“He sneaks up on you, doesn’t he?” said Daeng.

Siri was back in the restaurant, but the sun was on its way down, and Dtui and Phosy had arrived in his absence. Bruce was still leaning over his processor.

“But where did you come from?” said Dtui. “I’m sure you weren’t there when I came in.”

“They used to call it ‘out of thin air,” said Siri. “But the air got thicker, and you have to fight your way through the pollution. Actually, I was in the bathroom. How’s the screenplay coming along?”

“Well, when you ran off to wherever you went, and I gave up waiting for Civilai,” said Bruce, “I decided to go ahead and cut all the extra scenes you’ve both been forcing on me. It’s a lot shorter now.”

“I wish to see the changes,” said Siri.

“Right now, the movie is on hold,” said Phosy. “We’re putting our effort into your latest threatening letter. Bruce has read the note already, so we’ve drafted him into the team. We’ve got more important things to worry about than film scripts. This is getting serious. I’ve recruited my people to look into the case. I’ve made it a priority for the department.”

“Any insights?” Siri asked.

“Well, it was obviously sent from inside the country,” said Daeng.

“And the sender knows us and watches us,” said Dtui.

“We talked to the people at the post office,” said Phosy. “Nobody remembers seeing a foreigner buying stamps for a local delivery. Only airmail letters overseas. But of course he could have had someone local buy the stamps for him or procured them some other way.”

“What about the writing?” Dtui asked.

Bruce put the two notes side-by-side on the table.

“I’m not a native speaker myself,” he said, “but they both seem grammatically correct to me. Neat. Relaxed. He or she wasn’t in a hurry.”

“You think there’s a chance it might have been written by a woman?” asked Daeng.

“Just saying it’s not impossible,” said Bruce.

“How are we doing with the list of journalists?” asked Daeng.

“The embassies just gave us copies of the standard application forms, the passports and their CVs,” said Phosy. “A lot of them are on their first overseas assignments. If we’re looking for someone bent on revenge for something that happened in the doctor’s past, our choices are limited. There’s only one old enough to have been around in Paris in ’32. Dimitri Popov, Russian, sixty-eight years old. He was on the Pravda desk in Germany until the second war. Ring a bell, Siri?”

“No. I didn’t go anywhere near Germany,” said Siri.

“But no saying Popov didn’t go to Paris,” said Daeng.

“Why are the Soviets sending some feeble old journalist?” Dtui asked.