analysis. How hard can it be? Let’s go for a walk.”

Pak sat up and looked out his window. “In this rotten weather? February is no time to stroll around.”

“Cold is good for you, it helps the new shoots.”

Pak laughed, finally. “Whatever works,” he said, and put on his coat.

When we were on the street, Pak put his hands on his ears. “I forgot my hat. This is a hell of a cold day to be outside, O.” He’d used my name twice in a row; it meant he was happy to see me back. “Walk briskly. Never give your blood a chance to stop moving.”

For some reason, it didn’t strike me as so cold. “You want to hear about New York, you’ll have to slow down a little. I can’t think when I’m slipping on the ice. All my mental energy goes into balance.” I slid on a patch that Pak had stepped around. “What has happened to the snow-clearing teams? Isn’t anyone responsible for keeping the sidewalks clean anymore? They do a pretty good job of clearing the sidewalks in New York.”

Pak slowed long enough for me to catch up. “You might want to go easy on the invidious comparisons. Think before you say anything for the next few days, until your feet are back on the ground.” He reached for his ears again. “What did you learn about our lady friend? That’s why you were sent there.”

“I thought you wanted local color.”

“Sure I do. What’s the sense of having you go halfway around the globe if you don’t bring back tales of dragons and giants? But the vice minister has been badgering me for information on that lady. You and I know he doesn’t actually give a damn. What really concerns him is that your trip came out of the Minister’s special budget, and so he needs to justify it. Of more concern to us, the Minister is being squeezed for information about the case. Every morning after you left, I got a barrage of phone calls from him. Each one had exactly the same message: He needed the answer today … this minute … this very minute …”

I didn’t care about the vice minister. He was a rat and sooner or later would be trapped like one. The Minister was another matter. Who was putting pressure on him? An inspector might bend in the breeze; the Minister had a more difficult time doing that. Big trees blew over more often than little ones.

“I don’t think I found much of anything that is going to help. It can be summed up in a couple of sentences. She was there for only a few weeks, at which point she left suddenly. She barely gave any notice. The security man at the mission said she told him a couple of hours ahead of time, that’s all. He was still mad. He’d never seen anything like it, he said. And when he sent in a negative note for her file, he was told to forget the whole thing. As far as I could tell, she didn’t do much in the office. The wives complained she didn’t fit in.”

“For instance.”

“They had a reception, and all of them were supposed to cook something. She didn’t cook. She bought something already made and unwrapped it right there in front of them. There was an argument about it, but word came down to leave her alone. People pouted that she got special treatment, and no one was sorry when she left.”

“They know she was murdered?”

“Some rumors. They figured that’s why I was there. I got furtive glances but not much cooperation.”

“Where was her husband?”

Her husband, the one who was going to get her in trouble with the locals. If she was so difficult to get a line on, he would be impossible. People seemed to know less about him than they did about her. “I got very blank looks whenever I brought him up. He was supposed to be there, they were expecting him, but he never showed up in New York. No one notified the mission that his orders had been changed. Guess where he went instead? Pakistan, or that’s what a few people thought they’d heard.”

“Maybe he’s still there. Anybody bother to check yet?”

“Not me, I was only a local broom, remember? She arrived in New York at the end of June, hung around until July, and then one night packed her bags and was gone.”

“She couldn’t have just left on her own.