‘Shorthanded?’ I inquired, as Ed put the tray on the table and retreated to the door, where he stood with his arms folded, looking bored. This sort of thing was all in a day’s work for him, I supposed.

‘You have disrupted my plans rather badly,’ Larry admitted. ‘But only temporarily. Would you care for something to drink?’

The bottle of mineral water hadn’t been opened; the seal was intact. Larry watched with unconcealed amusement while I inspected it.

‘You really haven’t much choice,’ he pointed out pleasantly. ‘You might go on a hunger strike, but you can’t do without water long in this climate.’

Courteous as ever, he forbore to add that there were other, less comfortable means of controlling me. ‘So what are your plans?’ I inquired.

Larry settled back in his chair and studied me with an approving smile. ‘You are quite a remarkable woman, Vicky. Would it surprise you to learn that when I informed the Embassy we were engaged to be married, I found the idea not entirely displeasing?’

‘Let’s just be friends,’ I suggested.

Larry laughed. ‘Your heart belongs to another? Think about it Vicky. It would be one way out of our present difliculty.’

‘Where is he?’

He didn’t ask whom I meant. ‘You don’t know?’

‘We separated this morning.’ There was no harm in telling him that much; he must know Feisal and I had travelled together. It was a reasonable assumption that John and Schmidt would have done the same.

‘I thought you might have. You had, of course, arranged a meeting place in Cairo? Never mind, we don’t need that information. We’ve taken the necessary steps to inform him that you are my guest. He should be arriving anytime.’

They hadn’t caught him. My face must have registered relief. Larry shook his head. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Vicky. There’s a guard under your balcony and every door is being watched.’

So it was to be an exchange – or an offer of one. They couldn’t afford to let me go. John must know that.

‘How did you get in touch with him?’

‘My dear, your lovely face has been on every television programme in the country this evening. I gave out the press release myself. I’m sure he’s seen it, he’ll have been following the news closely. You are suffering from shock and physical and nervous exhaustion at the villa of the chairman of the Egypto-American Trading Company. He spends most of his time in the States, but he was happy to offer a refuge to you and your solicitous fiancé.’

And when I fell off the balcony or slashed my wrists my solicitous fiancé would say I’d committed suicide in a fit of clinical depression. They’d add that to Feisal’s account too.

‘What about Feisal?’ I had to force myself to ask; I dreaded the answer.