Cam parked in Alzacka Street and saw the blue Skoda pull up a hundred yards past him.

He was sometimes tempted to talk to Mario and Ollie, as they were so much part of his life, but he had been warned never to do that, for then the SB would switch personnel and it would take him time to recognize the new people.

He entered the Egyptian embassy and took a cocktail from a tray. It was so dilute he could hardly taste the gin. He talked to an Austrian diplomat about the difficulty of buying comfortable men’s underwear in Warsaw. When the Austrian drifted away, Cam looked around and saw a blond woman in her twenties standing alone. She caught his eye and smiled, so he went to speak to her.

He swiftly found out that she was Polish, her name was Lidka, and she worked as a secretary in the Canadian embassy. She was wearing a tight pink sweater and a short black skirt that showed off her long legs. She spoke good English, and listened to Cam with an intensity of concentration that he found flattering.

Then a man in a pin-striped suit summoned her peremptorily, making Cam think he must be her boss, and the conversation broke up. Almost immediately Cam was approached by another attractive woman, and he began to think it was his lucky day. This one was older, about forty, but prettier, with short pale-blond hair and bright blue eyes enhanced by blue eye shadow. She spoke to him in Russian. “I’ve met you before,” she said. “Your name is Cameron Dewar. I’m Tanya Dvorkin.”

“I remember,” he said, glad of the chance to show off his fluency in Russian. “You’re a reporter for TASS.”

“And you’re a CIA agent.”

He certainly would not have told her that, so she must have guessed. Routinely, he denied it. “Nothing so glamorous,” he said. “Just a humble cultural attaché.”

“Cultural?” she said. “Then you can help me. What kind of painter is Jan Matejko?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Impressionist, I think. Why?”

“Art really not your thing?”

“I’m more a music person,” he said, feeling cornered.

“You probably love Szpilman, the Polish violinist.”

“Absolutely. Such technique with the bow!”

“What do you think of the poet Wislawa Szymborska?”

“I haven’t read much of his work, sadly. Is this a test?”

“Yes, and you failed. Szymborska is a woman. Szpilman is a pianist, not a violinist. Matejko was a conventional painter of court scenes and battles, not an impressionist. And you’re no cultural attaché.”

Cam was mortified to have been found out so easily. What a hopeless undercover agent he was! He tried to brush it off with humor. “I might just be a very bad cultural attaché.”

She lowered her voice. “If a Polish army officer wanted to talk to a representative of the USA, you could arrange it, I guess.”

Suddenly the conversation had taken a serious turn. Cam felt nervous. This could be some kind of trap.