'No sign of the gent from… from the Establishment?'

'No, but he wouldn't book on the same boat, just pretend he had, maybe.'

'He'll be on his way. Watch your back, uncle.'

'And yours, nephew. Love to cousin Ellie. Shalom.' When I got back to the table, Eleanor was glooming at the menu. I said: 'Ken, all right. Some progress. D'you want to eat here or go in to Dizengoff?'

'Where?'

'Tel Aviv's Broadway or Bou F Mich'. Or something.' She put the menu down with a slap. 'So why not live a little?'

We ate at a small restaurant just up from Dizengoff Circle. Sunday isn't as lively as Saturday, with the Sabbath just out, but the gentle night air had brought enough of a crowd to give it a bit of a swing.

I made coffee-drinking gestures at the waiter. The food hadn't been anything to write home about, not unless your mother knew those sort of words already, but the Israelis take coffee seriously.

Eleanor said: 'You and Ken – you've been together a long time, now?'

'Twenty years or something. We don't actually give each other flowers on the anniversary of that first day I nearly landed up his chuff on the West Mailing runway.'

'You're going to go on?'

'Yes, of course.' Then I stopped to think why 'of course". 'I suppose… you've got a man you can work with, you trust, he's good at his job, you can talk to him but you don't have to… most ofufe is seven to four against, as somebody said, so why change?'

'But don't youlike Ken?'

'Of course I like the crummy bastard."

She looked at me carefully. 'Men.' Then: 'And neither of you ever got married?'

'I did once. Nearly."

'What happened?'

'Three years in a Persian nick."

'Oh. And she didn't wait?'

'I felt bad for a time, but… I'd never promised to give up merchanting death. I suppose a woman wants a man home more than once every three years."

'Most marriage services imply that," she said dryly. 'Are you going to give it up now?"

'I dunno… You've got young outfits coming up, now: kids who can't believe they'll ever land on the wrong side of the river. And past forty, you haven't got the years to spare in jail.'

'I guess I know how you feel…'

The waiter brought our coffee.'Dont tell me your best years were spent in Allentown jail?'

'No. But… when a girl gets to thirty… in her thirties, she can get the feeling the train's done gone.'

'There must have been plenty of hire cars on the way.'

She looked at me with cool blue eyes but a twitch at the sides of her mouth. Suddenly she grinned outright. 'I guess so – but sometimes you wonder about a ride that lasts a bit longer."

Sometimes you do. How manycafé tables had I sat at, listening for the moment when I knew this conversation would last the night? But tomorrow – tomorrow there'd be a cargo for Amman or Ankara or Lagos.

How manycafé tables had she been at, waiting for a spark, the moment of decision? We shared something already.

I reached and held her hand on the table. She gripped mine.

I said: That's what happens when you put the job first, maybe.'

'Maybe. But you don't get to work at the Met because there's no job at Macy's glove counter.'

I waved for the bill. 'D'you want to stroll a bit – first?'

She smiled gently. 'Sure.'

We walked hand in hand up the wide – well, fairly – road lined with trees and brightcafés. But slower than the rest of the crowd. The young Israelis strolled with a sense of purpose, a hungry edge to their gaiety.

Eleanor shivered and clutched my hand tighter. 'They're… growing up too fast.'

"That's Ufe as lived on the edge of war. These kids have never known anything else.'

'What can itdo to them?'

I shrugged. 'Too much teenage rumpus – for a Jewish society – use of arms in crime… the way they drive, even. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Now we're learning the price of eternal vigilance.'

Though some people must have known before. Myself a bit.

Just enough to know when I'm being followed – not tailed expertly, mind, but followed.

We stopped at a lighted bookshop. A tubby gent twenty yards back put on his brakes, too.

The window showed a book with an old sword on the cover. Eleanor said thoughtfully: 'Did Mitri ever say just what she plans for the sword – when and if?'

'One-track mind. Let's cross the road. There's a dark alley I want to show you.'

'This is so sudden, sir.' But she gripped my hand and we got through a squadron of hell-diving taxis and private jeeps intact.

So, a moment later, did my tubby non-acquaintance.

I said: 'She's going to sell it, she said. And if the Met can raise the money, you're home and dry.'

'It can find the money. Where's this dark alley?'

'Men were deceivers ever. I just wanted to prove we're being followed.'

'Oh shit.' She looked back. 'You know, that's the bit I'm worried about: getting the Met mixed up in an undercover deal.'

'Don't I remember something about the way they got hold of a vase from Italy a couple of years back?'

'Yes. They remember it, too. They don't want those sort of newspaper stories twice. Who's following?'

'No idea. Let's have a beer and find out.'

We sat down at the nextcafé; an open-fronted Parisian place. Before we'd ordered, a face peek-a-booed in from the street. I beckoned it across. It grinned and came.

He was dressed in an inconspicuous – for Dizengoff – shambolic way, with an open-necked shirt, a smudged lightweight jacket weighed down by too much in the pockets, thick grey trousers. It was only his chubbiness that made him noticeable; Israel isn't a fat country.

'Then you must be Captain Case. Thank you.' He sat down. 'I was waiting to see if you noticed me – I'm not very good at following – and I thought, if he notices, he must be him. Most people don't notice even me.'

I said: 'Miss Eleanor Travis. She'stouring. And you are…?'

'Yes, of course. Inspector Tamir. Attached to the Department of Antiquities at the Ministry of Education and Culture.' He tried to shake hands with us both and show a tattered warrant card at the same time. 'I tried at the airport, then the Avia, then I learned you'd taken a taxi to Dizengoff, so…"

'What are you drinking?'

He and I chose beer, Eleanor coffee. She asked: 'What do you inspect, Inspector?'

'Normally, normal police things. Now I'm bothered about…* he searched his pockets and found a piece of paper; '… Captain Cavitt. And something about Professor Spohr. I know he's dead. And Cavitt is in Israel.'

'I don't know where,' I said.

'Oh, we know: at Akka,'

'Acre?' What in hell was Ken doing there, nearly a hundred miles from Jerusalem?

'Yes. And that was where Professor Spohr was digging.' He routed his pockets again and stuck a wide-bowled briar pipe in his mouth. 'You see… the Professor had, there was a story in Beit Oren prison he had, he found something. Valuable. Not reported. Ah-' The waiter put down our drinks.

I carefully didn't look at Eleanor, just sipped my beer. 'And so?'

'Then we heard he was dead. The Professor, I mean. Shot'

'Suicide.'

'But can you be quite sure?'

'Ask the Nicosia police. They proved he had terminal cancer.'

He frowned and scratched his scalp, just a sun-blotched dome with a poor crop of long grey strands. And dandruff; a few flakes drifted down into his beer.

'But cancer victims don't…' He stopped and sighed. 'In Beit Oren we get people who could make the chicken seem to walk into the soup.'

'I believe that. But-' I took out my own pipe '-butsomebody fired a gun in that hotel at around ninein the evening. It was an empty wing, so nobody was too likely to hear, but… And if it wasn't the Prof, somebody got in and out without being noticed. Those two things needed luck; a man who could fake a suicide that well wouldn't rely on luck to get away with it.'