"Right," he finally said, "won't you come in and talk with me, Miss Agent Lady?"

I nodded, "Yes, love to." I didn't say the "Mister Ass Hole" part aloud but I thought it.

He bowed me into the open door with an overly exagerrated flourish - and boxwood twigs caught in his hair and clothing. I tamped down my urge to laugh and covered it with a cough. He shut the door quietly behind us. We were in a foyer tiled with black and white marble squares, a large grandfather clock ticking on one wall, a fine portrait of some Victorian high society lady - a Sargent, perhaps? - on the opposite wall. The wall facing us consisted mostly of an arched doorway and it was through here that my host walked, looking back to urge me to, "Keep up, luv."

"Charming, utterly charming," I muttered. I wondered if he knew he had boxwood leaves tipped over one ear, tangled in his hair? Probably not and I wasn't going to tell him, it was more amusing that way.

He led me into a small sitting room, gestured for me to sit on one of a pair of couches that flanked a marble fireplace, and sat opposite me on the other. I found it amusing that he seemed to feel safer away from me now that I'd leveled the playing field, so to speak, by dumping him on his oh-so-handsome backside. "Right," he said again, "which one are you - FBI or Interpol?"

No flies on this boy. "Feebs," I acknowledged, using the slang I was sure he already knew quite well. "Interpol knows I'm here," I added. Not that they knew I was right there in that room, mind, but they no doubt knew approximately where I was because I'd exchanged waves with their guy just before I'd gone into the White Hart Cafe for my fateful luncheon. Whether they had stayed in the neighborhood after that and knew anything beyond that I ate there was an unknown factor.

"Bullshit - they can't find their asses in the dark with a roadmap," he snapped back. "Tea?"

I blinked. "What? Oh - are you asking me if I want tea?"

"If you're not afraid I'll put drugs in it, yeah - tea?"

I nodded. He was a handful. And it looked like, for the moment, he was my handful to sort out. When he gestured for me to keep my place on the couch, I just nodded. He disappeared out of the room and I took the opportunity to check my cellphone for messages. Nothing. I didn't have time to actually call anyone because I heard his footsteps approaching and had to quickly return it to my purse and the purse to the floor where I'd put it before he came into the room again. Later, maybe, I'd ask to go to the bathroom and take the purse with me.

He came in carrying two big mugs of steaming tea, set one on the coffee table in front of me and returned to his seat opposite me. "I put lemon in it - one packet of that sweetener stuff all you sheilas use - if you don't like it that way, too fuckin' bad."

"How charmingly put," I said, pasting a smile on my face. As it happened, I did use that 'sweetener stuff' and the tea was excellent. I sipped and my hands and feet felt warmer.

He watched me over the rim of his cup, his eyes taking me in from head to toe. I studied him in much the same way. He still had the boxwood twig rakishly draped over one ear. I deliberately didn't look at it more than briefly - didn't want him to catch on. It made him less imposing to look just a bit ridiculous. Like if you're nervous speaking to a group of people, a professor I'd had in college said to picture them all as bunnies - brought them down to size and made them much less formidable. Also made me want to giggle, but I covered it by drinking more tea.

The clock in the vestibule bonged a ponderous two bongs, then returned to its loud ticking.

"I assume they've told you I need to be in protective custody for my own good," he finally said, putting down his empty mug.

"They have. You do." I was still drinking from my cup - I'm not a gulper. He is.

"How do I know this threat - this supposed threat - is any more serious than the one in 2001?"

"Mister Crowe," I began in full FBI mode, "this is a serious threat. The one then was equally serious - both of them were - and you of all people should know that." He had been fully briefed by the FBI and Interpol and British Intelligence back then - and they had only caught and neutralized the one group of plotters-for-money. The other had never been reliably identified and could be behind the current threat. The threat that had sent him high-tailing across Mexico, then across the whole USA, to France, then to Ireland and from there to England, where he'd been the past month, successfully hiding out in the well-to-do suburbs of London until I had literally almost fallen over him in the White Hart.

"How did you know I'd go to the Hart?" he asked instead of acknowledging my response.

"I had a tip," I said honestly. I had. A sometime-photographer for one of the endless number of gossip rags had heard second-hand from someone in the neighborhood of the White Hart that a man who resembled my elusive quarry had been seen there several days a week for the past month. They thought he frequented the White Hart and the Golden Bough - both upper-middle class establishments. I had spent the day before in a fruitless surveillance of the Bough. Today, even though I'd given up right before he appeared, I had struck paydirt at the White Hart.

I didn't bother enlightening him that his attempt to hide by remaining in the long-hair lightened-to-blonde mode he'd worn for his previous film hadn't worked. People knew him with the shoulder length golden locks now - they no longer looked and saw just another semi-scruffy man - Eurotrash on the shabby side - when they saw him.

"I'm not going into so-called protective custody - living in a box with babysitters - you can just tell them that, luv."

We locked gazes across the short distance between us, then I nodded at him. "Oh," I answered him firmly, "I think you are."

He jumped to his feet and I jumped to mine. "Do I have to knock you on your ass again, buster?" I said softly.

He stopped his forward movement and thought about it before uttering, "No," in a voice that said he wasn't beaten yet.

I nodded and resumed my seat. "Good - now, sit down and let's talk about this like two adults - I'm getting bored with the spoiled movie star act."

He tipped his chin up and regarded me down his nose like I was some offending object he'd found on his plate. It didn't work. I think I actually saw a quirk of his mouth that almost resembled the beginnings of a smile, but I'm not sure. I did see dawning respect in those famous eyes - and before you ask, yes, he has the longest eyelashes I've ever seen on a man. They would get him about two inches with me, less with a determined kidnapper. The boxwood twig was comic relief.

"Fine," he said then, "talk."

So I did.