The Tears Of Autumn

l

Christopher stood on the steps of the Galleria Borghese and watched Molly walk across the park with the pine trees behind her. She had spent the morning at the zoo while he wrote his profile of the Pope, and she carried a bag of peanuts in her hand.

She wanted to look at Canova’s nude Pauline Bonaparte and the Caravaggios before lunch. “Just those two things, Paul,” she said as she made their plans. “You needn’t look so suspicious.” Molly could spend hours looking at painting and sculpture. “There are museum guards all over Europe who think you’re in love with them, the way you hang about,” Christopher told her. “Then you know?” Molly said. “Chaps with sore feet in dusty uniforms make me go all funny.”

“Do you love me, now that you admit it, for my mind or for my body?” Molly had asked when he returned from Washington. Christopher could not separate the two. When he entered her, he felt himself grasped not so much by her flesh as by her idea of herself. Naked, she was as comic as a child; that was what had surprised him the first time he had her. He had imagined that she would be a solemn lover, but she laughed when she opened her legs, as if pleasure were a joke she played on life. They looked into each other’s face when they made love, smiling and chuckling.

Now, as she came toward him, holding her hair in the December wind, he felt a smile pulling at his face, and when they kissed, he laughed. Christopher had a strange loud laugh that he could not control; strangers turned their heads when it exploded.

“Ah,” Molly said, “I’ve just come from feeding a poor caged thing like you.”

When the museum closed at two o’clock, they walked to a restaurant, and because it was Thursday, ate gnocchi and bollito misto.

Molly ordered a spiced pear and said, “Why does food seem so romantic when one’s having a love affair? If I ate this much in a state of innocence, I’d weigh two hundred pounds.”

When she had come back from Siena, she had moved into his apartment; she bought vases and filled them with roses and carnations. She put his books in alphabetical order, novels on one set of shelves, poetry on another, general works on a third.

Molly said she had driven Cathy’s ghost out of Christopher’s bed. “Did you really not mind the way she put horns on you?” she asked.

“Yes, I minded, until I saw her reason,” Christopher said. “She knew more about my life than you do, Molly. Cathy was a gloomy woman. Maybe she wanted an existence that was as corrupt as she thought mine to be. It wasn’t love, but it was the best she could do, to go down the way she thought I was going.”

They were in bed, with Molly’s candles burning on all the tables in the room. “I know nothing about your life-are you all that bad when you’re away?” she asked.

“I never was, but when I was younger I had a tendency to melancholy,” Christopher said. “I’d return from Lagos, still seeing the lepers catching coins in their mouths like dogs because their fingers had fallen off, and I’d betray a certain sadness. Cathy thought she knew another reason for my mood.”

Molly lay still in the moving light. “Black girls?” she asked.

“That was the least of it,” Christopher replied.

“It must have been your bloody silence,” Molly said. “Have you any love for me when you’re away, or does it start when you see me and end when your plane takes off?”

Christopher took a candle off the bedside table and held it up so that both their faces were in the light. “If I love you, Molly, it’s because you’ve never been with me in all those places,” he said. “I won’t tell you, I won’t take you. That part of it isn’t life.”

A tear ran down her cheek. He had never seen her cry before.

“I never thought there was any love in you at all,” she said, “and now that you say there is, I want it all.”

He blew out the candle. Molly drew his arm around her body, put her wet face in the hollow of his neck, and went to sleep.

2

The following morning, Molly came back from the post office with Patchen’s letter. Christopher looked at the sterile envelope with his name and address typed on it and knew the sender: the characters that fell on the left side of the typewriter keyboard were fainter than the others. Once, as a joke, he had advised Patchen to get an electric machine to conceal these traces that his letters were typed by a man with one arm weaker than the other. He sent Molly out of the room and opened the envelope. On a sheet of cheap paper were typed two lines from one of Christopher’s old poems.

Death fell breathless behind us in our war-struck youth, and winning that race, we lost our chance at truth.

Below this, Patchen had typed: “PSRunner/22XI63/UBS (G).”

The note was unsigned. Christopher put it in his pocket, lifted the phone, and made a reservation on the noon plane to Geneva.

Christopher was not known at the Union de Banques Suisses in Geneva, but they were used to strangers there. He told a clerk that he wished to discuss a numbered account, and he was taken into an office where a bald Swiss sat behind a bare desk. Swiss banks have a churchly atmosphere; Christopher judged from the furnishings in the bald man’s office that he was the equivalent of a bishop. The man rose from a chair with a high carved back and shook hands, but did not smile.

