The pace of events had Troy's brain slipping into top gear as he left the room. A trip to Rome in the season with its overtones of dolce vita was all very well, but the natural exhilaration it might have generated was muted by his anxiety for Fletcher. What could have happened to him? Even if Jack hadn't been the solid, reliable type, a man with his eye on the ackers, a chap with a young family didn't whisk off into the blue. Particularly when he was making something like £5,000 a year plus expenses. There was negative incentive.

Unless he had bumped them off! Grand Guignol explanations offered themselves to Troy's imagination to be instantly rejected. Jack was too down-to-earth for that sort of thing.

Jack was an anchor man.

Troy was so immersed in thought as he passed through the Globe's editorial complex that at first he didn't hear Bert West calling after him. "What was it all about, friend -- any morsels for the diary man? Tell me over lunch ?"

Troy paused long enough to explain why lunch was out, though he didn't mention Fletcher's disappearance. An episode such as this, even if innocent, could damage a colleague's career if it became widely known, and Troy knew when to keep his mouth shut.

MacLachlan didn't look up when he walked into the Foreign Room. He was poring over some figures, the expense report of a Globe stringer in Switzerland.

Although Troy was unquestionably the star of his foreign team, he deliberately kept the 'New York man' waiting. Troy knew MacLachlan's ways and helped himself to a chair to watch the pantomime more comfortably.

"Bloody crook," declared the Foreign Editor, in the Glasgow accent he had never been able to refine. "The sod charges ten quid just to walk up the main street."

"But you did have him called out at midnight with instructions to watch the Aga Khan's villa till dawn," reminded one of the foreign desk assistants who had happened to be on duty that night.

"Yes, and the bastard took advantage of it. I'm cutting his expenses by half."

"And suppose we ask him to stand outside somebody else's house at that time?" asked the assistant. "Then what happens?"

"He'll go."

"The Americans pay him three times as well."

"He'll go."

"And if he refuses?"

"Then, for Christ's sake, we'll find somebody else. Someone young and keen. Plenty of good newspapermen are waiting for the chance to work for the Globe."

The plural 'newspapermen' was a typical MacLachlan term. His world and his upbringing did not admit to the more racy and modem description of 'journalists'.

He had come up through the old school, the hard way, where every lesson was learned, and every penny counted, and although he was indisputably the finest foreign editor Fleet Street had known in the century, he was also the meanest swine with authority to check and initial an expense account.  You would have thought that the money was his own.

"Ah, Mister Davis Troy. Our kingpin." The words were mocking, and calculated to be. Every foreign correspondent, even if superb, had to know his place.

"I am glad you are here Mister Troy because the New York account has just come in, and it appears that some people think we grow our money on gooseberry bushes. Your office will run this department into well-deserved bankruptcy if you are not bloody careful. Your costs were £7,000 a month at the beginning of the year, and now they are running at eight. Justify that."

"I can -- and with no trouble at all," retorted Troy. "We are the handmaidens of events. Last month we had five major stories running. In Sacramento. Acapulco, Mexico. New Orleans. At Cape Kennedy. And in Bermuda. Shove that fact down the throats of your accountants. You know as well as I do that you can't control the news. Sometimes it just happens that way. You'd kick our teeth in if we missed out on a story to the Express, the Mail or the Sun. You can't have it both ways."

MacLachlan picked at his tooth with a thumbnail.

"I accept that. But the jobs could have been done cheaper. Look at this item from Lancaster -- cocktail party for New York police, $350. A hundred and twenty quid for the cops! Christ, is he a newsman or a benevolent institution?"

"I cannot answer for the New York diarist," snapped Troy, angry to learn of the size of the amount claimed. "Take it up with him."

Phones were thrumming incessantly and their conversation was punctuated by interruptions. MacLachlan, although he would have died before admitting it, revelled in this sort of disordered urgency. He barked instructions and grumbled to order as Bonn, Helsinki and Madrid came through in rapid succession and Singapore chipped in by teleprinter.

"Gotta keep a finger on what's happening," he confided in a rare moment of humanism, "gotta be in the picture all the time." Even when he used American diminutives the Scottish burr grated through.

"I didn't really call in for a lesson in foreign editorship." Troy was losing his patience and his temper with it. After all, on paper he was heir apparent to MacLachlan in the job of Chief Foreign Correspondent and therefore almost as important in the editorial hierarchy.

"You've been talking to the Old Man?"

"You know I have. You arranged it."

"All right -- and don't be so tetchy. I'm as concerned about the Fletchers as you are. When they went missing I told Heron there was nobody else for the job."

"Thanks for nothing. When do I leave?"

"You are booked on an Alitalia flight this afternoon. It's less than two hours to Rome. We've checked you into the hotel where Fletcher and his missus were staying. It's right in the centre and here's the address.. ." He handed Troy a sheet of copy paper on which the name and location had been typed in block capitals.

