Unknown

She had been in love with the doctor the entire time, and now it was too late for him to say anything; she was dead.

The Frenchman toyed with his butterfly knife, flicking it open, flicking it shut, flicking it open again.

( was just a civilian, hired to take care of the cell’s mundane, workaday tasks—a receptionist for a foreign operation she knew nothing about.

He didn’t know who had interviewed her. This felt wrong to him. As a spy, he had acquired and discarded hundreds of identities over the years, but the rule he lived by was simple: know your quarry. Once you knew who it was you were pursuing, everything else fell into place—how to blend in, where to move, when to strike.

The Frenchman first saw her a year and a half ago. He was walking into the office with the doctor, grousing about the League’s coffee like they did every morning—and there she was.

Scott, their runner from America, stood in front of her. His narrow chest jutted out like a proud, scrawny dog while he talked at her. Despite their closeness in age, the girl’s gaze kept moving from the boy’s ballcap to the office floor, and back again.

The Frenchman thought he knew why: the boy’s mouth had no off switch or volume control.

“—Yeah, so if you want I can take you on el grando touroof this dump. C’mon, let’s go.” The boy made to take her elbow.

The door shut, making a loud click. She raised her gaze and looked at the men who had just entered.

In his trade he had seen every type of woman—from Hausfrau (wife of a crime lord; successful mission) to minor royalty (also successful)—and he had seduced them, though only for the duration of the given mission. Seduction was part of the game. The thought did not trouble him.

But that he should have been so taken with this modest girl, that was a thought that had kept him awake nights, even when she was alive.

In the distance, a train whistled. The Frenchman looked down the tracks, but saw nothing. The hot dry wind blew. He put his knife away and got out his cigarette case, careful not to jostle the precious cargo in his bag.

“Hello,” she said. Her accent was American, but nothing at all like the boy’s. She walked over to them and offered her hand. “I’m Cat.&rdquo.

The doctor took it. “Freut mich. I am Dr. Riedermann, and this is my associate…”

Even now, the memory of her hand made him break into a sweat, one entirely independent of the desert heat. Would that he had kept his wits about him! In situations inches away from death—or discovery—they had never failed him. But in that moment…

She held her hand out to him, and all the genteel manners he had amassed over the years—minute rituals which never failed to capture exotic women—fled from him like birds from the sound of gunshot.

He looked at her hand like it was an alien thing, then up at her eyes, then back to the hand. At last, his brain took a breath.

“Very pleased,” he said. After he shut his mouth, the protocol landed in his head with a thud. Bow, kiss her hand, give her the smile, say “Enchanté.”The Frenchman never mutteredupon meeting a woman!

Even as he released her hand, he wished to take back the last thirty seconds of his life.

“Oh!” The doctor straightened up and smiled with all of his perfect flat teeth. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“Ja—I studied some at the university. I’m not as good as I’d like to be, though.” She said this in slow but capable German, the whole time smiling like a light was turned on inside her. They spoke a few moments longer, then left the room.

Scott and the Frenchman looked at each other. The Frenchman scowled. Him, reduced to competing with the boy! At least he still had some advantages. She didn’t like Scott, that was one. The doctor hadn’t offered her his arm, that was another.

“Hey—what the hell was that? Sounded like the doc was gargling a cement mixer!”

Advantage three. “He said he would be happy to help her improve her German and asked if she could understand him. Then he offered to take her on that ‘grando touro’ of yours.”

“German’s hard, right? So she’s gotta be real brainy to speak gargle-talk with him, right?”

After his smoke, he went upstairs to the second-floor office and bent over his desk.

It was a rolltop so old that it looked like it belonged in some Edwardian museum. He found its old-fashioned craftsmanship a relief, however, since the desks at his previous assignments had all needed some kind of prop to keep them from wobbling.

He unlocked it, slid back the cover, and began reviewing his files. At the moment, there wasn’t much else to do; his work came with the papers, and those weren’t due to arrive until next week.

The doctor occupied the executive desk next to the Frenchman’s, but his primary job was to sew up injured League drop-ins; this he did downstairs in the first-floor infirmary. The Frenchman found the arrangement invaluable. Most injured members came straight from the front lines; a quick chat with the doctor often provided the Frenchman with just enough clues to piece together the general state of League affairs. But it was almost half past lunch before the doctor came in that day.

