pretty soon they were running through my mind. At the front of the pack was my brother’s appearance. That disturbed me most of all. There wasn’t much doubt that he and Sohn despised each other. I didn’t care if they tore each other to shreds, but I wanted to be on another continent when they did it. I never believed anything my brother said, but he was probably right about one thing—Sohn must have known we’d run across each other in Geneva. My brother was a shark; that made me, in Sohn’s eyes, a tasty bit of chum. Maybe this whole story about passing a message to the Americans was fantasy, and the real purpose of my being sent here was to get my brother to lunge at a barbed hook. Sohn seemed to have something to do with the Israelis. My brother was selling missiles. Here we were again—another tab A and slot B.
When I arrived at the statue of the naked lady, I stopped and looked up. Her backside faced the park. I took that as a sign and crossed the street. The park looked quiet, a good place to sit and think. Unlike the trees along the streets, the ones in the park were allowed to grow. The setting wasn’t what you would call wild. There was a plan to it; the paths wandered in a convincingly natural way, as they were meant to. Halfway up the long slope leading to a large house, there was an enormous plane tree towering above everything else, as if all the energy of the plane trees outside, the ones whose tops had been lopped off and had been forced to grow low and squat, had concentrated into this one tree. Across the lawn, there were big oaks, big maples—it was just the sort of place my grandfather would have wanted to come for an October afternoon, when the sky was blue and the first leaves, the eager ones that did not want to wait, had begun to turn. But it wasn’t October, it was mid-February and cold. Past an enormous pine tree with branches that grew just barely above the ground, I found a bench that looked out in the distance to the lake and, much nearer, a rose garden. When I sat down, I let my eyes take a slow tour around. No one seemed to be following me. M. Beret’s people were somewhere nearby, but for once they stayed out of sight.
On the far side of the lake, low clouds obscured the tops of the hills. They weren’t much to look at anyway. A signboard next to the bench said that farther inside the park were Roman ruins. I didn’t want to see ruins. I didn’t want to think about ruins. Suddenly, it was lonely in the park, and I didn’t want to be there. I walked back down the hill to the street. The clouds had rolled in, and it was starting to rain.
Halfway across one of the bridges that joined the two sections of the city, I stopped and looked down into the water. Footsteps came up beside me. I wasn’t in the mood to entertain guests. The rain had become serious, a winter rain that kept itself just this side of snow.
“Thinking of climbing over the side?” The Man with Three Fingers had turned so his back was against the railing. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“Well, if it isn’t the Mexican Jumping Bean. Did you buy yourself a watch yet, or are you late for your next appointment?”
“No, I’m right on time. Right place, right time. And you, Inspector? Everything squared away?” He put the collar up on his coat. “You should check the weather forecast before you go out on these walks of yours. You’re not dressed for this.”
“I tell you what.” I made a show of going through my pockets as the water streamed down my face. “How about I give you a detailed itinerary of my plans for the next several days? That way you won’t have to hang around out in bad weather, shadowing me. You can just pick a spot and I’ll be there, right on time. Twice a day should do it, don’t you think? Shall we set that as the goal?”
“Goal? Inspector, my goal isn’t to see you twice a day. It’s not to see you at all, ever.”
“And you think that’s doable?”
“Oh, it’s doable, alright. Just a question of time.” He pushed himself away from the railing