Nile Shadows

In the Black Code, chirped Alice. Seduction made me think of it.

And so, concluded Belle, allowing for some deciphering and translating in the dark hours, the timing would be just right for Rommel to have his little fellers sitting beside his herring at breakfast the following morning. Everything that would be useful for Rommel to know, carefully compiled by Colonel Fellers.

Belle smiled, Alice smiled. Joe was utterly astonished. He looked from one sister to the other and whistled softly.

And there, said Belle, is the secret behind the Desert Fox's uncanny foresight. He can read. And thus it seems it may not always be wise to praise famous men.

Or to put it another way, chirped Alice gaily, you know a man by what he puts his nose into first thing in the morning. Little fellers? Herring? . . .

What do you think? Belle asked Joe.

In answer Joe whistled again, very softly.

I think the two of you are astounding, he said. And I also think the Black Code is about to join Hammurabi's code as one more chunk of ancient history in the sandy Middle East. From now on it's herring only for Rommel's breakfast, and a once dashing hero is back to looking like a surly thug when not in uniform.

Well there, twittered Alice brightly.

Belle clicked her knitting needles with conviction.

Next? she said.

***

Joe nodded. He frowned.

I'm sorry, but a few things are still a little unclear to me. Bletchley has told me almost nothing and I haven't been able to talk to Stern yet, so the hieroglyphs are still a mite mysterious. The truth is, I still can't make out Stern's role exactly.

Ask questions then, suggested Belle. Isn't that why you're here?

It is, said Joe, and I have to admit I feel a little bit like some ancient Greek traveler come to pay a call on the Sphinx.

Little Alice laughed.

Come now, we're not as enigmatic as all that, are we? Two forgotten little old women with their aches and pains and their lives behind them?

Joe smiled.

No one would ever describe you that way. The two of you are a legend, you must know that.

To others maybe, said Alice, looking down at her cramped hands, her laughter gone.

Just look at those, she whispered sadly. Two ugly claws, that's what they are.

There there, said Belle in a quiet voice. We mustn't dwell on the unfortunate things, dear. After all, life has been very kind to us in so many ways.

Alice looked up at her sister, who smiled and nodded in encouragement.

Belle sitting stiffly erect.

What a will of iron, thought Joe. Two broken hips and part of her paralyzed and nothing holding her together at all really but that fierce mind of hers, that iron soul that won't give up because she knows her little sister couldn't manage without her. Because she knows Little Alice would just float away like the beautiful dream she's always been. Wind in her hair and running through the fields and climbing trees to see over walls, a pretty singing bird who'd just take flight on the rays of the sun and float off in the summer air forever if it weren't for her older sister waiting back there on the porch where she's always been, solid and substantial and just a mind now, just a soul that won't give in. Big Belle, they've always called her and that's what she is, determined and fierce and all mind and soul now. And precious little else now, God have mercy.

Belle turned to him.

You have questions?

I do, said Joe. I was wondering if Stern has known all along that the Germans have the Black Code?

Not all along. He found out not too long ago, as we did, by way of the Italians. They're good at so many things, but war isn't one of them. Winston summed up the matter once with his usual flair for words. An Italian blitzkrieg was the phrase he used, which is certainly the most hopeless of concepts, and also one reason I've always liked the Italians. A people incapable of making war well are blessed by God. In any case, Alice and I knew only that this American cipher had been stolen in Rome. We didn't know what use it was being put to, or about this Colonel Fellers here in Cairo. But Stern would have been aware of all that. And more important, the Germans would have known that he was.

You're certain of that?

I am now. It's simple enough to reconstruct it in retrospect. I would say the Germans were probably present when the truth slipped out in front of Stern. So if he had spoken to the British, the Germans would have known immediately who had given the secret away. You understand, I'm sure, that Stern's extraordinary value to the Allies has always been that he's thoroughly trusted by the other side. It's this very unusual quality he has about him. This ability to inspire trust.

I know, said Joe.

So knowing that the Black Code had been compromised, Stern was placed in a terrible position.

Stern's usual position, it seems. But the two of you suspected this?

Yes, we both sensed it. We could see how tormented he'd become. It was obvious something was torturing him, but we didn't know what it was until tonight.

This is an idle speculation, said Joe, but do you think Stern was planning to tell the British eventually?

That's neither idle nor speculation, replied Belle. The reason Stern returned to Cairo a few days ago was precisely to do that. Again, this has only become clear to us tonight. Until a few days ago he'd been hoping the British would uncover the truth about the Black Code through other channels, other sources.

He'd been desperately waiting and praying for that. But when this last mission turned out to be such a disaster, he decided he couldn't wait any longer. His mission was part of a larger scheme, apparently, which was a total failure.

Yes, I know about it, said Joe. There were special strike forces and the like against the German and Italian bases being used to attack Malta. Bletchley mentioned it. Stern was probably serving as a pathfinder, the contact for one of the commando groups behind enemy lines.

He was devastated when he returned, continued Belle. Truly wretched. He said he feared the tide might really have turned in favor of the Germans. So he had decided to talk to Bletchley.

Joe was puzzled.

Yet I was with Bletchley yesterday evening and there was no hint at all that he even knew Stern was back in Cairo.

No, Bletchley didn't know Stern was back, or at least he didn't know then. As it turned out, Stern didn't have to go to Bletchley. As soon as Stern reappeared in Cairo he learned that what he'd been so desperately waiting for had finally happened. The British had finally learned about the breaking of the Black Code through other channels.

That would explain Bletchley's new sense of calm last night, said Joe. But at the same time Bletchley has been implying all along that this was exactly the kind of thing that worried him about Stern. This business that's now cleared up by the fact that Colonel Fellers and the Black Code were the source of all the trouble. So it just seems strange that Bletchley didn't say anything about it, or give me some hint that the situation had changed and Stern was no longer under suspicion.

Joe nodded to himself, puzzled anew. But Belle said nothing and he noticed that her face was impassive as she stared at her knitting.

Trouble, thought Joe, for the first time sensing that the Sisters were withholding something from him.

***

What could it be? he wondered. Obviously it had to do with protecting Stern, but why? From what?

And why had Bletchley said nothing if the revelations about the Black Code cleared Stern of suspicion?

Didn't it have to mean that Bletchley had some deeper concern about Stern? Some fear that far transcended the Black Code?

The writing on the wall. The hieroglyphs of Stern's life. Joe still couldn't read them, they were still a mystery. And he was sure now the Sisters were holding something back, guarding some secret because of their love for Stern. Cherishing Stern, as so many people did.

And then there was Belle's mention of other channels. Bletchley, the British, had learned about the Germans deciphering the Black Code through other channels. Did that mean some low-level informer who was secretly working for the British, or was much more than that involved? Was that why Bletchley had said nothing to Joe? Because these other channels were so very important Bletchley couldn't even hint at their existence?

***

Belle sat rigidly in her chair, her mouth set.

Perhaps it's the timing that's confusing me, said Joe, the sequence of events. The Black Code was stolen in Rome toward the beginning of the year?

Belle nodded.

No earlier?

Belle shook her head.

It doesn't fit, he thought. That was when the three men in white linen suits had turned up in Arizona, just about the same time the Germans were getting their hands on the Black Code and putting it to use in North Africa.

So obviously Bletchley had studied Stern's file and picked out Joe's name and asked that Joe be recruited to come to Cairo for another reason altogether. For something that didn't have anything to do with a serious security leak in Cairo, and the suspicion that Stern might be behind it. The appearance of the Black Code affair was merely a coincidence, something that had turned up in the interim and been cleverly put to use by Bletchley to mask his real concern from Joe. So Bletchley's real concern must have always been elsewhere, his fear of Stern something more profound.

And as so often the same thought returned to Joe, an inexplicable episode in Stern's life that wouldn't go away—Stern's Polish story. He wondered whether the Sisters would discuss it. He wondered if they even knew anything about it, so mysterious was it becoming in Joe's mind.

***

Belle still sat with her mouth set, waiting.

I don't mean to pry, said Joe, but it seems you've seen Stern more than once since he's been back.

That's true enough, said Belle. He's in the habit of coming here quite often, he's always done that. But it has nothing to do with Bletchley or what he does for Bletchley. Stern's visits here go back to a time before he began his revolutionary work. To the days when he was a young student in Cairo.

I see. I didn't know that. To be frank, as well as I knew Stern in Jerusalem, he never mentioned you.

Belle smiled.

He's like that, isn't he. Very private and protective of those he loves. And I imagine there have been other revelations for you concerning Stern since you've been here.

Yes. Many. And I have a feeling the most important ones are yet to come.

Belle frowned. She gazed at Joe.

How long have you been in Cairo? she asked.

A little over two weeks.

Such a short time. . . . Tell me, how do you feel about these revelations you've had concerning Stern?

Joe shrugged.

Ah well, he said, that's hard to put into words because Stern's life is more complex than most. But all lives are secret tapestries that swirl and sweep through the years with souls and strivings as the colors, the threads. And there may be little knots of tangled meaning everywhere beneath the surface, tying the colors and threads together, but the little knots aren't important finally, only the sweep itself, the tapestry as a whole. So what saddens me about Stern is that I may never even glimpse the sweep to his life. Not even have a glimpse of the tapestry as a whole. . . . That's how I feel.

Belle nodded, gazing at him, deep in thought.

She's trying to decide what to do, thought Joe. They know exactly what I need but they're protecting Stern the way everybody does.

Little Alice stirred, a faraway look in her eyes.

And oh he was such a handsome boy, she murmured. I remember so well the first time we met him, right here in this very room. Menelik had brought him to meet us. Menelik and Stern's father had been great friends in the old days, and when Stern came to Cairo to study, Menelik was like an uncle to him. He brought Stern here the very day Stern arrived in Cairo from the desert. . . .

To this very room. And Stern was so young and strong and pure, so determined to be honest and kind in life. And those beautiful ideals of his, and that wonderful enthusiasm. Of course there were other sides to him as well, I suppose there had to be, growing up in the desert the way he did, in a tent on a dusty little hillside in the Yemen where there were no other children to play with, so much alone from the very beginning and accustomed to that, because it was the way it had always been. A kind of solitude you could see in his eyes, a mark of sadness perhaps, a touch of the barren desert deep within him that would always be there, no matter what. A quietude, a stillness, and it did have its lonely side to it. You had to admit that.

But there was also so much warmth and tenderness in him because people were so precious to him, because of his loneliness as a child, I imagine. And you only had to look at him and listen to him talk for just a moment to be filled with joy. You couldn't help yourself, you were just swept away. This is what life can be, you felt. This joy and this beauty and this freedom, this exquisite music drawn from the silence of the desert.

Even though life doesn't turn out that way for most of us. Even though things happen and get in the way and we seem to arrive at some little place in life, by chance as much as anything else, and just stay there.

Never having done as much as we would have liked, never doing all the things we dreamed of doing once. Even though it is like that for most of us in the end, when we look back.

Even so, you felt something different when Stern was with you. You only had to look at him to know there could be so much more, truly beautiful things. It was hope that he gave you. Hope. You felt it. You just knew it.

And he stood right there that first afternoon, I remember. It was his first day in Cairo and he stood in those open doors by the river, his eyes shining, and he said how wonderful it was to see all that water, to just stand beside the Nile and look at it. And he laughed and he said that might sound foolish to us, but that when you had grown up in the desert the glory of all that water was simply miraculous, simply beyond imagination. Truly a wonder, he said, laughing. Truly a gift of God. A gift of His variety and splendor.

He had an Arabic name as well then, I don't remember what. Menelik would remember but Menelik's dead now. And he stood there in the open doors with his eyes shining, laughing and gazing at the Nile and just feasting on all of it like a hungry man brought to a great table. And he told us all the beautiful things he was going to do in life. Hope. Hope. . . .

So very young then, back in the beginning. A thin excited boy with everything ahead of him, filling our hearts to overflowing with joy, his joy, the magic of just being able to look and see and feel and love.

That's how rich the world was for Stern. So miraculous for him and so unexpected in its gifts, its blessings. . . .

Yes, we all felt it that first afternoon. Menelik and Belle and myself, we all felt it although not one of us said a word. But we understood the magic of that moment. Watching him, listening to him, we all knew he was precious to this world and it would always be so. Precious. A special human being, a man apart.

Always to be so. . . .

Silence then in the room. Silence for a time.

Finally Belle picked up her knitting. The rhythmic clicking began again.

There's more you wish to know? she asked.

A few things perhaps, said Joe.

***

Joe scratched his beard. He picked up his empty whiskey glass and put it down again.

There's a trip Stern made to Poland, he said. Nearly three years ago, just before the war broke out. I'm convinced it's at the heart of everything because Stern was reckless for once, and that's not his way.

Joe stopped.

Are you familiar at all with any of this?

Alice looked at Belle, whose face was impassive.

Why would Stern have done that? asked Belle after a moment.

To save lives, said Joe. To preserve the lives of others. And I understand he felt there was some kind of priceless breakthrough while he was in Poland. Do you know anything about it?

First, said Belle, there's a question we have to ask. How important is it for you to find out about this?

Very.

Very, yes. All kinds of things seem important along the way, but in the end? You might be surprised what's important to Alice and me when we look back on life.

I don't think so, said Joe.

Alice sighed.

Nor do I, she said, and Belle doesn't either. But what she's asking in her delicate way, Joe, is this. What if it meant your life?

I know that's what she's asking, and the answer has to be the same. I came to Cairo to find out about Stern, that's all.

But why is that so all-important to you?

Because he deserves it. Because the end is coming for him and he deserves a witness to the truth of his life.

But why? Why do you feel that so strongly?

Because he's explored the human soul more deeply than anyone I've ever known. Because his life looks like nothing but failure, and I can't accept that without knowing it to be true. Because long ago in Smyrna during the massacres, deep in the night that began our age of genocide, I watched him pull back the head of a dying little girl and slit her throat, and that moment has forever haunted me. Because unless there's some meaning in his life, I can't see where there would ever be any meaning anywhere.

And does there have to be? asked Belle.

No.

For you or for anyone?

No.

Do you feel it's our right, just because we were born?

No. But I feel we should seek it.

And yet you yourself, Joe, find Stern's life to be a chaotic tapestry. And in such a vast network of colors and threads and souls and strivings, what can you expect to find?

Nothing perhaps.

But if you did find out . . . about him, what would it tell you?

It might begin to tell me what life is, and how it should be lived.

Belle stared at him and then she turned away to gaze through the open French doors at the river. Alice had also turned away and was looking out at the river, and again there was silence in the strange room so crowded with ghostly wicker chairs, the dozens and dozens of pale shadowy shapes drifting with the reflections of the stars off the water, airily floating in the soft yellow glow of the few candles that still burned in memory of other eras, dimly now and low with the late hour.

And it's decided now, thought Joe. The weaving's done and they know what they're going to say or not say to protect the rare fragile thing they cherish.

It was Alice whose small voice finally broke the silence. Little Alice gazing at the river and speaking quietly in the stillness.

How hard we try, she murmured. How hard we try.

***

The two ancient women seemed far away, lost in thought. Abruptly Belle's knitting needles clicked once.

All right, she said. All right, young Joe, you'll have what you want to know. But whatever we tell you now is for Stern's sake. It doesn't concern the war, not this war or any war, because we have nothing to do with such things. So for Stern's sake, then, because we love him and because he's always been like a son to us, and there's no limit to that kind of love.

Belle paused, her hands holding her knitting. Alice sat erect, watching her.

Over the years, said Belle, we've known many people from many lands who have come to tarry here in the course of their restless journeys and be touched by the timelessness of the place. And there's nothing new about that, people have always done that. Alexander the Great stopped here, wondering whether he might recognize something, before setting out to reshape the world. But it was already a tradition by then and long before young Alexander there had been visitors in search of man's past, his nature, come to view the enigmatic pyramids and the enigmatic Sphinx and the great river that gives life in the desert. A Greek word, enigma. A riddle, something obscure. Do you know the origins of the word?

No, said Joe.

It means to speak darkly, murmured Little Alice. To speak allusively. And the root of that is the Greek word for a tale.

Yes, said Belle. Oddly enough, the ancient Greeks had the idea that such was the nature of an account of life. To recite a tale, to speak of life, was to speak darkly because the essentials forever lay just beyond the clear light of the mind, tempting and allusive and beyond. To them, a tale was felt and experienced and its truths were known that way. But a tale could never be reduced through recitation to mere landscapes and seascapes and other topographies of the soul, however mighty, however brilliant the telling of it. Nor could the shadows and the echoes of a tale be removed in the speaking of it.

Belle studied Joe.

By chance, we know the name of their first great teller of tales, don't we? Or at least time and tradition have assigned a name to this blind man who would otherwise be anonymous, who must have sat in the dust of some wayside recounting what he had overheard from the din raised by those who passed him by, or what he imagined he had overheard. And curiously enough, since you mention Smyrna, it was that very same ancient Greek city in Asia Minor where this obscure blind man was said to have been born.

Blind Homer seeing deeply behind his dead eyes, seeing brilliantly in the dust of the wayside through the perpetual shadows of his mind. Homer's blind eyes at play for all time on the dancing glittering seascapes, on the hard unyielding landscapes of the ancient world where others passed him by on their journeys, passed him by while imagining they sailed and strived in the clear white light of their days. When in fact he was the one who saw the journey, not them, because he was blind and they had only lived it.

And that ancient Greek image of blind Homer seeing more than the great heroes of whom he spoke, seeing more than those who have eyes, is an enigma in itself. And as an enigma it whispers to us and hints at things and suggests far more than we might want to acknowledge readily, and it remains an enigma untouched by millennia, no less of a truth today and yet no more resolvable than it was then, three thousand years ago. An enigma as dark and allusive and true, still, as it ever was. And with that we are brought to the code you now look for in Cairo.

Belle paused, gazing at Joe.

Today? This century? Stern? A sudden unexplained trip to Poland just before the war broke out? A priceless breakthrough?

Enigma, she said, is the name of the code machine used by the Germans. Just before the war broke out, a Polish intelligence service acquired one of these machines. Stern learned of its existence through contacts and he knew the machine had to be turned over to the British before Poland fell. Consequently, he went to Poland at once and there were hectic clandestine meetings in Warsaw that finally resulted in the most important meeting of all, held in a secret signals-intelligence post buried underground in the Pyry forest, a concrete bunker referred to as the house in the woods. Stern wasn't at that final meeting himself, but he played some part in arranging it. Just what part I can't tell you, because Alice and I don't know that. In addition to the Poles at the meeting there were three men from London, two of them professional experts in cryptology. The third man from London, an observer rather than a participant, was there in the guise of a professor from Oxford.

Joe was listening intently, deep in thought.

He knits, said Joe suddenly.

Both Belle and Alice stared at him.

What's that? asked Belle, startled.

Joe looked confused, embarrassed. He had spoken as if from a trance. Now he passed his hand over the side of his face, a nervous gesture, as if he were brushing something away. Even as he made the movement with his hand, he realized it was something he had seen both Liffy and Cohen do in the last few days.