“There is a numbered account here for me, recently opened, I believe,” Christopher said.

“Will you state the number and the name, please?”

“It is 22X163,” Christopher said, “and the name is P. S. Runner.”

“One moment.” The bald man unlocked a file and extracted a large card; he centered it on the polished surface of the desk before him and looked expectantly at Christopher.

“Do you require a signature?” Christopher asked.

“No, monsieur. Our instructions are to pay on demand, but you must furnish the second of two lines of verse.”

Christopher quoted the line from Patchen’s letter.

“It’s in order,” the bald banker said. “Do you wish to make a withdrawal?”

“What is the current balance?”

“A deposit of $100,000 has been made-that is, Swiss francs 432,512.65. You may have any amount, in either currency.”

“Please give me twenty-five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, and five thousand Swiss francs in hundred-franc notes.”

The banker wrote on a form and pressed a bell. In a moment, a messenger returned with two long buff envelopes. The banker counted the money rapidly, sealed the envelopes, and handed them to Christopher. “Your balance is now $73,865.74,” he said. “When you call for more funds, you may come directly to this office without asking the huissier. It’s more discreet.”

Christopher nodded and put the envelopes in his breast pocket. Outside in the rue du Rhone he saw a man in a tweed Brooks Brothers overcoat limping through the crowd and thought for an instant that it might be Patchen. His letter bore a Swiss postmark, so he might have carried the cash to Geneva himself. Christopher followed the limping man for a block or two before he got a clear glimpse of his face, which was whole and handsome.

At a garage near the railroad station, Christopher rented a car with French license plates. There were no identity controls at the French frontier for motor traffic. The weather in northern Europe was already turning bad, and he drove over the Jura through fog and sleet. He did not want to leave any traces of himself on paper in France, so he did not stop at a hotel. He drove all night and arrived in Paris before the morning traffic had begun to move. He parked the car behind the horse barns at Longchamps and slept for three hours in the back seat. When he awoke, he touched the envelopes with Patchen’s money in them.

3

It took Christopher half the day to learn the telephone number of Nguyen Kim.

“Are you still bumming meals?” Christopher asked, when Kim came on the noisy line.

They arranged to meet at Fouquet’s. Christopher filled the gas tank and spent three hours circling the block until he found a parking place on the Champs-Elysées in front of the cafe.

Kim drank two large bourbons at Fouquet’s and two more at La Coupole after they had driven through Montmartre and doubled back across the Seine bridges. Kim did not know the city, and the long ride with many detours down side streets did not surprise him. When they reached the restaurant, they were alone; as they pulled away from Fouquet’s, Christopher had seen, in the rear-view mirror, the two men who were following Kim. One hurried around the corner to get a taxi while the other watched Christopher’s rented Peugeot vanishing into a school of others just like it toward the place de la Concorde.

Kim ordered oysters. For an Asian, he was an adventurous eater, but he looked uncomfortable when he saw before him the thick green meat of a dozen Spéciales in their gnarled shells. He squeezed lemon over the oysters, and putting one into his mouth, opened his eyes wide and chewed. “They have no taste,” he said, and sprinkled pepper over the ones remaining.

“Kim,” Christopher said, “Let me see if I have this straight. The part of the Vietnamese family called the toe consists of all persons, male or female, who claim a common ancestry back five generations into the past, and forward three generations into the future. Is that right?”

Kim, still chewing, frowned. “Say it in French,” he said. Christopher translated.

“Yes,” Kim said, “That’s it. Then there are the chi and the phai-different parts of the system.”

“The chi is the important unit, is it? Those are people related in direct line of descent from eldest son to eldest son.”

“People who belong to a chi think so. How do you know this stuff?”

“I’m not sure I do, that’s why I’m checking. What’s a phai?”

“There can be lots of phai in a family. That’s people who are descended from younger sons.”

“Can you belong to a chi on one side and a phai on the other?”

“Sure, everyone does. I’m a chi on the Nguyen side and a phai on the Ngo side.”

“What about, say, Diem and Nhu-where did they fit in?”

“They were both younger sons,” Nguyen said. “The eldest son was Khoi-the one I told you was killed in ‘45 by Ho’s people.”

“Do these categories mean anything in the modern world?”

“You bet your ass they do,” Kim said. “What counts is where you rank in the family. If the Nguyen kings had held on for another four hundred years, I’d be a prince of the blood royal. Nobody forgets that.”

