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Yves Senechal. Avocat à la Cour, Paris
. No address, no telephone number. Webster had not expected him to be a lawyer. Lawyers tended to try harder to make a first impression benign.
    “Mr. Hammer, he is not here?”
    “I’m afraid not. Did you have an appointment?”
    “I prefer to see you as I find you. You are his partner?”
    “I’m his associate.”
    Senechal thought for a moment, the smile gone.
    “Very well. Can we talk in private?”
    Webster nodded and led him down a dark corridor past several closed doors to a meeting room, Senechal following with a slow, light step. When Ikertu had taken this office, a floor in a tall glass-lined box, Hammer had named each of these rooms after his favorite fictional detectives: Marlowe, Maigret, Beck. This, the largest of them all, was the Wolfe room. Through the window that made up one wall it looked west across Lincoln’s Inn, today a dull green square in the spring gloom.
    Senechal declined coffee, took a glass of water, sipped it almost imperceptibly through his thin lips and began. He sat upright, tucked in close to the table, perfectly still.
    “I am not here on my own behalf. I have a client who needs your assistance, perhaps.”
    Webster let him go on.
    “He is a very significant man.” He spoke slowly, his accent heavily French, and his eyes never left Webster’s. “Very significant.”
    Webster waited again, struggling to maintain Senechal’s gaze and finding his ghostly face difficult to address. There was something unfinished about it.
    “Before I begin,” said Senechal, showing no signs of losing his self-possession, “can I ask you who you are? What is your career? I like to know who people are.”
    So do I, thought Webster, but let it go. “I’ve worked here for six years, more or less. Before that for a large American company doing much the same thing.”
    “You have always done this work?”
    “I used to be a journalist. In Russia.”
    Senechal nodded. “So you know about lies. That is good.” He looked at Webster for a moment, as if assessing him dispassionately. “Why did you move companies?”
    “Why did I come here? For the chance to work with Ike. With Mr. Hammer.”
    Another nod, and a pause.
    “My client, he has a problem with his reputation,” Senechal said at last. “We believe that someone has said things that are unjust about him.”
    Webster thought he knew what that meant. Some powerful man who had grown accustomed to his lawyers smoothing out every problem had been refused a visa or a loan and was experiencing an unfamiliar sense of powerlessness. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You’d like us to find out who?”
    “Later, perhaps. No. That is not it.” Senechal shook his head once, an exact movement. “He would like you to investigate himself. To discover that which can be discovered.”
    “And then?”
    “And then, if there are lies, you can correct them.”
    “If they’re lies.”
    “They are lies.” Senechal’s meager lips pressed tight in a line.
    Webster thought for a moment. “We don’t often do that sort of work.” He paused, watching his guest. “How bad is it?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “The damage. To your client.”
    “It is an irritant.”
    “Because this is expensive work.”
    “I know,” said Senechal, with another unexpressive smile.
    “Who is your client?”
    “I cannot say.”
    “I can’t help you until you do.”
    Senechal reached down for his briefcase and put it on the table. He took a key from a ticket pocket inside his jacket, unlocked the single clasp and from within drew out two or three pages of paper bound in a Perspex folder. Sliding the briefcase to one side he placed the document neatly in front of him.
    “This,” he said, “is an agreement I wish you to sign. It commits you to make a proposal in general terms. You will tell us how you work and how much it will cost. If we are satisfied I will reveal my client’s identity to you and we can decide