Joe smiled. Such was the man’s discretion—Joe noted he had avoided the mention of a name—he could have applied for a job with the secret service. “Oh, Lord!” was Joe’s afterthought. “Perhaps he did and perhaps Military Intelligence accepted him. Am I slowing down?” If he’d been involved in the preparation for this shindig, placing staff like this is exactly what he would have done. To maintain the deceit, he passed a generous tip into the man’s palm. The slightest reaction of surprise on the man’s benign features confirmed Joe’s suspicion.

He flashed a grin at the footman. “Make the most of it while you can. Why not? And I’ll have coffee, please. Rather a lot of it in one of your big pots.”

“Certainly, sir. Your host has already been served breakfast in his room and will most probably not be ordering further cooked dishes,” came the helpful warning.

Joe sighed. “Ah! I’m in for one of those pretend breakfasts! Well, I’m hungry. Can you bring me something delicate I can toy with between weighty pronouncements? A croissant or two? Would you have those?”

“I’m sure we have, sir. Normandy butter and strawberry jam with that?”

“Perfect.”

“I’ll transmit your order to the waiter, sir.”

Joe indicated that he would seat himself and proceeded to pass the table and its coverings in review. He chose to sit himself with his back to the wall with a view of the room, leaving Kingstone, when he arrived, to feel uncomfortably unaware of what was happening behind him. His situation would oblige him to trust to Joe’s swift reactions in countering any mischievous attack from the rear whether by revolver, fish knife or stink bomb. All part of Joe’s tactics when it came to establishing his authority.

The coffee arrived minutes before Kingstone and Joe was thankfully halfway through his reviving cup when the senator made his appearance.

Kingstone arrived like a blast on a saxophone and stood for a moment at the entrance searching the room with a commanding eye. Not a man creeping about seeking anonymity, was Joe’s first reaction to the American. On sighting Joe, he dismissed the footman at his elbow with a smooth gesture and strode forward. Of medium height and well built, he was impeccably dressed for a summer morning in London in a pale grey suit, white shirt and lavender-coloured paisley-patterned tie. As Joe rose to his feet, the strong, square face broke into a mischievous smile, which stripped a decade off his forty-odd years. A man perfectly capable of dealing with his own would-be assassins, Joe concluded.

He held out a hand and shook Joe’s as both men made the ritual enquiries about each other’s health and declared themselves pleased to be meeting at last.

“Did you leave anything in the pot? Then I’ll join you. Glad to see you’re a coffee drinker, commissioner. Can’t be doing with a tea drinker. See what it does for your walk?” he rumbled on, an amused and indulgent eye on the waiter threading his way through the tables on sinuous hips toward them, bearing a tray of pastries. “Turns you into Ivor Novello.” Kingstone ordered another pot of coffee and helped himself to a croissant from the dish. “The ham and eggs were good but I can never resist one of these. I learned to like them, trailing around the capitals of Europe in the wake of Natalia. My fiançée? You know about Natalia?”

“I do, sir. She arrived five days ago, I understand?”

“That’s right. Monday. Not that we’ve managed to spend much time together. I’ve hardly had time to say hello and she’s barely unpacked—using the hotel as a perch. But then she’s started rehearsals. Always a mistake to give these girls a couch in their dressing rooms,” he confided mysteriously. “And the balletmeister they’re working for—boy does he crack a whip! There’s a Frenchman—maybe he’s Polish; Colonel de Basil, he calls himself—running things. Every bit as demanding, they say, as the lamented Diaghilev. This fella has them on their toes from dawn to dusk. And I mean toes! Natty’s got toes like sledgehammers but even hers are beginning to crack and bleed. She gets through three pairs of ballet shoes in a day!”

Joe listened to his easy chatter with a creeping sense of foreboding. “Look here, sir, if you’re saying you haven’t seen Miss Kirilovna since—Monday, was it?”

“Tuesday night.”

“Tuesday. That’s three days ago. I say—if you’re concerned and would like to post her as missing, I can set wheels in motion. Make enquiries at the theatre …”

“No. No. For God’s sake don’t make it official! She’d tear my ears off for interfering. The press would overhear and before you knew it there’d be headlines everywhere, trumpeting a mystery where there is no mystery. Relax, Sandilands! She’ll be back when she judges she can make the most telling entrance. It’s what she does. You know—leap back on stage to roaring applause.”

Kingstone glanced from side to side and looked back at Joe with a question in his sharp blue eyes. “Speaking of being overheard … we seem to be discreetly placed here.”

Joe passed a forefinger swiftly over his mouth in a soldier’s gesture, understanding his concern. He raised his voice slightly and enunciated clearly: “I think we may speak openly without fear of being overheard. A gentleman of your status has diplomatic immunity in this country, after all,” he said. As he spoke, he drew a slender screwdriver from his breast pocket. An electrical screwdriver, and the only weapon Joe was ever armed with on a routine day. This little inoffensive tool was as useful for connecting wires as for disconnecting arteries. The sharpened steel edge applied to a jugular vein with appropriate threats had remarkably persuasive effects. But its duty this morning was, if not entirely innocent, at least what it was designed for.

Joe casually upended the table lamp positioned between them and looked at it closely. He shook his head and playfully tapped the metal base plate with his screwdriver before applying it to the head of a brass screw. He was intrigued to see Kingstone instinctively spread his broad shoulders and lean forward, a complicitous grin on his face, effectively obscuring Joe’s performance from the room behind. In a few deft moves Joe had removed the base, identified the wires of interest and disconnected them. He put the lamp back together again and repositioned it.

“Tiffany,” he commented. “More attractive when lit but I think we can manage very well without.”

Kingstone gave him a shrewd look. “That was fun. But won’t someone have something to say about that little bit of prestidigitation?”

Joe smiled. “You heard me take the trouble to sign off,” he said. “You do have immunity. I reminded them of that.”

“But who was listening?” Kingstone persisted. “Who’s cursing the name of Sandilands at this moment?”

Joe shrugged. “Oh, Military Intelligence? Special Branch?” And, slyly: “The FBI?”

Kingstone grimaced, sat back and poured out more coffee. “All right. No more pussy-footing around, then. Down to business. We’re going to be in each other’s pockets for the next days or weeks. Tell me something about yourself. And I’d especially like to hear about that scar on your forehead. Can they expect me to trust a man who lets a tiger get close enough to sharpen its claws on him?”

“You should see the tiger, sir. I still have his hide on my wall …”

The two men exchanged manly blather concerning game rifles and the habits of the tiger and the mountain cat. An easy conversation.

Kingstone then listened to Joe’s summary of his professional life: the young Fusilier, the London policeman, the secondment to India and the swift rise through the ranks back home in the ’20s. A sparse account which Joe salted with just enough scandalous or amusing stories to keep Kingstone entertained. He refrained from asking reciprocal questions of the senator. Kingstone must be aware that if Joe had done his job he would know everything there was to know from records about the man and his career. A senator’s curriculum vitae was common knowledge; that of a London policeman with overall charge of the Special Branch was not.