“Where do you rank in the Ngo family?”

“Way down-lower than Diem and Nhu did, even.”

“They couldn’t have ranked so low.”

“Well, no, they didn’t. They were listened to, and they contributed a lot to the family wealth in one way or another. But as far as the Truong toe was concerned, they were just a couple of kids who spoke French.”

“The Truong toe?” Christopher said. “Who’s that?”

“The head of the family. He’s the oldest man of the main line of eldest sons. I guess maybe he was their great-uncle.”

“What’s his name?”

Kim chewed another oyster and gave Christopher a bright drunken look, filled with wariness. “Ngo,” he said.

“Ngo what?”

“That’s for me to Ngo and you to find out,” Kim said, and coughed violently on the oyster that laughter had driven into his nose.

When he recovered, he wiped tears from his eyes and asked, “What do you want to know all this stuff for, anyway?”

“After we had lunch in Rome, I thought I might go back out to Saigon and do a piece on the Ngo family. You made them sound interesting.”

“Well, they’re not. They mostly sit around in dark little houses, eating smelly stuff and talking about the past.”

“I find it hard to believe that this guy-the Truong toe?- could run the lives of men like Diem and Nhu,” Christopher said.

“In politics, no. In the family, yes. He’s the one closest to everyone’s ancestors-very important stuff with us.”

“He’s in touch with everybody in the family?”

“Sure-that’s all he has to do in life. Whenever there’s a problem in the family, he settles it. Consults the ancestors, you know, and comes up with the answer. His house is the headquarters of the toe.”

“What if you’re a militant Catholic, like Diem or Nhu-do you still worry about ancestor worship?”

Kim held a glass of wine to his lips with his right hand. With his left he made a gesture, palm upward, then downward, and lifted his eyebrows. He swallowed his wine and said, “It isn’t a question of ancestor worship versus Jesus Christ Our Lord. I tried to tell you in Rome how strong the family is with us. You’ve got to picture a group of people to whom all the dead ones, going back forever, and all the living ones, including the ones who are going to be born from now to forever, are all with you, all the time. That’s the Vietnamese family.”

“I’d like to write something about this.”

“Would you? You’d better do it on some other family. The Ngos are just a little anti-American right now.”

“It would be a good chance for them to make a point or two,” Christopher said. “I’ve got twenty million readers.”

“Your readers wouldn’t know a Truong toe from a third baseman, even after you told them. Paul, you’re shitting me. I think you’ve got something up your sleeve. You think about that while I get rid of some of this wine.”

Christopher watched Kim’s progress through the loud restaurant. Sybille Webster, sitting at a table against the wall, put a finger along her nose and winked at him. Tom Webster watched the Vietnamese go into the toilet, then walked over to Christopher’s table with his napkin clutched in his hand.

“Hi,” he said. “How’s every little thing?”

“Okay, Tom.”

“A college friend of yours passed through a couple of days ago. He left a message for you.”

“Did he, now? What was it?”

“It’s a bit complicated. Why don’t you come over for a drink when you ditch the little fellow?”

“All right. It may be late.”

Webster nodded and went back to his table. When Kim returned, he changed to red wine.

“Have you been to Beirut yet?” Christopher asked.

“No,” Kim replied, “I’ve decided to live oy my wits for a while. I keep busy selling interviews with Madame Nhu. You’re still not interested?”

“Not really, Kim. I know what she’s going to say-and it’s not publishable.”

“You want to do a story about the Ngo family without talking to her? No way you could do it-you’re too white, with all that blond hair and your big feet in wing tips. They wouldn’t say a word to you.”

Christopher shrugged. “I thought you might help out.”

“I don’t work there anymore.”

“But you work, Kim. I’m not thinking of your doing anything for free.”

Kim put down his wineglass and drew a short finger delicately around its rim. Christopher was.reminded of the bald banker in Geneva, counting money. “Well,” Kim said, “anything for the homeland. What seems reasonable to you?”

“A fair exchange. You give me ten good names-the Truong toe and whoever else you think might talk to me. I’d go to two hundred a name.”

Kim shook his head. “You’d have to use my name to get in the door,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“Then give me some other name-there must be someone I can pretend to know. By the time they check, I’ll be out of the country.”

“Give me a piece of paper,” Kim said. He pushed his plate aside and wrote rapidly with Christopher’s pen, holding it between his second and third fingers. “I’ve given you addresses, too-the one with the asterisk is the Truong toe.”

