Raven didn't mind the chilly autumn wind as he walked back across St. James park from White's. He did mind the chaos awaiting him at home. He sought order, not confusion, in his life. First, he heard pounding and shouting coming from his upstairs sitting room. Then saw a canvas bag of tools on the mahogany staircase. He then sensed Lane, his aged butler, was apoplectic. And knew his wife was gone. "Lady Diana left an hour ago for the country...." Lane spluttered, always calling Raven's wife, the daughter of Lord Tuttman, by her ancestral title. He added, "The people from Christie's are upstairs. Lady Diana told them to install the painting over the desk."

The hammering suddenly stopped. A workman came down the stairs, picked up his loose tool kit, and then was ushered out the door by Lane.

Chris stood in her stocking feet on the partner's desk in the Edwardian sitting room, engrossed in adjusting the painting, She wore a thin blue dress lashed to her taut frame with a sash, with a fashionable slit up its side, exposing the whiteness of her leg. The afternoon light hit her like a spotlight. She did not hear Raven enter.

She spun around. "Sorry I didn't hear you come in, Tony. What do you think? Isn't it magnificent? Allen Julian, in my opinion, is England's finest painter of castle art, and this may be his best painting. The detail is incredible."

Raven, coming closer, could see that the colors in the original were much richer than in the copy in Lord Crude's library. The shooters were far much more life-like, Achnacarry castle more realistic, the dark sky more ominous. He could see that the original contained something not in the copy: a third shooter. He also knew why the third shooter had been deliberately left out from the copies.

"It's looks perfect there, Miss..." He resisted, as he had from the moment he met her, calling her by name. He feared she already had too much power over him.

"Castle art of course is not everyone's cup of tea," she said, nimbly climbing down from the desk. "But this painting has a special meaning to you, doesn't it."

He looked up sharply. How much did Nubar tell her, he wondered, "Dogs. Grouse. Hunters. Moors. Castle? What's special about that, Miss --- ?"

"Chris," she reminded. "Your wife just told me she that she was actually there, at this very shoot, at Achnacarry. "

"1928. Lady Diana was just a child then, too young to really remember it."

"Quite the contrary. She vividly remembered the castle had been scaled off from the public by round-the-clock guards for a fortnight. Each day limousines arrived with new guests. And each afternoon, while she and the other children played, and the women took naps, the men locked themselves away the library. She even knew the shooters. She said they were all oil men, like her father."

"We never really discussed the castle parties she attended as a child," Raven said, trying to cut off any further discussion.

"Look, there is an additional shooter in this painting." Chris' face grew animated, her cheeks puffing up like a squirrel. She pointed to a squarely built man with a grouse in his game bag, smoking a pipe. "There were only two shooters in the one in the Lord Crude's library. None with a pipe."

Raven said " I think you are mixing it up..."

"Absolutely, not. "Crude has two shooters, you have three. "That Sir Henry Deterding, isn't it,"

"Yes," Raven acknowledged. " Deterding owned Achnacarry Castle, where the shoot took place."

"And lots of oil, I bet" "He was chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. He was rich enough to afford the shoot."

"And this shooter with the dead bird. He also look suspiciously familiar," she pointed to the tall aristocratic-looking man.

"That is Lord Cadman. As I recall, he was Chairman of Anglo-Iranian Oil. The third man, for your information, is Walter Teagle, the head of he head of Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust. They were all sportsmen who had come to Scotland to shoot grouse. They shot 200 birds in a weekend, as I understand it. That was it." Raven said, closing the discussion by slicing his hand through the air.

"It wasn't just sport, was it? Something else happened there, didn't it. Something secret. Was the painting sent to you as a reminder? Is that's why there are truncated copies of this painting?" She smiled tauntingly.

"You have an over-active imagination, young lady. Its getting late..."

"Is it getting late?" Chris had a way of turning a statement into a question when pressed. "That's what you were saying to Lord Crude about Iran," she continued in her chirpy, teasing voice. "I love secrets."

"Let me tell you are a story with a moral, young lady. There once was wise man that saved a king from ruin. The King told him, as a reward, he could have anything he possessed. The wise man replied, give me anything but your secrets. The moral?"

"It may be dangerous to know a King's secret." Chris answered. "How exciting. Would it be that dangerous for me to know your secret."

"My car can take you home, Miss. I appreciate..."

She didn't want to go. He intrigued her, even attracted her. "Nubar told me you were a man of mystery?"

Raven brought his eyes were level with hers. You're the dangerous one, he thought. You look into men's faces with your bright eyes, not giving a damn how you play on their weakness. He suddenly wanted her in his power. "OK, young lady your secrets for mine? Fair exchange? I will tell you whatever secret you want to know--two, if you like if you'll do likewise. If you cannot answer both truthfully, you'll have to pay a consequence. "

"I'll go first," she accepted his challenge.. "What was really going on at Achnacarry, other than birds being shot."

"Negotiations," he decided to be brutally honest. "The men at the shoot represented seven companies that owned the world's pool of crude. But it was inevitable new pools of oil would be found. They had two choices: they could compete for the new oil or they could make an arrangement to share it. They choose an arrangement." He didn't mind telling her, it was all history now. "My turn. What question would you not answer truthfully under any circumstances?

"That's easy," Chris laughed, "I would never tell a man I was sexually attracted to him. What does that old arrangement have to do with that man, Moose-a-day, is that how you pronounce it."

"Without the oil in Iran, the arrangement cannot work. Iran is now led by a madman named Mossedeq. He runs around in back pajamas, weeping. Hopefully, through an election, he will soon be replaced by a saner man.," Raven hoped he had a benevolent spin on what she had evidently over heard in the library.

"My turn," he continued, "Are you sexually attracted to me?" "No, I mean..." she hesitated, realizing that she had already logically excluded a truthful answer. "You know I can't answer that."

"Consequence, Chris," it was the first time he had called her by name.

"What do I have to do?" she asked, petting the finely-carved ebony camel, across from the desk.

Raven left and returned with a bottle of Kristal champagne on ice and two large crystal glasses. He filled one glass and handed it to Chris. "Is this my consequence?" Chris asked, then drained it. She loved really bubbly, cold champagne.

"Not quite," he answered, refilling her glass.

Chris drank again. She felt strangely light-headed and uninhibited. The room seemed to wobble. She put her glass down. Raven, touching her incredibly lightly under her elbow, guiding her towards the Tang dynasty opium bed. It was covered with cushions.

She lay back on the silky cushions, looking at the three shooters in their plus-four tweeds, their mangy dogs, their unhappy-looking beaters, murky Achnacarry castle while Raven's grip on her was growing firmer. She could feel his finger undoing her sash, her buttons and all the other attachments that held her clothes to her body. She made little effort at resisting, things had gone too far. She had no exit strategy.

"The Consequence," he said, kissing her.