Another discarded plaque~ this one in French. The openings were ashes without her.

Abel was beginning to dread that he might spend the rest of his life without seeing his daughter again. To kill the loneliness, he slept with some very expensive and some rather cheap women. None of them helped.

William Kane's son now possessed - the one person he truly loved. France no longer held any excitement for him, and once he had finished his business there, Abel flew on to Bonn where he completed negotiations for the site on which he would build the first Baron in Germany. He kept in constant touch with George by phone, but Florentyna had not been found, and there was some very disturbing news concerning Henry Osborne.

'He's got himself in hea vy debt with the bookmakers again,' said George.

'I warned him last time that I was through bailing him out,' said Abel.

'He's been no dan - w use to anyone since he lost his seat in Congress. I suppose I'll have to deal with the problem when I get back.'

'He's making threats,'said George.

'There's nothing new about that. I've never let them worry me in the past,' said Abel. 'Tell him whatever it is he wants, it will have to wait until my return.'

'When do you expect to be back?' asked George.

`Three weeks, four at the most. I want to look at some sites in Turkey and Egypt. Hilton's already started building there, so I'm going to find out why. Which reminds me, George, the experts tell me you'll never be able to reach me once the plane has landed in the Middle East. Those damned Arabs haven't worked out how to find each other, let alone visitors from foreign countries, so I'll leave you to run everything as usual until you bear from me.'

Abel spent over three weeks looking at sites for new hotels all over the Arab states. His advisors were legion, most of them claiming the title of Prince, each assuring Abel that they bad the real influence as a very close personal friend of the key minister, a distant cousin in fact.

However, it always turned out to be the wrong minister or too distant a a cousin. The only solid conclusion Abel reached, after twenty - three days in the dust, sand, and heat with soda but no whisky, was that if hisadvisors' forecasts on the Middle East oil reserves were accurate, the Gulf States were going to need a lot of hotels in the long term and the Baron Group had to start planning carefully if they were not to be left behind.

Abel managed to find several sites on which to build hotels, through his several princes, but he did not have the time to discover which of them had the real power to fix the officials. He objected to bribery only when the money reached the wrong hands. At least in America, Henry Osborne had always known which officials needed to be taken care of. Abel set up a small office in Bahrain, leaving his local representative in no doubt that the Baron Group was looking for sites throughout the Arab world, but not for princes or the cousins of ministers.

He flew on to Istanbul, where he almost immediately found the perfect place to build a hotel, Overlooking the Bosphorus, only a hundred yards from the old British embassy. He mused as he stood on the barren ground of his latest acquisition, recalling when he had last been here. He clenched his fist and held the wrist of his right hand. He could hear again the cries of the mob - it still made him feel frightened and sick although more than thirty years had passed.

Exhausted from his travels, Abel flew home to New York. During the interminable journey he thought of little but Florentyna, and whether George had found her. As always, George was standing, waiting outside the customs gate to meet him. His expression indicated nothing.

'What news?' asked Abel as he climbed into the back of the Cadillac while.the chauffeur put his bags in the trunk.

'Some good, some bad,' said George, as he pressed a button by the side window. A sheet of glass glided up between the front and rear sections of the car. 'Florentyna has been in touch with her mother. She's living in a small apartment in San Francisco!

'Married?' said Abel.

Tes,' said George.

Neither spoke for some moments.

'And the Kane boy?' asked Abel.

'He's found a job in a bank. It seems a lot of people turned him down because word got around that he didn't finish at the Harvard Business School, and his father wouldn't supply a reference. Not many people will consider employing him if as a consequence they might lose his father's business. He finally was hired as a teller with the Bank of America - Way below what he might have expected with his qualifications.'

'And Florentyna?'

'She's working as the assistant manager in a fashion shop called "Wayout Columbus" near Golden Gate Park. She's also been trying to borrow money from several banks.'