I need to know what’s going on.”

“Of course you do. Every crummy sector cop in the capital needs to know what is happening in an isolated, out-of-bounds county on the east coast.” She snorted, which was never her best noise. “Don’t ask me. It’s military, and they keep us out. That’s all I know, and if I knew anything else, you’re the last person in the world I would tell.” She was lying, very openly, which was the only way she could tell me what I wanted to know. Amazing! As angry as she seemed to be after all of these years, she was willing to help. Maybe she still liked me. Not bad, having a chief in the personnel section, even an acting chief, with the hots for you. It was more than I had a right to ask; but it was exactly what I needed.

“There’s a visitor who wants to go there,” I said and put my step in cadence with hers. “Body rhyming,” we used to call it when we went for walks. That popped into my memory from somewhere. I shut the door in a hurry. “Should I take him?”

“You couldn’t get him past the first barrier. He’d need special orders. So would you, incidentally. A Ministry ID doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

“He’s an Israeli.”

I could tell that stunned her. She took a half step out of rhythm and then stopped abruptly. “Well, well, well. He’ll have some interesting company if he gets in there.” No reason she should know about a visitor under our protection, but still, it surprised me that she didn’t. I would have thought the news had gone up and down the corridors by now.

“Interesting company?” I thought my voice had just the right lilt of disinterest. “Like who?”

“Maybe Pakistanis. Maybe Iranians. Maybe Bolivians.”

“Bolivians?” It was hard to sound uninterested.

“Why not? If I were from Bolivia, I’d want missiles to protect me against Venezuela.”

“Venezuela isn’t near Bolivia.”

“My mistake.” She walked away, down the path to a waiting car. Her engine probably got maintained pretty regularly.

7

I didn’t go back to the office as I’d planned. I needed to walk a little more in the dark, maybe head to the Koryo and let my thoughts fall into some sort of order. I made a mental list. The Man with Three Fingers, the general’s dead daughter, a Swiss-Hungarian-Jew with a wad of dollars, and now, to top it all off, two Israeli delegations falling over each other. None of them had anything to do with Bolivia, but I’d bet they were all linked. Timing had everything to do with it. Pak hated it when I fell back on timing to explain a hunch. I never much liked it, either. The only thing I liked less than timing as an explanation was coincidence, cosmic or not. Even if I could accept coincidence now and then, there was no way that could cover two Israeli delegations. I thought about this for a while—whether timing meant something or whether it meant nothing—and then I realized I was completely alone. No one else was on the path; there was barely anyone around. It wasn’t that late; there should be at least a few people still outside, hurrying home. The city had become eerie, much too quiet. There was no pulse left, no spark. The stores were empty, the streets were deserted. The whole way over to the Koryo, I kept wondering where the hole was that had swallowed the population. By the time I got to the hotel, I was practically frozen.

Once my fingers thawed, I found a phone and called up to Jenö?s room. “I made it here, barely. Meet me in the coffee shop. I’ll be the one pouring hot water over his head.”

I was the only customer, so I picked the warmest-looking table and sat down.

Jenö showed up a few minutes later. He didn’t even say hello. “How did the first group react when it found out about the other one?” It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. The two Israeli delegations were staying in the hotel, but apparently he was steering clear.

“I haven’t talked to them.”

“You must have seen a report.”

“Let’s just say one of them spit bullets and the other two laughed until they cried.”

Jenö leaned back and smiled, content. It seemed a good time to break the news to him.

“All your requests for meetings have been denied,” I said matter-offactly. We weren’t on a beach. We were both