Christopher glanced at the list. “Who are the others?”

“Men to be careful of, Paul. I mean it. I think I know what you’re after.”

Kim laughed suddenly, staring into Christopher’s eyes. “Oh, this ought to be funny, Paul. You want a name to use as a reference, eh?” He leaned forward and beckoned Christopher closer. “Tell them you know Lê Thu,” he said.

“Lê Thu? That’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, sometimes,” Kim said. “Not always, though. Lê Thu-can you remember that? Believe me, that name will open doors in Vietnam.”

Christopher paid the bill. Outside, the café awnings were whipped by a hard winter rain. Kim fastened the button at the neck of his camel’s-hair overcoat. “Jesus,” he said, “I don’t wonder white people are all screwed up, coming from a climate like this.”

They walked together to the taxi rank at the corner of the boulevard Raspail. A tart standing against the wall of a building with her umbrella held over her head gave Christopher a miserable smile and cried, “Au secours!”

Kim stopped to inspect the girl. “How much?” he asked her in French.

“Un napoleon,” she replied, “service non compris.”

Kim turned away with a look of contempt. “A hundred francs-for that?”

The girl called after him, “Seventy-five, it’s raining.”

“C’est dégoûtant,” Kim said.

Christopher stepped under the awning of a darkened shop. He handed Kim an envelope.

“Two thousand francs,” he said. “You’re doing better than the poule, and you don’t have to stand out in the weather.”

Kim weighed the envelope in his hand, then stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. His hair had been parted by the rain and his small round face was wet.

“I’m selling a bigger thrill,” Kim said. “Remember the name-Lê Thu.”

4

Christopher let Kim walk alone to the taxi. When the cab was out of sight, he went into the Dome and ordered a hot rum. The zinc bar was gone, and the harp-backed straw chairs, but the manners of the customers had not changed. A boy in a ragged sweater stared contemptuously at Christopher’s suit and tie; the boy held his girl’s hand and pressed down hard with his thumbnail on each of her knuckles in turn, watching with a small smile as pain crossed her face.

Christopher watched the street. When he saw Tom and Sybille Webster get into a taxi, he paid his bill and walked around the corner to the Metro.

Webster opened the door before Christopher rang the bell. “How’s Kim, the P.R. genius?” he asked.

“About the same,” Christopher said. “Are we going to talk here, or do you want to go someplace else?”

“Wherever we go on a night like this, we’ll be surrounded by four walls. Sybille wants to say good-night to you-or goodbye, or whatever.”

Sybille had taken off her stockings when she came in from the rain, and she stood in front of the fireplace with her skirt lifted high on her freckled legs.

“Hello, cookie,” she said. “Why are you in this terrible town when you could be in the sun?”

Christopher kissed her. “To see you for the last time-we can’t go on meeting this way, Sybille.”

“That’s what David Patchen told me the other night. Oh, I realized I hated him when he sat right there with his eyes propped open like a bad statue’s and said, ‘By the way, Christopher’s resigned,’” Sybille said. “As a conversationalist he’s a blowgun-Paul, I know he’s your best friend, but every time he comes here he has some bit of news, tipped with curare, that he fires into my poor flesh. Why does he come? Why doesn’t he stay in Washington and stroke his computers?”

Webster handed his wife a glass of brandy. “We’ll still see Paul,” he said. “Blame him-he’s the one who resigned, after all.”

“I’d rather blame David Patchen,” Sybille said. “Besides, it will never be the same. We can’t assume Paul knows the same secrets as we do anymore. I’ve seen people go outside-they have the same faces as before, but they change. Little by little, what made them nice leaks out of them.”

Sybille drank her cognac. “Oh, well,” she said. “I’m going to bed like a good professional wife, so you two can have your last exchange of dark confidences. Are you sleeping here tonight. Paul?”

“I might, if that’s all right.”

“You know where-I’ll put some towels out for you. We’ll meet again in the morning.” Sybille put a hand to his cheek and kissed his lips. “It’s raining all over the world,” she said.

Webster filled their glasses again. They stood together by the fire, smiling at Sybille’s noises in the back of the apartment. Finally her bedroom door closed and Webster brought a sealed envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Christopher. There was no salutation on the note and no signature:

You wanted something on Oswald’s movements before Dallas.

He was in New Orleans from 24 April to 25 September, working at insignificant jobs. He passed out leaflets for something called the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

On 25 September, for no apparent reason, he went to Mexico City by bus, arriving there on the morning of 27 September. He stayed at the Hotel Commercio ($1.28 a day).

