He turned to his Deputy Head of Mission.

“Tom?”

At two thirty-five Wavery’s secretary put through a call.

“Well? So where are you?”

“Didn’t you get the message?”

“What message? I’ve been here two hours.”

“Something cropped up –”

“What do you want to do?”

His secretary tapped on the door. Wavery waved her away. “It’s all right. I’m here,” he said. “Listen, I can’t talk now. Catharine?” But she had gone.

He met the Ambassador in the corridor. “Tom, do you have a second?”

“Not a good moment, Ambassador,” said Wavery. He knew what the Ambassador wished to discuss. Undercover agents at Denver’s embassy, following a trail originating in Miami, had been led to the guardhouse at the British residence. There was evidence that two of the guards responsible for the Ambassador’s security had been making long-distance telephone calls to Bolivia.

Wavery told the Ambassador he was due at a meeting with Petro-Peru’s Vice President. Tenders were expected next week for a drilling project on the Huallaga. “There should be useful opportunities for UK suppliers,” said Wavery. For the first time in his career he had told a direct lie.

“Then when you have a moment. By the way, I thought the artist was looking splendid at Rita’s.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“I never used to think so, Tom, but she’ll make an excellent Ambassadress.”

Catharine Riding sat in the lobby on a tall pink chair. There had been a press conference and the lobby milled with journalists. “They’ve discovered the world’s longest natural bridge,” she said and gathered up her coat. She had been waiting since twelve-forty-five. “I never thought of trying the restaurant. You are exasperating.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No. Exasperated.”

He drove out of the town centre, through Miraflores to Barranco. He parked on a cliff overlooking the sea. They left the car and she slipped her arm through his, quickening her step until they walked at the same pace.

They walked over the wooden bridge and along the Malecon Paul Harris where security men stood on neatly tiled roofs, confessional with their handsets. The cliffs were softened by moist fog, the Lima garua which curled off the sea as if it were not fog at all but steam from a witchdoctor’s cauldron, thinning and thickening to reveal or smother a couple in a parked car licking ice cream, two children chasing each other round the base of Admiral Grau’s statue, a figure coiled in a manhole, half-asleep, a hand moving inside torn trousers, nurturing itself.

The fog covered the road, the grand houses. Through the fog came the scuttle of rats on the garbage, the bark of a dog. inside a car, the distant roll of the waves.

The fog lifted, and standing on the verge ahead of them they saw a one-armed man wearing a loose coat. He unloaded a cart of burning rubbish. He applied the stub of his left arm to the handle and pushed upwards. The contents slithered over the cliff and the air became warm with ash.