crows of strasbourg

10.

During their last conversation, Mitchell Prescott recounted Roger's funeral to Hines.At that time, they were sitting at the table closest to the garden in the "Canary Fountain" restaurant, and the two detectives were sitting far away from the bar. They were the two who guarded Hines during the investigation of the task force. Hines Called them Toad and Dormouse, for he did not know their names as yet.Prescott didn't look at the menu, told the head waiter he wanted "the special of the day, whatever it was," and declined the offer of wine and dessert, so Hines assumed he had paid for the lunch himself.The garden was not much bigger than a napkin, and the fig trees cast well-trimmed shadows, but the fountain caught the sunlight, and the quivering light triggered the pain hidden deep in the eyeball, and Hines looked away.

It was a Friday, Prescott said, without specifying how long ago it was or where.A funeral without a body, the reconnaissance plane blown to pieces before it hit the ground, and think, Connor, with two drop tanks.At least now the Soviets can't figure out anything from a pile of junk, and of course we didn't tell Mrs. Kemper about all this.The widow insisted on a coffin that was way over the CIA's budget--walnut and engraved rivets, who would have thought there were such things as engraved rivets--did you know we had an appropriation for that, Connor?A decent wooden box for good folks like you when the worst happens?

"No," he answered, and taking up the glass, there was a slice of lemon floating in the water, so thinly sliced ​​that it looked translucent, and Toad and the Dormouse watched every move he made. "I don't know."

"You were good friends before, weren't you? You and Roger."

Hines replied that they can only be counted as colleagues who meet more often, and this question has been asked no less than twenty times.

Prescott wasn't satisfied, he was a little boy who just stole a needle and couldn't stop until something or someone bleeds. "And Roger's little boy, Charlie, isn't it? Poor little thing, I can't even tell my wife, my Lillian is a sensitive one, she'll spend a week grieving over the boy. You Could it happen to be the boy's godfather, Connor?"

"No."

Priscott nodded, and Hynes imagined him opening the six-story filing cabinet in his mind, putting the message in, and locking it, "Any kids, Connor? Is there someone waiting for you at the end of the country lane?"

"Not as lucky as you, sir."

The stew arrived, a steaming plate of dark red paste, and Prescott crooned "Mrs. Robinson" and tore off a loaf of bread.Hines glanced in the general direction of Toad and Dormouse. There was a glass of ice water in front of them, but no food. "Whip" dropped the topic of the funeral and turned to Bonn.The fountain threw its flickering light over the awning, and three or four sparrows were bouncing up and down restlessly, salivating at the crumbs but fearful of the gigantic creature at the table.

Hines asked him if this was an interrogation.

"Of course," Prescott frowned, as if accusing Hines of taking so long to ask the perfectly legitimate question, "I'm doing my job, deciding where you're going, and it's not Doesn't mean I'm your enemy."

Hines wanted to point out that he had been under house arrest by "not the enemy" for seven months, but the salad was served at this time, and he looked away to the garden, waiting for the waiter to leave. "Whip" concentrated on scraping the gravy off the edge of the plate with the bread, chewing with relish.

"My job," Prescott said, brushing the crumbs off his hand, "has seen a lot of poor souls, and my wife said it was awful, and I said to her, 'Lillian, honey, these People are fighting an invisible battle, which requires courage and a certain degree of stupidity. If you look at them for a long time, you will find that they all have some common characteristics. I will classify them for you, the first kind'" he raised Index Finger, "'The fanatic, the McCarthyist who inherited his father's mantle, attracted like a fly to the war, and can't wait to kill a few Soviets with his own hands; the second type, the melancholy patriot. The third type is the speculator, for the imagination Dental insurance and retirement pensions. The fourth type, the idealists, each pretends that they have exchanged their hearts for stones. If you approach them carefully enough, you will find that they still have real hearts. , as sensitive as a cat'. I asked my wife what she thought of the taxonomy, and she said, 'Mitchell, why don't you write poetry?'"

He paused, waiting for Hines to ask a question, but the latter didn't let him.Prescott cleared his throat.

"Did 'Starling' tell you who was the one who shot in front of the embassy in Warsaw that night?"

Starling is the head of the Eastern European Liaison Station, "No." Hines replied.

Prescott watched him. "A Mr. Benjamin Richter, you've seen it, haven't you?"

