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I

THE GENERAL SAT quietly in his car at the airport terminal, waiting for his mother and his mistress.

To have driven himself after dark was, he knew, an emotional action, perhaps even a foolish one. But then he had never attempted to impose on his private life that ruthless discipline which had characterised his professional career.

Indeed, he was convinced that those with great power and responsibility must allow themselves a calculated measure of self-indulgence, which was then not a weakness but a safety valve; as a student of history he frequently reminded himself that in matters that did not concern the state it was Caesar's wife who had to be above suspicion, not Caesar.

He drew on his cigar, puffing the smoke carefully out of the window. He wasn't supposed to smoke cigars either, in fact he had promised both women that he wouldn't smoke at all while they were away. Yet he felt only mildly guilty about his broken promise, for he had also never been able to resist the minor forbidden things of life, like smoking cigars and dummy2

parking in the prohibited area right in front of the terminal.

And from the number of cars parked around him the latter was clearly a national characteristic, and in his view a healthy one.

In any case, it was comforting to know that he had only himself to blame for being at the wheel when most sensible men of his age who worked as hard as he did were in their beds. For even if he might fret at his mother for her ridiculous economy in taking a cheap night flight he had to admit that she had neither asked nor expected him to attend her return. She had simply assumed that he would send his driver—which would have been less embarrassing as well as easier, since he suspected that she knew very well that her companion was as necessary to his peace of mind as to her own.

In fact there were plenty of good, sensible reasons for his not being here at Leonardo da Vinci, truly.

Quite simply and literally, he could not wait to get his hands on Angela. Not (somewhat to his surprise) in any lascivious way, but just in a strangely old-fashioned loving manner. All he wanted to do was to take hold of those splendid hips, one hand to each flank, and look at her. If it went no farther than that tonight he would not be discontented; it had taken him forty years and two marriages to discover that there was more than one kind of intimacy through which a man could dummy2

enjoy a woman's company, and he was almost as excited about that discovery as he had been all those years ago about the otner.

Physically, the feel of those hips would be enough. There was no denying that Angela's legs were long and elegant, her bottom shapely for a woman of her years, and her bosom magnificent. But the General had always liked hips, for they were the one thing about women that reminded him of horses. And Angela's hips were incomparable.