Do you know about this? asked Belle.

No, none of it, said Joe quickly. A thought just came to me, that's all. I'm sorry I interrupted you, I didn't mean to.

Who knits? asked Belle, curious all at once.

That third Englishman who was in the bunker, the one who was pretending to be a professor from Oxford. Actually he's a Scotsman.

He is?

Yes.

How do you know that?

The way he speaks.

And he knits?

Yes.

How do you know?

I've met him. He knits and listens and doesn't say much. And he smokes a strong brand of cigarettes, or rather, he inhales them without lighting them. He never lights his cigarettes. They call him Ming on the other side of the Atlantic, the American-Canadian side. He's a chief of some kind, high up, probably at the top, he has that way about him. When I saw him he was traveling with an American and a Canadian who must be equally high up, who go by the names of Big Bill and Little Bill.

How do you know it's the same man?

I don't, I just have this feeling it must be.

Belle stared at Joe, curious and more.

You're beginning to sound like Alice, she said in a quiet respectful voice. And where did you meet this Scotsman called Ming, who knits?

On top of a mesa in Arizona, said Joe. Underground, in the sky. In a kiva.

A what?

The Hopi Indians call them a kiva. It's a sacred underground chamber. At the time I met him I joked with myself that they were the Three Fates come to call on me. One Fate spins the net of life, one measures it, one cuts it. I joked with myself that he was the one who spins, because he knitted and listened in the kiva and didn't say much. He gave me a shawl then that he'd knitted, a black shawl, it was a gift. They came to visit me in Arizona to get me to come to Cairo to find out about Stern.

Before I left the mesa I gave the shawl away, added Joe for no reason. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please go on.

But Belle didn't go on. She was still staring at him, fascinated.

You gave the shawl away before you left that place? To whom?

A little Indian girl in the village. A little Indian girl.

Yes, what happened?

Nothing really, said Joe. I was sitting on the edge of the mesa one night and the sun was going down and a little girl came out of the shadows and stood beside me. I took her hand and the air was getting chilly so I gave her the shawl and she was there with me for a while. She didn't say anything, neither of us said anything, we were watching the last of the light. After it grew dark she went home and I went to the kiva for a meeting with the tribal elders.

I gave her the shawl because it was cold, he added simply. It was my last night before I left the mesa, as it turned out. I was trying to decide whether to leave or not, whether to come to Cairo.

You were thinking of Stern, said Belle, and of the dying little girl in Smyrna twenty years ago. The one whom Stern . . .

Belle stopped. She stared at her lap.

Yes, you're right, said Joe. I thought a lot about Stern that night.

Nervously, Joe passed his hand over the side of his face again.

Please, he said, I'm sorry to have interrupted. I'm terribly anxious to hear the rest of it. What happened at the secret meeting in the woods near Warsaw? The Poles agreed to turn over their Enigma to the British?

Belle looked at him. She leaned back in her chair.

Yes. Eventually the machine reached London and since then the British have been reading everything the Germans tell each other. The secret is truly priceless, and very few men in the British commands know of the existence of Enigma. But Stern knows, and the British have learned that he knows, and how can they possibly allow that to be when Stern lives the kind of life he does? The secret is far too important, the danger far too great. And then there's also the future and Stern's Zionist connections to be considered. Today, British and Zionist interests coincide, but they didn't before the war and they may not again. So with everything taken together, it's a situation the British would feel they would have to bring to an end.

A cry escaped Little Alice.

An end, she whispered, gazing out at the river.

Oh an end, an end. . . .

***

Joe got to his feet. He walked quickly over to the open French doors and turned, restlessly beginning to pace around the room.

It's clear enough now, he said. Bletchley's been having me trace people down to see what he has to worry about. He didn't have time himself to do the follow-up work so he had me called in to do the excavating for him, to find out which of Stern's friends might know what. A natural precaution for a professional like him. He didn't want to make his move against Stern until he was sure he could finish things once and for all. You can't afford loose ends when the secret's as big as this one, so he had me out gathering the bits and pieces, and then when he felt he had enough of the picture. . . .

Oh my God, cried Joe, I've been digging Stern's grave. I've been digging into Stern's past so Bletchley can get ahold of it and . . .

Joe sank into a chair, appalled at what he had done. He gripped his hands together, trying to get some control over himself, and suddenly he remembered where he was. He looked up, staring wildly at one sister and then the other.

There's danger, he said. There's danger to all the people I've talked to, I can't say it strongly enough.

Obviously Bletchley's been watching me much more closely than I imagined, since that was the whole point of the thing. And there's danger to the two of you, and we've got to . . .

Belle shook her head.

No.

But there is, I tell you. If Bletchley suspects . . .

No, repeated Belle. We understood this situation before you came here, Joe, that's why we asked how important it was for you to learn the truth about Stern's trip to Poland. We've known all along what the implications of that were, as has Stern. So nothing has changed for him tonight, or for us, but much has changed for you and those you've been in touch with. For unfortunately we never act alone, do we? The colors and threads of the tapestry are too closely interwoven for that, so no matter what we do, we always act for others as well, although generally without their knowledge, and often without even knowing it ourselves. But that's the nature of souls and strivings, isn't it, Joe? None of them is ever separate and every act casts echoes in many places, through many lives.

Joe jumped to his feet.

But the two of you, he began. We must . . .

Belle stopped him again. She shook her head.

No, not us, Joe. There's nothing for us to fear. Just look around you and you can see that for yourself.

Alice and I are from another time altogether. We've lived our lives and there's nothing anyone can do to us that matters, surely you understand that. And even if there were, I doubt Bletchley would dare to take a decision like that upon himself. In fact, I'm quite certain he wouldn't.

Belle nodded slowly and went on in her quiet voice.

But even that's not the point. Alice and I aren't really a part of any of this, don't you see that? At the beginning I told you that what we were going to say had only to do with Stern, not with the war, not with this war or any war. And I said we would tell you for his sake, Joe, because we love him and because you wanted to know the truth about him for your own reasons. Your own personal reasons. Isn't that so?

Yes . . . yes it is.

And we believe in those reasons of yours, Joe, and so we went on and spoke to you.

Joe had collapsed in a chair. He looked up and found both Belle and Alice watching him.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry but I . . .

It's all right, whispered Little Alice suddenly. Don't take so much on yourself, Joe, just let Belle finish.

Joe turned from one of them to the other.

Yes, I'm sorry. Please go on.

Belle nodded.

This may sound strange to you, but the truth is Stern is more important to us than the war, this war or any war. His life means more to us, quite simply, than all the clamor of all the great armies which are ravaging the world for the sake of a noble cause, bless them, and for the sake of an evil cause, damn them. And that's true even though vast numbers of innocent people are suffering and dying, and even though many more will suffer and die before it's over one way or the other, if it ever is.

A sad smile played on Belle's face.

That may sound narrow and selfish to you, Joe, and it may even offend you. But we're not philosophers, Alice and I, and that's the way it is for us. Certainly we would wish better for the world, and we know what a terrible tragedy it is when these bestial nightmares seize men. But the two of us are old, Joe.

We're old, and we've lived too long to embrace the entire earth and everyone on it. These times are a tragedy for man, but we're simply too small and our eyes are too old and dim to gather that grand sweep in. We've never been great empresses of all the somethings, or magnificent queens by the Nile. We're just two sisters who never married and never had children, who began by mopping floors and went on to find roles in an opera of life, who dreamed a few harmless dreams along the way and then ended somewhere, having done the best we could.

And in the end there's nothing more to say than that, nothing except one thing. We love Stern, our son.

We would do anything for him but there's nothing we can do for him now but weep, and so we do that.

With the darkness closing around us, in our hearts, we weep for him and we weep. For him. . . .

***

Joe sat with his head in his hands, listening to the words of the Sisters and thinking of many things. Of Ahmad and Liffy and David and Anna, of Bletchley and his desert fortress and his bands of anonymous Monks, of Maud and Stern and the quiet little Cairo square where the two of them had once passed evenings together. And of the young Stern years ago in this very room, standing in the open doors beside the great expanse of river and laughing, his eyes shining. . . . Stern laughing and feasting on the riches of life, giving joy and hope to all who knew him.

Joe felt two tiny hands on his shoulders, gestures by the Sisters in passing, the two of them stopping to touch him for a moment as they moved slowly across the room, Big Belle going stiffly on ahead, Little Alice lingering to speak to him softly.

We're in the habit of ending our evenings with music, she said. It's soothing to us and helps us to sleep, but mostly we do it because it brings back so many good memories of beautiful moments we have known. So please excuse us, Joe, and leave whenever you like. We know you have much that concerns you and much to consider. Young men always do. . . .

A mysterious blend of sounds then filled the shadowy sunroom in that strange houseboat anchored on the shores of the Nile, Little Alice brightly trilling on her harpsichord as Big Belle sounded the somber notes of her small bassoon, a twinkling haunting strain to their music as Joe gazed out at the river and listened to their elegy under the stars, their allusive recitation at the end of the long night.

-16-

Two Candles

As soon as Joe left the houseboat he picked out one of the men who was following him. He waved to the man and began walking quickly.

Several buses later and he had also lost the second man. Of course it had to be obvious what he was doing and Bletchley would be getting telephone calls from the surveillance team, but that didn't matter to Joe. He was angry now, too angry to care if it showed as he worked his way deeper into the city, waiting, doubling back, looking for eyes that avoided his, a head that turned away.

Nothing. No one. Where was the third man, or was Bletchley using two-man teams to cover him?

No, not good enough. Using replacements, then? The men telephoning in and having someone take their place ahead of Joe? Waiting for him, keeping the trail alive that way?

No, Bletchley wouldn't have the manpower for that, not with all the demands there had to be on the Monastery these days. Bletchley might be willing to assign more men to him but not until he was sure Joe was really on the run. And Bletchley couldn't know that yet, despite the telephone calls coming in from his surveillance team that morning.

Monks, thought Joe. Bletchley's bloody Monks from the desert. A secret order of initiates with their own rules and their own hierarchy, looking like everybody else but not like anybody else at all. Solitaries who pursued their missions alone, silently conversing with their coreligionists through secret signs. . . . Even their vows had a monastic quality to them. Obedience and silence, and poverty in a way, chastity in a way. A secret brotherhood with secret goals, the anonymous Monks of war. . . . The bloody anonymous Monks of war.

So where was the third man then, the leader of the team?

Joe quickened his step and turned corners, angry that somewhere near a man was watching him, hunting him, one of Bletchley's anonymous Monks. And then all at once he saw him. A small man moving awkwardly on the other side of the crowded street.

Joe felt a sudden rush of blood. Now he was a hunter himself and he could strike, wound.

There was a café on the corner. He turned in and went to the back where the telephones were, slipped out the rear entrance of the café and moved behind a truck which was rolling forward to cross the street.

He walked slowly keeping pace with the truck, hidden by it. Only a minute or two had passed since he had first seen the man.

Joe was now across the street from the café, behind the small young man who had joined a group of people waiting at a bus stop. The small man had opened a newspaper and was pretending to read it as he watched the café. Joe moved up behind him and dropped his chin onto the small man's shoulder, rested his chin there, looked down at the newspaper open in front of both of them. The man's eyes flew sideways but no cry escaped him.

Too clever by half, thought Joe. I know they told you to look the enemy straight in the eye, but a lunatic resting his chin on your shoulder is something else.

Joe smiled, still looking down at the newspaper.

Gulbenkian's the name, he said. Do you mind if I sneak a quick glance at the headlines to see what Rommel had his nose into at breakfast this morning?

People at the bus stop turned to stare. The small man recovered and spoke with indignation.

Excuse me? Is there something you wanted?

Too late, little rabbit, thought Joe. Forget what they told you about showing no emotion. Madmen are disturbing to everybody.

Joe smiled more broadly.

All I wanted is the secret to Rommel's success, he said. Does it mention in the papers what he ate for breakfast?

Excuse me, said the young man forcefully, angrily. He had closed his newspaper and was trying to move away from Joe, but Joe held him tightly from behind and moved with him, his chin still on the young man's shoulder. Joe noticed for the first time that he had a limp. The people at the bus stop had formed a circle around them. Joe grinned sideways into the small man's face, only inches away.

Would you believe me, he said, if I told you I've just been up all night listening to Catherine the Great and Cleopatra explain what Rommel puts his nose into first thing in the morning? Maps or herring, most people might think, but it's not like that at all. Just shocking information, as a matter of fact.

The small man had finally pulled away from Joe and now stood facing him, his fists clenched, hatred in his eyes. A large crowd had gathered around them, pushing and pressing forward, trying to find out what was happening. Joe raised his arms and stepped back, shouting at the crowd.

O worthy Cairenes, O noble sons and daughters of the Nile. Today a great liberator moves ever closer to Cairo and oppression may soon be at an end. But what has this agent of British imperialism just whispered in my ear at this very bus stop? What manner of slander has he dared to whisper right here in broad daylight?

Silence fell over the crowds pressing in from every side. Joe waved his arms and shouted.

O worthy Cairenes. Is it right for this secret agent to say the great General Rommel puts his nose into little fellahs first thing every morning? Is it right to say such wicked things about a great generalissimo panzer liberator? Can't the great General Rommel eat what he wants for breakfast?

Angry mutterings ran through the crowd. Hisses. Groans. Again Joe waved his arms and shouted.

And verily I say unto you, a great field-marshal generalissimo panzer savior, our very own Rommel, can eat what he wants for breakfast and British imperialism be damned. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, and I'll keep on saying it no matter what they do to me.

Rommel eats what he wants for breakfast.

Eats what he wants,

Eats what he wants. . . .

To the hungry masses thronging the crossroads that morning, the visceral appeal of Joe's booming message was immense and immediate. In only a few words Joe had managed to express the first principle of every poor Egyptian's dream for a better future, food, the dream disguised as usual as homage for a savior, the first principle disguised as the first meal of the day, breakfast. So it was no surprise to Joe when several daring voices took up the revolutionary cry out of hunger, and in another moment the entire hungry mob had broken into a thunderous chant secretly demanding an adequate breakfast, hundreds of clenched fists raised against the clear blue morning sky.

We've said it before and we'll say it again.

Rommel eats what he wants for breakfast.

Eats what he wants,

Eats what he wants. . . .

Joe noticed some policemen forming across the way, getting ready to charge into the crowds before a riot broke out. Already the mobs were surging back and forth in a fierce din of shrieks and sirens and horns. Joe winked at Bletchley's small Monk, who was still trapped in front of him, and slipped away into the crowds. A block up the street, the shouts and horns behind him, Joe suddenly stopped and leaned against a building. All at once he felt dizzy, as if he had been running for hours.

A silly trick, he thought. There would only be more anonymous Monks waiting for him near the hotel, the first telephone call from the surveillance team would have seen to that. So why had he done it? Why had he lost control so quickly?

It was more than exhaustion, he knew that. The night had been filled with many things but the excitement was gone now. For the first time since leaving the houseboat, he felt he could see things clearly. And then he listened to the animal cries behind him and realized what had happened.

Joe choked and groped for the wall, violently beginning to vomit.

As he hurried along he thought of the young man he had just humiliated, a small man with a limp, with a bad leg or no leg, a false one in its place. Had he lost the leg in a tank? There wasn't much room in a tank and small men managed better, so that's where they were often assigned.

The boy hadn't done very well at the bus stop, thought Joe, but of course he was new to the game.

Probably he'd learned about tanks first, then how to walk again, then a quick course with the Monks before he was sent out to walk the streets for Bletchley. . . . He could imagine the boy's file being sent to Bletchley and Bletchley going through it and seeing his own life laid out in front of him. The boy patched up and out of the hospital and able to walk, an earnest young soldier who still wanted to help, could Bletchley use him? And Bletchley looking at the file and seeing his own life twenty-five years ago, everybody gets his own war. For Bletchley had also wanted to stay on in the army back then, it was just that they hadn't been keeping men with only half a face, no more than one leg would do it today. So Bletchley had known exactly how the boy felt and had taken pity and made him an offer.

God help us, thought Joe, but that's exactly how it works. Sign on as a war hero and lose a leg and if you're lucky you get promoted to streetwalker, simple as that.

And the kid was just doing his job back there, thought Joe. He doesn't know who I am and he's never heard of Stern and he's got nothing to do with any of us, but I put hatred into his eyes, I did that. And he'll pass it along all right but the worst part is I was enjoying myself, I wanted to wound, and laughing I was because I was so clever. . . . Clever for sure, whipping a crippled kid like that in front of a lot of people.

He stopped, exhausted again, feeling empty and ashamed. It seemed so futile sometimes. All these years and something like that could happen so quickly. It was frightening.

But he didn't have time to think about it. He had to keep moving now. There was just so little time left for anything.

***

The alleys of Old Cairo, as always, looked as if they had been gnawed by rats during the night. Joe was near the hotel. He turned a corner.

A haggard Arab figure suddenly loomed up in front of him, blocking his way, the man's hair long and matted, his filthy cloak a patchwork of faded rags. Desperately the Arab clawed at the air in front of Joe's face, his eyes burning as he ripped at the sunshine. But it was the creature's mouth that horrified Joe, snapping and gnawing at the sunlight. Joe tried to back away but a flaying claw came slashing down and hooked him, the Arab's bony fingers burning into his skin. Joe winced at the shock. The Arab's face was only inches away . . . a wild vision of some hermit who had lost his way in the centuries and come staggering in from the desert to haunt the byways of the city. But then all at once the Arab's eyes seemed strangely familiar.

Liffy?

For a moment the frantic burning eyes held Joe, then the claw slipped away and the mysterious gaze was broken.

Me, gasped Liffy . . . an asthma attack . . . in here.

He pulled Joe sideways into an alley and dragged him along.

Are you all right?

. . . better now . . . can't go back to the hotel. . . . Here.

He pulled Joe into a dark room off the alley, separated from the alley by a shabby curtain. There were small bare tables in the room and a counter with bottles in a row, stacked chairs, a mirror behind the counter. An Egyptian faced the mirror, his back turned. The floor glistened from water splashed around to lay the dust.

The Egyptian behind the counter glanced into the mirror to see them and went on wiping glasses. The mirror was old and cracked and deeply grained with time, its edges blackened in the gloom. Joe guessed the place was some kind of cheap bar used by laborers, probably mostly at night, empty now save for its owner. Liffy wheezed and sputtered and ordered coffee.

Joe found himself gazing into the mirror, fascinated by the odd distortions floating in its hazy interiors. A peculiar thought flashed through his mind. What if Stern were to sit with him looking into that mirror? . . .

Liffy dragged him along to a table at the back, away from the shabby curtain separating the room from the alley. Liffy was still pale and gasping for breath. Joe held his arm.

Are you all right? Can I do anything?

Liffy closed his eyes, chewing at the air.

. . . better now . . . passing . . . an attack.

