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proposition.’
    ‘Well, what are they waiting for? I know Jakob says there’s something brewing. Believes they may be involved. But it doesn’t look like it from here.’
    ‘That’s why we’ve got to get a bug in there. They’re not going to have parcels coming into the place with “Explosives”written on them. The postman’s not going to drop letters on the pavement with coded messages for us to pick up.’
    She stood up, pulled her hair forward over her shoulders and went to the window. ‘What happens tonight?’
    ‘I relieve Zol at eight o’clock. He has something to eat, then comes here. At eleven he goes back to Spender Street. You get there at midnight. I take the tools in. He brings the bugs and a tape recorder. You bring another recorder and the spare tapes. Okay?’
    ‘Yes. Mind if I go to the pictures first?’
    ‘Johnnie Peters?’
    She smiled. ‘Yes. He wants me to see Emmanuelle. Says it’s erotic but beautiful. Thinks it would be good for me.’
    ‘Considerate of him. What time does it finish?’
    ‘About ten-thirty.’
    ‘Be sure to lose him soon after that. We don’t want him tailing you down Spender Street.’
    ‘Don’t worry. I know how to get rid of him.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘A woman’s secret, Shalom.’
    ‘Okay. But we’ve got some too. Don’t take chances.’
    He lit a cigarette, his eyes following the smoke as it drifted to the ceiling in whispy spirals. ‘Now, where was I? Sure. We move into Mocal around three in the morning. Soon as we’ve checked all’s clear. You stay in Fifty-Six keeping a lookout. Anybody, anything, odd turns up you alert us. Use the radio-cab code.’
    ‘Radio- taxi code,’ she corrected. Ascher’s last assignment had been in the United States.’
    ‘Same thing.’ He shook his shaggy head. ‘We’ve already cased the place. The door has a mortice lock with Yale backup . No trouble.’
    ‘Bolts?’ she suggested.
    ‘There aren’t any.’
    ‘Did Ezra have that checked?’
    ‘Yes. Sent in one of his lot, meter reading, ten days ago.’
    She came back from the window, sat on the floor again.
    ‘Tell me more.’
    ‘We’ll allow fifteen minutes to look round the place. Another ten to fix the bugs. Ten to test. We talk, you check the tape. That’s thirty-five minutes. Soon as you give us the okay we come back to Fifty-Six. Any problems?’
    ‘Not yet. After midnight’ll be Tuesday. Should be quiet around three.’
    He nodded, looked at her absentmindedly as if he were thinking of something else. ‘We’ll have to watch it. Leaving the office and coming into Spender Street when it’s all over. Best come out separately. Could be the odd fuzz about.’
    ‘There’s no law against working overtime in your own business,’ she said. ‘Even in Britain.’
    ‘We’ll be careful all the same.’
    Narrow, winding, little-used, Spender Street was one of those quaint old London thoroughfares which seemed no longer to serve any useful purpose. Situated in the triangle formed by Leicester Square, Covent Garden and the Savoy, and more or less equi-distant from them, it snaked a brief course between small, smoke-grimed buildings, most of them struggling for tenants since London’s great fruit and vegetable market had moved from Covent Garden to Nine Elms.
    Number 56, an old decaying structure of two storeys and basement, was as small and unimportant as the street on to which it faced, but for the Israelis the two offices they rented there were vital. One of these was a general office, the other a stockroom. The sign on the passage door read Ascher & Levi, Music Agents. Once through it, callers were confronted with stacks of LPs and singles in colourful sleeves, hundreds of cassettes, a library of catalogues, two tape-recorders, a hi-fi, desks, chairs, a typewriter, filing cabinets and a telephone.
    The windows were fitted with Venetian blinds, and from them the Israelis could watch unseen the ground floor premises across the street. Their particular