country mansion not far from the village of Notgrove in the rolling Gloucestershire countryside, Shannon’s file on his knee and a brandy and soda at his elbow. It was close to midnight, and Lady Manson had long since gone up to bed. He had saved the Shannon project to read alone in his library, resisting the temptation to open it in the car on the way down or to slip away early from dinner. When he wanted to concentrate hard he preferred the night hours, and on this document he wanted to concentrate hard.

He flicked the cover open and set on one side the maps and sketches. Then he started on the narrative. It read:

Preamble. The following plan has been prepared on the basis of the report on the republic of Zangaro prepared by Mr. Walter Harris, my own visit to Zangaro and my own report on that visit, and the briefing given by Mr. Harris on what it is desired to achieve. It cannot take into account elements known to Mr. Harris but undisclosed by him to me. Notable among these must be the aftermath of the attack and the installation of the successor government. Nevertheless, this aftermath may well require preparations built in to the planning of the attack, and these I have obviously not been able to make.

Object of the Exercise. To prepare, launch, and carry out an attack on the presidential palace at Clarence, capital of Zangaro, to storm and capture that palace, and to liquidate the President and his personal guards living inside. Also, to take possession of the bulk of the weapons and armory of the republic, its national treasury and broadcasting radio station, also inside the palace. Lastly, to create such conditions that any armed survivors of the guard unit or the army are scattered outside the town and in no position to mount a viable counterattack.