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Malmain, who clearly did not like Abdul’s plan, said: ‘I’ll need photographs.’

Abdul drew from his jacket pocket the two strips of photos taken at the travel agency and slid them across the table.

Tamara said: ‘Oh! The woman at Lake Chad! I thought the name Kiah was familiar.’ She explained to Malmain. ‘We met this woman in Chad. She questioned us about life in Europe. I told her not to trust people smugglers.’

Abdul said: ‘It was good advice. They took her money and dumped her in a Libyan slave camp.’

Malmain spoke with the hint of a sneer. ‘So you have befriended this woman.’

Abdul did not reply.

Tamara was still looking at the photograph. ‘She’s very beautiful. I remember thinking that at the time.’

Of course they all suspected the relationship between him and Kiah. Abdul did not try to explain it. Let them think what they liked.

Tamara was on his side. She turned to Malmain and said: ‘How long will it take you to produce the passports – an hour or so?’

Malmain hesitated. Clearly he thought Abdul should first return to N’Djamena to be debriefed. But it was difficult to refuse Abdul anything after all he had done – and Abdul was counting on that.

Malmain gave in, shrugged, and said: ‘Two hours.’

Abdul concealed his relief. Acting as if this was what he had confidently expected all along, he handed Malmain one of the business cards he had picked up at the hotel desk. ‘Please have them delivered to me at my hotel.’

‘Of course.’

Abdul left a few minutes later. In the street he hailed a taxi and gave the address of the travel agency he had visited earlier. On the way he mulled over what he had done. He was now committed to taking Kiah and Naji to France. Her dream was going to come true. But what about him? What were his plans after that? Clearly this question was on her mind as much as his. He had been putting off the day when he had to answer it, with the excuse that he did not know what attitude the CIA and the DGSE would take. But now he knew, and there was no longer any reason to dodge the real issue.

When they got to France, and Kiah and Naji were settled there, would he say goodbye to them, and return to his home in the US, and never see them again? Whenever he thought about this possibility he felt depressed. He thought about their lunch today, and how contented he had felt. When was the last time he had experienced such a sense of rightness and satisfaction with his place in the world? Maybe never.

The taxi pulled up and Abdul went into the travel agency. The same smartly dressed young woman was behind the desk, and she remembered him from the morning. At first she looked wary, as if she thought he might have come back without his wife in order to ask her for a date.

He smiled reassuringly. ‘I need to fly to Nice,’ he said. ‘Three tickets. One way.’

CHAPTER 36

A harsh wind was blowing across the circular southern lake in the government complex of Zhongnanhai at seven o’clock in the morning. Chang Kai got out of his car and zipped his down coat against the cold.

He was about to meet the president but he was thinking about Ting. Last evening she had asked him about the war and he had told her that the superpowers would prevent escalation. But in his heart he was not sure, and she sensed that. They had gone to bed and clung to one another protectively. Finally, they made love with an air of desperation, as if it might be the last time.

Afterwards he had lain awake. As a young man he had tried to figure out who really had the power. Was it the president, the head of the army, or the members of the Politburo collectively? Or the American president, or the American media, or the billionaires? Gradually, he had realized that everyone was constrained. The American president was ruled by public opinion, and the Chinese president by the Communist Party. The billionaires had to make profits and the generals had to win battles. Power resided not in one locus but in an immensely complex network, a group of key people and institutions with no collective will, all pulling in different directions.

And he was part of it. What happened would be his fault as much as anyone’s.

Lying in bed, listening to the all-night swish of tyres on the road outside, he asked himself what more he could do, from his place in the grid, to prevent the Korean crisis turning into a global catastrophe. He had to make sure that Ting, and his mother, and Ting’s mother, and his father, did not die in a storm of bombs and flying debris and falling masonry and lethal radiation.

That thought kept him awake a long time.

Now, closing the car door and pulling up the hood of his coat, he saw two people standing at the water’s edge with their backs to him, looking over the cold grey lake. He recognized the figure of his father, Chang Jianjun, wrapped in a black overcoat, looking like a squat statue except that he was smoking. The man with him was probably his long-time pal General Huang, braving the cold in his uniform tunic, too tough to wear a woolly scarf. The old guard is here, Kai thought.

He approached them, but they did not hear his footsteps, probably because of the wind, and he heard Huang say: ‘If the Americans want war, we will give it to them.’

‘The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,’ Kai said. ‘Sun Tzu said that.’

Huang was getting angry. ‘I don’t need a lesson in the philosophy of Sun Tzu from a whippersnapper like you.’

Another car drew up and the young National Defence Minister, Kong Zhao, got out. Kai was glad to see an ally. Kong took a red skiing jacket from the trunk of his car and shrugged it on. Seeing the three of them at the waterside, he said: ‘Why aren’t we going in?’

Jianjun answered: ‘The president wants to walk. He thinks he needs the exercise.’ Jianjun’s tone was mildly disrespectful. Some of these old military types thought that exercise was a young people’s fad.