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night-long recitation of the Blessed Koran, many hundreds of the younger people came and sat in his courts.
    A footstep on the stairs. Thinking he had mused so long, it was time for the muezzin to utter a prayer-call, he roused and turned.
    But those soft slippers did not belong to the muezzin; here came Ali, his most trusted body-servant.
    ‘What is it?’ he demanded.
    There were shushing sounds: the man was bowing.
    ‘It is to be hoped that the work will not suffer,’ he said in a tone of obsequious regret. ‘One attends below, however, who wishes urgently to speak with you. His name is Dr Frederick Satamori.’
    Mustapha’s heart lurched halfway to his soles. The Deputy Director of the Skelter Authority! What could have brought him here, instead of putting in a phone call?
    A myriad fearful images chased one another across his mind: memories of all the houses he had visited illegally, all the codes he had sold first to his former partner, then to Hans Dykstra who was so unconvincing in his rôle as a collector of finely-calligraphed books of Arabic poetry …
    He gathered himself with an effort. ‘Request Dr Satamori to make himself comfortable in the Room of the Leopards,’ he directed. ‘Bring him refreshments. Inform him that I shall join him in a few minutes.’
    ‘The effendi’s will is done,’ Ali said, backing away with his sandals scraping the sand-dusted floor.
    But it was more than a few minutes before Mustapha regained his normal composure and was able to find his way down the twisted staircase.

INTERFACE D
    Time was when any lover, seeing his mistress
    Was gone from the room, might call for her
    And be assured that she would hear his cry.
    O my beloved I do not treat you coldly.
    Rather am I haunted by the knowledge
    That one step may have put the world between us.
    – M USTAPHA S HARIF

Chapter 4

    Hans wondered absently: what had the woman of that house been like? Tall, from her skeleton propped up in bed (devoid of a visible wound like her husband’s but maybe she was stabbed in the throat or belly instead of shot) – but beautiful? Blonde? Blue-eyed?
    Well, no doubt there would be pictures of her in an album or a drawer, and of her husband and child, even though none had been on display.
    She must at all events have been better than that lazy greedy incompetent smug ungrateful …
    Resentful thoughts in his resentful brain, he stepped out of the skelter into his own hallway – and Dany was rising from a chair to confront him.
    He stopped, petrified. She had no business to be at home! She had told him she was off to a treasure-hunt party, a common and indeed a favorite gimmick in the circles she frequented, and he had relied on her solving the imbecilic clues, finding her way to the right place, staying at least several hours in the company of her friends.
    Hers. Not his.
    But here she was – and here he was, with the mask he’dput on after her departure still around his neck, frost on the outlet vent of his suit, a score of fatal clues in plain sight for anyone to strand a noose for him!
    Or worse: a bracelet, symbol of living death.
    ‘Hans, where the hell have you been? I want your help!’
    Words flared instantly into his consciousness: ‘Liar! When you accept help the millennium will have arrived! I’ve told you over and over that you need it, and Karl Bonetti would supply it, and – the hell with you. May your next bug be fatal.’
    But he couldn’t say that because he was ashamed of even half-meaning it; he was hung up on a problem called ‘conscience’, very contra-survival for the individual inasmuch as it made him vulnerable, but enjoined on him by the faith he had adopted, the Way of Life. Besides, to have an actual wife, legally bound – no matter that she was aging, fat, plain, querulous and selfish – was a great status symbol, bringing young subordinates to him during brief breaks from the job in Caracas or Calcutta or Cardiff to pose problems to him about their