“Yes, he does seem to be preoccupied,” said Jimmy. “And I agree, that woman is not healthy for him. But we are businessmen. Or businesspeople, Miss Jones. As long as Mr. Berman can deliver what he has promised to us, we are happy. We all have our foibles. I just hope that the big picture has been adequately taken care of.”

“I can assure you that everything is ready,” said Whitney. “The Web sites are prepared and just need to be accessed.”

“I am very confident that everything will run smoothly. As smoothly as the athletes this evening. London has done a good job with these games, as they did with the Olympics. They weren’t as spectacular as Beijing, of course, but the English have been interested in involving their citizenry, which was less of an issue for us.”

“They have to allow the taxpayers access,” said Whitney. “That’s the way democracies are supposed to work.”

“Indeed,” said Jimmy. “But not in here, not right now. Would you like more Champagne?”

“I notice you are not drinking.”

“Not yet. I want to toast a Chinese victory. I see we have a women’s hundred-meter race up first. Sprinting has not proved to be a strong point for us like it is for the Jamaicans, so perhaps I will have to wait for our success in the long-distance, endurance events.”

•   •   •

BURIM SAT IN FRONT of the computer monitor in the St. Pancras Library. The homeless man he had elbowed off the terminal had said he was going to find “the management,” and Burim hurried, in case the man actually persuaded someone to come see what he was complaining about. Burim found the search engine and typed in the two names he had been given. What he eventually found didn’t make for pretty reading.

The men were key figures of an Albanian sex ring that specialized in smuggling Eastern European girls to the Far East or North Africa or the Arab states of the Middle East. The ring was not averse to taking vulnerable girls off the streets of London or Manchester or Edinburgh, or any other European capital. The girls were often teenage runaways unable to find adequate work in Prague, Budapest, or Bratslavia and were often rather attractive in the current paradigm of the fashion world: youthful, slim yet curvaceous with sculpted facial features. Such a young women of exceptional beauty could fetch up to £500,000 in the Arab market. Burim read quickly to the end of the article. “The Pipeline” was what they termed the chain along which the captured girls were passed, usually forced to take heavy doses of illegal drugs. Once someone was in the Pipeline, the piece read, it was almost impossible for them to be traced. It was the equivalent of being sucked into a black hole. They all but disappeared.

Burim hurried out of the library and called Harry, but there was no reply. Then he called George.

“Any luck?” he said.