put her hand out. They walked like that for several steps, hands reaching for each other, not searching, sure that the space between them was nothing, that it was not permanent. Finally, one of them, you couldn’t tell which, moved the extra centimeter; maybe it was both, but I didn’t think so. They were joined and walked on—neither hurrying, neither lagging.

The car sat idling for another minute as I watched them. Which of them would not survive the winter? I hated the question. I despised myself for asking it.

One of the gate guards walked up and looked in the window. “Problem?”

“Nothing for you,” I said and turned into the street.

Chapter Four

“No one in the building knew her. There is no record of the file. It never existed.”

“What did you see, then?” It was amazing how much heat one little heater could put out. The only problem was, in order to avoid overloading the wires, he had rearranged things in the wall socket; the lights had to be off. In the morning, there was probably enough daylight coming in the window to read by; now, in the afternoon, I could barely see his face, except when he moved into the glow of the heater.

“Must have been a phantom, a place holder. It wasn’t for her. It was for her husband. That’s a guess, and I’m not going beyond that.”

“This is why I came out of my office, drove through the snow, and sit here in the dark? For you to tell me you’re not going beyond telling me you don’t have anything?” I reached in my back pocket and pulled out a pair of wire cutters.

“So, forget I told you,” he said quickly. “Don’t think about it. We’ll find something else.” Upstairs, Miss Ban walked across her office. For a lithe woman, she had a heavy tread. The liaison officer looked at the ceiling. “She’s been restless the past few days. It’s not like her. Usually she just sits.”

“What does she do?

“Some sort of research.”

“Right, research. How come she has her own office?”

“I guess someone doesn’t want her disturbed.” He poured a cup of hot water for himself. “You want some?”

I did, but I didn’t want to give the impression that a cup of hot water was a substitute for what I really needed from him. “Let’s get back to the file.” I put the cutters into my jacket pocket, where they would be visible. He bit his lower lip, calculating how much room he had to wriggle.

“Nonfile,” he said.

“Nonfile. You have many of those, or are they kept in a nonfile room?”

The liaison man looked up at the ceiling. I followed his gaze. “Maybe I’ll pay a call on Miss Ban.”

2

“Miss Ban, I am Inspector O from the Ministry of Public Security. I would like to talk to you.”

She stood in the doorway to her office, giving no sign that she was prepared to step aside. “You’ll have to make an appointment through normal channels, Inspector. You shouldn’t even be on this floor.”

“Pardon me?” I couldn’t remember why I imagined her as lithe. I should have trusted my instincts. Her footsteps sounded like someone solid, and now I saw why. She was tall, solid as a rock. Not fat, not heavy, just very solid. I knew elite guards who didn’t have her build. Maybe that’s why she had this job shuffling phony files. She looked like she ate small men. “I’m not here to vacation. I’m on assignment, and I need to talk to you. I don’t make ‘appointments’ when I question people. You can consider yourself lucky you weren’t ordered to appear at my office.”

“I’ll do that. Consider myself lucky. If that’s all, I’m especially busy right now. Come back some other time, maybe in a month or two, when it’s warmer. I look forward to spring, don’t you, Inspector?” She smiled with her mouth, only it wasn’t anything that warmed the heart. It was a serious warning, and I could tell she was a serious woman. She parted her hair in the middle, not a little to one side, but right down the center line so it looked like it was done with a machine. Maybe it was. Maybe they made such machines and she had been issued one in order to make it clear she wasn’t fooling around, she was serious, and if you didn’t think so, just look at that part in her long black hair. As soon as I left, she would phone in a