And Dunbar looked faintly like a toad. Gray saw him first from the cafe door. He sat with his back to the wall, presumably just as they had told him to sit. There was a newspaper spread out on the table: French, which he could barely read. Perhaps because waiters still tended to ignore him, the table was otherwise bare.

"I wasn't certain you would come," Dunbar began.

Gray shrugged. "Why shouldn't I come?"

"Oh, I don't know. Obvious reasons."

A waitress finally appeared, a rather plain girl.

"I wonder if you know what I'm doing here," Dunbar said. "Why I wanted to talk to you?"

"Your telegram gave me some indication."

"Then I suppose you've gathered that I'm with the firm now, the same firm you worked with on the Michard case. Been with them eighteen months. They're not a bad group at all."

Gray couldn't help smiling. "Firm? Is that what it's called? The Firm?"

"Your last experience wasn't typical, Nicholas. Not typical at all."

"I'm sure."

"What we want now is not at all the same sort of arrangement. Indeed, I expect it will only take about three days."

"Where?"

"Berlin."

"Piss off, Charlie."

The absinthe arrived: definitely foul stuff in glasses smudged with fingerprints. Dunbar drank it, however, so as not to appear foreign.

"She's living with Rudolph Spangler, in case you haven't guessed. She wrote you a letter. I can't say exactly how I obtained it, but I can show it to you if you'd like. The important thing is that she wants to see you. I mean, she really wants to see you."

"What about Spangler?"

"Ah, well, that's the whole point."

Then came the cigarettes, a rank Algerian blend that Dunbar also accepted for the sake of appearances.

"The problem is actually fairly simple," Dunbar said. "Spangler's involvement seems to have taken him close to the edge, but we don't know how close. She's costing him a great deal of money that he doesn't have, and she's rather got him into trouble with his superiors . . . who, incidentally, don't like her one bit. But the question is, how does one take advantage of it? How does one actually drive it home?"

Zelle, Gray thought, had always said that home was just a place you started from. "When would I go?" he asked.

"Soon. But honestly, Nicky, all we actually want you to do is to accept an invitation. That's the whole of it. Spend a few hours chatting with her, have a drink with Rudy. That's it. I swear that's all there is to it. In on a Friday, out by Monday. Honest to God."

Zelle had also once said that one must accept God as unknowable, or else altogether disappointing.

"Where will you be?"