“Once it hits the streets,” he had said, “the kids will rename it anyway, they always do. Meantime—it makes you fly, man, then it wraps you up in this cozy little nest, then…”

“What’s their name?” Lazare said again.

Bertrand, now recovered, came to the point. He told Lazare that the miracle pills, which were small, untinted, and sweet-tasting, were known as White Doves.

The name seemed to touch some chord in Lazare, who repeated it, as if to himself. He looked up at Bertrand again. His final question was sharp: “And they’re safe?”

Bertrand, eager to escape, decided that now was not the moment to go into further detail. He decided not to mention any of the Dutch chemist’s more crude remarks, or the American’s incoherent warnings. He certainly had no intention of admitting to Lazare the full effects only half a tablet had had on him the previous night. Bertrand, a married man and straitlaced on most occasions, was not used to such loss of control. Lazare was in for some surprises, he thought, not without a certain malice.

“Powerful, sir,” he replied. “But yes, completely safe.”

Part One
England

Chapter 1

THE MEETING WITH ROWLAND McGuire was scheduled for ten o’clock in his office in the features department, not in Lindsay’s in fashion. Lindsay agreed to this venue, then realized it gave McGuire a territorial advantage. Irritated, she had begun planning at once. She did not like McGuire; she was disposed to loathe McGuire, who, in the two short months he had been at the newspaper, had already bested her more than once. It was becoming urgent to deal with McGuire; Lindsay had decided that at this meeting there would be no more feinting: she would—somehow—deliver a knockout punch.

She arrived at her desk that morning, as usual, at eight. She had gone to bed the previous night at twelve, and had risen at six. Before she left home, there had been the usual domestic imbroglios—leaking pipe, no milk, cat sick. Attacking her in-tray, she tried to persuade herself that she was ready for this bout with McGuire, resolve and energy intact.

By nine she had approved that week’s fashion pages, lined up three future shoots, acted as unpaid analyst for her favorite photographer, Steve Markov—most of her photographers were neurotics, but Markov, whose latest boyfriend had just decamped to Barbados, was a maestro of temperament—and had finalized all the arrangements for the Correspondent’s coverage of the spring Paris couture collections, which would begin the following week.

At nine-thirty she retreated to her private office and shut the door on the shrilling telephones, the scurrying assistants. She drank her third black coffee of the morning, and began making lists—always a bad sign.

The lists grew. On the one headed WORK was a screed of numbers for models and assistants and accessorizers and fixers, all of whom, if soothed and bullied and cajoled and flattered in the right way, might ensure that she covered the spring collections efficiently, and without Markov threatening to slit his throat at ten-minute intervals. The other list, headed URGENT, made her spirits sink. It said things like chicken? and toilet paper! and get petrol/call Gini/talk plumber/wholemeal bread/tell Tom return vid tapes.