There was a mist in the channel, and Catharine’s ferry seemed to be borne away on it. Some time elapsed before Wavery admitted to himself he no longer saw the smoke from its funnel. The sun had set and the beam from the lighthouse parried the dusk. Near to shore, a lamp glinted on trails of coloured paper which groupers would mistake for sprats. From the south-east there was a light breeze. It was aromatic with hemp and carried the unmistakable cry of an ibis, nesting out of sight behind the fort.

A blankness assailed Wavery. He felt dead. He covered his face with his hands and knew himself to be alive only by the warm breath on his skin. The tears made an uncomfortable, ticklish path down his cheeks, lodging awkwardly on his upper lip before descending faster.

“Catharine!” he shouted.

Against the hermitage wall, the old man shifted on his bag. He removed the kif pipe from his mouth and opened his eyes.

“Catharine!”

The man grunted, as if telling Wavery to be quiet. He spat again into the bushes.

2

“Where were you?” Queesal sounded livid. He had been appointed Wavery’s Head of Department.

“I was in Africa,” said Wavery.

“I know. I tried your hotel.”

“I changed my name.”

“You did what?”

“For anonymity.”

“What name?”

“Riding.”

“You –” There was incredulity in the voice. Some automatic instinct for self-preservation stopped Wavery from replacing the receiver.

He said, “So you don’t care what the Berbers are thinking?”

“That, Thomas, is precisely why we were trying to contact you. The PUS is, frankly, anxious.”

“Why?”

“He’s received an intelligence report about the tunnel. Contrary to what you are telling us, there’s a suspicion it won’t be ready by August.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Wavery, as if the matter no longer directly concerned him.

“The Foreign Secretary shares his anxiety and so, I gather, does the Prime Minister, and, I might tell you, so do I. There’s a belief growing PDQ that if we can’t extract certain guarantees from your end, we might have to find an excuse to call the whole thing off. At least for the time being.”

A telephone sounded in the background. “It would help if I had your unequivocal assurance . . . Hang on,” he said. “Hello? Oh, Sir Derek. Yes. One moment. Tom? I’ve got to go.”

Asunción opened the window. “Aren’t you hot in here?” she said.

“I suppose so.”

But his secretary wasn’t thinking of the heat. She was thinking, Whatever happened in Chauen? Another man had returned from Africa. His eyes were hammocked with tiredness and his mouth was folded up and misery invaded his voice.

Before his weekend in the mountains, on the occasions when he was distracted, Asunción had felt able to tell him so. She would tell Wavery he needed to get out more, see more people, go to the cinema: it wasn’t enough to make do with her father’s books. You only had to look at her father, who had withdrawn into his murex shell on the third floor where he sat day and night, typing into the computer. His shape before the screen was so inert she had become worried. Soon, if they turned him over, she warned Clotilda, they would find a catalogue number.