"Can you suggest any leads?"

"Question the hotel manager. See if you can locate any friends, any contacts Fletcher was using before he disappeared. They might conceivably open up a line. Apparently Fletcher's clothes are still in his Rome hotel room. Go through them. Turn out the pockets. Look through his wife's things. Read any letters you find. I don't have to tell you what you must do, and understand that you have the full authority of his lordship in any step you consider necessary. There will be no comebacks. That's understood."

"And this Italian stringer of yours ... what's his name? Peretti?"

"That's taken care of. I'm arranging for him to meet you at Rome airport. The main advantage of having him will be that he speaks the language and knows the city inside out. I don't think he's very bright. Whenever there's a good story for us in Rome he manages to miss it and I've been trying to find somebody better. His one saving grace is that he is pretty well in with the Vatican and now and again he has come up with a good tale from those sources. Nevertheless -- as somebody or other said -- one swallow doesn't make a summer. Use him as much as you like, and we'll pay him afterwards."

"Did he meet Fletcher?"

"Unfortunately, he didn't. These damned Itie newspapermen get a hell of a long holiday, and apparently he went to Ischia with his family. Fletcher, when he reached Rome, wanted help, but Peretti was already disporting himself on some beach. According to what the Italian told us later, they talked on the 'phone a number of times. When Fletcher wanted guidance he would call him up."

"And Peretti's been no use in locating Fletcher?"

"He's been bloody useless. In fact you might think he had a mission to keep the whole thing wrapped up as a great big mystery. We asked him to go through the Fletcher clothes -- gave him authority --and he told us it was unethical. Unethical. . . when a whole family suddenly disappears without reason or trace! We asked him to check on Fletcher's contacts in Rome and he said he couldn't find any. My kid is a Brownie, and she could do better than that. Anyway, he'll drive you in to the hotel and give you the set-up."

"I suppose he's trustworthy?"

MacLachlan snorted. "How could he be otherwise? The man's too much of a dimwit to be a rogue. No, he's trustworthy, without doubt. He's worked for us, on and off, for a long time."

Troy sighed. Life was invariably complicated.

"The other problem," continued MacLachlan, "is to get good coverage on the Royal visit. I think you'll find Peretti a big help there, now he's back in Rome. When it comes to pomp and circumstance and formality and tradition and religion he's very definitely a good man to have on your side.

"Unfortunately, this sort of thing -- this visit by our Princess -- doesn't happen very often, so his use is limited. But I suggest you pick his brains, keep in close touch with his own paper's newsdesk, and write up the story the way you know we want it. Purple."

"When do you need the first piece?"

"As soon as you can let us have it. The Princess flies out towards the end of the week -- we're not sure of the day yet -- and anything on the subject from now on is eminently newsworthy. The Express have a staffer on the spot already and he's giving us hell."

"I see. How about passes?"

"We're getting you accredited, and they'll be on the first 'plane out after they touch my desk. Substituting your name for Fletcher's has meant going through all the old Palace rigmarole for a second time. However, your name was known, and the Court advisers have approved you -- God knows why! -- and now it's only a matter of documentation."

"Shall we continue this briefing over lunch ?"

"Lunch! That's a luxury you cannot afford. You don't have the time, my son, there's a 'plane to catch. If you dash upstairs to the canteen you might be able to grab a pack of bully beef sandwiches to eat on the way, otherwise you'll have to feed on Alitalia's airborne spaghetti. There's a driver waiting to take you to the airport."

"But I don't have any clothes."

"A good newsman keeps clothes in the office."

"This isn't my office," retorted Troy. "I'm on leave from the New York office -- remember?"

"O.K. And you can cut out the sarcasm, lad. You'll have to rush back to your hotel and pack 'em, quick. You won't have time for sandwiches."

"This is all very well. But what happens to the New York office meantime? I mean, supposing somebody knocks off this President while I'm in Rome?"

"We'll manage. Nobody's indispensable."

"You're a bastard."

MacLachlan looked up from the wad of pink, yellow and white agency cables that had been dumped on the desk in front of him. His expression was severe. "If you had less than a record behind you I'd have you on the Old Man's mat for insubordination. There's no room for temperament, or friendship even, in this game. The jungle is perilous and overpopulated with killers who are just waiting for the chance to take over as King Lion."

"Shall we eliminate the window-dressing?"

"By all means. In basic Scottish you go out to Rome this afternoon to find Fletcher, and while you're doing so you double for him by fifing first-class scene-setters on the Royal visit. Is that clear enough? And don't cover up for the sod if he's run off with an Italian bit, or anything like that, because Big Brother will be watching you."

"I don't go for you," said Troy. "You have a nasty, dirty, suspicious mind."

"Join the queue," accepted MacLachlan evenly. "It's because I know my men that I remain a fixture in this highly competitive business. Now stuff those tickets into your pocket and make like you were a real reporter..."