On the twenty-seventh, he went twice to the Cuban embassy and once to the Soviet embassy to apply for visas; said he wanted to return to Russia, transiting through Havana. He was turned down at both places, and had a loud argument with the Cuban consul. At the Soviet embassy he spoke with Yatskov and Kostikov, both KGB types under consular cover.

Between 27 September and 1 October, he remained in Mexico City, but there is no information about his movements on those three days. He returned to Dallas, arriving 3 October, and went to work at the Texas Book Depository on 16 October.

He’d had the rifle for some time-bought it under a false name, “A. Hidell,” on 13 March, by mail order.

On 1 November, he rented P.O. Box 6225, Terminal Annex, Dallas.

After our little dance on the sidewalk, I began to think about what you’d said. Maybe we’re the ones with illusions, but it doesn’t matter. See what you can do; if you succeed, I’d like to hear about it. But that’s up to you.

The money in Geneva represents less than the total of your magazine salary over the past five years. We never found a way to give it to charity (something about accounting regulations), so it’s been lying in a safe all this time. I found a way to give it back to you as a “termination bonus.” As long as we call it that, it seems to be okay. There’s more if you need it.

I wish I could arrange a nobler gesture. It’s not possible. I do advise you to stay out of this country for a while. Your highly placed friend won’t be in “power” forever, but while he is, you might as well realize you have no one here who can help you. He’s serious about the straitjacket.

I’ve told Tom about your “resignation,” to prevent his sending me cables asking where you are. He’ll keep it to himself, even if asked directly. He knows nothing else, and shouldn’t.

Good-bye.

Christopher read the first part of the note again to memorize it, and dropped it in the fire. Webster said, “What’s all this about, Paul?”

“A word of farewell from David.”

Webster brushed aside Christopher’s reply with a motion of his hand. “I mean, what brought this on so suddenly?”

“Tom, it’s not so sudden. You get tired of the life. I’ve been hanging around alone in hotel rooms in central Africa and Afghanistan ever since I got out of college. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“It’s not too convenient for the rest of us, you know. There are twenty-six principal agents in eighteen different countries out there who won’t talk to anyone but you.”

“They’ll get along. Ninety percent of what they do, they do out of their own resources. They aren’t photographing documents, they’re running political movements. I’ve held their hands for a long time-let them go on alone.”

Webster sat down heavily. “I’m not used to operating against you, Paul, and I don’t like to do it. I think this smells very, very funny. Patchen doesn’t give a shit about your agents, either. He wouldn’t discuss handing them over to somebody else. It’s like he expects you back after a short vacation.”

“I won’t be back, Tom. David knows that.”

“Then what’s he waiting for? He doesn’t want word of your leaving to get around, isn’t that right?”

“You read Patchen’s mind if you want to. I’ve never been able to do it. What do you mean by operating against me?”

“Trying to get you to open up,” Webster said. “Sybille may think things have changed, but I don’t. We’ve never lied to each other, Paul.”

“Then let’s not start now.”

“All right, I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t think you’re out. I think you and David have got something going. You went to Washington without even telling us. I didn’t know you’d been there until Patchen showed up on the doorstep day before yesterday.”

“When I went to Washington, it seemed the thing to do, Tom. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you-but I go a lot of places without telling you, when I pay for my own ticket.”

“So you fly home at your own expense, resign, make plans to shack up in Rome for the rest of your life with that Australian you’ve got, right?” Webster said. “And a week later I spot you in La Coupole, with Nguyen Kim, with no French surveillance closer than wherever you lost it. The French are on him like ten pots of glue, all the time. You’re telling me they took a night off so you two could eat oysters and gossip about old times?”

“Tom, I’m not telling you that-you’re making it up.”

“Well, I’m not making this up. Kim has run just over two million dollars through the Banque Sadak in Beirut in the last ten days. He’s got couriers going every which way.”

“He didn’t mention that to me,” Christopher said.

“The French have got him bugged. We couldn’t get mikes in there because there’s always someone in the house, so we’re piggybacking the French wires.”

Christopher laughed. “I’ll bet the French are going to like that.”

“They won’t find out. We’re not going to find out a hell of a lot listening to tapes. We need someone next to Kim-like you. But you’re an outsider. I’m not telling you any more.”

“I can guess,” Christopher said. “You think they’re talking to Hanoi-put us back in, and we’ll let you in after we get rid of the Yankee devils.”