"In Bern, just once."

Prescott crumpled the napkin and put it next to the plate. The waiter took it as a signal for him to come and clean it up, but Whip waved him away. "Before I make up my mind—"

"No offense, sir, I don't care about your decision," Hines stood up, and Toad and Dormouse jumped up, like two marionettes who have been pulled hard, "If you have any questions, You can go to the interrogation transcript, I'm sure it's detailed enough."

Perhaps his file would be marked as "crazy, rude and uncooperative," but Hines left the restaurant feeling relieved, as if something that had been unresolved for so long had finally settled down. "See where the ball goes", in Roger's words.Probably out of politeness, Toad and the Dormouse kept a long distance, and out of the same politeness, Hines pretended not to notice them.

-

As far as places of exile go, Istanbul was by no means the worst.The embassy and the several suspicious "offices" involved in it were dead, as if everyone and things here were stuck in a permanent temporary storage state, waiting for some lucky day far away to be released and lead Go to pastures with richer water and grass.

An American business group arrived in Istanbul the second week after he took office. The group of Californians selling bearings called the consulate after drunk and asked inarticulately where to find "evening entertainment." Hines murmured He held the microphone, repeated the question to the duty secretary, and then heard Tamia's name. "Better follow them and keep an eye on it," the secretary didn't look up from the newspaper. "I'd never go to the police station in the middle of the night just because these idiots are fighting other idiots."

It was she who approached Hines first, a pale sparrow wrapped in a robe with swirls of brown and red. "Are you with them?" she asked, gesturing to the rowdy crowd.Smoke crepes his eyes, and a badly connected lamp keeps blinking like a sick eye.

"Yes," he thought for a while, "no."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Think about when you can leave."

"I mean, what are you doing in Istanbul?"

"The answer is the same."

She patted the back of his hand sympathetically and asked if he'd like another drink, and Hines agreed.It was only when he returned to his house three hours later through the early morning streets that the local broker, wrapped in colored cotton, would have known who he was and why he was there.The dog waited by the door, its tail lashing the floor excitedly.We called her Anika and burned her because we couldn't dig through the frozen ground.Alcohol traps him in a tired yet lucid state, and instead of helping him fall asleep, it brings up a lot of scum.Late at night at Geneva Airport, the gates of the waiting room were locked, and the lights were black and white.The barren grass around the tarmac was frozen over and was originally pitch black. After midnight, the clouds cleared and the moonlight reflected it into a transparent silvery white.One of them was waiting for the inspector from Washington, and the other was waiting for the trade representative from Moscow, walking up and down the runway like two mechanical clock parts, so as not to freeze.Hines forgot what Anton said, presumably a joke about intelligence officers and slugs, and they all laughed, 20.00% because of the slugs, 80.00% because of how boring the joke was.A point of light appeared above the mountains, and Heins touched Anton's arm, let's make a bet, big man, do you think it's a McDonnell Douglas, or a Tu-114?

It was an An-24, and they both lost five marks to each other, and vowed never again to pretend to be experts in civil aircraft.

He wondered under which Prescott classification he was.The dispatcher kicked him off the CIA employee roll, and Connor Hines was now a junior consular employee with a three-year contract and a clean file, a bleached black sheep.He closed his eyes, the galvanized buckets brought up from the garden overflowing from the slanted windows of Bad Goldberg's torrential rain.He had only been to Anton's attic once, and he left in the rain at dawn, soaked through, and entered the office under the amazed gaze of the typist.

He finally fell asleep, the dog guarding the couch, a tuft of light-colored hair above his right eye like a tiny flame.

Two days later, a handwritten card appeared in the blue mailbox, inviting him to visit the Smokehouse again.Tamia worships the principle of reciprocity, Hines does not object, he may or may not have participated in several smuggling operations, and the other party may or may not have obtained "climbing tools" for him: fake passports, illegal guns, .

"There's another ship," he told Leon, pushing open the window and motioning him to climb out, "registered in Cyprus, owned by a Greek, tell him you know Mr McAllen and need a lower berth. It will dock first Patras, and from there to Genoa. Take the key, it's much safer in your hands than mine."

Leon hugged the water pipe tightly, with the handle of the gun against his waist, "What about you?"

Someone was banging on the door. "I'll catch up," Hines said, closing the window.