The sidewalks of London’s Jermyn Street were filled with people who had too little time, and with people who had too much. An assistant bank manager of NatWest was scurrying with as much speed as was consistent with dignity, late for a lunch date with the junior vice president of Fiduciary Trust International’s Fixed Income Department. He knew he shouldn’t have taken that last phone call; if he wasn’t punctual, he could kiss that job good-bye … . A beefy sales rep for Whitehall-Robins was keeping an assignation with a woman he had chatted up at Odette’s Wine Bar the night before, braced for disappointment. Daylight usually added ten years to those slags who looked so sultry and appetizing in the smoky gloom of the downstairs banquettes—but a chap had to find out one way or another, right? Maybe a stop-off at the newsagent was in order: being on time might make him seem a tad eager … . The neglected wife of a workaholic American businessman was clutching three shopping bags filled with expensive but dowdy clothes she knew she’d probably never wear back in the States: charging it all to his Platinum American Express somehow let her vent her resentment for his having dragged her along. Another seven hours to kill before she and her husband saw Mousetrap for the third time … . The chief assessor of Inland Revenue’s Westminster branch was jostling his way through the crowd with an eye on his watch: you never had as much authority with those berks at Lloyds when you showed up late; everybody said so.

Striding down Jermyn Street in a fast lope, Paul Janson was lost among the window-shoppers, bureaucrats, and businessmen who crowded the sidewalks. He was attired in a navy suit, a spread-collar shirt, and a polkadotted tie, and his look was harried but not nervous. It was the look of someone who belonged; his face and his body alike telegraphed as much.