“Maybe. But it may just be business. Kim’s in touch with a heroin factory in Marseilles.”

“Why? They’ve got more opium in Vietnam than they know what to do with.”

“I don’t know-maybe he’s buying technology. If Kim can process it himself instead of shipping it raw, he’ll make fifty, a hundred times the profit.”

“Do you really think they’re serious about the heroin business?”

“Kim sure as hell is,” Webster said. “He puts in all his time on it, night and day. He wants to buy a factory. I’m certain of it.”

Christopher grinned. “Were you in touch with your wire man today?”

“Yeah, How’d you enjoy your beer at Fouquet’s?”

“Okay. You had nobody behind me after I left.”

“Didn’t I? I stuck a bleeper under the left rear fender of your fucking Peugeot, buddy.”

Webster was filled with sly pride. He showed Christopher a rigid middle finger and poured himself another cognac.

“That’ll teach me to believe in coincidence,” Christopher said.

“You just aren’t used to operating against a professional service,” Webster said. “You’re not going to explain a goddamn thing, are you?”

“Tom, there’s nothing to explain. If you think I’m not out, you’re wrong. I’m through. I don’t work for you people any longer.”

Webster took off his glasses. He was a young man, but there were heavy pouches beneath his eyes and broken veins under the skin of his face. “Okay, Paul,” he said, “I’ll say this-next to Sybille, you’re the most sensitive human being I know. You don’t think for a minute that I believe any of this. Patchen sat right here and told me to help you any way I could and to keep my mouth shut about it. That seemed a little unusual to me.”

“If I need any help, I’ll let you know,” Christopher said. “One thing-have you picked up anything on the audio you have on Kim about somebody called Lê Thu?”

Webster thought, and shook his head. “I don’t recall, but I’ve got some logs in my briefcase. Hold on.” He looked through a sheaf of typed sheets. “No, nothing in these, Who’s he supposed to be?”

“I think it’s a she-Lê is a female indicator in Vietnamese names, like Lé Xuan, for Mrs. Nhu. It was a name Kim mentioned, as if he were playing a practical joke on me. Maybe he is.”

“I can run it through for a name check, if you want.”

“No,” Christopher said. “Don’t do that. I’m not entitled to such services. You’ve got to start remembering I’m a private citizen.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Webster said. “Go to bed.”

5

Christopher rose while it was still dark. He left a note for Sybille on the kitchen table and went down the carpeted stairs. In the cobbled courtyard of the apartment building he encountered the Webster’s concierge. She was collecting the garbage, and she raised her wizened face, narrowing her eyes in the smoke of her morning cigarette. Her squint of suspicion changed to a smile.

“Husbands travel, don’t they?” she said.

Christopher rapped softly on the lid of one of the concierge’s garbage cans. “It’s the age of the airplane-everybody can afford to fly,” he said.

The old woman grinned. “But some have to take off early, eh?”

Christopher gave her a ten-franc note, and she trotted ahead of him through the rain to open the heavy door to the street.

He found a café filled with workmen and a few pallid whores; the girls sat at the tables by the window, talking about shops and movies with the kindness and generosity they have for one another. He was reminded of Webster; like him, the girls were aging too quickly, and they placed the same value on people who knew the things that they had learned. They understood one another’s fatigue.

Christopher had two cups of coffee and went out into the rain again. By the time he had walked to Montparnasse, the rain had stopped and Paris was filled with its winter light, a dull atmosphere of mother-of-pearl. There was no one in the street behind the Select where he had parked his car. He felt inside the left rear fender until he found the transmitter Webster had put there. It was attached with a strong adhesive, and Christopher broke a fingernail prying it loose. He stuck it under the tailgate of a truck with Nice license plates.

Christopher headed north, toward Brussels. He reached the airport there by noon. In the tax-free shop he bought Molly a ring shaped like a cobra with rubies for eyes. That afternoon in the sunlight in Piazza del Popolo, he watched her slip it on her finger.

“A stealthy gift,” she said. “What lovely surprise have you in store for me next?”

“I’m going to the Far East tomorrow,” Christopher said.

“Christ. You just got back from there.”

“I promise to love you the whole time I’m gone,” Christopher said.

Molly removed the ring and put it on the table between them.

“Don’t mock me in daylight with the things I say in the dark,” she said. “One day I’m going to leave you alone in bed, Paul, and tell you nothing when I return except that I love you. You’ll find the reassurance means quite a lot.”