Joe glanced over his shoulder at the counter, where the owner of the bar was putting a tiny metal pot to boil, removing it when the froth bubbled up and letting the froth subside before returning it to the flame, boiling the mixture of coffee and sugar three times in all. The color was coming back into Liffy's face.

Finally he opened his eyes and stared at Joe.

Better?

Yes, whispered Liffy. I was beginning to think you were never going to show up.

What's this costume you're wearing?

Nothing, just something left over from last night. I was doing a job for the Waterboys and didn't have time to change. Wait.

Joe heard the movement behind him. The owner brought over the two little cups of coffee and placed them on the table, a disheveled man with puffy eyes. As soon as he had left them, Liffy leaned forward.

I was afraid I'd missed you. Something's happened.

What?

Ahmad, whispered Liffy. I came to see you late last night when I finished work. I didn't think you'd be all night and I was going to wait in your room, but I never got there. Ahmad wasn't at his desk when I walked in and there was something wrong, I could feel it. There didn't seem to be anybody there.

Joe gripped his hands together under the table.

You looked around?

Not inside, I didn't like it. Then I thought he might be out back in the courtyard and I went around and climbed up to look in.

Liffy's hands were trembling. He lowered his eyes. Joe stared.

Ahmad, whispered Liffy. He was lying there all crumpled up. It looked as if he had fallen off the roof. His spyglass was still in his hand and his trombone was beside him.

A spasm jerked in Joe's stomach.

Dead?

He was lying the wrong way. His legs and his head were all twisted around but his straw hat wasn't there.

I didn't stay, I left and came to wait for you. I've been waiting for hours, I didn't go back. I have no idea what's going on there.

What was he wearing, Liffy?

His faded lavender nightshirt. That old thing he always wears when he's on duty.

Liffy hung his head. He pulled his hands off the table and hid them, his voice trembling.

I know what you're thinking. Ahmad never went up there without putting on his suit, it was his special place after all. And where was his hat, Joe? What happened to his old straw hat?

Liffy's voice cracked. He clutched Joe's arm, begging him, imploring him.

He went up there on a whim? Just decided to do it and leaned out too far . . . lost his balance?

Joe closed his hand over Liffy's.

An accident? pleaded Liffy in desperation.

No, said Joe, squeezing Liffy's hand more tightly.

No? Liffy almost shrieked. Just this one time? No?

Joe gripped Liffy's shoulder. Tears were streaming down Liffy's face.

He was pushed? shrieked Liffy in a whisper. A harmless man like Ahmad? But what's the sense of that, Joe? What's the sense of it?

Joe was on his feet. He dropped some coins on the table.

There's no time, I have to leave.

Liffy's head jerked back.

Where are you going?

I have to see someone.

Who?

There was terror in Liffy's eyes.

Who? Say it. I know anyway.

David, whispered Joe.

Liffy leapt to his feet.

I'm going with you, then. I am.

You shouldn't, Liffy, not now. It would be better if you didn't.

Better? David? . . . Better?

All right but we have to hurry, whispered Joe, and started down the room toward the shabby curtain separating them from the alley, a sudden image catching Joe's eye as they rushed past the mirror, the vision of a ghostlike figure drifting through the half-light behind him, wild hair streaming and a billowing cloak and a tormented face glowing in the dimness. . . . Liffy in flight through time. The unworldly figure of Liffy whirling through one of the last of his mysterious incarnations. . . .

***

The door to Cohen's Optiks was ajar. A bell tinkled when Joe pushed it open. There was no one in the shop.

Another door, half open, led to the workshop in the back where Joe had talked to Cohen. The workshop was also empty, the door at the rear of the workshop closed. Joe knocked, waited, turned the handle.

It was a storeroom, the place where Anna had listened to Joe's conversation with her brother. There were boxes and dusty trays, discarded grinding wheels, a clock on the wall which no longer worked.

Anna sat on a box, staring at the floor. She looked up, bewildered.

I only just heard. . . . Were you there?

She stared at Joe blankly and he shook his head. She stared at Liffy.

You weren't there? . . . Wasn't anybody with him?

No, said Joe softly. What happened?

Oh. Oh a lorry struck him. The police just told me. He was crossing a street. They said it was nobody's fault.

Her face was empty. She stared at the floor. Joe heard a muffled cry beside him and all at once Liffy was on his knees beside Anna, gathering her up in his arms, the two of them rocking back and forth and wailing and crying out . . . crying and crying.

Joe looked at the motionless clock on the wall and felt himself sinking. He pressed his eyes shut, too weak to stand, his heart crushed by the eternal sound of their weeping.

***

The tiny Greek church they had sought for refuge was deserted save for the two of them, the floor of the nave bare as was the custom, the few high-backed wooden chairs pushed back against the walls like thrones at a convocation of wary medieval kings. Shouts from playing children pierced the cool darkness.

Liffy sat on his throne with his hands in his lap, the life drained out of him since they had left Anna. Beside him Joe moved uneasily on his throne, thinking how stark the tiny church was without its priest and worshipers, its canticles and incense, with only vanished chants to fill the shadows. Liffy stirred, whispered.

Joe? What are you going to do now?

Well I'm going to try to see Stern tonight, one way or another, but in the meantime I need a sanctuary. In another era this little cave would have been fine, but the concept's no longer honored, sadly. Seems holy places have a way of getting lost over time, don't they, so you always have to be seeking new ones. . . .

Can you think of a place, Liffy?

A refuge, you mean?

Yes.

Liffy was gazing up at the low dome, at the fresco there depicting the austere figure of Christ as Pantokrator, the Paraclete or Intercessor, the stylized face expressionless, the enormous powerful eyes staring down at them.

You could try old Menelik's mausoleum, whispered Liffy. That would probably be as safe as anywhere.

It might be at that, thought Joe.

But Ahmad kept his forgery equipment there, he whispered. Won't Bletchley think of that?

Liffy stirred.

There's no reason for him to bother with it. There's nothing but a small printing press which runs by hand, so old and battered no one but Ahmad could ever work it. I imagine they'd just leave the place locked and forget about it. It doesn't mean anything to any of them.

Seems likely, thought Joe.

But how could I get in then?

I have a key, murmured Liffy.

You do?

Yes. I had a duplicate made of Ahmad's once. He used to let me borrow his and I was always afraid of losing it.

You used to go there by yourself, you mean?

Sometimes, to get away from everything. Ahmad took pity on me and let me use it. I used to go there to read.

Joe looked at him, surprised.

What did you read down there?

Buber, mostly. It was very quiet and I could feel at peace.

Joe nodded. I've been thinking about the Waterboys, he whispered, wondering if they could help in some way.

Liffy moved on his throne, still gazing up at the dome.

Why them?

Because I doubt they know anything about this, security being what it is. And because there'd have to be some sense of rivalry between them and the Monastery, human nature being what it is. And also because Stern's done work for them in the past, which means they'd have a high opinion of him. And because Maud works there. I know she only does translations, but that still means they'd trust her. Is there any officer there you know particularly well?

The Major, murmured Liffy. He'd be the one to contact. We get along and I think he reports directly to the Colonel, Bletchley's equivalent. In fact I think he's the Colonel's personal assistant. I can give you his private phone number and you could pretend you were me, asking for an emergency meeting. I've never had to set one up in the clear over the phone, but you could do it. We have the arrangement.

I couldn't imitate your voice, whispered Joe.

You wouldn't have to. Whenever I call him I use a different voice. It's a kind of game between the two of us.

Joe nodded. Liffy's gaze was still fixed on the fresco overhead.

Joe? What will you do if Menelik's crypt doesn't work out? If you have to find another place to hide?

Where will you go?

I've been thinking about it and I suppose I might have to try the houseboat. The Sisters would take me in all right, the trouble is Bletchley would think of it. I know no harm will come to them, I'm sure they're right about that, Bletchley wouldn't dare. But the houseboat just sits there on the water and if Bletchley's men came looking, well, they'd find me soon enough.

And so?

And so I'll just have to hope old Menelik can keep me hidden down there in his five thousand years of murky history.

Liffy looked at him.

I know, whispered Joe, it's a hope that doesn't make much sense. History doesn't hide you, just the opposite. Gives away your hiding place, if anything. But what other hope is there?

Liffy didn't answer.

And when they question you, added Joe, remember, just tell them the truth. You know I talked a lot with Ahmad, and that I talked with David once, and that I went to see the Sisters last night. But you don't know anyone else I might have seen and you don't know what the Sisters might have told me, and that's the truth. You don't know, Liffy, that's all. It's not your affair. This business is between Stern and me, and Stern and me and Bletchley, and that's the way it's been from the beginning. So just tell them the truth and Bletchley's not going to give you any trouble when he understands how things are. There's nothing wrong with Bletchley, it's just that he's got his own job to do and we're sitting in different places. So just the truth, Liffy, and it'll be all right.

Liffy nodded, distracted. He opened a little leather pouch which was hanging from his neck and placed a key in Joe's hand.

Menelik's crypt?

Yes.

Liffy stared at Joe, then whispered again.

There's one thing I have to know. Is Stern . . . did it turn out to be . . . is it all right? Did he know in the end, Joe, did he have it right? You have to tell me the truth for Ahmad's sake, for David's . . . ours.

Joe smiled.

We never doubted that, Liffy. Deep inside, neither one of us ever doubted that. Stern's on the only side there is, the right side. Life. Hope. The right side. And we knew that, Liffy, we knew it. Do you remember what you told me about Stern the first time you ever mentioned him? How the two of you used to go to poor Arab bars late at night and just sit and talk about nothing, and in particular, never about the war? And you said he liked your imitations, they made him laugh. And you said that meant a great deal to you, bringing laughter to a man like Stern, knowing the life he's had. It made you happy, you said. Do you remember?

Yes.

And then you said something else, Liffy. Do you remember?

Yes. I said it was an unusual kind of laughter. I said it was gentle, and I said his eyes were gentle.

That's right, said Joe, and so they are. And so there's nothing to be afraid about now because it's going to be all right.

Joe smiled. Liffy looked at him. And, of course, there was that last question lingering between the two of them, when would they meet again, and where? But they understood each other too well to bother with that, and instead they made their final arrangements and sat a few minutes in silence, gazing around the tiny church with its little dome and its darkened fresco of the Paraclete, the Intercessor, sharing the coolness and the quiet of the place, a moment of calm for both of them.

Finally, reluctantly, Joe squeezed Liffy's arm and slipped off his throne.

I have to be going now, he whispered.

Liffy drifted along with him toward the door. There was a small stand for prayer candles and Liffy stopped to light two of them, one for Ahmad and one for David, and they stood looking down at the candles before they embraced. And that was where they parted and where Joe left him, a frail man in a tattered cloak with his matted hair streaming around his face, a sorrowing hermit from the wilderness crouched over the flickering candles of memory, of love.

Liffy silently weeping for Ahmad and David in the somber light of that little cave. Liffy once more the haunted prophet of old, a frail man stricken with the terrible knowledge of the names of things . . . his ancient dusty face running with tears that glistened like tiny rivers come to water the desert.

-17-

Mementos

The vast bands of homeless pilgrims roaming the outer circles of the Irrigation Works seemed to keep no regular hours.

They were also all said to be in search of water. Or at least that was what they claimed whenever they were stopped and asked what they were doing, those milling bands of Slavs and Rumanians and Danes and Greeks, Belgians and Armenians and Dutch, some determined and some merely dazed, others wild-eyed or tame by turns as they chaotically croaked their messages and banged their long staves on the floor, pilgrims far from home swaying as stalks of grain in the wind, those confusing groups of Maltese and Czechs and French and Norwegians, Cypriots and Hungarians and Poles, the many stateless wanderers and the occasional homespun Albanian.

According to Liffy, they kept no regular hours in the outer offices of the Irrigation Works. But in the inner offices where Maud worked, the practice was to take an hour or two off in the afternoon, to escape the heat, before returning to work into the evening.

Thus, after taking many precautions, Joe was sitting in the living room of Maud's small apartment when the front door opened that afternoon. He heard her put down some packages and walk along the corridor, quietly singing to herself. The room where Joe sat was shuttered against the sun and the heat.

Maud stepped into the room and stopped singing. She stared.

She was smaller than he remembered, close up like this. She put her hand to her mouth, startled, wonder and astonishment playing on her face. Joe took a step forward and reached out.

It's me, Maudie. I didn't mean to scare you.

She stared, her hand at her mouth. A familiar smile came to the corners of her eyes.

Joe? It's you? It's really you?

He took another step, reaching for her hands, her green eyes brighter than he remembered. Sparkling, stunning.

I didn't want to just turn up, Maudie, but I couldn't write and there was no other way to let you know.

He smiled more broadly.

It is a surprise, isn't it. Twenty years later and here in Cairo, whoever would have thought it?

She watched him, intensely curious. He glanced around the room in his embarrassment.

It's nice, it's a nice place you have. How are you? You look fine.

She was still staring at him. At last she found some words.

But how? . . . why? . . . what are you doing here?

Joe nodded, smiling.

I know, it's strange, you just walking in like this and me just sitting here. It's as if we'd seen each other last month or last winter or something. How are you? You look fine.

Suddenly she laughed. He remembered her laughter but not the astonishing richness of it.

I'm fine, but what are you doing here, Joe? Are you in the army? I thought you were still in the States somewhere. You've hurt your ear. Here, let me look at you.

She pulled away and studied him, still holding his hands. She laughed and wrinkled her nose, a beautiful little movement that surprised him at first, but then he remembered that too. She used to do it when something unexpected pleased her. It was just that he hadn't seen it in such a long time.

He looked away, embarrassed. She was still studying him.

Would you know me, Maudie?

Your eyes, I'd know your eyes anywhere but I don't think I'd have recognized you on the street. Your face has changed and you have a leaner look, although you were always thin. Joe laughed.

It's the lines, he said, they cut deeper now. But you look just the same. I'd recognize you anywhere.

Oh no, she said, freeing one of her hands and pushing back her hair. I've changed completely. . . . But heavens, oh my, has it really been twenty years? It doesn't seem that long, I don't feel that old. . . . You look very distinguished though. Age becomes you.

Distinguished? Dressed like this?

Your face. I didn't notice what you were wearing.

She laughed.

Your clothes never did fit you, you know. Remember that funny old uniform you used to wear in Jerusalem? The one that had belonged to that ancient Franciscan priest, that Irish friend of yours who'd been in the Crimean War?

Yes, the baking priest. He'd worn it at Balaklava.

That's right. The one who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade because he was drunk. His horse was shot out from under him and he was too drunk to keep up on foot, so they gave him a medal for heroism because he lived. Then afterward he became a priest and was sent to Jerusalem and put in charge of the bakery in the Franciscan enclave in the Old City. And he'd been baking bread ever since, always in the four shapes of the Cross and Ireland and the Crimea and the Old City, the four concerns of his life, as he said. That uniform he gave you, that was too big for you too.

Joe nodded, smiling.

Well I guess I haven't changed all that much then, I'm still wearing hand-me-downs. This suit belongs to an Armenian dealer in Coptic artifacts, in transit, or at least that's what my papers claim he is.

The Armenians, she said abruptly, were the first people to embrace Christianity as a people. Fourth century.

Joe looked at her in surprise.

That's an obscure piece of information. How did you know that?

You told me.

Oh.

They gazed at each other.

Would you like something to drink?

That would be grand.

A glass of lemonade? I have some made.

That would be lovely.

But she didn't move. They were standing a little apart and she went on staring at him, fascinated.

No, I don't think I would have recognized you on the street, not unless I'd looked into your eyes. The rest of you is different. There's a leanness to your face that changes your whole expression.

You look like someone who's been living in the desert, she added in a quiet voice Joe smiled.

Well I guess that's only right because that's what I've been doing. Not here, over in Arizona. I finally found an Indian tribe that would take me in.

You used to say you'd do that someday.

I know I did. And I got the idea originally from hearing about your Indian grandmother. Remember how I used to ask questions about her all the time? . . . Ah Maudie, where did the years go? Where did they ever go?

I don't know. But here you are again all of a sudden, and you're still asking questions the way you always did. You were always looking for answers then.

I was young, Maudie.

Yes, we both were. And you could never get enough of anything, you wanted things so much. And I suppose I did too, and maybe that's what was wrong with it. Both of us so young and wanting things so much, too much, I don't know. Are you still like that, always looking for answers?

In a way, I imagine. But in a way it's also different.

Yes, I would have guessed that. And there's a calmness you didn't have before and you're leaner, harder.

In a good way, I mean, inside. The desert must have done that for you.

Probably.

She looked down at her hands, her face thoughtful.

You've been tending your soul, haven't you? You used to talk about doing that and that's what you've done. You went away and did it.

I suppose.

Yes, it shows. It shows in your eyes and your face and I guess we all do that in our way, and I guess that's where the years go. . . . Oh my, but we were young then. We were, Joe, so very young, and we didn't know much of anything. . . . Oh my. We were children playing in the fields of the Lord and there was never a day or a night for us, never darkness or light, just love and the joy of being together and wanting to be together. . . .

She stared at the floor.

It was beautiful, she whispered. . . . It didn't last, but it was beautiful Joe moved closer. He put his arm around her shoulders.

I brought some pictures, Maudie, some photographs of Bernini. I took them before I left the States. He's playing baseball, wearing what they wear when they do that. He's called a catcher. Can you imagine your son doing that, just like any American boy? He was very excited when I told him I was going to see you.

He sends you his love. He also sent this.

Joe took a bracelet from his pocket, a thin gold-colored band without any markings on it, made from some cheap metal.

He picked it out himself, said Joe. I asked if I could help him choose something but he said this was what he wanted. He said he knew you'd like it because it's simple, and you like simple things. And then he talked a lot about the little house by the sea in Piraeus, where you used to live. He has such a good memory for some things. And he insisted on paying for the bracelet out of a little money he'd earned. He says he's already learned enough to get paid for it sometimes. Of course it must be something they do at the school to encourage them, paying them a little now and then, but he is doing well, Maudie. I went to the workshop and watched them repairing watches and he's getting on with it all right. It's not going to make the least bit of difference, the things he can't do, they're not going to hold him up at all. In other ways he's just marvelous, the way he thinks is just marvelous. Oh he's a jewel, little Bernini is.

Maud took the bracelet and held it, gazing down at it. She wondered whether Joe knew that Stern had once given her a bracelet like that in Piraeus, although one made of gold. And of course Bernini had remembered that other bracelet, and now with this simple gift he was saying to her that he too. . . . But of course Joe must have known all of that . . . and understood it.

Joe felt a quiver pass through her shoulders as he held her. All at once she seemed smaller than ever to him, her shoulders thinner than he remembered.

Here now, Maudie, what's this you're doing?

Tears were welling up in her eyes. She shook her head, as if to send the feeling away.

I get so frightened sometimes, she whispered. He's not little anymore, not just a child, and sometimes I get so frightened when I think about it. The world's not made for people like him, it's not. It's hard enough to get by when you start with all the regular things. . . .

