Several times during the night the telephone had rung, and the front desk had picked up. At six-thirty, as the first thin city light stole into the room, Rowland rose and went through into the sitting room beyond. As was the hotel’s practice, the messages had been placed in an envelope and slipped beneath the door. The calls had all been for Gini and there must have been several, more than he had realized, for the envelope was bulky. He placed it on Gini’s desk, picked up some of the scattered papers, and looked down at the map of this city he and Gini had scanned the night before.

Where next? he thought, and tried to focus on the demands of this story, this piece of work. He looked at the objects spread out on the desk: the map, Anneke’s address book, his notebooks, Gini’s notebooks, a tape recorder and tapes. The objects would not connect; their links were unimportant to him. He passed his hands across his face; he felt sexually spent, jagged with exhaustion, with the speed of events. Could change, decisive change, occur overnight?

He stopped. He was lying to himself. It was not simply a matter of hours. These events did not begin when he led Gini into this room for the first time the previous night and suddenly felt a surge of acute desire for a woman he scarcely knew. When did it begin? How long had he been being prepared, shaped, for an event he did not expect?

He stared down angrily at the map on the desk, trying to fight these uncertainties. The telephone rang. Rowland picked it up.

There was a buzzing; he listened to silence, then more interference, then a humming of wires.

“Yes?” Rowland said impatiently. “Who is this?”

“It’s Pascal Lamartine,” said a voice, coolly enough but with edge. “Could I speak to Genevieve Hunter, please?”

Rowland took a fraction of a second too long to reply, he thought, but when he did so, he felt his tone was well judged.

“Sorry—I’m afraid you’ve been put through to the wrong room,” he said.

“Is this Room 810?”

“Yes, it is. And Genevieve Hunter was using it yesterday, but they moved her out when I arrived. I’m her editor. I think they put her on the sixth floor, near Lindsay Drummond. You know Lindsay?”

“Yes. But the desk said—”

“Oh, the front desk’s useless,” Rowland said in easy tones. “They don’t seem to know where anyone is. The hotel’s full, the Correspondent has umpteen rooms. Get them to check again. It might be the sixth floor. I think some people are up on the twelfth. Unless they moved her to another hotel, of course.”

“Very well. I’ll try the desk again.”

“The thing is…” Rowland said quickly. “I’m not sure if you’ll catch her. She said she’d be making an early start. Some interview, I think…”

“This early?” The man’s tone sharpened. “It’s not seven o’clock yet.”

“You might catch her. I could be wrong. I can give her a message later if you like. I’m supposed to be meeting her at a press conference around eleven. Does she have your number? You want her to call you back?”