Wavery drank. There was no doubt, since Silkleigh had installed his system under the sink, the water tasted fresher.

Silkleigh said, “I must say I’ve always found Chauen very overrated. There’s one hotel and nothing else.”

Wavery refilled his glass and drank again.

“Eye does not see, heart does not suffer,” continued Silkleigh. “Perhaps you could change sex, like a cuckoo wrasse.” When still Wavery had uttered no word Silkleigh said softly, “I’ll go now, kara mia. I’ve got to arrange some security for this jamboree of yours. But before I go – if I could have your concentration for just two minutes – let me show you what I did today,” and guiding Wavery into the Royal Suite, pungent with new chintz, he led him to the window.

“There. Look.”

Wavery followed the direction of his finger. Bolted to the curving green ironwork of the balcony and rising like a gigantic bull’s pizzle into the evening above the tattered palms on the Marina Española, above the tunnel mouth, above the cranes and the fishing boats and the camp-fire lights of Europe, he saw a lean, varnished pole at the top of which flapped the Union Jack.

“Up the flag!” said Silkleigh. “Which reminds me, what do you think of Wavety’s Last Post?”

“But I thought you’d –”

A shudder ran through the house and Wavery had the sensation of something disintegrating in the vitals of the building, as if a structure had fainted.

4

Genia Ortiz felt the earth buckling in her sleep. She had retired to bed for a siesta and lay with her white hair in a net and her cheeks carefully not touching the pillow. She made up her face once a week, on Sundays before Mass. Otherwise she slept in her make-up, her face preserved beneath one of those masks distributed to first-class passengers on transatlantic flights. She had never yet travelled on an aeroplane, still less first class. The mask was a gift from Tromso.

Her baton lay beside her on the sheet, to stab out the eyes of intruders. On the right-hand side of the bed, where Ernesto had slept, El Faro was open at the arts page on which in large red circles she had ringed three literals.

Often, before his banishment to the guest room, Ernesto would be woken by his wife calling “Daddy! Daddy! We’re stuck on a sand bank.” Tonight her face was calm. A dictionary at her side, she had written to the Mayor of Balnasharki, informing him of her arrival at the end of August. She had been able to pay for her passage with the compensation owing to her by the Straits Tunnel consortium for aural abuse. On the day after the tunnel opened she would travel through it to Gibraltar where she would take her berth aboard the cruise-liner Hummingbird which would transport her as far as the Crimea. From there she would board a train to Kiev. Soon she would be repacking the green trunk under her bed. Soon she would be in Balnasharki again.