Joe held her tightly. She was crying and shaking her head, unable to shake herself free from the echoes she didn't want to hear.

Ah Maudie, I know how you feel and it's right for you to feel that way, you're his mother and nothing else would be right. But it's also true that people succeed in all kinds of ways. It's just breathtaking how they do it and Bernini's a fine lad, that's all, and he's going to do just fine. It doesn't matter that he can't read and write the way others can, or that he doesn't have a head for figures particularly. All the one means is that he'll never be an accountant hidden away in the back of some dusty office. And as for the other, well Homer was blind and he couldn't read or write, but he still saw everything there was to see and read the world much better than most of us. What I mean is, Bernini has other gifts and it's a rich world he has, just teeming with beauty. And it's going to be a rich life he finds for himself, I know it.

Maud had stopped her tears. Suddenly she looked up and smiled.

My God you're beautiful, thought Joe. Just trying so hard to take in all of life and make the best of it, and never hiding to be safe. It's the difficult way but it's also where the riches are, God bless.

She raised her hand. Joe smiled.

In the old days, he thought, you would have put your finger on my nose when you said whatever it is you're going to say. It's your way of getting close to people, the best thing God ever made.

Maud dropped her hand self-consciously. She looked confused.

The lemonade, she said. What happened to the lemonade?

I don't believe we've had the pleasure yet.

She laughed.

Poor Joe. You come to visit on a hot afternoon and you don't even get something cool to drink. I'm sorry, I'll just be a minute.

***

While she was gone he wandered around the room looking at her little treasures, the simple things that spoke of years of trying to find a place. Mementos he remembered from Jerusalem and Jericho, even a seashell from a tiny oasis on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. And mementos from Smyrna and Istanbul and Crete and the islands and Attica, and now from Cairo, from Egypt.

Once more, then, Joe found his thoughts slipping back through the years. To Jerusalem where they had met, and to Jericho where they had gone in the autumn when the nights had turned cold, because it was always summer in Jericho and Maud was going to have their child. A little house with flowers around it and lemon trees not far from the Jordan, a heady lemon scent near the river of promise and hope.

But it hadn't worked out for them in Jericho. Joe had been away running guns for a mythical man named Stern and Maud had grown desperate, afraid that one day he might not return and love would be taken from her again, as it always had been before. Joe too young to understand her fears and Maud too young to explain them, the two of them wrenched apart because they loved each other so deeply, until finally Maud in her anguish had abandoned Joe without even leaving a note, because words were too painful for what was being lost. . . . Maud overwhelmed with sadness as she trudged up the path away from the little house and its flowers, carrying the infant son she had named Bernini in the secret hope that someday he at least might build beautiful fountains and stairways in life. . . . Bernini at least.

And so to Smyrna, and to the islands and Istanbul and Greece, more restless years of uncertainty as her wanderings stretched on and on and seemed as if they would never end. Stern entering her life then through one of those mysterious turnings of fate so common in the ancient lands of the Eastern Mediterranean where everyone seemed to meet sooner or later, perhaps because they were all secret wanderers and it was a place for that, for seeking.

Stern and Maud meeting for the first time on a bleak afternoon beside the Bosporus where Maud had gone to stare at the swirling waters, feeling too weak to go on, too tired to pick herself up and try again, too beaten and alone for that. The darkness falling and a stranger coming out of the rain who was thinking exactly what she was thinking, who came up to the railing beside her and began talking quietly about suicide, speaking simply because he understood so well that sad solution, that haunting companion of the lonely. . . . So Stern had saved her life that afternoon and eventually Maud had been able to try again.

Once more there had been a little house with flowers, by the sea this time in Piraeus, where she and Bernini were happy together and Stern had come to visit.

And those had been the best years really, the happiest years for Maud when she looked back. Bernini still young enough so it didn't matter if he wasn't quite like other children, but then all too quickly that had ended. . . . War was coming.

Stern there to help as always, finding a job for Maud in Cairo and suggesting a school for Bernini in America, now that he was too old to sit daydreaming by the sea. A special school where Bernini could live and learn a trade, so that someday he would be able to support himself and make his way, in America where it was safe. Stern offering to pay for the school since Maud didn't have the money.

In the end she had agreed because it was the best thing for Bernini. And she had always thanked Stern, even though she had known from the beginning that the money must really have come from Joe. Because Stern didn't have money like that, despite what he told her, and Joe was the kind of man who would find it. Joe trying to make it easier for her by sending the money to Stern, and asking Stern to make the offer in his place. . . . And thus Bernini had come to have two fathers who cared for him, two men whose lives had been inextricably entwined with Maud's through the years. . . .

Echoes, thought Joe. Echoes of the sun and the sand and the sea and a glorious spring on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba . . . echoes from the brief span of a moon above the Sinai so long ago. . . .

Joe held the seashell to his ear, listening and listening, then replaced Maud's little treasure.

***

She was distracted when she came back from the kitchen. She sat down beside him and pushed back her hair.

What is it? she asked suddenly, looking startled.

Joe smiled.

Nothing.

Did I do something strange?

Joe laughed.

Not that I know of.

Oh the lemonade, she said. I forgot the lemonade. I must have been thinking of something else and had a glass of water and just turned around and come back. How silly of me. It's dreadful how my mind wanders.

Nonsense. What were you thinking about?

Maud's face was serious.

Bernini. What you said about him. I understand that, you know.

Of course you do, Maudie. Sometimes it seems to me that everybody always understands everything. It makes sense, after all, when you think of it, because we do have all of the past and all of the future within us, so what happens is that we just get reminded of things in life we already know, and remind others in turn. Stern taught me that, and you did, and then I learned a little more about it sitting in the desert for seven years. The sounds in a desert are small and you have to listen ever so softly to hear the whispers of the real things, even though they're already inside you.

Joe? I know Bernini's special and it's only sometimes that I feel confused, and right now the confusion has more to do with seeing you.

Yes, there are just so many feelings, aren't there, Maudie. What we had and what we lost, and what we've done since then and haven't done. . . . It's confusing, I know, and it's sad.

But now there's something else, she said quietly. You don't have to tell me why you're here. No one has said anything but it has to be because of Stern, it can't be anything else. And I suppose you can't talk about it and frankly I don't want to hear about it anyway. I know what Stern has meant to me and I'll always know, and nothing can change that. . . . But Joe? Just tell me one thing.

She turned away and shook her head. The tears had begun to well up in her eyes.

Oh what does it matter, you don't even have to tell me that. I already know the answer.

No, Maudie, go ahead and ask it anyway. It's better to say some things outright and not just hint at them, even when we know the answers.

She stared at the floor.

All right. . . . Last night I saw Stern. We went out to the desert and we sat up all night near the pyramids, and he talked as if it were all over and he even said it was the last night of his life. I tried to tell him we don't know things like that, but he said he knew it anyway, and then at dawn he took a photograph of me out there with my camera, so I'd have. . . . But Joe, is it true? Is it all over for Stern?

Joe nodded. . . . Yes.

You mean he's finished, just like that, and there's no way to . . . no chance at all?

Not with what's happened. No.

Oh, I didn't want to believe him. It's so hard to imagine with someone like Stern who has always been there and always managed to come back. Somehow you just never think . . .

Joe took her hands.

But how does he know? she asked. How does he know that?

I guess it's just always been that way with Stern. There's no explanation for it. He just knows things, that's all.

Oh my, I feel lost. . . .

Maudie, try to hear me, I need your help. I want to see him and there's no time. I came all this way to see him and find out about him and there's almost no time left, so can you help me do that? It may mean trouble with the people you work for, because of the Monks, serious trouble even. But can you do that for me anyway, for Stern's sake, for all of us?

Maud hung her head. Her voice was far away.

. . . I can get a message to him.

Where is he now? Do you know?

Maud turned and gazed at the shuttered window. Thin lines of sunlight framed its solid darkness.

Out there, she whispered. Out there dressed as a beggar in some nameless city where he's always been.

He tried so hard to find his holy place and he never did, but he never stopped believing in it, Joe, and something terrible has happened now. He's out there alone and he thinks he's failed. He sees his life as so many ruins around him and he thinks it's come to nothing, and all the pain and suffering were for nothing.

He's wearing a beggar's rags and he's not afraid, but he's lonely and defeated and he shouldn't feel that way. . . . Oh Joe. Oh my.

Maud pushed away her tears.

Last night he said so many things he'd never said before. Some of them I already knew without him having to tell me, but some of them I didn't. And now he's out there thinking he's failed and there was nothing I could do to convince him it isn't so. I felt completely helpless. Stern, of all people. Stern. He's done so much for others and now he feels nothing means anything to him. . . .

Oh Joe, make him see. Let him see. Don't let him die feeling this way. . . .

Maud jumped to her feet.

Wait, I'll get the lemonade. The little things have to go on . . . they have to, otherwise it's too much.

***

After he had left, Maud sat looking at the thin gold-colored bracelet on her wrist, turning it around and around and thinking how strange life was, how contradictory. For the thin bracelet reminded her of the trade Bernini was learning, repairing watches, and the time told by watches was something Bernini didn't even believe in, dwelling as he did in another kind of time where the hour of the day was only to be found in one's heart.

And she wondered as well what this gift from her son might mean now, coming when it did. Could it be that this simple little band was to be the final memento of all the many worlds she had known with Stern, with Joe?

Maud alone in the half-light turning the little bracelet and pondering the meaning of love in its long ago beginnings. . . . A miracle to be cherished above all others . . . to be found only to be lost and lost again through the years.

-18-

Crypt/Mirror

Old Menelik's spacious crypt from antiquity, hidden away beneath a public garden beside the Nile.

A secret and soundless vault unearthed by the great Egyptologist early in the course of his brilliant career of anonymous discovery in the nineteenth century. Later chosen by the former slave and graffiti expert as his retirement home, when he finally decided to forsake sunlight altogether and go underground once and for all, permanently on principle.

In the middle of the crypt the massive stone sarcophagus that had once belonged to Cheops' mother, its roomy cork-lined interior having served for many years as old Menelik's cozy bedroom in retirement, after he had abandoned the elegant pharaonic society he had sought in his youth and had set himself up on a heap of pillows in the evening of life, to sip tea in his sarcophagus and nibble an occasional madeleine in the comforting stillness, to ruminate and recall stray words from over the years. A soothing womb of refuge that had quite naturally evolved into old Menelik's tomb in the end, its enormous stone lid now firmly lowered into place for what might well be eternity.

On the far side of the crypt a small manual printing press, until recently the clandestine work corner of the melancholy Ahmad, former master forger and reigning night clerk of an obscure way station known as the Hotel Babylon, a run-down lodging whose Hanging Gardens had already been in an advanced state of decay at least as far back as the turn of the century, when its sordid rooms had always been available for balmy interludes in the unhurried darkness of Old Cairo, rentable by the half-hour without reservations on anyone's part.

Save for the printing press, the crypt exactly the same as it had been in old Menelik's day. In another corner a handsome harpsichord which had once been played by Little Alice.

Here and there clusters of stately Victorian garden furniture, its paint flaking away, originally Sherwood Forest green. The furniture consisting entirely of sturdy park benches, monstrously heavy and all but immovable due to the solid cast-iron slats binding their undersides in unbending Victorian decorum.

These park benches arranged so visitors could circulate with ease when Menelik had held his open tomb every Sunday, as he used to say, sitting upright and alert in his huge stone bed while entertaining friends at his famous weekly musicales.

Everywhere on the walls of the crypt the exquisite hieroglyphs and pharaonic wall paintings that testified to old Menelik's unparalleled success as a social figure in other ages.

On the park bench next to Joe lay the book Liffy had been in the habit of reading in the crypt on quiet afternoons. Buber, thought Joe. A wonderful old crank who actually believes man and God should talk together. No wonder Liffy used to like to slip away from the mayhem aboveground and have a little quiet discussion down here, why not? Never was much good for his people, that mayhem up there.

Joe looked down at the thick wad of forged foreign currency he was holding in his hand. He had picked up the money at random from the neat piles stacked along the walls of the vault, crisp counterfeit bills left over from Ahmad's last run On the printing press, uncounted sums of Bulgarian leva and Rumanian bani and Turkish paras, all of it apparently worth something somewhere.

The Balkans, thought Joe. Always was a confusing concept, as Alice says, and its money is just as confusing as the rest of it. What's one to make of leva and bani in the end? Or for that matter, of paras above all?

He studied the money, aware that something about it wasn't quite right.

Coins, he thought all at once. In real Balkan life this money was never issued in anything but coins, but here's Ahmad turning it out as paper money. Surely the old poet must have had a strong sense of private reality to be able to forge coins as bills, even if they are Balkan bills.

Joe stuffed the money into his pocket and moved uncomfortably around on the hard park bench, his attention drawn to the crude sign hanging over the iron door at the entrance to the crypt.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

It was an old sign clumsily painted, a slab of whitewashed wood with uneven block letters in green, badly faded by years of exposure to powerful sunlight. Where had the sign come from and why had old Menelik seen fit to hang it over the door of his retirement home? What memories had it held for the greatest archeologist and subterranean graffiti specialist of the nineteenth century?

Joe frowned.

There's something sad about that sign, he thought. Something ciphered too, I would imagine. Surely it's no mere slip of stray sentiment adrift in the gloom, considering what this place has meant to so many people. Of course things would tend to be cryptic in a crypt, that's only to be expected. But all the same I'll wager that sign has a hidden message to it. It would have to down here in old Menelik's mausoleum of stoned coincidences, as Ahmad used to call it, quoting his father who had lapsed into a heavy use of hashish toward the end.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Mysterious graffiti, thought Joe, and what might its origins be? Pharaonic? Nilotic? A Biblical writing on the wall after the manner of mene, mene, tekel, upharsin?

Who knows? thought Joe. Best to ask Stern about it when he shows up. When in doubt about a sign faded by sunlight deep in a crypt underground, best to ask a master cryptographer what's really going on, as some old Cairo saying must have it.

Joe turned uneasily. A sound seemed to have come from the corner where the small printing press stood

. . . metal rubbing lightly against metal . . . a soft crunching noise.

Impossible, he thought, gripping the arm of his park bench. Yet a part of the machinery in the corner seemed to be moving, almost as if the manual press were preparing to crank through a cycle.

My God, he thought, of course that's impossible, and steady there, I can't go losing my bloody mind now. These antique shadows are playing tricks on me

But then he jumped, startled, unable to believe it. The small hand-driven printing press was actually beginning to turn over. Meshed parts were moving methodically in some kind of inscrutable order, up and down and sideways, backward and around and in. There was a loud groan and then the machine clattered noisily, cranking out a slip of paper. The paper fluttered and floated down to the floor.

Message from the past, thought Joe, leaping to his feet and rushing over to snatch up the slip of paper . . .

a Greek banknote newly printed. One hundred drachmas. The ink was still wet.

Joe whirled where he stood, taking in the crypt at a glance. The thick iron door was still solidly locked, the massive stone lid was still on the sarcophagus and as so often in life, everything seemed still the same when it wasn't.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Joe spun around, peering in every direction. Oh help, he shouted silently, turning over the strange banknote in his hand only to find there was a different currency printed on its other side. . . Albanian money. Ten thousand leks.

Ha, he thought. Inflation in the Balkans as usual and so much for classical Greek values too. They've gone to the Albanians like everything else we once admired. Just nothing's worth what it used to be and that's a fact in this world. . . .

Joe jumped, became rigid. Deep laughter was booming through the crypt, great surges of rolling laughter.

A hand was reaching out of a hole in the wall behind the press, stealthily removing block after block of stone and widening the hole, methodically pushing the blocks aside and stacking them up on the floor.

After a moment a ghostly head emerged from the blackness, an apparition in the age-old rags of a mummy. Without warning the ghostly head jerked back to reveal a dusty masklike face staring directly up at Joe, fierce dark eyes glittering in the dimness, beneath them the third eye of a gun barrel pointed at Joe's head.

Joe's mouth fell open. The revolver disappeared. The ghostly figure crawled forward and then all at once there was Stern standing in front of him, laughing and dusting off his tattered Arab cloak, laughing and laughing and shaking his great dark head.

. . . sorry about that, Joe. I didn't mean to scare you.

Joe hopped up and down.

How's that, Stern? Didn't mean to, you say? Well do you always go around cranking off counterfeit money when you break into a tomb? Just in case you have to pay your way in eternity?

. . . a mistake, said Stern, throwing back his head, laughing. . . . I was groping around and my hand happened to fall on the printing press handle.

Happened to fall, you say? Well after seven years in the desert I just happened to drop in down here to say hello, so hello, you stranger.

Joe laughed too and they embraced, hugging each other.

***

They sat on a park bench near the huge stone sarcophagus. Stern sniffed the bottle of arak in his hands and passed it to Joe.

The honor's yours, you must be thirsty. There's an Arab saying that nothing quickens a man's thirst like seven years in the wilderness.

Joe smiled and took the bottle, admiring it. When Stern had begun rummaging around in the crannies of Ahmad's little printing press, poking into its recesses and finally holding up the bottle in triumph, it hadn't surprised Joe particularly. Somehow it was the kind of thing he would have expected of Stern. An unlikely act in an unlikely place.

Joe glanced sideways at Stern.

Strikes you as a scene you've come across before, does it? Two down-and-out tramps sharing a bottle on a park bench?

Stern smiled.

What happened to that wondrous thirst?

Right. It's got me in its grip.

Joe drank. He turned his head and coughed.

My God that's strong stuff, Stern. But it helps a printing press think more clearly, you say?

Stern laughed.

Ahmad was very fond of his old printing press and he always claimed arak was the best solvent for cleaning counterfeit type.

And I don't doubt it for a moment, said Joe. It's a first-rate solvent for all kinds of things, brains being one and Balkan reality another. But aren't you the tricky one now? Imagine just sneaking in here through a secret passageway like a regular tomb robber on the prowl.

Stern took a drink from the bottle. He lit a cigarette and a smoke ring floated up over the sarcophagus.

I was afraid the front entrance might be watched. It seemed wiser to come in the back way.

Tricky, all right. Has that secret passageway always been there? From the time when the tomb was built, I mean?

No, Menelik had it put in as an emergency exit. But from the looks of it, I don't think he or anyone else has ever used it.

Right, dusty as dusty and the very past itself. It's just that I didn't know there was another exit of any kind down here, and that's what scared me.

Stern moved, shifting his weight.

But isn't there always another exit, Joe, if you look for it hard enough?

Joe whistled softly. He pretended to make a face.

And there you go, Stern, starting up first thing. You are tricky, you know that? As long as I can remember you've been saying things that arrive or leave more ways than one. It's not that you're ambiguous really, it's more a matter of searching out different paths in your quiet undercover way. That and keeping your eye all the while on more than one lodestar up there in the unfathomable deep. I suppose it must be a habit you picked up in the business you keep.

Stern's dusty face softened.

