He settled back and steepled his fingers for a lecture; I poured myself another cup of coffee.

“We in the West have developed the unfortunate habit of training and arming insurgents, then dropping them when they become inconvenient. As a result, there is a certain lack of long-term trust on the part of the native inhabitants, even those who declare themselves our stout friends. And as a part of that lack of trust, we cannot always be certain that our ‘friends’ are telling us all they know. The Northwest Frontier of India has known spies for so many generations, even the least sophisticated of communities suspects any outsider of nefarious purposes. One of the perpetual dilemmas for the man wishing to come and go freely along the border territories has always been finding an acceptable disguise to justify his presence, so that he is not thrown into gaol, or summarily shot. Some players of the Great Game go as hakims, with patent cures for fever and eye infections to supplement rudimentary medical skills; others bluster their way as hunters, collecting heads and skins openly as they surreptitiously map an area. I’ve known wandering antiquarians, big-game hunters, and itinerant durzis—tailors—but each depends on specific skills. One wouldn’t care to be a durzi if one could not handle a needle, for example. O’Hara was note-perfect as a holy man, due to his long wandering in the company of a Tibetan lama. But for the man—or woman—with the necessary skills, one of the best disguises is that of a travelling entertainer. Native peoples expect a magician both to be itinerant and to behave in a mysterious fashion. And as long as there are no inconvenient coincidences, no village bullocks die or floods come to wash out the crops, the people are happy to accept most witchery as benign. I want you to practise your movements until you can do them backwards in your sleep.”

I could see already that we wouldn’t be spending much of the voyage up on deck, open to curious ears and eyes.

Too, this would clearly not be a visit among the exotic comforts of India. From the sounds of it, we’d be lucky to sleep under a roof.

Worst of all, this talk of “frontier” made my heart sink and my chilblains tingle: It did not sound as if the warm, frangipani-scented south was to be our destination.