Call After Midnight

“No comment.”

“Seems to me the old love life’s been pretty barren since your divorce.”

Nick set his coffee cup down with a clatter. “What’s with all these questions?”

“Just trying to see where your head’s at, Nick. Haven’t you heard? It’s the latest thing. Men opening up to each other.”

Nick sighed. “Don’t tell me. You’ve been to another one of those sensitivity training sessions.”

“Yeah. Great place to meet women. You should try it.”

“No, thanks. The last thing I need is to join some big cry-in with a bunch of neurotic females.”

Tim gave his friend a sympathetic look. “Let me tell you, Nick. You need to do something. You can’t just sit around and be celibate the rest of your life.”

“Why not?”

Tim laughed. “Because, dammit, we both know you’re not the priestly type!”

Tim was right. In the four years since his split-up with Lauren, Nick had avoided any close relationships with women, sexual or otherwise, and it was starting to show. He was irritable. He’d thrown himself into salvaging what was left of his career, but work, he’d discovered, was a poor substitute for what he really wanted—a warm, soft body to hold; laughter in the night; thoughts shared in bed. To avoid being hurt again, he’d learned to live without these things. It was the only way to stay sane. But those old male instincts didn’t die easily. No, Nick was not the priestly type.

“Heard from Lauren lately?” asked Tim.

Nick looked up with a scowl. “Yeah. Last month. Told me she misses me. What she really misses, I think, is the embassy life.”

“So she called you. Sounds promising. Sounds like a reconciliation in the works.”

“Yeah? It sounded more to me like her latest romance wasn’t going so well.”

“Either way, it’s obvious she regrets the divorce. Did you follow up on it?”

Nick pushed away what remained of his chocolate mousse cake. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t feel like it.”

Tim leaned back and laughed. “He didn’t feel like it.” He sighed to no one in particular. “Four years of moaning and groaning about being divorced, and now he tells me this.”

“Look, every time things go bad for her, she decides to call good old Nick, her ever-loyal chump. I can’t handle that anymore. I told her I was no longer available. For her or anyone else.”

Tim shook his head. “You’ve sworn off women. That’s a very bad sign.”

“Nobody’s ever died of it.” Nick grunted as he threw a few bills on the table and rose. He wasn’t going to think about women right now. He had too many other things on his mind, and he sure as hell didn’t need another bad love affair.

But outside, as they walked back through the cherry trees, he found himself thinking about Sarah Fontaine. Not about Sarah, the grieving widow, but about Sarah, the woman. The name fit her. Sarah with the amber eyes.

Nick quickly shook off the thoughts. Of all the women in Washington, she was the last one he should be thinking about. In his line of work, objectivity was the key to doing the job right. Whether it was issuing visas or arguing a jailed American’s case before a magistrate, getting personally involved was almost always a mistake. No, Sarah Fontaine was nothing more to him than a name in a file.

She would have to remain that way.

* * *

Amsterdam

THE OLD MAN loved roses. He loved the dusky smell of the petals, which he often plucked and rubbed between his fingers. So cool, so fragrant, not like those insipid tulips that his gardener had planted on the banks of the duck pond. Tulips were all color, no character. They threw up stalks, bloomed and vanished. But roses! Even through winter they persisted, bare and thorny, like angry old women crouched in the cold.

He paused among the rosebushes and breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of damp earth. In a few weeks, there’d be flowers. How his wife would have loved this garden! He could picture her standing on this very spot, smiling at the roses. She would have worn her old straw hat and a housedress with four pockets, and she would have carried her plastic bucket. My uniform, she’d have said. I’m just an old soldier, going out to fight the snails and beetles. He remembered how the rose clippers used to clunk against the bucket when she walked down the steps of their old house—the house he’d left behind. Nienke, my sweet Nienke, he thought. How I miss you.

“It is a cold day,” said a voice in Dutch.

The old man turned and looked at the pale-haired young man walking toward him through the bushes. “Kronen,” he said. “At last you’ve come.”

“I am sorry, meneer. A day late, but it couldn’t be helped.” Kronen took off his sunglasses and peered up at the sky. As usual, he avoided looking directly at the old man’s face. Since the accident, everyone avoided looking at his face, and it never failed to annoy him. It had been five years since anyone had stared him boldly in the eye, five years since he’d been able to meet another person’s gaze without detecting the invariable flinching. Even Kronen, whom he’d come to regard almost as a son, made it a point to look anywhere else. But then, young men of Kronen’s generation always fussed too much about appearances.

“I take it things went well in Basra,” said the old man.

“Yes. Minor delays, that’s all. And there were problems with the last shipment…the computer chips in the aiming mechanism…. One of the missiles failed to lock in.”

“Embarrassing.”

“Yes. I have already spoken to the manufacturer.”

They followed a path from the rosebushes toward the duck pond. The cold air made the old man’s throat sore. He wrapped his scarf a little tighter around his neck and forced out a thin, dry cough. “I have a new assignment for you,” he said. “A woman.”

Kronen paused, sudden interest in his eyes. His hair looked almost white in the sunshine. “Who is she?”

“The name is Sarah Fontaine. Geoffrey Fontaine’s wife. I want you to see where she leads you.”

Kronen frowned. “I don’t understand, sir. I was told Fontaine was dead.”

“Follow her anyway. My American source tells me she has a modest apartment in Georgetown. She is a microbiologist, thirty-two years old. Except for her marriage, she has no apparent intelligence connections. But one can never be certain.”

“May I contact this source?”

“No. His position is too…delicate.”

Kronen nodded, at once dropping the subject. He’d worked for the old man long enough to know the way things were done. Each man had his own territory, his own small box in which to operate. Never must one try to break out. Even Kronen, trusted as he was, saw only a part of the picture. Only the old man saw it all.

They walked together along the banks of the pond. The old man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the bag of bread he’d brought from the house. Silently he flung a handful into the water and watched the crumbs swell. The ducks splashed among the reeds. When Nienke was alive, she had walked to the park every morning, just to feed the ducks her breakfast toast. She had worried that the weak ones would not get enough to eat. Look there, Frans, she would say. The little ones grow so fat! All on our breakfast crumbs!

Now, here he was, throwing bread on the water to the ducks he cared nothing about, except that Nienke would have loved them. He carefully folded the wrapper and stuffed it back into his pocket. As he did this, it struck him what a very sad and very feeble gesture it was, trying to preserve an old bread wrapper, and for what?

The pond had turned a sullen gray. Where had the sun gone? he wondered. Without looking at Kronen, he said, “I want to know about this woman. Leave soon.”

“Of course.”

“Be careful in Washington. I understand the crime there has become abominable.”