And which business is that, Joe?

Right you are, and that's exactly what I meant. Which business among the many and how's a body to know which one is being referred to?

Joe laughed happily, more relaxed than he had been in weeks despite the circumstances. They drank and talked about the past, passing the bottle back and forth, recalling the years since they had seen one another in Jerusalem. There had been letters back and forth during those years, but inevitably much that had been left unsaid by both of them. On Stern's part, because so many of his concerns could never be committed to paper, and for Joe, because many of his experiences in Arizona weren't of the kind that could be readily described in letters. The conversation could have gone on much longer and Stern seemed reluctant to have it end, but there was so much Joe wanted to know he finally interrupted their talk by standing and sitting down again. He took a drink from the bottle.

Stern? Can you spare one of those awful Arab cigarettes you carry?

Stern handed him the packet. Joe lit one and coughed.

Wretched, same as always. Tears the lungs right out of a man. They always were the worst.

Stern watched him. Joe glanced at Stern's scarred thumb and looked away.

What is it? asked Stern.

I was thinking about last night at the Hotel Babylon, and this morning at Cohen's Optiks. I assume you know all about that.

Stern shifted his weight. He spoke slowly, haltingly, and there was a calmness in his manner that bothered Joe.

You mean Ahmad? . . . Yes, I know about that, and I know about David. . . .

Stern moved again, a ponderous motion.

I wanted to see Anna, he said quietly, but I knew I couldn't. David was such a wonderful young man, so much the way his father used to be. He always reminded me of his father. And Ahmad, well, we go back a long way. Ahmad was one of the first people I met in Cairo, along with Belle and Alice and David's father. They were all Menelik's friends to begin with. . . .

Stern was gazing at the sarcophagus in front of them, thoughtful, somber. Joe waited for him to continue but he didn't.

Silence, thought Joe. Dead whispers as he slips. Better a roar of outrage than that, better anything than deafening quiet. He's just too cool and calm by half and I don't like it. Silence is the enemy here tonight.

Ahmad and David were Bletchley's doing, I take it, said Joe.

Stern nodded.

So what's next then? asked Joe.

Stern moved, hesitated. He looked at Joe for a long moment and when at last he spoke his voice was matter-of-fact.

Next? Well let's see. How much do you know?

Most of it, I think. About Enigma anyway.

Well that's most of it now. At least it's the part that counts.

So?

So Bletchley will do what it's right for him to do. He's fighting evil, after all, the Nazi madness in the human soul

And so?

And so I'm next, said Stern.

Joe looked at him. Too calm, he thought. Too calm by half.

And that's all? Just like that?

Stern shrugged.

Yes, I guess so. Sadly, even good purposes conflict. Good and evil just aren't as simple as we'd like them to be. We try hard to pretend otherwise, but it's never really true.

Stern smiled again, a peculiar smile that Joe remembered.

But tell me, Joe, why did you ever allow yourself to get drawn into all of this? So often I used to envy you over there in Arizona. It seemed like such a good life, exactly the kind of thing a man should do with his days, not at all what I've done with the years. And even after you did come here you could have pulled back, given Bletchley something and then. . . . Bletchley probably expected it, in fact. Why didn't you, Joe? You must have sensed where things were heading.

More or less, I suppose.

Well?

Well I didn't pull back, that's all.

But why?

I don't know really. How can we ever give a true answer to something like that? Because I wanted to see it through to the end. Because it seemed right to do that.

I'm afraid it doesn't surprise me, said Stern. From the time I saw you on the street near Maud's, I'm afraid it's what I thought you'd do.

Why afraid?

That's obvious, isn't it?

I guess. But did you know I was in Cairo then? Before you saw me on the street that evening?

No, I had no idea, it was a shock. But the moment I did see you I knew why you were here and who'd arranged it and what the circumstances had to be. I'd realized all along that eventually someone might find out some facts about that trip of mine to Poland and look into it, as Bletchley did, and then start something like this. I didn't imagine they'd go so far afield as to look you up, but then, it makes sense when you think about it, doesn't it?

I suppose it does, Stern, at least as much sense as anything else. And then the first time we did come face-to-face, there you were playing the beggar, sitting in the dust in those rags with your hand out, and I took pity and gave you money. And you, you shameless rascal, you even took my money.

Stern laughed.

I was hungry. I just don't have much pride anymore.

Well that's not true but we'll let it pass, the same way I passed you by then. But why didn't you get in touch with me after that?

I thought about it but I was hoping you'd find out enough to give Bletchley some satisfaction, and then quit before you got in all the way. I didn't expect it to happen, but there was always a chance.

Joe reached for the bottle.

So where does that leave us now, Stern? Just a couple of losers having a last glass together on a park bench underground? Just mulling it over and trying to get a grip on before we go topside and get run down by a lorry or take a tumble off a roof?

Stern opened his hands and looked at them.

Maybe. Probably. It's the danger in living among people, isn't it? In the desert you can run out of food or water but it's not all that easy to do, really. You can get by on very little and it takes longer to die. Men, civilization, speed things up.

Stern smiled.

But I still wouldn't say this is our last drink.

No? Well I'm glad to hear that, I never did like the idea of closing time. And how many carefree hours might we have ahead of us then?

Oh I don't know, said Stern. We could probably even manage a day or two if we stayed down here.

But how could we do that? Isn't this one place Bletchley's bound to look if we don't show up elsewhere?

I imagine, so I guess we only have hours. But we do have some time, so we might as well relax.

Well it may sound strange, Stern, but the fact is I am relaxed. I didn't get a nod of sleep last night but I feel as if I've been doing nothing else.

You stayed up all night with Belle and Alice?

Almost all night, but how did you know I was there? You haven't been following me too, have you?

No, but I have friends in the city who keep an eye out for me . . . beggars . . . fellow beggars. It's an occupation that allows a good deal of time for observation.

Joe nodded. . . . Stern's secret army, he thought. Some people have tanks, some have Monks, he has beggars. Must depend on which dusty byway you choose to sit in at the end of the day.

Beggars, are they? said Joe. And do you know what happened then on my way back from the houseboat this morning?

Stern laughed.

A dreadful commotion. You nearly caused a riot, shouting about Rommel's breakfast.

There was that as well, said Joe, but it wasn't the important thing. What happened was that I made a fool out of one of Bletchley's young Monks who was following me. Lost my head and humiliated him for no reason at all. I was terribly ashamed.

Stern looked at him.

Well you should forget that now, Joe. It's over and done with.

I know it is, and there's something else I wanted to mention. That letter you wrote to me about Colly's death. That was a beautiful letter, Stern, and I'll never forget it.

Well I'll never forget Colly. Along with many other people who knew him.

Joe nodded.

He was his own man all right, said Joe, and an unusual one. But you know, I did a little quiet asking into his death after I got here, and Bletchley gave me the impression you might have made a special trip to Crete, using an operation as an excuse, just to find out what happened to Colly. Any truth to that?

Stern moved awkwardly on the bench.

There could be.

Could be, yes. Could be, surely. But did you or didn't you? I don't think I caught your answer.

I did make the trip, said Stern.

I see. And naturally that was just a little thing. But what about Bletchley himself in all this?

I like him. He's a decent man.

Do you trust him?

To do his job, yes.

And his job is us, now?

In answer, Stern reached out and touched Joe's arm.

And more silence, thought Joe, just more and more of that shadowy shape that won't be. But he's got to start somewhere.

Well even if that's how it is, said Joe, there's still one thing that's been bothering me this evening in this cozy vault. That sign over the door! I know it's suggestive, but of what? And where'd it come from?

Stern turned and gazed across the crypt. After a moment he began to speak in a faraway voice.

The Panorama used to be a restaurant, he said. It was right on the river, a cheap place, mostly a refuge for off-duty dragomen. A dirty open-air restaurant with trellises and vines and banks of flowers, and a pool where ducks paddled and a cage with squawking peacocks, and strong dark wine by the flagon and huge platters of spicy lamb. A century ago three young men got into the habit of spending long Sunday afternoons there, eating and drinking and talking and talking, and they liked it so much they always went back when they could later in life.

Ah, said Joe, so that's the Panorama being referred to. I've heard of that restaurant all right, but I never knew its proper name. And the three young men in question would have been your father, once called Strongbow, and Menelik and the Cohen of the day, the one who was later known as Crazy, before they all set out on their journeys. And they kept going back to that restaurant for a full four decades, as I understand it, and that was the legendary forty-year conversation on the banks of the Nile that Ahmad used to talk about. That I also heard about years ago in Jerusalem, for that matter.

Yes, mused Stern, it did last on and off for forty years, right up until my father became an Arab holy man and disappeared into the desert. But then toward the end of his long life he decided he wanted to see Menelik one last time, Cohen being dead by then, and he traveled up from the Yemen to Cairo and he and Menelik returned to their same old restaurant one Sunday afternoon, not long before the First World War.

And they found that sign waiting for them?

Yes, said Stern. That sign and an empty lot.

Joe whistled softly.

So how did they celebrate then? Did they go look for the restaurant?

Stern shook his head, his voice far away.

No, they didn't do that, they didn't go anywhere. They were too old to drink by then and too old to have any particular interest in food, and they knew each other so well there wasn't much point in even talking anymore. So what they did was sit down in that empty lot and rest their backs on that sign and spend the afternoon enjoying the view. Now and then one of them would chuckle over some memory that came to mind, first one of them and then the other, and that was how the afternoon passed. Then when the sun began to sink they got up and left the place, Menelik to return here to his sarcophagus, my father to return to his tent in the Yemen. And for them, that was the end of the nineteenth century.

Joe whistled very softly.

And there we have it straight out, he said. And after forty years of honest raucous talk beside the Nile, there hangs the sign of a tale in time, deep underground and out of sight. And it is amazing when you think of it, how such an immensity of swirling moments can reside in a legend as brief in the telling as that one.

And sure the Panorama did move . . . and sure it has and does.

***

Suddenly Stern's manner changed. A dark mood seized him, some violent memory from over the years.

He lurched heavily to his feet and began pacing around the crypt, oblivious to Joe and everything else, his eyes working feverishly in the gloom, his thoughts fixed on some distant landscape.

Joe watched him in fascination. It's strange, he thought, how much Stern can look like a beggar when he wants to, how easy it is for him to become the very poorest of the poor or anything else. . . . And it was frightening as well, for there had always been something profoundly disturbing to Joe in Stern's sudden transformations.

Joe sat quietly watching, waiting, as Stern moved restlessly through the shadows. . . . A gaunt face hollowed to the bone, so lean no more could be dug from it. Hard slender hands and scarred feet and a faded cloak made threadbare by innumerable beatings on stone, weathered by a relentless sun until it was as soft and pale as the sands of the desert. But for Joe, there was more to Stern than just his striking appearance. There had always been a hunger haunting the man that knew no bounds, a fierce and pitiless hunger that could never be satisfied.

Here, now, Stern was a beggar in a crypt. And he is that beggar, thought Joe. With Stern it's never just a disguise. As he limps there in his rags, he is that wretchedly poor man with nothing.

Yet, as Joe also knew, Stern was truly many men in many places, truly a vast and changeable spirit who had ventured so deeply into the byways of the human soul that every sound he heard there had long ago become but an echo from his own heart. A strange and mystifying presence who had touched many lives, yet there were so few of them that Joe knew anything about. Years ago in Jerusalem there had been one or two, and again in Smyrna, and now in Cairo there were a few others, friends of Stern whose lives had always been involved with his wanderings, some even for a lifetime.

And Maud.

No one had been closer to Stern during these last years than she had, and yet it was only within the last twenty-four hours that Stern had sat down with her and told her about the massacres in Smyrna two decades ago, when Stern had picked up a knife and pulled back a little girl's head and made the sudden awful slash that had cut through his entire life, a terrible and merciful act but also just one among tens of thousands in Stern's turbulent life with its wrenching changes . . . these few people in Cairo and Jerusalem and Smyrna the only ones Joe happened to know about. How many others had there been in other places? How many people helped in some small way by his devotion and love? How many lives marked through the years . . . how many hearts touched by Stern?

A strange and restless soul, thought Joe, as he watched Stern pacing in the shadowy dimness of the vault.

Perhaps even a soul lingering on the stormbeaten threshold of sanctity.

For as the poet said, hadn't that threshold always been terrible? . . . Even crime-haunted?

***

Suddenly Stern whirled.

I've got to get out of here. I can't stand it down here any longer.

Joe got to his feet.

Fine. Where do we go?

Stern thought for a moment.

There's a place I used to go to years ago when I was a student, a cheap Arab bar, I've been back there once or twice. It's small and out of the way and as safe as anywhere else. In fact it's not far from the Hotel Babylon, which is good. Bletchley won't be looking for us that close to home.

Fine. It doesn't have an old cracked mirror behind the counter, does it?

Yes, don't all bars? How else could we ponder that mysterious stranger who enters our lives whenever we sit alone and brood?

True. And by any chance, did you ever take Liffy to this bar?

I may have. Why?

Because if it's the same place, I was there with him this morning.

Stern stopped. He gazed at Joe and smiled.

That's curious.

You're right, it is, said Joe, also smiling. Well then, is it time to leave old Menelik's mausoleum on a clear Cairo night in 1942? Time, is it, as we used to say?

Yes. Just give me a minute.

Sure, said Joe, I'll just wander over and give Ahmad's miraculous printing press a last inspection. Who knows? After you and I leave here no one may ever see that magical machine again. This crypt may just stay locked forever and that may be the end of Greek leks and Albanian drachmas and Balkan reality in general, who can say. Odd money in any case, Ahmad's private tender. . . .

Joe kept talking as he walked away, talking and scraping his feet and shuffling, making noise. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Stern moving quickly in the other direction, his face to the side, not so much avoiding Joe as making it easier for Joe to avoid him. Joe stopped in front of the printing press and began turning a handle, turning and turning it, making noise.

He glanced over his shoulder. Stern was crouching by a table near the door, beside a candle, hunched over and intent as he worked on something in his hands. A small black case lay open in front of him.

God have mercy, thought Joe. . . . Morphine to steady the blood, oh God.

Joe squeezed his eyes shut and turned the handle of the printing press around and around, methodically making noise and cranking out counterfeit banknotes, spewing out more and more of the ridiculous money onto the floor.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Oh have mercy, whispered Joe silently. He's tried so hard and he's given and given but he's finished now and he just has no more to give. And when the time comes let a whirlwind descend on the desert at night and let the blessed stillness of dawn be on the sands where he's walked. And let a moment of peace be on him before then, just one small moment of peace before the wind howls an end to him in the darkness

. . . an end to all he was and wanted. . . .

***

It was the same poor Arab bar where Joe had gone with Liffy that morning. A narrow barren place where laborers slumped along the walls in stony silence, somberly smoking and drinking in the half-light, stirring only to nod at their uselessness within the passing hours.

The two of them sat at the counter, facing the cracked grainy mirror on the wall. Now I have to get this right the first time, thought Joe. There are opposing points of the compass to be touched and not much time to do it in, so how to get things started with Stern? One way or another we've just got to break through that silence of his, damn it to the end of the world. He's just got to know and believe in what he's done, but how to help him go where he needs to go this one last time?

The mirror, thought Joe, recalling the visit that morning with Liffy. The mirror will have to tell him . . . the mirror. See all, hear all, speak what?

Joe laughed and spread his arms, gathering in the room with the gesture.

So this is your secret world, Stern? This is where you dreamed away the wee hours of your youth? Well it's a murky place for sure, and certainly a place for dreaming. Certainly there'd be no other direction you'd want your fancy to take in the late hours here, in an alley as sordid as this one, in a rat-infested slum in Cairo or anywhere else.

And speaking of murkiness, Stern, there's something that's been weighing more and more on me since I arrived in Cairo. It has to do with the tiny glimpses we're given of people, and the fact that everyone seems to be a secret agent in life in a way. With their own private betrayals and their own private loyalties that we don't know anything about, and their own secret code copied down from a private onetime pad, which we both know is all but unbreakable. And with their status in this world not unlike my own in Cairo, in transit, as the good document describes it ever so nicely.

Ahmad, for example. When you looked at him you saw only a silent melancholy man endlessly playing solitaire and nodding over newspapers that were absurdly out of date, like all newspapers. But when he opened the secret panel to his clandestine little cave, hidden away behind the wall in the shabby corridor that passes for a lobby in the Hotel Babylon, with all the treasures he'd stored up over the years in that private little closet . . . well, a whole world of experiences suddenly came to life right in front of your eyes.

I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of that private world, Joe went on, but it would have been just as easy to have missed it altogether, as I'm sure many people did. And to them Ahmad will always be merely what he appeared to be, a taciturn man without any feelings particularly, some kind of large and immobile oddity not worth knowing.

Even the implements of the clandestine trade are there, continued Joe, cast in their own unique shapes as is only proper. An old dented trombone, say, that served as the unlikely key to Ahmad's secret code, because it provided the notes to the tunes that others had forgotten, but not him. Or an old cardboard suitcase, empty save for a few sheaves of paper with some poems on them, the black bag of Ahmad's particular escape and evasion operation over the years, its very emptiness bulging with voluminous secret memories that only Ahmad could decipher.

So it strikes me there are no commonplace people in the crowd, said Joe, and no innocents in the game of life really. We all seem to be double and triple agents with unknown sources and unsuspected lines of control, reporting a little here and a little there as we try to manage our secret networks of feeling and doing, our own little complex networks of life. . . .

Ahmad? An immobile taciturn man without any feelings particularly? Ahmad? That eloquent and gentle poet? That shy swaying poet of stately lost dreams and elegant lost causes? A man who so heroically defended his mythical lost city of the soul?

No, Ahmad wasn't what he appeared to be at all. And don't we all use covers in a way, Stern? Don't we all use our own secret codes? And don't we all protect the secret sources of our strength and keep them separate one from another because they're so dear to us, while all the while we secretly plan the little clandestine operations of our lives, our daring forays up the street to the greengrocer's? And isn't betrayal, as Ahmad also said, still the most painful wound of all, and self-betrayal the very worst kind there can be? So devastating to us it forever remains incomprehensible in our hearts? The one sin we can never forgive in ourselves, therefore the one sin we can never accept from anyone?

Well it does strike me that this secret-agent way of doing things is true for all of us in some fashion, said Joe, and part of it often comes from fear, I know, the fear that others may discover who we really are.

But all of it isn't fear, not generally, and in your case none of it is. So what's the other part of it, Stern, the part that isn't greengrocery espionage? The part that takes us beyond the obvious similarities in people and gets us closer to that figure you were talking about earlier. That mysterious stranger who manifests himself in the mirror behind the bar and just plonks himself down to stare at us when we're brooding alone. Who is that stranger and why is it so difficult to know anyone in the end? Even ourselves.

Stern moved, sipping his drink. He smiled.

