The President looked at him quizzically. ‘Are you afraid of me?’ he asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you need help?’

‘I'm not far from home,’ he remembers stammering, before waving to the President and his increasingly restive bodyguards, and walking away. To the freeway. A passing motorist had stopped, looked him over carefully, then offered him a lift (perhaps his stooped, shivering stance, that vulnerable look he instinctively assumed when he was being examined, made him appear harmless).

Through the rest of the night, he remained aware of the gun in his pocket, pressing its presence on him. He had practised pulling it out rapidly, because that might be the only way he would get close enough to Du Boise. Would he really have shot that grand old man, he wonders now, as something in his mind was subliminally suggesting when he stood before Nelson Mandela's open window?

The shuffle of many feet, voices still solemn from the prayers they have said. Soon Imam Ismail comes in, finds Michael asleep, his head resting on his knees. Ismail takes off his cloak and lays it over the boy's shoulders. Let him dream his solitary dreams. The way to heaven is a lonely road.

Michael awakens, startled. He removes the cloak from his shoulders, sniffs the strange odour, incense and smoke. Imam Ismail rises from a desk.

‘My one indulgence. The hubble-bubble pipe. How is my refugee today?’

Michael smiles. ‘I need a favour.’

‘Another one? Michael, how will you pay all this back?’

Michael removes a disc from his pocket, hands it to Moulana Ismail. ‘A full list of the next government's legislative programmes, anti-terror measures, the creation of a special unit to monitor extremist groups, and also some references to which of their agents are inside the different organizations. You can work out who they are, a simple process of elimination.’

Ismail looks a little disappointed.

‘It is all I have to offer, for now.’

‘I am sure it will be of some use to someone. But it is the words you use that disturb me.’

‘My words?’

‘Young man, if you talk like them, you soon become one of them. They are all alike, these silent soldiers, not enough imagination, so they use these dead words. Now, what is the favour you need?’

‘A passage to India.’

‘What?’

‘I found out about the Kacholie Society, they have a student exchange programme. Even send some of them to the home village.’

‘You want to become a “gham” boy, a village returnee? You know that the traffic is mostly this way?’

‘It will only be for a while.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘A place to stay.’

‘To hide.’

‘Yes, Moulana.’

‘And you have already done what drives you into hiding?’

‘Part of it.’

‘And the other part cannot be deferred or cancelled?’

‘No.’

‘Are’ baap. Yes, I have somewhere for you to stay until we can get you to India.’

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