Field looked at her. For a moment, believing that she was completely aware of the extent and scope of her Faustian pact, he felt like throwing up.

“Alexei Simonov.” Field saw immediately that Sister Margaret knew the boy. “Mr. Lu-or his men-brought him here and asked you to give him shelter?”

Sister Margaret did not answer.

“The mother…”

“It is a tragedy,” she said.

“Of course.” He allowed himself a mournful pause.

Sister Margaret raised her hand. “We have had five Russian children in one year,” she said, spreading her fingers.

“Five.”

“Suicide is against God’s will.”

“Yes.”

“But it is still a tragedy, of course.”

“Of course, yes.”

Field reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the photograph he’d kept in his desk. He stood and handed it to Sister Margaret. “This is how Natalya Simonov committed suicide, Sister.”

Her face went white. After a few moments she handed it back. She did not catch his eye.

“Would it be possible for me to speak to the boy?”

“Out of the question.” She shook her head.

“It’s just that-”

“Out of the question.” She shook her head again, in case she had not sufficiently emphasized this point. “He has been traumatized.”

Field looked out of the window at the boys still playing football in the yard.

“He is not here, Mr. Field.”

“Supposing that the boy did turn out to have family, after all, then he would-”

“We are past that point, Mr. Field. Alexei must be allowed to begin his life again. Mr. Lu has his best interests at heart and he was most clear on this point. No one is to see the boy.”

“It is touching to hear that Mr. Lu takes so much time to consider the welfare of individual orphans when he must be such a busy man.”

She glared at him.

“Sister, Natalya Simonov was stabbed about fifteen times in the vulva and the lower part of her stomach.” He looked her in the eye.

Sister Margaret’s face was sheet-white again.

“We think Alexei saw his mother’s killer. We believe he is the only person who can positively identify him before he does this”-Field held up the photograph-“to another woman.”

Sister Margaret’s lips tightened. “I cannot allow it,” she said. “I cannot.”

The children had stopped playing football on the far side of the yard. They were drinking water and splashing it on their faces. Their hair was damp with sweat. Their uniforms seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, a green cross at the center of each shirt. They sat down against the far wall, talking among themselves.

Field reached for a notepad and took out his father’s pen. “This is my number. I leave it up to you.” He handed her the piece of paper and left the office.

Field stopped when he reached the central hallway. He could hear the sound of his breathing. A door opened behind him and he turned to see Sister Margaret walking in the opposite direction. He watched her until she reached the far end of the corridor. She did not look round.

The hallway was silent again.

Field half turned and saw that some of the children were watching him silently. There were four of them, all young Chinese or Eurasian boys. They did not move, their gazes solemn.

Field walked out through the entrance hall and into the bright sunshine.

There was a car waiting on the far side of the street, about fifty yards to his left. He watched it for a few moments before setting off, but the car didn’t follow him.

Once he’d turned the corner, he stopped beneath the shade of a sycamore tree and leaned back against the iron railings of a large house. He shut his eyes. He’d never felt so tired.

When he opened them again, he looked at his watch, then fumbled in his jacket pocket for Prokopieff’s old surveillance notes. He glanced over them, then put them away and began to walk.

It took him only a few minutes to reach Lu’s house, but he looked at his watch again to be sure of the time. It was twelve-thirty. If Lu’s routine had not changed, he would leave at one o’clock.

Field stood beneath the trees opposite the house before deciding that he was too conspicuous and retreating a few yards.

He took out a cigarette, but then put it back in the packet.

He looked up at the bedroom window. He fought against the idea that she was a willing-even an enthusiastic-prisoner. He thought of her apartment and her elegant clothes and the look that had crept across her face as she had forced him away.

The door opened. Lu’s bodyguards came down the steps and surrounded the car. As the blond one, Grigoriev, scanned the street, Field turned quickly and walked away. He kept on going until he was round the next corner, then spun around and came back, keeping in the shadow of the trees.

Field watched as Lu came down the steps with a girl of about thirteen or fourteen. He had a brief glimpse of her frightened face before she was pushed into the back of the car. Lu moved slowly, Grigoriev supporting him as he came down the last step.

Natasha was not with him. Field felt his shoulders sag with relief.

The bodyguards climbed into the car or onto the running boards, and the car moved off in the direction of the Bund. Field looked at his watch again. It was one o’clock exactly.

He stepped farther into the shadow of the trees and lit a cigarette. He glanced up at the bedroom window but saw no movement. Every so often he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Lu returned at five minutes past two. All four bodyguards were on the running boards now. They jumped off before the car had come to a halt, taking up the same positions as they had done earlier. After about thirty seconds Field saw Grigoriev tap the driver’s window and another of the men stepped forward to open Lu’s door. He went slowly up the steps to the house. The bodyguards followed him and the car drove off. There was still no sign of Natasha.

Field lit another cigarette.

He was about to leave when a rickshaw pulled up outside the house.

Before Field had even had time to retreat farther into the shadows, Lu’s door had opened and Field caught a glimpse of the man who had arrived. It was Caprisi. He stepped inside.

For a moment Field stared at the door and the empty street. Then he leaned back against the tree. His shoulders sagged; hope drained from him. Natasha had been right. Everyone and everything was corrupt; nothing here was left untainted.

He could feel his father mocking him, and he realized that to have believed in any kind of purity, to have sought any kind of victory, moral or practical, had been doomed from the beginning.

It made him fortune’s fool.

Caprisi stepped out of Lu’s doorway. He lit a cigarette and glanced deliberately up and down the street, as if assuming he was being watched. He looked deflated; the meeting had not gone well. By Field’s watch he had been in there exactly half an hour.

The American beckoned to his rickshaw driver, walked down the steps, and climbed in.

Field watched for a few moments before following on foot, occasionally having to break into a run to ensure he did not lose the rickshaw as it turned off toward the Chinese city.

The streets were narrower now, swift progress no longer possible against the oncoming wall of humanity.

They did a series of turns, and Field was soon lost, a stranger still in the dusty, teeming sprawl beyond the European boulevards.

The rickshaw pulled up at an intersection and he ducked back into a doorway as Caprisi got out and put a note into his driver’s hand. Field was bent low, beneath a lamp, a baby crying in the open courtyard of the tiny house behind him. He listened to its mother trying to soothe it.

The American began walking, and for fifty yards they were the only two people in sight, then Caprisi turned right into a busier street. Field bumped into a woman herding a group of pigs, and when he looked up, the American was gone.