crows of strasbourg

12.

He struggled to play "Taylor," often forgetting his new role until the first officer called him several times before he realized it.The sailors ignored him at first, but the entertainment provided by playing cards was limited after all, and soon they turned their attention to the newcomer.where is he from?Where are you going?Leon ruminated over the stories he had hastily made up, filling the holes and cracks with fabricated details and praying their openings weren't so obvious.He wondered how Hines did it, throwing three or four identities in turn like a circus juggler, catching each one firmly, maybe practice.

He worked in the kitchen every morning, peeling potatoes and washing the dirty dishes in the sink.The front and back doors of the kitchen were always open, but not even the sea breeze could blow away the weird smell that permeated everything, smelling like sour milk.The chef is a Frenchman whose ancestors were oyster farmers in the Gulf of Saint-Michel until those aquatic companies with large processing plants and fleets of trucks drove them out of the business. "I don't want to clean oyster shells for Parisians in a workshop," he has a fisherman's face, rough, chiseling the scales of the changeable weather of the Brittany peninsula, when he talks to Leon about the processing that grows like warts by the sea His face would wrinkle as if he had swallowed a whole lemon when he was in the factory, and most of the world's crises, in his opinion, were caused by the Parisians, "My two brothers also work there, they could have Owns an oyster farm." He took a puff on his cigarette thoughtfully, "After I go back."

Conversations tend to end here, and he never says what will happen when he goes back, maybe he will single-handedly smash the processing plant, maybe he will find a low-paying job there like everyone else. "Reporter, eh, Tyler?" he asked. "Will this be a good story? Will you write my story?"

"Yes," Leon said, dumping the potato skins into the trash can, "very good, Laurent."

There was a time, when he was about twelve or thirteen, when Leon fantasized about leaving the farm and walking along the railroad to the West Coast, like he'd seen in the comics.The sky in the picture is always vast, and there are always kind strangers and warm kerosene lamps in the midnight train carriages.The comics were all brought back by Uncle Frank, "Frank the Tramp," as his father called him, but he never dared to say that in front of his mother.The Methodist minister and his battered Ford Thunderbird were always on the road, always reappearing at the most unexpected moments and disappearing quickly.Leon read these cartoons over and over under the oak tree behind the barn. They gave him a wrong impression, as if the journey itself was a kind of points game, with clear signposts and clear rewards. As long as the protagonist walked far enough, all problems would be resolved Mysteriously resolves itself.This is not the trip I imagined, Leon thought, propping his hands on the steel sink for the next puke.As the Patricia tossed and tossed in a storm twenty miles southeast of Skyros, the sailors shouted to each other in Spanish as the waves beat against the portholes with an unnerving roar.The walls seemed to shake around him, and Leon gripped the edge of the sink, eyes closed, for God's sake I'm just a telegrapher.

From time to time he dreamed of the long and narrow street in front of the carpentry shop. Out of some tyrannical subconscious logic, he couldn't leave the headless corpse of a crow. A sickly crimson glow.Footsteps were clearly audible, but he saw nothing but shifting shadows.Leon woke up in a cold sweat in the cargo ship's cabin, reaching for the gun taped to the back of the bed to confirm its presence.

If he had ever hoped that Hines would miraculously wait for him in Greece, that hope was completely shattered when the Patricia reached the port of Patras.The cargo ship would anchor here for a week, and the captain told him that if he wanted to go ashore and "take a look," no one would stop him.The last thing Leon wanted to do now was wandering around strange cities, so he stayed on board, playing the sailors' endless game of cards, winning half a bottle of brandy from Laurent, and losing it to After calling the chief engineer, the sailors burst into laughter, and someone patted Leon on the back hard.They're not your friends, they're Tyler's, the little voice in his head reminds, Hines won't be around anymore, you're on your own.

Maybe he was in Genoa, Leon argued with the voice, not to jump to conclusions.

Stupid boy, sighed the voice that sounded so much like her mother's.

-

Prescott hadn't spoken for 15 minutes.

These 15 minutes were counted from the time the telegram was sent in. An ordinary piece of paper was clutched in the secretary's hand like a young bird that couldn't escape. After watching "Whip," he struck a match and lit a cigarette with a burning piece of paper, presumably to add to the drama, which Prescott loves.The office had no windows, the ventilation ducts hummed, and the air smelled like old manila paper bags.There were four telephones on the table, one of which was rumored to have a direct line to Langley, and the Consul wanted to know which one.He shifted in his seat, took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"Not feeling well, Sam?"

"No."

"You have been." The regional dispatcher made a motion of wiping his forehead.

"It's just a habit."

"What caused this habit?"

"Don't know, active metabolism, I guess."

"Pressure," Prescott tapped the table with his hand holding a cigarette, as if to pin the word on it, "the difference between a diplomat and a gambler lies in the stakes, you charge a higher price, and rely on Radio to tell you what color and number the roulette wheel turned."

"I'm not so sure, Mitchell."

Prescott fell silent again, absorbed in his smoking.The Consul wondered why he was sitting here, why he couldn't go back to Strasbourg yet.Every time he stepped out of the temporary residence assigned by the embassy, ​​there would always be a fake and attentive "assistant" asking him to go back with various reasons. If the consul insisted on going out, then the "assistant" would be happy to accompany him all the way.The consul couldn't be sure whose orders these little jackals were following. The CIA or the embassy, ​​I'm afraid it didn't make any difference.

"Whip" put out the cigarette butt. "Some interesting news out of Turkey, Sam, there was a shooting with no victims in a filthy little hotel, you have to be careful, in this kind of hotel, the shooting is not the most shocking, there is no body this That's the truth. Normally we don't notice petty disputes like this, but since we were 'hunting' the local liaison office questioned the porter anyway, can you imagine what they found?"

No, the Consul replied meekly, he couldn't imagine.

"They had a Mr. McAllen, and his young nephew."

The Consul tried again to wipe his face with the handkerchief, but this time he held back.

"You guessed it, it was Mr McAllen's guest room where the gunshots came out, and I had to ask the right questions, didn't I, 'Where's Christen', 'Where the hell is Hines', and There's the most important, 'Where's the fucking keys', perfectly reasonable question, no? 'I don't know sir', the only thing my agents keep saying over and over, 'I don't know sir' , I might as well keep a cage of parrots." He lit another cigarette, stood up, and began to pace the room, the consul's eyes following him, just as people instinctively stare at a cobra, "'I I thought of a new way for you', I told them, 'Since you can't smell the prey yourself, run after the KGB's ass, starting today, staring at Sokolov, 24 hours a day, phone records, photos Records, the whole process, until he leads you to Hines and Christen'."

The Consul licked his lips, which were chapped in the dry filtered air, "Then?"

"Then we made Sokolov disappear and brought our boy back."

"It might not be a good idea, he's an employee of the Soviet embassy after all, and it would cause—"

"That's not the part you should worry about, Sam. We have no less than fifty ways to make a murder accidental. Trust me, it's one of our many specialties." He suddenly approached the consul, who subconsciously leaned back. , trying to distance himself, "If you had left this matter to the grown-ups from the start, you could have spent your mediocre diplomatic career comfortably in Strasbourg today. The reason why I put all this I tell you because you can't leave Paris until this thing is over, and I'll keep an eye on you."

You don't have that power, the Consul wanted to protest, but as he did so many times before, he dared not speak.