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money he's paying he's entitled to expect that.'
    By now the young 'SAS expert' was sweating and his cheeks were flushed. It was difficult to tell if it was the thought of having a dentist's drill in his mouth or swallowing poison or the Savoy's chair which was causing him the most distress. Hell, if he swallowed this story he'd swallow anything, the tooth, the poison, even the chair.
    'We're going in with bazookas, mobile missile launchers, grenades, the works. It should be one hell of a war. And if, I mean when, we take over there's a good chance we'll be kept on as the new Sultan's bodyguard, unless the cunning old bastard tries some sort of double cross.
    'He'll also be looking for help on the interrogation side afterwards. It seems the present Sultan has been tucking away hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts all around the world and our employer would obviously like to know where the money is.- I hope you've got a strong stomach, it's liable to get a bit messy.'
    I don't know what the guy was looking for, cheap thrills, hard experience to beef up his part-time toy soldiering or what, but my Arabian tales had put the wind up him and no mistake. He'd stopped chewing on the stuffed olives and most of his pint was untouched.
    'Well, I'm your man,' he said, and neither of us believed him for a moment. I took a few details from him, told him I'd be in touch and off he went into the wide blue yonder, a first-class prat and a second-class time-waster. I wanted a killer and I'd turned up a pussycat.
    I never did hear from the Have gun, will travel vet. Maybe it was a joke, maybe he was Iying bleeding to death on some far-off battlefield I couldn't pronounce in a month of Remembrance Sundays, or crouching in ambush high in the hills of Afghanistan, maybe I've just got an overactive imagination, who knows? I never found out, anyway.
    The ex-para got in touch two days after the headbanger. Quiet, confident, no messing about. His name was Jim Iwanek, he'd left the Paras eighteen months ago and had been working as a bodyguard for a casino operator until recently. Where could we meet? I wasn't superstitious so the Savoy seemed as good a place as any. He agreed. 'I'm about five-eleven, short black curly hair and I'll have on a brown check sports jacket,' he said, like a policeman giving evidence from his notebook. 'I look forward to meeting you.'
    He was bang on time and just as he'd described. OK, he missed out the brown cord trousers, the brown brogues, the crisp white shirt and the light brown tie, but who's counting? I went over and introduced myself, bought him a double Teachers and took him to the table by the piano.
    There was another thing he hadn't mentioned, his eyes. They were blue, a cold blue, difficult to read until maybe it was too late. Eyes that looked me over, measuring me up, calculating distances and angles, eyes that could just as easily work out twenty-four different ways of killing me bare-handed as they could spot a lie before it left my lips. You can tell a lot from a man's eyes: if he's Iying, how he'll react to stress, sometimes even what he's thinking. Iwanek's eyes were as cold and hard as ice daggers and he hardly blinked as he crossed his legs, smoothed out the creases in his trousers and asked me what it was I was offering.
    I took a sip of my whisky. He hadn't touched his. 'I'm thirty-two years old and I am what's called a corporate financier, a sort of merchant banker without a bank. I help 21 arrange bank loans, company takeovers, share flotations, that sort of thing. Sometimes I act as a company doctor, find out where a firm is going wrong, why it's losing money, suggest a remedy. I make a lot of money doing what I do because I do it well, very well. I'm an expert and in the City I'm a survivor. More than that, I'm a winner. But I have a problem, a big problem, and it's one that I can't cope with own my own.'
    Iwanek hadn't moved while I talked, but I knew I was being measured up, assessed,