Sylvia came back to the desk, her coat on and a smart felt hat with a feather jammed on her head.

'Supper in tonight?' she said. 'Let's have steak and red wine.'

"Fraid not,' a man's voice said.

They both turned to see Morris Devereux standing there. He was a lean, acerbic, sharp-featured young man with prematurely grey hair which he brushed sleekly back from his brow without a parting. He took care over his clothes: today he was wearing a dark navy suit and an azure bow tie. Some days he wore brilliant scarlet shirts.

'We're off to Brussels,' he said to Eva. 'Press conference, foreign ministry.'

'What about this lot?' Eva said pointing to her pile of newspapers.

'You can relax,' Morris said. 'Your dead sailors have been picked up by Associated Press. Nice cheque for us and you'll be all over America tomorrow.'

Sylvia grunted, said goodbye and left. Morris fetched Eva's coat and hat.

'We have our master's motor,' he said. 'He's been summoned to London. I think a rather nice luncheon is on the cards.'

They drove to Brussels, passing swiftly through Bruges with no delay but at Ghent they were obliged to detour on to minor roads to Audenarde as their way was blocked by a convoy of military vehicles, lorries filled with soldiers and small tanks on low-loaders and, strangely, what seemed to be an entire division of cavalry, horses and riders milling about the road and its verges for all the world as if preparing to advance on a nineteenth-century battlefield.

In Brussels they parked near the Gare du Nord and, as they were late for lunch, they took a taxi direct to the restaurant Morris had already booked, the Filet de Boeuf in the rue Gretry. The press conference was at the hotel de ville at 3.30. They had plenty of time, Morris thought, though perhaps they should pass on dessert.

They were shown to their table and ordered an aperitif as they scanned the menus. Eva looked about her at the other clients: the businessmen, the lawyers, the politicians, she supposed – eating, smoking, drinking, talking – and at the elderly waiters bustling importantly to and fro with the orders and she realised she was the only woman in the room. It was a Wednesday: perhaps Belgian women didn't go out to eat until the weekend, she suggested to Morris – who was summoning the sommelier.

'Who knows? But your refulgent femininity more than compensates for the preponderance of males, my dear.'

She ordered museau de porc and turbot.

'It's very strange, this war,' she said. 'I keep having to remind myself it's going on.'

'Ah, but we're in a neutral country,' Morris said. 'Don't forget.'

'What's Romer doing in London?'

'Ours not to reason why. Probably talking to Mr X.'

'Who's Mr X?'

'Mr X is Romer's… what? Romer's Cardinal Richelieu. A very powerful man who allows Lucas Romer to do pretty much what he wants.'

Eva looked at Morris as he cut his foie gras into neat little squares.

'Why isn't the Agence in Brussels?' she asked. 'Why are we in Ostend?'

'So it'll be easier for us to flee when the Germans invade.'

'Oh yes? And when will that be?'

'Spring of next year, according to our boss. He doesn't want to be trapped in Brussels.'

Their main courses arrived and a bottle of claret. Eva watched Morris do the whole sniffing, glass held to the light, wine rolled around the mouth performance with aplomb.

'We'd eat and drink better in Brussels,' Eva said. 'Anyway, why am I on this trip? You're the Belgian expert.'

'Romer insisted. You do have your identification with you, I hope.'

She assured him she had and they ate on, chatting about their colleagues and the deficiencies and disadvantages of life in Ostend, but Eva found herself wondering as they talked, and not for the first time, about what tiny part she was playing in an invisible grander plan that only Romer really understood. Her recruitment, her training, her posting all seemed to betoken some form of logical progression – but she could not discern where it was leading. She could not see the Eva Delectorskaya cog in the big machine – she could not even see the big machine, she realised. Ours not to reason why, Morris had said, and she ruefully conceded that he was right, as she carved off a square inch of turbot and popped it in her mouth – delicious. It was a pleasure to be in Brussels, away from her French and Russian newspapers, lunching with a cultured and amusing young man – don't rock the boat looking for answers; don't make waves.

The press conference was held by a junior minister and was designed to outline the Belgian government's position with regard to Russia 's recent invasion of Finland. Eva's name and details were taken at the door and she and Morris joined about forty other journalists and listened to the junior minister's speech for a minute or two before her mind began to wander. She found herself thinking of her father, whom she had last seen in Paris in August for a few days while she was on leave and before she moved to Ostend. He had looked much frailer, thinner, the wattles under his chin more pronounced and she noticed also how both his hands trembled in repose. The most disturbing tic was his constant licking of his lips. She asked him if he was thirsty and he said, no, not at all, why? She wondered if it were a side-effect of the drugs he had been given to stimulate his heart but she could not lie to herself any more: her father had embarked on a slow form of terminal decline – doughty old age was behind him, now he was entering the final fraught struggle of his time on earth. She thought he had aged ten years in the few months she had been away.

Irene was cool and incurious about her new life in England and said, when Eva asked about her father's health, that he was doing very nicely, thank you, all the doctors were very pleased. When her father asked her about her job she said she was working in 'signals' and that she was now an expert in Morse code. 'Who would have thought it?' he exclaimed, something of his old vigour returning for a moment or two, putting his trembling hand on her arm and adding, in a low voice so Irene couldn't hear, 'You did the right thing, my dear. Good girl.'

Morris tapped on her elbow, jerking her out of her reverie, and passed her a piece of paper. It was a question in French. She looked at it incomprehensibly.

'Romer wants you to ask it,' Morris said.

'Why?'

'I think it's meant to confer respectability on us.'

Therefore, when the junior minister had finished his speech and the moderator of the press conference asked for questions, Eva allowed four or five to take place before she raised her hand. She was spotted, pointed at – ' La Mademoiselle, la - and stood up.

'Eve Dalton,' she said, 'Agence d'Information Nadal.' She saw the moderator write her name in a ledger in front of him and then, at his nod, she asked her question – she had no real idea of its import – something to do with a minority party in parliament, the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond, and their policy of 'La neutralite rigoureuse'. It caused some consternation: the junior minister's reply was brusque and dismissive but she noticed another half-dozen hands being raised for follow-up questions. She sat down and Morris gave her a covert smile of congratulation. After five more minutes he signalled that they should leave and they crept out, leaving by a side entrance and crossing the Grand Place at a half-run through an angled, spitting rain towards a cafe. They sat indoors and smoked a cigarette and drank tea, looking out through the windows at the ornate cliff faces of the buildings round the massive square, their sense of absolute confidence and prosperity still ringing out across the centuries. The rain was growing heavier and the flower sellers were packing up their stalls when they caught a taxi to the station and then drove back steadily and without delays or diversions towards Ostend.