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"Thousands of miles away, you would probably have a hotel room," Madame Jeanine d'Autrey-Lascal said.

"Here, you don't. I think you are very sweet for not wanting to impose on me, and very foolish for not believing me when I say it will not be an imposition."

He turned his hand over and caught hers in it.

"And you are very kind to a lonely traveler," he said.

And I knew the moment I saw you in the bank manager's office that you had an itch in your britches, and miserable, amoral, no-good sonofabitch that I am, given half a chance, that I would wind up scratching it.

"You have such sad eyes," Madame d'Autrey-Lascal said, very softly, as she looked into them.

And then, finally, she reclaimed her hand and stood up.

"Shall we go?" she asked.

Whittaker followed her out of the crowded bar. As they walked across the lobby, she took his arm.

[TWO]

OSS Station Cairo Savoy Hotel, Opera Square

The Chief, Cairo Station, was Ernest J. Wilkins, thirty-six, a roly-poly man whose face darkened considerably whenever he was upset. He was upset now, and smart enough to know that he was. Before speaking, he went to his window and looked out at the statue of Ibrahim, sitting on his horse in the middle of Opera Square. And then he looked at the Opera building itself, until he was sure he had his temper under control.

Then he turned and faced the three men standing in front of his desk. They were his deputy, his administrative officer, and his liaison officer to the British.

"Well, where the hell could he be?" he asked.

"I think," his administrative officer said, "that we can no longer overlook the possibility of foul play."

"Horseshit," Wilkins snapped.

"If anything had happened to him, we would have heard it by now. And since nobody knew he was coming, how the hell could they get anything like that going so quick?"

His administrative officer had no response to that and said nothing.

Wilkins had hoped that he would say something, so that he could jump his ass.

Wilkins lost his temper again.

"Jesus Christ," he flared.

"Do you realize how goddamned inept this makes us look?" He saw the message on his desk and picked it up and read it aloud:

PROM OFFICE OP THE DIRECTOR WASHINOTOR

TO CAIKO FOR WILKINS

IMTERCEPT CAPTAIN JAMES M.B. WHITTAKER USA AC W ROUTE

LOMDOM TO BRISBANE VIA MATS PLIGHT 216 STOP REDIRECT

WASHIHOTOM FIRST AVAILABLE AIR TRANSPORT STOP ADVISE

COMPLIANCE AMD ETA WASHINGTON STOP DOHOVAN

"You'll notice," Wilkins said, "that it's signed "Donovan." Not "Douglass for Donovan," or "Chenowith for Donovan," or even "Ellis for Donovan."

"Donovan' himself, goddammit. And what he's asked us to do isn't going to be written up in a history of intelligence triumphs of the Second World War. All Colonel Donovan asks is that we find some Air Corps captain that he knows is on a MATS flight and send the sonofabitch to Washington."