Since early January Crowe has maintained tight security while jetting between three continents to promote Proof and to attend awards events honoring Gladiator. In London he reserved two additional rooms at the Athenaeum Hotel to accommodate his minders. "It was the first time he's ever had bodyguards," says a hotel source. "He's just not that sort of person." In the end Crowe chose instead to stay at the Dorchester, where all the press meetings took place. (The hotel declines to say if he had his security entourage in tow.) "High-profile people need to take measures, and the most effective one is unpredictability," notes Andreas Carleton-Smith, a vice president for Control Risks Group, an international firm that specializes in corporate investigations, security and kidnap situations.

While the FBI has acknowledged only one instance of attending Crowe in public, it is unclear how often his retinue has included federal agents. "We don't do protection, like the Secret Service," says Matthew McLaughlin, the FBI spokesman in L.A. "For celebrities we do investigative work, and sometimes that requires us to go undercover." On this point Scotland Yard is even less forthcoming. "We don't discuss matters of personal protection," says Angie Evans of the Yard's specialist operations unit. "We do not discuss security issues, ever."

The FBI, it appears, only wishes that were so. Last month, around the time that Crowe was promoting Proof in London, the FBI apprised Scotland Yard of its investigation. Lucy Panton, the crime reporter at Britain's Sunday People who broke the kidnapping story, says Crowe was then interviewed at length by a female officer in the Yard's Criminal Intelligence Branch. ("The joke in their office afterwards was 'God, if it's taken that long, she obviously fancies him,' " says Panton.) Subsequently, Panton says, she got her "tip-off from someone who knew the officer who did the interview." The FBI's Bosley says she does not know the source of the leak, but says that "in light of the fact that this was already disclosed from another source, we did go ahead and confirm it."