He brought an assistant and it was the assistant who did all the talking. The consul introduced him. ‘This is Vladimir Turin from the trade department,’ he said. Irina shook hands with him briefly. ‘Please sit down,’ she said. She didn’t offer them a drink. It wasn’t a social visit. She had discharged herself from the clinic as soon as she heard about the empty envelope lying on her office floor and that Dimitri’s passport had not been found. That, she concluded, must have been what the intruder was looking for. The implications were too serious to be concealed. She got back to her apartment and, with a vicious headache, managed to search through the cupboards. Nothing belonging to him was missing. But the emptiness had a special quality she recognized. Real emptiness, not absence. There was a difference. He wasn’t out, he was gone. She had felt so weak and sick that she was tempted to delay. To go to bed and sleep on it before she called the embassy. But that was failing in her duty.
