If only the French customs agents hadn’t made such a mess of things at de Gaulle. If only he hadn’t had to screen the operation through Interpol. The way he saw it, they should have disabled the creature with a shot as soon as it reached customs, then dropped it in a vat of sulfuric acid, or cremated it. Instead, they took it to an airport brig. It escaped before they even got it in the cell. Of course it did.

“I wish I could tell you what it is I’m doing,” Paul said. “It’d be a lot easier if every damn security officer and cop on the planet knew. But there would be huge problems. It’d be the most unpredictable goddamn thing you could imagine.”

“Well, that explains that. You gonna get yourself wasted, old buddy, on this thing. Your politics are all used up, way I hear it.”

They pulled up in front of the long, impressively French Victorian building that housed the Sûreté. Paul expected a lot of bureaucracy and a long wait, but they were soon in a very quiet, very ornate office facing an extremely fastidious midget.

“I am Colonel Bocage,” he said.

“Where’s Henri-Georges?” Sam asked.

“You will interview with me.”

Paul said in French, “J’voudrais mon peuple, monsieur. Tout de suite.”

Colonel Bocage laughed. “Mr. Mazur, this is the man in charge, that you promised us to meet?”

Sam nodded. “I made that promise to Henri-Georges Bordelon.”

“And he transmitted it to me.” “I need my people,” Paul said. “We’re saving lives.” “You speak French. You should think in French. It’s more civilized . . .” “I can’t think in French.”

“ . . . because we have so many ways of expressing concepts of good and evil.” He smiled again, and Paul thought he looked, for a moment, like a very hard man. “Mr. Mazur, could you step out for a moment? I am sorry.”

This wasn’t the usual drill when you went to beg to keep your spies in place. But Paul was in no position to ask what was going on. When Sam had left, the colonel went to his window, which looked out over a lovely park. There was a difference between being a high official in the Sûreté and a lowly intelligence officer like Sam.

Colonel Bocage closed a manila folder he’d been appearing to review. It was only a pose, a tension builder. Paul had done it himself a thousand times, to a thousand nervous supplicants in ten different countries. “So,” the colonel said at last, “you are here investigating les sauvages. Tell me, what do you Americans call them?”