I knew for sure was what Sohn had told me, which wasn’t very much. One of the few things he had emphasized was that I needed to keep the delegation leader from defecting. The delegation leader had just consumed an expensive lunch of perch with a Mossad agent. As far as I knew, that wasn’t a classic indicator of imminent defection, though it didn’t make the negative case very well, either.

“I don’t think you’re clear on what we face. I don’t even think you know why you’re here, Inspector,” the delegation leader said. “It would be very much like Sohn to send you on a mission with the tiniest part of the picture he could afford to give. Just enough to keep you from stumbling into the lake. When the time came, he’d tell you what you needed to know to do your job.”

“And you? You have a full picture?” The atmospheric meter ticked down.

“Probably better than yours, though not all of it from Sohn. We’re kept in the dark about a lot of things, but anything to do with foreign relations we eventually find out. Facts, rumors, crazy ideas—if they touch on foreign policy, they all swim, or float, or tumble toward our building. Sohn understood that. He even used it to his advantage. He would throw a piece of information into the air, nothing too definite—maybe nine parts fluff, one part substance—then watch it drift into our windows. That way he couldn’t be accused of giving us something we weren’t supposed to know.”

Jenö handed each of us a cigar. “If you smoke cigars, Inspector, you’ll like these. I only bring them out for special occasions.”

A breeze came off the lake. It had something of spring on it, though still not much. “If you don’t mind, I’ll save mine for later.” Maybe for a victory celebration, even a minor one, if I could figure out how to define victory. “You said time was running out. Time seems to be an obsession here. People pay a lot of attention to it in this country. They make fistfuls of money from it. If time runs out, then the world won’t need watches. What will you do then?”

“My people can’t hold open this deal forever, Inspector. If your people want it, they’re going to have to move soon. And from what I hear, if they don’t move soon, there may not be so much left of your country. The famine is growing, order is breaking down, rumors are racing around. It wouldn’t take much to tip over the whole structure.”

“Is that so? You think we’re about to start begging?”

The delegation leader lit his cigar. “Face it, things are bad.”

“Bad?” I hadn’t expected him to be so direct about anything, certainly not in front of a foreigner. “Bad is nothing. Bad is normal. We’ve been through worse. We’ll survive.”

“Really?” Jenö looked thoughtfully at the mountains in the distance. They were covered with snow. “Then why turn to us?”

Fair enough, I thought. Too bad Sohn hadn’t told me. Too bad Sohn hadn’t told me much of anything before his head ended up at an odd angle on his shoulders. “I wouldn’t know who turned to whom in this case. Maybe you came tapping at our window. You’ll have to talk to someone who toils in the foreign affairs field, like him.” I pointed at the delegation leader. “He might be able to supply you with some answers. You two seem to know each other. I’m just a policeman.”

The delegation leader laughed. “Do you really think you’d be here if you were just a policeman? That’s like saying your grandfather was just a guerrilla fighter.”

“My grandfather has nothing to do with this.”

“To the contrary, Inspector, I’d say he has everything to do with where we are, and where we might decide to go. You can be sure Sohn didn’t pluck you out of some Public Security rabbit hole by accident.”

“Plucked is the right word. I’m not here by choice.” No, Sohn hadn’t picked me because of my grandfather but because of my brother. “The ambassador wants me out of here. He’s made that clear. I’m leaving as soon as I can. I’ve got no reason to stick around.”

“Even before the job is done?” Jenö tapped the ash from his cigar. “Even when we’re so close to the goal?”

“Goal. You want us to stop selling missiles to your neighbors. That’s your goal. It’s not mine. I don’t have any goals that relate to missiles. Believe it