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on? Have you declared war or something?”
    “Not as far as I know. We can’t anyway, because I’m playing tennis this afternoon.”
    “Who’s responsible for putting these barricades all over the place?”
    “Barricades?”
    Paul told him.
    “Sounds like Hardwicke to me. Want me to have a word with him?”
    “Yes. I have a friend of yours here, an old foe from the tennis courts, who thinks they merely add to the already overwhelming difficulties of his life.”
    “If he’d only leave Zeinab alone, he’d have a lot less difficulty in his life.”
    “I’ll tell him that. Oh, I think he’s heard. Oh, and, John, one more thing: it would lessen the difficulties in
my
life if the Army stopped arresting Ministers of His Royal Highness’s Government.”
    “That the barricades too? OK, I’ll see what I can do. Ring you back.”
    Within a few moments he rang back.
    “It was Hardwicke. And I’m sorry to say he’s being difficult. He says the CG requested it.”
    “All we requested was an extra guard. I sent the memo myself.”
    “He’s digging his heels in. If the CG is changing his mind he’s got to be told formally.”
    “I’ll send him a chitty.”
    “That won’t be enough. He wants a meeting.”
    “A meeting! I’ve got too many of those already.”
    “With the CG.”
    “He’ll be lucky! The Old Man’s off to the coast this afternoon.”
    “He won’t move without a meeting.”
    “Oh, very well. We’d better have one, then. I’ll fix it up. And as for you, boyo,” Paul said to Owen, “you’re going to have to repay me for this. Richly.”
    The Army had erected barricades not just round the Residency but at other “strategic points” in the city. As Owen discovered when he returned to his office. These included the railway station.
    “Sheer bloody lunacy,” Owen complained at the meeting the next day. “There’s a Hadji due back from Mecca and they’ll all be meeting him off the train and then processing back to his house.”
    “They’ll just have to do without the processing this time,” said the Brigadier grimly.
    “If you try and stop it, there’ll be a riot.”
    “We know how to handle that.”
    “We’ve got enough on our plate without that,” said Paul, chairing the meeting in the unavoidable absence of the Consul-General.
    Brigadier Hardwicke, at the personal request of the Consul-General, relayed through Paul, had reluctantly agreed to remove the barricades around the Residency. He was digging his heels in, however, over the other barricades.
    “This is a particularly tense time in the city,” Owen said. “We don’t want to do anything provocative.”
    “If they’re shooting our people,” said the Brigadier, “we need to teach them a lesson they won’t forget.”
    “We need to teach the people who are doing the shooting, not the others. If we come down heavily on the others, all we’ll do is drive them into supporting the extremists.”
    “You’re soft, Owen,” said the Brigadier.
    “I’ve seen it in India,” said Owen, who knew that the Brigadier’s own service had been confined hitherto to the Home Counties. “It didn’t work there either.”
    The argument continued for some time. Eventually Paul, who had been following it with delight, pronounced the verdict on behalf of the Consul-General: the barricades were to come down.
    “You might as well confine the Army to barracks,” said the Brigadier.
    “As a matter of fact,” said Owen, who was in an unforgiving mood, “that might be an excellent idea.”
    “If that’s what you want,” said the Brigadier, rising from the table in a fury, “then you can have it.”
    “Do we need to go that far?” asked Paul.
    “Yes,” said Owen.
    The Brigadier walked out. As he reached the door he paused and looked back over his shoulder.
    “You’d better be right, Owen,” he said. “Because if things go wrong now…”
    Paul saw him out and then returned for his papers.
    “I would not ordinarily agree