Answers, Joe? Pulling my cover as a greengrocer in order to find answers? Well I suppose the other part must come from that very mirror behind the bar, from the images there and the voices. When you look at this mirror in front of us, you see me and you see yourself. But since this is a place I once knew, when I look at this mirror, inevitably I see many people.

Now it's beginning, thought Joe. And slowly, easy now, if we're to hear the first whisper through the silence. . . .

I wouldn't doubt that for a moment, Stern. So tell me, of the many people in that mirror for you, can you see the first woman you ever loved? Is she still there?

Stern lowered his eyes.

Yes, he whispered.

And there it is, thought Joe, and now he's listening to the echoes and straining to hear their beginnings, now when everything seems to be coming to an end. So slowly then, from the deepness of the silence. . .

.

You can see her, Stern? What was her name, I wonder?

Stern was still gazing down at the counter.

Eleni, he whispered.

Ahh, and that's a beautiful name, Stern. A name from ancient times that has always meant beauty to everyone and especially to Homer, who launched a thousand ships in his mind because of her. And where did you fall in love with her, and who might she have been?

Awkwardly Stern shifted his weight, his eyes fixed on the counter.

It was in Smyrna. She was from one of the leading Greek families there, back when it was still a Greek city. We were married. It was before you and I met.

Joe was astounded. He had never known that Stern had been married.

What happened?

It was when I first returned from studying in Europe, whispered Stern, when I was just setting out and beginning to learn about revolutionary work. We fell in love and we were married and for a while it was wonderful. But my life didn't seem to allow for a marriage, at least not for two people as young as we were. There was trouble between us and she left me and came back, then finally she left for good.

Where is she now?

Dead. She's been dead for years.

She must have been young.

She was, whispered Stern. Much too young.

What was it?

Stern turned uneasily and looked at Joe.

I'm not sure, I've never been sure. Footprints in the sky that I couldn't see? The sound of perfect sunlight? Laughter and joy and the eternal tragedy of the Aegean?

Abruptly Stern turned away from Joe and stared hard into the shadowy interiors of the mirror. He raised his hand and reached out, as if he were groping for something there.

It seems everybody doesn't make it, he whispered. It seems everybody can't. . . .

***

He had been in Athens when he finally heard the end was coming for Eleni. She had left him during the First World War, left him and Smyrna and gone to live in Italy. She hated war and she hated killing and she had learned to hate Stern's work, even though it was her uncle, Sivi, who had taken Stern in as a young student returning from Europe and had first trained him in that very work.

In Athens, years later, Stern chanced to meet a man who had seen Eleni recently, an acquaintance who had known them both in Smyrna before the war.

I'm afraid it's all over for her, said the man. The drinking just gets worse and you can't really talk to her anymore. But it can't last this way. She's killing herself.

They talked awhile longer and then Stern said good-bye to the man and walked back to the small hotel where he was staying in Athens. Only a year earlier he had become a morphine addict although he hadn't admitted it to himself yet, although he was still pretending he could face the grayness in the window at dawn, the coming of a new day, alone.

But that night he did admit it to himself as he sat up in the little hotel room in Athens, thinking of Eleni. That night he admitted many things to himself while thinking of her, because he had to.

A kind of prayer. That's what he'd had in mind.

He wanted to remember how beautiful Eleni had been when they had first met in Sivi's lovely villa by the sea. And he wanted to remember the long nights of love they had known that first spring and summer and autumn, and winter. The closeness and the tenderness, the excitement, all of it.

A kind of prayer to send to her to bring the good times back to life, by remembering them. So perhaps that one night at least Eleni might also be able to remember the good times, for it had been a wonderful love they had known.

And so Stern had recalled it all and been drawn back to the very beginning of their love, back to a spring day in Smyrna before the First World War. . . .

***

A brilliant afternoon. The two of them young and laughing and falling in love, wandering through the empty alleys near the harbor and coming to a little café, deserted at that siesta hour. And sitting down at a small table in the shade of a narrow old building, quietly laughing in the stillness of the little square, a breeze off the water and the warm colors of sunlit stones against the blue sky.

A sudden thud. Eleni and Stern turning with smiles on their faces.

Two cats, still coupled, had slipped off the roof of the building above them and fallen, fallen, and come crashing down into the cobblestones no more than ten feet away. One of the cats was unmoving. The other cat was trying to raise itself on its front paws, its hind quarters crushed in the sudden fall from sunlight to shadow, quietly screeching and trying to raise its head and sinking back, trying to sniff for life as its eyes closed. The one cat dead and the other dying.

Stern staggering to his feet and stumbling away, sick to his stomach and sick in his heart and utterly bewildered in the small shaded square. Eleni running after him and taking him by the arm and holding him tightly, pressing herself to him as he wandered lost by the sparkling sea. . . .

***

Yes, Stern had remembered it all and left nothing out in the darkness of the bare little hotel room in Athens. And once he had even imagined reaching out and touching Eleni in the stillness, and she had looked at him the way she used to and they were young again and in love and the world was made for them, and they would go on forever doing all the wonderful things they had known on the shores of the Aegean, with wine and love and soft whispers in the shadows, and little boats in the harbor. . . .

A kind of prayer, then, down through the hours of that long night in Athens. And he hoped his whispers had reached Eleni and helped her in some small way as the darkness closed in and the end drew near. Nothing left out of his prayer, all the bright dark moments of love, the exquisite joy and the infinite sadness. . . .

It wasn't much but he hoped it had helped a little, for soon after that Eleni had slipped and lost her way, and the end had come for her.

***

Joe shook his head, stunned by this revelation from Stern's past.

Somehow it's all hard to take in, he said at last. I've just never thought of you as having had a wife. The way you've moved about and forever uprooted yourself, always traveling. . . . I don't know.

Stern groped for his glass, a clumsy motion, his other hand edging back and forth on the counter.

Well it was a long time ago and you never lose what you had together, but you go on as best you can, if you can. Everybody doesn't seem to be able to, and it's not a matter of courage or worth that decides it, or of being more or less of a person. I don't know what decides things like that. People come up with all sorts of answers but I've never found one that works for me. Eleni was a beautiful human being, that's all.

She had so much to give the world and she was no weaker than the rest of us, so why did it happen to her?

Yes, said Joe, it's always the same Why.

And what is that feeling anyway? asked Stern. The belief that there's a purpose to it all, or should be?

Stern moved his hand on the counter, edging it back and forth.

I've always envied people who have it, but I've never been able to see things that clearly myself. It all seems chaotic to me, and only in retrospect does life take on any kind of purpose or design. Of course that could mean I've just never been able to fathom it. Or it could mean the purpose and design aren't there, and it's only our need for them as dreaming creatures that casts some kind of coherency over life when we look back.

Stern shrugged.

When we do look back, he said, we always know there were certain moments that determined our lives, and certain things that did become inevitable for us, eventually that. . . . But when did it become so?

When did it begin, I wonder. . . .

***

Stern took out the worn Morse-code key he always carried and held it in his hand, feeling its balance.

Joe smiled.

Bit of the past still traveling with you?

What's that?

The Morse-code key. I see you still carry it.

Stern gazed down at the smooth slip of metal shining from years of being rubbed between his fingers, gently polished by the oils of his skin. His eyes were thoughtful, far away.

I didn't realize I'd taken it out. I seem to have become distracted lately, or maybe relaxed is a better word. There's been little chance for that since the war started.

Joe nodded. Sign both good and bad, he thought. Good, because it means he's leaning back and taking a look at things. Bad, because he feels none of it matters anymore.

Stern studied the key as if listening to something, then put it away.

There are no inanimate objects, murmured Stern. Everything around us whispers continually, it's just that we don't have time to listen. In the desert it's different. In the desert you have the time and you listen long and hard because your life depends on it.

Joe watched him.

Why these thoughts, Stern?

Stern frowned, moving awkwardly around on his stool.

I'm not sure. I guess I was thinking about home, the idea of a home, what it means for all the people who have lost theirs in the war and will never have one again. . . . I chose my life and I knew what I was doing, but it's still true you never get used to being homeless. You can get used to being away from home, whatever home happens to mean to you, that's easy enough. You can even do it forever, if you have to. But there's a difference between that and not having a home at all.

Well I can see what you're saying, Stern, but I'd never have thought you could consider yourself an alien out here. Not when you can pass yourself off as a native no matter where you go. What's more, as a native of just about any background or standing.

Joe smiled.

After all, you haven't always been a beggar in rags the way you are tonight. As I recall, some other incarnations of yours have been quite grand.

I guess.

Well?

It's what you just said. I can pass myself off as a native. But being one, feeling that you belong in a place, is different.

That it is, and that brings us back to a stranger in the bazaars and deserts, aloneness amidst the clamor and the silence. What's it all about, Stern? Why these thoughts tonight and what was the particular inanimate object you had in mind?

Stern frowned, moved.

A rug. I was thinking about a rug.

Joe watched him.

A rug, you say. Simply that.

Yes. Rugs always remind me of someone's home because that's where I've always seen them, in someone's home. Most of my life has been spent in places like this, bare rooms with bare floors and almost no furniture, not places for living. It's just a little thing, one of those innumerable details we almost never think about. One of those tiny physical details that define us eventually, strangely.

That old faded red wool hat of yours, Joe, that's a physical detail. The one you used to wear in Jerusalem when you were living alone in that odd little room on a roof in the Armenian Quarter. Do you still have that hat?

Yes.

With you here in Cairo?

Yes.

And you wear it?

Well I did all right, back when I was taking my ease in the Hotel Babylon and seeing the world with the help of Liffy's miraculous gift of faces and gift of tongues. Or when I was out back in the courtyard with Ahmad late at night, sitting in our tiny oasis and listening with him to the stars.

Why did you wear it, Joe?

Habit, I suppose. Reminded me of things, I suppose. Must make me feel comfortable wearing it.

And uncomfortable too sometimes?

Oh yes. The incarnations come and go and it's not always easy to recall where those other people in your body have been, and what they did and what seemed so crucial at the time. Of course some of it was crucial, all of it in its way, but is that what you meant about physical details? That my red wool hat is a way of reminding myself that a kid on the run in the hills of southern Ireland, and an obsessed young man playing longterm poker in Jerusalem, and the medicine man of the Hopi Indians, and an Armenian agent known as Gulbenkian in wartime Cairo, that these odd types are all related in some obscure way?

Moreover, that they all grew out of a boy who passed his childhood tossing around in a fishing boat on the tides off the Aran Islands? Tides and more, despite all? Despite even adverse winds and the peculiar sunspots of time? That all these boys and men and notions I've just mentioned, despite the years, still have something in common? Namely me, because they are me? Is that what you meant?

Stern laughed.

You have a way of putting it, Joe. But yes, something like that.

Sure, thought Joe, something like that, but what exactly? Which rug are you thinking of, and why? All of Europe has lost the rug it's standing on, but you've got one specific one in mind. . . .

Well sure then, said Joe. In that sense nothing would be inanimate and there'd be no such thing as just plain furniture in life. An old wool hat or a shiny Morse-code key, they'd have their changing tales locked inside of them all right. But it was a bare floor you were talking about, a rug and a bare floor and homelessness. And it would seem to me that someone who grew up in the desert the way you did, in a tent made of goats' skins, wouldn't have any serious interest in floors, bare or otherwise. So how did that get into your thinking tonight, and just where was that bare floor? You must have looked at it hard and more than once. Where was it, Stern?

In Smyrna.

Then it must have to do with Eleni, thought Joe. Or with her uncle, Sivi, who got you started in this business.

Where in Smyrna, Stern?

Stern moved.

In Sivi's villa, he said, in the bedroom I always used when I stayed with him. A long room with a high ceiling and tall French doors and a small balcony overlooking the harbor. At one point, after Eleni left me, I used to spend a great deal of time sitting out on that balcony in the early mornings when the harbor was coming to life, and then again late at night after everything had closed and there was only an occasional wanderer poking along the waterfront. I liked the quiet, the peace, the new light of the morning and the old light of the stars. Harbors have always fascinated me with their ships from far and wide and no end to where they might go. Any journey under the sun conceivable, every destination in the world a possibility.

Stern smiled.

It's the ancient Greek in me, he said, that fascination with what lies beyond the horizon. Or what may lie out there, if you dare to look for it.

Greek too, Stern? Being English and Arab and a Yemeni Jew isn't enough of a heritage for you? You want to take on the Greeks too?

Yes, why not, said Stern. And anyway, everybody in this part of the world has a bit of the ancient Greeks in them. The Greeks were the ones who went everywhere after all, who couldn't stop themselves from trying to go everywhere. The light and the sea, but above all that astonishing light that makes you think you can see forever. It just drew them on and on and not just across the surface of the earth. What interested them was what lay beyond things, behind things, beneath things. The soul was their sea and the voyage never ended. Returning home to Ithaca was only an excuse for the Odyssey, the voyage itself was what counted. Homer, with his blind eyes, couldn't help but see that.

Homer, Stern? He's said to have been born in Smyrna. And what of that little balcony in Sivi's villa where you sat in the late and early hours, listening to Homer's seascape and keeping watch in your mind's eye?

Stern frowned.

A peaceful place on the surface, he said, but I wasn't at peace then. Eleni had left me for the last time and I hadn't become used to any of it yet, particularly going back to Smyrna and not having her there. Eleni was Smyrna to me, and the whole excitement of the place and the beautiful way of life people had there then, before the massacres, was inseparable in my mind from Eleni. When I was away, traveling, it wasn't so bad. But whenever I went back to Smyrna to see Sivi, I could only think of her and all the little places where we'd been together. Every little corner held some memory and no matter where I looked it was there waiting for me . . . some feeling, some sensation that brought her back to me.

I had no control over it, said Stern. It was a mood I couldn't overcome. Her loss was always in front of me in Smyrna, tearing at me and never letting up. All I wanted to do when I was there was hide. Sivi tried to help but he couldn't really. The days terrified me, especially the sunlight on bright days . . . Homer's sunlight. The nights were easier in a way as they always are, less harsh and less brutal, but it was also at night when the most dangerous moments came. The truly black moments when nothing mattered and it began to seem perfectly reasonable to just end it all . . . just end it. End everything. . . .

Stern fell silent. He touched the ragged sleeve of his cloak and leaned forward, staring intently into the shadowy mirror.

***

The end of December. One of the last nights of that dark year when Eleni had left him for the last time.

Stern had just arrived back in Smyrna to spend the holidays with Sivi, through Epiphany. Sivi was always careful to arrange some event for the evenings, so Stern wouldn't be left to sit alone in his room and brood. But that evening friends had invited Stern to dinner, so Sivi felt it safe to go off to the theater.

Stern was able to manage only a few hours at the house of his friends before his courage left him.

He gave them an excuse and returned early in the evening to Sivi's, to sit on the small balcony of his bedroom looking out at the harbor.

He was strangely calm that night and the decision came to him in a natural way as he sat there gazing at the lights on the water and listening to the sounds of the sea. There was nothing dramatic about it. On the contrary, it seemed reasonable and commonplace. A new year was coming and there was no point in facing it. No point at all.

So he went inside and emptied a bottle of pills into his hand and swallowed them one by one, without water, the way he always took pills. Then he poured himself some whiskey and sat down on the side of the bed to savor the drink, lighting a cigarette to go with it.

Suicide? A desperate act brought on by intolerable despair?

No, not at all. That wasn't the way he had felt about it then. He was calm and his feelings were commonplace, his mood reasonable. A drink and a cigarette before lying down to sleep was the same as hundreds of other nights. Exactly the same, only this time he wouldn't wake up.

He sat there on the side of the bed gazing out through the open French doors at the harbor, not particularly sad, relieved more than anything else. Soothed, at peace. The soft lights swayed on the water and the gentle night embraced him, a tranquil murmur of whispers rising from the cafés below in the darkness, anonymous and remote like the world itself.

It's so easy, he thought, as he sipped and smoked. Real decisions are always so easy, unlike the little things. And death is comforting and death is peace, only life is not. . . .

***

Stern remembered nothing after that until he awoke the following morning. Sivi had stopped by his room when he returned from the theater and had found Stern sitting on the side of the bed, dressed and unconscious. Sivi had immediately guessed what had happened and had made Stern vomit and called his housekeeper, and the two of them had pushed Stern into a cold shower and walked him up and down in his room for more than an hour, until the danger had passed, only then letting Stern lie down to sleep.

The housekeeper had told Stern about it the following day, when he questioned her. As for Sivi, he had never mentioned the incident and never alluded to it in any way. Instead he was his usual jovial self the next day, laughing and joking and trying to buoy Stern up as he always did, as if nothing at all had happened during the night.

But whenever Stern had returned to Smyrna and his bedroom in Sivi's villa, he had picked up the corner of the new rug beside the bed and looked at the stain on the floorboards, a permanent stain made by his vomit, by the life going out of him one night in order that he might live.

***

I used to close the door and sit there staring at it, said Stern, trying to find some design in that map of my life on the floorboards. But no matter how hard I looked it was still a shape without a shape, shadings that turned in upon themselves, a swirl of dark tones that was all suggestion, like clouds in the sky. So I tried to see something there but I never could. I could never read anything into it at all.

At first that stain was so ugly to me I hated to be in the room with it. It shamed me and frightened me and I was always aware it was there, under the rug, and always very careful to step around it. But after a while I forgot about it and I'd actually find myself standing on it, not thinking where I was. . . . In a way that made it better, but it also saddened me because it meant I'd learned to live with the stain. The psyche doing what it had to do in order for me to survive. Forgetting. What it always has to do when something horrible becomes an everyday companion in our lives. . . . But there was also another cause to the sadness. Whenever I found myself standing on that stain, I also found myself thinking of my childhood and how far I had come from a dusty little hillside in the Yemen. By a bed now in a room that wasn't my own, near some open doors overlooking a harbor. . . . But why this harbor and why this room? . . . I used to ask myself that and a whole host of questions would follow. Where is this? Where are you? And the answers were devastating. . . . I was anywhere. I was standing on a map that was me, my life, and it had nothing to tell me. So I wasn't someplace, I was just anywhere. . . .

Stern drew back. He touched the neck of his ragged cloak and turned away from the mirror, pulling himself away from its peculiar fascination.

As for that attempt at suicide, he said, the first one, it caused me to think about many things. What I'd really done and what it meant, and what I'd learned about myself and the human condition, and maybe more than anything else, what I'd learned from Sivi.

There was so much wisdom in the old man I've often wondered whether he was actually aware of it.

Whether he did what he did out of some intuition, or whether he knew that the way he acted after that night was the only thing making it possible for me to go on. . . . Sivi acting as if. Acting as if nothing had happened. . . . How could he have known to do that unless he himself had once been where I was then?

But that's a whole other subject, said Stern, and it leads to the massacres and Sivi going mad during the massacres. Wisdom that profound is so tenuous it's often impossible for it to survive the brutality of life, the fears within us. And with Sivi it didn't and he went mad. . . .

