The man in the covered passage searched M with his eyes before he used his hands.
That was his first mistake.
He had expected panic, a case, maybe a clumsy attempt to run. Instead, M stood near the shop window with both hands visible and nothing heavy on either side of the body. The old envelope was still inside the coat, but it held only paper. Nothing in it was worth the kind of trouble now gathering around them.
"Where is it?" the man asked again.
M looked past him to the other two men blocking the end of the passage. "I don't know what you mean."
"You left the vault with a black case."
"I left a building."
"This is not the time to be clever."
"I'm not being clever."
The man stepped closer, then stopped himself. There were cameras above two shopfronts and a security guard near the far entrance watching them with more interest than he had shown a minute earlier. A public place was a bad place to make a private problem worse.
M understood that too.