Of course, that night on the balcony happened a long time ago, when I was just beginning to become a man. And looking back on it and what followed, I realized just how hard we try not to grow. How desperately we go on trying to clasp the certainties of childhood to our hearts, bravely trying to face the world with that pathetic armor. I know, we say, I may not be able to explain it but I know what I mean.

And yet if we can't explain it, said Stern, there is no understanding. Instead there are rigid dead dreams, the sand castles of our childhoods to which we add a turret or two in our youths, and a rampart or two later on before we die, passing on to our children the same outwardly dreamy shape with the same inwardly dense and incomprehensible structure.

Stern frowned. He stared down at the counter and his voice was tense, hushed.

Why is it we don't understand how destructive it is to cling to things? Why is it we don't understand that even revolutionaries do that, and that in fact there is often no one more reactionary than a revolutionary?

A man who yearns for order, often innocently, and therefore justifies violence and murder and terrible repression through his yearning for the imagined symmetry, the imagined beauty, of a sand castle in a child's mind?

Images, said Stern . . . things we imagine. These hosts of ethereal wonders and horrible monstrosities born of our unfathomable imaginations. Belief in everything and in nothing is the curse of our age.

Righteously, arrogantly, we play in our minds with the zeal of pious hermits who have seen nothing of the world and refuse to do so and refuse to hear any echo of what has come before us. So enormous is our arrogance, and so pathetic, we even pretend we can jettison our own past and make ourselves into anything, just by saying it's so.

But it isn't so and we can't do it because we know so much less than we think we do about man's freedom and responsibility, and his guilt. Yet we go right on pretending in our arrogance, making terrible presumptions that demand hundreds of thousands of victims, even millions of victims. The victims our age seems to want . . . and worse, seems to need.

Why? Why is our guilt so great today we have to practice human sacrifice on such a monstrous scale?

What are we sacrificing to? Why do we feel this brutal guilt so implacably it causes us to raise up a Hitler or a Stalin to work our slaughter for us? Is freedom really so terrifying in the twentieth century that we have to have concentration camps and whole political systems that are nothing but prisons? These huge grinding inhuman machines that people willingly flock to, willingly embrace and die for, calling them the future? Are we really so terrified by freedom that we have to make the world into a vast penal colony?

Are we really that desperate to recapture the order of the animal kingdom . . . our lost innocence and ignorance?

Revolution, said Stern. We can't even comprehend what it is, not what it means or what it suggests. We pretend it means total change but it's so much more than that, so vastly more complex, and yes, so much simpler too. It's not just the total change from night to day as our earth spins in its revolutions around a minor star. It's also our little star revolving around its own unknowable center and so with all the stars in their billions, and so with the galaxies and the universe itself. Change revolves and truly there is nothing but revolution. All movement is revolution and so is time, and although those laws are impossibly complex and beyond us, their result is simple. For us, very simple.

We arrive at a new dawn only to see it turn to darkness, or more specifically, in order to see it turn to darkness. And we live in darkness in order to know light. . . . For a moment. As time spins forth opposites, with no end or beginning that we will ever perceive.

Revolution? Dedication? Belief in humanity and in gods that die and gods that fail?

Innocence is the origin of our sin, said Stern, and our hope as well as our curse. From that innocence comes all that is evil and all that is good, and living with it is our fate. For the God who is and all the gods who have ever been and will be are within us, seeing with our eyes and hearing with our hearts and speaking with our tongues. . . . Ours. I know. I've been as dedicated as anyone. . . .

***

Stern stopped. Muscles tightened in his face and his eyes moved restlessly.

He's disturbed all right, thought Joe, we're getting in deeply now. And sirens are going off in his head and flares are exploding and gunfire's rattling everywhere. A man looks like that when he's been under siege too long. Shell shock, a doctor might say. Of the soul, Liffy might say.

Joe rested his hand on Stern's arm.

You know, he said, awhile ago when I mentioned Ahmad and David, it surprised me that you passed over them so quickly. But I have to keep reminding myself that you and I have lived very different lives these last years, and you've been close to a lot of that. My times have been quiet and I don't have to tell you how hard that makes it to deal with violence. In matters of feeling, I know, we tend to think everyone's concerns are our own, a way we have of trying to bring people around to our own size and shape. Seems to be human nature to want to make people into a standard issue so we can pretend we understand them, which would be reassuring, naturally. So I have to keep reminding myself of that scorching freezing desert you've been living in, with its death and its dying and its own bloody rules. And I know it's been bad, but what's been the worst part about it for you?

The sounds people make, whispered Stern. The sounds they make when they're lying there ripped up and dying. It's something you never get used to, and once you hear it it never goes away.

No, I don't imagine it does, said Joe. At least not out in that no-man's-land where you've been living for all of your life. But you know, most people have never heard that. Most people hear whines and whimpers and excuses in the end, things you can say something about. Not that animal sound from deep down that just sits there worse than death and has nothing to do with words, ever. . . . Do you remember that saying, though, about abstractions being our pseudonyms? The tendency we have to project our own personal cause as the general cause at large? Which is why Marx, say, badly constipated as he was from so much sitting around and thinking, tended to feel a future explosion in the lower regions or classes was a scientific necessity? The historical movement of pent-up bowels objectively determined by the grunts of the dialectical potty, and so forth? Do you recall that saying at all?

Stern stopped moving around for a moment. He glanced at Joe and looked away.

It sounds familiar, he murmured.

Does it? Well I thought it might because you were the one who said it.

I was?

Yes. One night when we were sitting up late over lamp fuel in Jerusalem. And wretched drink it was that night, same as now. Also called Arab cognac and I'll never know how those two names got together to ease the pain in the dark hours. Talk about opposites. Arab cognac? Arab cognac? Just hearing that causes a revolution in the head, a real revolution, the kind you were talking about, not to mention ongoing turmoil in the stomach. But yes, you did say that once, and Ahmad after you more recently. As I recall, you were quoting from your father's memoirs.

Oh.

Stern moved restlessly back and forth. He made a sign to the owner of the bar, who drifted down the counter to fill their glasses. Joe touched Stern's arm, smiling.

But I can't let you off too easily, Stern, now can I? I mean this feeling you have that you've failed. It's only to be expected I'd have to worry that one a bit, Marx and the war aside. So tell me something. When you were young, did you ever think of becoming a recluse off in the desert somewhere, the way your father ended up? Something along those lines? It would have been easier, certainly, than dealing with people.

Stern looked surprised. At least I'm getting his attention again, thought Joe.

No, said Stern. Never.

Why not, I wonder.

Stern gazed down at the pool of water on the counter. And he's beginning to do more than just remember, thought Joe. It's not all sirens and bombs and flares going off.

Not enough guilt, said Stern. That wasn't my father's reason for doing what he did, but it would have had to have been mine. He sought the desert, after all. I was born there.

Right. Stands to feeling. So I guess what we're talking about here is regret, isn't it? Things haven't turned out as well as you'd hoped.

Stern shuddered violently.

As well? What in God's name do you mean, Joe?

Right. Things have turned out awful, in fact. The worst. And yet what you've done in the last few years is a hundred times what most men can do in a lifetime. Of course it's also true not many people will ever know about it. Bletchley and Belle and Alice and myself, and Maud and Liffy in a partial way, and some others that I'm not aware of. Not many surely, a handful at best, and even so they're never going to be able to say anything about it except to themselves. Whisper it to themselves maybe, when they're alone and sad and taking the long view. And doesn't that bother you a little? It'd be only natural if it did.

Stern moved his finger through a pool of water on the counter, tracing a circle.

Yes, he said. I suppose it does.

Well sure, Stern, why not. Anybody would like it known they've left something real behind, something more than just the dust of gold and real estate, something tangible to the heart. Still, another man could be puffing himself up with pride if he'd done what you have, but you don't even see yourself as having accomplished much.

Joe rested his hand on Stern's arm.

Tell me, why this talk about Sivi tonight? It's been a long time, ten years since he died, twenty since he went mad. On the face of it, those events would seem more than a little distant to be taking up so much of your thoughts tonight. Or are we looking back to the real beginnings of your Polish story? . . . Ahmad used to call it that, you know, and he wasn't referring just to the actual trip to Poland. For him, your Polish story seemed to suggest a great deal more. Maybe that was because Ahmad always had a long-range way of looking at things, so although the war appeared to start in Poland, he knew its true beginnings had to be much more deeply buried in time. . . . But anyway, Sivi then. What keeps bringing him to mind? Or is it Smyrna we're really talking about?

***

Stern moved his finger through the pool of water, tracing circles, his restless eyes never still.

Somber and feeling useless all right, thought Joe, just as Maudie said. But telling him it isn't so won't help.

No sense telling a hungry man he isn't hungry, when did that ever mean anything? The flares and the sirens may have let up a bit in his corner of the desert, but he's still expecting the next barrage and he's weary to the soul, that's certain.

Stern?

Yes. Sivi, you said. I was thinking about it.

And?

I think it's because I started out with him and learned most of it from him. And then too, that period in Smyrna is all of a piece in my mind. Eleni and Sivi and the wonderful times we used to have before the massacres, before that whole way of life disappeared forever. And the Aegean must have something to do with it, that mysterious light that has always made men want to go farther. And living with the sea in Smyrna and just the sea itself, the closest we ever come to the sound of infinity. And I was young then, so everything was significant, and I was in love. . . .

Yes.

So all of it together made every sensation intense. Everything seemed clearer and surer somehow, but it's that feeling of intensity I remember the most. Experiencing every moment to the fullest, even the smallest things, the way we always should and so seldom do Everything alive, Joe.

Yes.

But then the changes began to come and the parts no longer fit and no longer made up a whole. . . . Eleni and I drawing apart and seeing that terrible pain in each other's eyes, and knowing full well what was slipping away but powerless to do anything about it because the past of someone else is forever beyond us, untouched by our best intentions. Helpless, the two of us, even though the ruin of the dream was unbearable. . . . So that ended and then the darkness came to Smyrna, the massacres, and Sivi went mad and everything ended there for me, and there was nothing to do but go on.

Yes, said Joe. And now Smyrna is the world and massacres come every day like the night, and whole ways of life are lost in the darkness. But you're no stranger to that night, Stern. You've known that darkness for a long time now.

Stern was gazing down at the counter, unmoving at last, finally at rest in the half-light of that barren room.

Are we there? thought Joe, watching Stern. He waited and a long moment seemed to pass before Stern raised his eyes.

That's true, whispered Stern. And sometimes I can look back with a measure of calm and justify most of it to myself. Life has always been pretty much the same, after all. Three thousand years ago on those same shores of Smyrna, the Greeks went through every bit of it and raged and wept and then launched their ships anyway, at least some of them did, those who hadn't blinded themselves or locked themselves away in cages because of the horror. . . . So this has happened countless times in the past and innumerable others have sat here like this, as you and I are, and I've tried to see with Homer's eyes and you've tried to help me see, and I know all that, Joe, I know it. It's just that sometimes . . .

Slowly then, Stern turned and looked at Joe and never had Joe seen eyes that were so exhausted.

. . . it's just that sometimes I can't feel the balance anymore, the balance, Joe. It's all too dark and unyielding and there seems to be no reason for anything and I just can't pretend to myself that there is.

Can't pretend anymore, Joe, do you understand? And I look back and I can't see that anything means anything at all. . . .

Too close, thought Joe, we're getting too close. He's got to pull back or he'll shatter right here in front of me.

Well I know it, said Joe, I can feel that in you, and we both know you've been out there living with this century too much. It's not what most people do after all. Most people spend their lives in other ages, muttering back through the past while sitting up straight in yesterday's furniture, perusing yesterday's timetable and mulling over yesterday's thoughts. Animals are conservative, as you say, and we'd always prefer to do things the way we did them the last time, given half a chance. And I know what you mean about how dangerous that's become and the paradox of violence growing out of innocence, out of these pathetic certainties we cling to, the sand castles of the race.

Joe?

Yes I know it, and I know that sad paradox whereby prophets delve into the childhood of the race and turn memories into visions of the future, imagining the lovely total order of an imagined Garden of Eden.

And we do seem to have gotten into the habit of rummaging around in our heads too much, not listening to the echoes from outside and playing with ideas as if they were toys. Try one and try another and if white doesn't work, try black, and if God won't do the job, try Hitler and Stalin.

Joe?

Words, Stern. They're just words, a child's building blocks, just names for misplaced memories because we want so desperately to believe that someone somewhere is in charge . . . or might be . . . or could be.

Words are our shadows in the twentieth century, as if giving something a name gave it a place and put it in that place. As if saying something took care of it. As if repeating incantations could set us free. As if we were no longer dealing with human beings. . . . Because that's the real trouble, isn't it, Stern? Ideas are always easier to deal with than people, because ideas are words and can be numbered and defined and reworked to our liking and assigned colors and playing stripes, and categorized and put safely away in drawers. And so we deal with ideas and pretend we're dealing with something real, and Lenin's a mummy like any of the pharaohs, and Hitler will be a mummy for the thousand years of his Third Reich if he can manage it, both of them with their own Great Pyramid of skulls so we can remember them, and meanwhile human beings are massacred along the way. . . . Massacred, surprise of surprises, on the way to the sand castle.

But Joe?

Right. I need another drink myself and here comes your man with the lamp fuel, time-honored. And human beings are dark and unyielding and that's the truth of it, and that's also the real code and the only one that matters. And because human beings are what they are, we take the easier way and play with these niceties we call ideas, building blocks after all, the dead weight of our pyramids and also good for raising our very own Tower of Babel. Clean and simple lines progressing logically upward in an orderly fashion, we say, according to the laws of reason. . . .

Reason, Stern? Logic? Touch a human soul in any spot that counts and you know how reasonable an answer you get. A scream is what you get, a cry of despair and hope. But we pretend otherwise and pretend we can build ideas one on top of another until we have a magnificent cathedral to kneel in or an imposing people's emporium to cheer in. Sand castles, as you say. Or maybe, like today, just these huge grinding machines of death, outright. And all the while human beings are being slaughtered for the sake of

... For the sake of what, Stern? What, my God? Ever?

Joe, I . . .

No wait, Stern. I've come a long way to sit in this bare room tonight and savor the smells of this slum and knock back some lamp fuel with the friend I've known longest in this world. A long way in time and in space, so you can't expect me to let you off easily, now can you? Or to put it another way, I'm here now and I'm real and you've got to deal with me. With me, Stern.

Joe nodded, he smiled. He held Stern's arm and slowly, Stern smiled too.

Got him, thought Joe. There's no way he can deny himself in the end. Not him. He knows too much for that.

Right, said Joe, leaning back. And here we are and what a place to come to when in need of bucking up the soul. I mean it's not exactly bracing, is it, to be where we are in the dark hour of a dark war? The two of us sitting not far from the Nile lamenting the eternal state of affairs? Everything changing and nothing the way it used to be? The ancient Egyptians had what, thirty dynasties more or less? And every one of them an end of an age, the end of an era, with its share of gents like us sitting up with the lamp fuel and lamenting the death and the dying and pondering the permanent revolutions of the heavens, round and round? Makes you wonder if times change at all really, and if you and I haven't been in the custom of dropping in here over the ages to reflect upon the ends of all those dynasties. Makes you wonder, in fact, if this room or one like it hasn't been here for four or five thousand years, so a couple of gents like us could drop in and take stock of the latest end game not far from the river.

Joe glanced around the room. He made a face.

And there's not much of it in the end, is there? Stock, I mean This place is just plain bare. Except, that is, for what's going on in this mirror in front of us. A shadowy screen, that one, with its cracked edges and its grainy textures, surely a worn cinema of the mind with its reels of fleeting shapes and its projection lamp in need of more lamp fuel to make more light, now as always. So yes, I think I may just have one more glass even though you're not yet ready yourself. But why are you smiling, Stern? Because you know we've been sitting here for four or five thousand years? And why is that smile even giving way to a little laughter? Because that seems like a long time to you?

Joe turned sideways on his stool, facing Stern. He pointed at the mirror.

And just what have we seen on this worn reel of the mind's eye? . . . Well first of all we started with a bare floor, bare like this room where we've been rambling over things for millennia, preparing a land and seascape for Homer. And that led you to a rug that was somebody else's, in a home that was never yours, and with that we saw a pair of open French doors and a small balcony overlooking a harbor that could have been anywhere, but wasn't. Smyrna, we'll call the place. And Eleni going off and killing herself over time, and the massacres coming and Sivi going mad in that place, and you acquiring a morphine habit and everything slowly dying like that second cat in the story, the one that didn't die straight off. . . . I mean my God, Stern, what is this tale of the century you're telling me tonight? Morphine and suicide and alcohol and madness, and despair and murder and death.... What is this? What kind of a tale, for God's sake?

Stern was very calm now. He was smiling his peculiar smile and listening to Joe, watching him, his face intent.

I'm not sure, said Stern quietly. Perhaps, you can see it more clearly than I do, Joe. The tale of a man who wanted to believe? Who tried to believe?

Did believe, Stern. Does believe. And there should be no more of this talk of trying anymore, that's all behind you. Who sent that prayer to Eleni, have you forgotten that? And who took a frightened Irish kid on the run in Palestine and gave him his first lessons in life? And what about Belle and Alice, and David and Anna and their father? And Liffy and Ahmad and Maud and Bernini, and all the others I don't know anything about? Where would they have been without you? Don't you know you're the stuff of dreams to Bernini, don't you know that? You are dreams to him, you're what can be done in this world. Forget the secret codes and what you've done in the desert, the apparent Enigma. That aside, do you have any notion what you've given to people just by being who you are? Do you remember Sivi's first words that horrible night in Smyrna? When he was raving? Do you remember?

No.

Find Stern, he said. Call Stern. That's what Sivi was saying when he was going mad that night and not coming back. That's what he was reaching for on his way down. For you, Stern, and don't you know it, man? Don't you know it by now? Don't you know it's always been like that for so many people?

Stern was staring at the counter. He frowned and moved his finger through the water, tracing circles and fighting his weariness, struggling with himself. Joe could see it. . . .

And somewhere outside a commotion was slowly beginning to gather in the darkness. . . . Shouts and curses and drunken laughter, the victorious yells of men out celebrating an escape from death, some kind of triumphant drunken brawl working its way through the night.

Men turned nervously to glance at the shabby curtain hanging in the doorway of the bar, all that separated the half-lit room from the alley outside. The owner of the bar stopped what he was doing and turned uneasily to look at the curtain. Even Joe swung around to see what was happening, but Stern didn't both to look. Stern went on staring down at the counter, tracing circles of water with his finger.

What is that out there anyway? asked Joe, irritated by the interruption.

Nothing, whispered Stern. Probably some soldiers back from the front, happy because they're alive. . . .

Well? said Joe. You do know how much you've done, don't you? You don't really feel it all comes down to trying to no end, do you?

Sometimes it does seem that way, whispered Stern, despite what you say. Other people and how they feel . . . well you know other people can never justify our lives for us. We have to do that for ourselves.

I do know, said Joe. You taught me that a long time ago. And as for the blackness sometimes, this dark and unyielding part of us that's always inside just waiting for us to give it a name and a dominion out there, well I'd certainly agree with you now with this war around us. And I'd also agree if we were talking about great peaceful new nations that should exist and don't, in this part of the world or anywhere else.

But that's politics, Stern, and the temporal kind at that, and politics have never been more than a cover name, words, a code for systems which aren't systems at all and can never be that, because the stuff in them, of them, is us. Not an abstraction but us, and we can't be reduced to systems through words, codes, covers, any of it. . . . In fact if there's one part of your thinking I'll never understand, it's how you could ever have mistaken that cover for reality. You, who've spent your life with these things and know about codes and covers and disguises, and what's real and what isn't. . . .

The shouts and the screams and the shuffling outside were louder now and moving closer. More of the men in the bar were watching the curtain that separated the room from the night. Joe swung around to look again, saw nothing, turned back to Stern. His voice was urgent, intent.

A place on the map, Stern, a country in that sense? Is that what you really wanted? Border guards and visas and customs officials in uniforms? Is that really what your dream comes down to? You, who've spent your whole life crisscrossing every conceivable kind of border and proving they're fictitious, arbitrary, meaningless? Other people may be confused by reality, Stern, but you know. How have you gotten yourself into thinking that real estate has anything to do with anything? Is that what those ancient Greeks went in search of? Place names? Is that why they launched their ships? The soul was their sea, you said that, and your whole life testifies that it's what's inside people that's important. Not the code names or the cover jobs or the uniforms, not the colors on a map or the words in passports listing conflicting names of God. . . . Just look at yourself in those rags, Stern. Don't they show you haven't failed? Don't they prove the land you sought is in men's hearts? And isn't that what your beloved Jerusalem is and always has been, a dream of peace for all people? Touch a human soul and you hear despair and hope, and although this real estate may be the world to us, it's still just a speck of dust lost somewhere in an unknown corner of an unfathomable universe. So arrogance aside, there can be no certainties, and hope is what you've always given people. Always, Stern. . . .

More screams and laughter and muffled shouts outside, moving nearer. Drunken curses and the sound of breaking glass, a window shattering somewhere up the alley in the darkness. Stern was sitting sideways on his stool now, looking at Joe and the curtain beyond Joe's shoulder. Joe spun around again, glanced at the doorway, turned back to face Stern.

Damn that noise.

It's nothing, Joe, just the night. Men celebrating because they're alive. . . .

I know, I know. So the point is, even good causes conflict and oppose each other, as you've often said.

Just as love can oppose itself, even love. But don't you feel it, Stern? Don't you really know beneath and behind it all what you've done? Who you really are?

In answer Stern smiled his peculiar smile, and all at once he did seem truly at peace. There was a serenity in his gaze, a powerful enduring strength.

What a strange and paradoxical man, thought Joe. As mysterious and yearning as life itself.

And as Joe sat there looking at this elusive man whose secret he had sought for so long, he was reminded of the moment when he had passed Stern by without recognizing him at the top of the little street where Maud lived, Stern sitting in his rags at the end of the day keeping watch over one he loved, a solitary beggar who was homeless and stateless and who was yet the ultimate prize for all the great armies . . .

anonymous in the end. A man alone in the dust at twilight surveying his limitless kingdom, a beggar of life from nowhere who would one day return whence he had come.

Joe held Stern's arm. There were tears in his eyes.

Ah that's good, Stern. You do know, I can see it. So it's been a clear night for us to see things after all and you've done it, Stern, and you know you have.

Stern nodded gently. He smiled his strange smile.

Maybe I have, Joe. And it's true we make our heavens and hells and spin them grandly in our hearts, sparing no extravagance or excess, no act of memory too daring and no disguise too extreme, every vista in the vast dream fashioned by us alone, out of love. . . .

Shouts. Screams. Men scuffling and yelling in the darkness.

Joe?

A smile on Stern's face and Stern's fist crashing into Joe.

Shouts. Laughter. Bloody wogs.

Joe stunned and reeling across the floor, not yet realizing that Stern had reared back and struck him full in the chest with all his strength, knocking the air out of Joe and sending him tumbling backward across the room, Joe knocking over chairs and glasses as he went slamming into the wall, into a corner. Joe with his back to the door, not having seen the shabby curtain pulled aside and the hand grenade that had come sailing in from the darkness, no one in the room moving except Stern. No one knowing what it was except Stern.

Bright blinding light then in the mirror behind the bar. A roar pressing Joe into the corner and glass shattering and debris falling and men screaming as they rushed to escape. Joe staggering to his feet in the smoke and staring at the spot where Stern had been a few seconds ago, before the hand grenade had exploded in his chest.

And even fiercer shrieks in the alley and yells everywhere and running feet, the barren room quickly emptying and the anonymous soldiers who had thrown the grenade disappearing in the darkness, people running and screaming and a roar ringing in Joe's head. Amidst the screams of terror, one cry higher than the others and eerily floating in the clear night, taken up again and again and passed on in the darkness A beggar's been killed, a beggar. . . .

The cry leaping through the alleys and piercing the stillness of midnight, haunting unlit doorways and dark stairwells and tiny rooms where people huddled against the night in the slum, listening to the sudden cry of death.

A beggar . . . a beggar. . .

Joe standing in the corner in the smoke, in the haze, staring at the spot where Stern had been, Stern gone now in the roar of shattering glass and blinding light and the echo of disappearing footsteps. Joe smiling and whispering to himself.

He knew in the end. It was in his eyes.

The cry outside already so distant it seemed but an echo. And dust and chaos and Joe struggling to breathe, a sudden stillness to the world as the roar in his ears crowded out all else. Joe smiling, the thin cry far away now in the darkness dying, its moment over in the night.

A beggar . . . a beggar. . . .

PART FOUR

-19-

A Golden Bell and a Pomegranate

Tobruk had fallen. The panzers of Rommel's Afrika Korps were little more than fifty miles from Alexandria. The routed British army was digging in to try to hold the line at El Alamein, but if that last resistance failed the Germans would overrun Egypt and seize the Suez Canal, and perhaps the entire Middle East.

Nearly all the British troops had left Alexandria. The streets of Cairo were jammed with vehicles pouring in from the desert. Civilians with money and documents were leaving for Khartoum and Kenya, South Africa and Palestine. Long columns of trucks retreated in the direction of Palestine.

The British fleet had sailed for the safety of Haifa. Military and civilian staffs were being evacuated. Huge crowds of European refugees stood in lines seeking transit papers and an escape to Palestine.

***

Belle and Alice weren't surprised to see Joe, but they were surprised to see him turn up so soon again at the houseboat. Joe was moving and speaking quickly, his words confused as he stumbled around the sunroom of the houseboat bumping into wicker furniture. Even his voice seemed not quite his own.

It was Belle who would recall that later. It was almost as if he had been possessed, she said later.

Both Belle and Alice tried to question him but his answers made little sense, and in any case it was impossible to hold his attention. Joe kept turning away and shaking his head, his voice sinking to a whisper. Occasionally one of the women caught a few words.

Danger. . . escape. . . .

They were shocked by the changes that had come over him in such a short time. Shuffling and disheveled, gaunt from lack of sleep, he looked as if he might collapse at any moment. His thin shoulders drooped, his shapeless clothes hung on him. His hands kept opening and closing as he picked up things and put them down again somewhere else, touching objects, touching everything, pointing at nothing and groaning, muttering to himself.

Escape . . . the exodus. . . .

It was as if events had finally overpowered him and he had shrunk into himself, retreating to some private world. For the first time both sisters realized how small he was.

But Joe, what happened to Stern? asked Belle. What happened to Stern?

Gone . . . everyone's leaving. . . .

He moved quickly away to the corner and stood there staring down at the harpsichord and the tiny bassoon resting on the polished wood. A bewildered expression crossed his face and he backed away, abruptly fixing his gaze on the portrait of Cleopatra. He went up to it and pushed his face close, examining the portrait.

The panorama's moved. . . .

What did you say? asked Alice.

But Joe was moving again, hurrying away, retreating to the other side of the room. He bumped into furniture and knocked over a porcelain figure, shattering it, coming to a sudden halt in front of the portrait of Catherine the Great. He shook his head, his mouth working all the while, biting and chewing, his tongue licking his lips.

But what happened to Stern? repeated Belle.

Gone and gone, even him . . . and by day a pillar of smoke, by night a pillar of fire.

Joe swung around, his face harried and pale, puzzled. A spasm twitched in the taut muscles of his neck.

His hand went to his throat and he gasped, fought for breath.

Joe?

He reached out desperately for support, caught himself, lurched into the back of a chair. He whirled and knocked another porcelain to the floor, shattering it.

Joe, Belle called out. Stop, for the love of heaven. Sit down, rest for a moment.

But he couldn't stop, he couldn't rest. He groped through the air in a frenzy and stared wildly around the room, recognizing none of it, muttering to himself.

A ransom of souls . . . a crypt and a mirror. I and Thou. . . .

His mouth fell open, his head slipped to the side. He gaped as images tumbled through his tortured mind, obscuring the room. . . . Wounded animals in the desert and flames shooting high in the sky, trails of wreckage and twisted bodies, ripped tanks and abandoned cannons, sirens and echoes and screaming men lying blind on the sands. . . . And elsewhere to the east, endless columns of trucks winding away into the Sinai, fleeing headlong into the wilderness on the ancient paths that had always led to Palestine and the promised land of Canaan.

Joe raised his hand, as if preaching to some invisible congregation. He whispered.

Their lives have been bitter with hard bondage. . . .

Whose lives? asked Belle.

Joe staggered, fell to one knee, pulled himself to his feet again with an enormous effort.

They're leaving. . . .

Who's leaving? asked Alice. Where are they going?

To the land of their pilgrimage . . . a good land and large, flowing with milk and honey. . . .

He uttered a cry and spun around, stumbling toward the tall French doors that opened onto the small veranda beside the river. Alice rose to her feet in alarm but Belle shook her head, stopping her. Joe stood in the open doors gazing down at the Nile.

And all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood . . . and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. . . .

Alice tried to plead with him.

Joe? Rest for a moment. Sit down and rest, please?

But he was moving again away from the veranda. He stopped in the middle of the room and raised his hand once more as if addressing an invisible congregation, his obsessed eyes staring into the distance, glittering and fixed.

Don't you see them? Can't you see them? . . . They're beautiful jewels, they're precious stones. . . .

Belle watched Joe's eyes, her face filled with sorrow.

What jewels, Joe? What do you mean?

Look at his eyes, whispered Alice, terrified.

What jewels? repeated Belle, loudly.

Joe murmured, his hand raised, his voice gathering strength.

Precious stones, settings of stones. . . . A sardius and a topaz and a carbuncle, an emerald and a sapphire and a diamond, a ligure and an agate and an amethyst, a beryl and an onyx and a jasper. . . . These precious stones, beautiful and ancient. And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names. Every one with his name shall they be, according to the twelve tribes. . . .

Joe dropped his hand and turned away, his eyes shining. In despair, Belle shook her head. Alice was ready to break into tears. Belle made a gesture and immediately Alice rose and fled to her sister, holding her tightly.

I'm frightened, whispered Alice. He looks ghastly and it frightens me the way he moves his hands, the way his mouth keeps working. What's the matter with him?

He's ill, whispered Belle. He's not himself.

But his eyes, Belle, the way they shine and the way they stare, it frightens me. What does he see? What does he think he sees? Why are his eyes so strange? Whom is he speaking to?

He may have a concussion, whispered Belle. He may have been struck on the head or been near some kind of explosion.

Shouldn't we call a doctor, Belle?

In a moment. We can't leave him alone now.

Belle tried to comfort her sister, but she was just as disturbed by Joe's strange appearance and his even stranger behavior. Much more than mere physical exhaustion had to be involved, she knew that. It was his jerky movements that disturbed her, the spasms that seemed to seize him every few moments and spin him around, sending his disconnected thoughts careening off in some new direction. And above all there were his eyes, as Alice had said. There was a wholly unnatural luster to Joe's eyes, a feverish glow that was much too bright and seemed to devour everything his gaze fell upon.

Suddenly Belle raised her head. What's that? she whispered.

It was the sound of an automobile stopping nearby. In front of the houseboat perhaps. On the road beside the river.

Belle stiffened.

It's no use. There's no time to try to hide him and he wouldn't go with us anyway.

Joe wandered among the pale white wicker shapes, the ghostly furniture that crowded the room with wispy shadows of other lives and other eras. Again he raised his hand, whispering.

For I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land. . . .

A car door closed, another. Whoever was out on the road in front of the houseboat seemed to be making as much noise as possible, although Joe's wounded mind was too far away to hear it. He stopped again, turned again, moving more slowly now. He looked out at the river, taking a step toward it.

Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. . . .

The front door to the houseboat banged open. Another door banged and a sharp voice barked an indistinct order. Footfalls could be heard in the corridor, hurried footsteps growing louder. Alice buried her head in Belle's shoulder. Belle stared straight ahead at Joe.

He was smiling now, smiling for the first time, wandering among the ghostly wicker shapes and talking to himself. And the jerky movements seemed to have passed for the moment, the spasms to have subsided.

Once more he was moving toward the open French doors but calmly now, gracefully now, the Joe they remembered, calmly drawn to the edge of the water.

He smiled as he gazed out over the river, his voice strong, the words spoken as if to someone he loved.

A golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about. . . .

He uttered a cry of joy, his hand raised to the river . . . then everything happened very quickly. The door to the room burst open and men were shouting and rushing forward. Joe turned in the open doors to the veranda and looked back, smiling, a mysterious joy lighting his face.

The first shots ripped into his side and fluttered his jacket, spinning him around so that he was facing the room when the next bullets hit him, before a submachine gun roared and exploded into the middle of him, ending it all and nearly cutting him in half, collapsing his small thin body and sending it flying back through the doors to the edge of the river . . . a twisted heap of old clothes on the wooden slats of the little veranda, one hand trailing in the water.

The men went quickly about their business. They gathered up the body in a canvas sack and in another moment there was no one in the airy sunroom but the two tiny ancient women, alone once more with the haunting wicker shapes of memory.

Little Alice quietly sobbing in the stillness. . . . Big Belle gazing steadfastly at the shattered glass doors and the silent river, at the huge empty vista where Joe had been . . . desolate now and passing.

-20-

A Gift of Faces, a Gift of Tongues

Early evening, the day after Stern had been killed.

The Major stood behind his desk in the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works, the headquarters of the intelligence unit referred to as the Waterboys. He had just returned from a meeting in the Colonel's office, where the two of them had discussed the information acquired that afternoon in a Cairo slum by one of their better local agents, code name Jameson, an Egyptian blackmarketeer with yellowish teeth and a bad liver.

From conversations with the Arab owner of the bar where Stern had been killed, Jameson had been able to elicit a surprising amount of information on the behavior of Stern and his unidentified companion, prior to the explosion of the hand grenade at midnight. This information, in turn, had led the Colonel to make a number of intriguing suppositions about the case. And since the Colonel had known Stern personally and had worked with him in the past, it was only to be expected that his questions would follow certain lines.

Why had the Monastery been running an operation against Stern?

What had been the nature of the operation?

Bletchley had given the agent working against Stern a Purple Seven designation, the most sensitive of all the categories. Why the need for this extraordinary secrecy? What made the case so important it had required a Purple Seven agent?

Further, the agent in question had been brought in by Bletchley from the outside, although a Purple Seven designation was so sensitive it was almost never assigned to someone from the outside. Why had it been done in this case? How had Bletchley been able to convince London that it was necessary?

Was it true, as the Colonel suspected, that this Purple Seven agent had to be someone who had known Stern well in the past? Again, that he must be someone who had also once been closely involved with an employee of the Waterboys who had been a longtime friend of Stern, the American woman Maud?

And finally and most intriguing of all to the Colonel, what events from the past lay behind the unlikely connections that had existed among these three people?

For the connections did seem unlikely.

Maud. An American who had lived in Greece and Turkey before the war. A likable hardworking woman, trusted and thoroughly commonplace to all appearances, a translator in the Third Circle of the Irrigation Works.

Stern. A wizard of languages and Levantine ways. A brilliant agent who had used his vast knowledge of the Middle East to come and go unsuspected for years. A solitary man who had ingeniously used his role as a minor gunrunner to conceal his espionage activities, who had managed through this sordid cover to escape important notice throughout his life.

And lastly, the mysterious Purple Seven. An experienced agent from the outside, identity unknown, history and previous involvements unknown. Evidently a European but referred to by the Colonel as the Armenian, because the false papers of his Purple Seven cover carried an Armenian name and an Armenian background.

When the Major thought about it, it wasn't difficult for him to understand why the Colonel's questions took the form they did. The Colonel had spent most of his life in the Middle East and despite his ordinary army manner, he was a scholarly expert in the cultures of the region who couldn't help but be intrigued by the contradictions of Stern's obscure past.

Then too, in Stern's case, it wasn't just a matter of facts and straightforward information. From the way the Colonel and others spoke of Stern, it was apparent Stern had been the kind of man who had invariably had a powerful effect on anyone who knew him. Almost an hypnotic effect, it seemed, as if in the process of uncovering the truth about Stern it was possible to discover a much larger truth. Almost as if some secret meaning lay hidden in Stern's lifelong journey in search of his arcane goals.

It was only a vague notion to the Major, but he knew that was because he had never met Stern and been exposed to his influence. From the way the Colonel spoke of Stern, even from certain references in the files, it was easy enough to imagine the aura that had surrounded Stern, the peculiar mixture of strangeness and recognition men had felt in his presence, a sense of wonder and familiarity and of profound fear as well.

An age-old tragedy, then, Stern's life. A tale of idealism and disaster on the shores of the Aegean that would always be unresolvable in its depths of darkness and light, a fated play of mystery and suffering in the stony deserts where certain men had always wandered. In its yearnings and its abject failures, a tale on the nature of things, its rhythms spun from the soft roll of ancient seas and the hard tides of ancient deserts. And yet a tale so simple it was known to the poorest of beggars and had been for thousands of years . . . its stark cycle always secretly felt in the heart, always secretly passed from heart to heart through the millennia.

***

Although the Major could appreciate the profound fascination felt by the Colonel for Stern's enigmatic life and death, his own imagination was more deeply provoked by the unidentified figure in the case. The man who had been brought in to uncover the truth about Stern, the elusive Purple Seven agent known as the Armenian.

Nor was it difficult for the Major to understand his own particular fascination with this other figure. For the man's Purple Seven identity had been used only once before, and that was by the professional agent who had designed the identity for himself in the 1930s and used it so successfully in Palestine and Ethiopia, the same man who had been the hero of the Major's youth during the First World War, Columbkille O'Sullivan or Our Colly of Champagne, the legendary little sergeant who had survived a bullet through the heart in 1914 and been awarded two Victoria Crosses, an impossible feat.