Until he saw the doctor’s beaming smile, the Frenchman had managed to keep busy enough to forget about the girl. He looked up from the drawer he was cleaning out.

“I gave the Fräuleinsome money and sent her out for our lunch. Zigeunerschnitzel, oder?”

“Yes, that’s acceptable.” The Frenchman thought about it. “You think she can be trusted?”

The Frenchman winced at the memory. The question had made sense at the time—months before Cat’s arrival, the Frenchman and the doctor had discovered Scott pocketing the change from lunch as a “delivery charge”—but looking back, he couldn’t see it as anything other than an insult to her character.

“Absolutely,” said the doctor. “She is religious.” This he pronounced as though declaring her immune from some terrible disease.

The train pulled up. The Frenchman extinguished his cigarette with an automatic drop, toe, twist. Soon he would be relieved of his burden.

“Religious, you say? Catholic?” The Frenchman had killed a lot of Catholics in his time.

“She didn’t say. She doesn’t wear a cross, but she does not wear a star, either.”

The Frenchman shook his head. “I hope she doesn’t have plans for—” the Frenchman waved his hand in the air, encompassing all the things a religious zealot might do to the established order. “I have a very nice Merlot here and no one so small is going to make me to abstain.”

“I don’t get that feeling from her, to tell you the truth.” The doctor took off his glasses and cleaned them.

And that should have been it. Why should a scoundrel like him subject himself to some self-righteous teetotaler?

The Frenchman recalled setting the Merlot down on the lunch table that first day. She’d glanced at it, then continued talking with the boy.

On Friday, things were normal. She sat at her desk on the ground floor, and he went straight up to the office with the doctor. The Frenchman caught up on his newspapers. Save for a brief break in the afternoon to catch up with a visiting Russian colleague, the doctor was at his desk all day. The Frenchman left early, the back way, because he had tickets to the opera.

Saturday, he stationed himself at one of the palace parks. He sat on a bench by the sphinx statues that lined the courtyard, smoked, and watched young couples pass by. A girl or two looked like her.

He found a seat alone and apart on the train and looked out over the landscape, beige under the brilliant blue. The train would not be departing for some time.

Looking out over the desolation, he wondered how it could have ever evoked any music.

The Frenchman had been engrossed in a book of poetry when she was suddenly there in front of him. He hadn’t heard her come in. Tucked in her slender arms were the documents for his next assignment.

“Mail for you.” She offered him the manila envelope. Her voice was soft, and she stood back a ways from him.

He shook himself out of examining her (Indigo sweater. Black skirt. Nice legs. Lovely.) and took the envelope.

“Merci beaucoup,” he said, but she had already turned away to the doctor’s desk.

“Do you think it’d be okay if I leave his on his desk?” She held up another envelope.

“I think it would be better if you kept it with you until he returns,” said the Frenchman. The League’s rivals were prone to leaving their important documents unattended (the Frenchman’s camera knew this firsthand), but that was no excuse to let it happen on his watch. “There should be a locked drawer in your desk below.”

“Oh, I saw it, but I don’t have the key,” she said, ending with a look that wondered if she should have said that. He stood—he would have stood when she entered the room, except he hadn’t heard her—and touched her back lightly.

“I’ll show you,” he said, and guided her down the stairs. She clutched the doctor’s envelope in lieu of the banister. It was narrow going down the iron spiral staircase. He could feel her warmth close to him.

More men came aboard the train. Workers in dusty overalls, excavators of the wrecked city. The Frenchman lowered his head to block them out, to retreat to happier times.

The last few steps were wobbly, and a nervous smile broke out on her face. She glanced back at him with this smile and he knew at that moment that somehow, this girl (at least it wasn’t May-December attraction…May-September, at the latest.

She jumped the last two steps, light as her namesake, and looked back. For a second, he stood there with his arm in the air, feeling foolish until he followed with his own leap.

She gave a little grin that turned into a laugh of delight, and he smiled back at her. The ease of it lightened his heart.

The Frenchman used the doctor’s lack of thoroughness as an excuse to show her every nook and cranny of the storage room. A plastic package of pens discovered in a drawer delighted her. She collected them along with two legal tablets. He walked her back to her desk.

“I’m in the middle of writing something—a story.” She ducked her head and risked a glance at him.

“These pens, I really like them. They let me write quick enough to catch all my thoughts,” she said. “I haven’t been able to buy them for a while now, so I’m glad we have them here.&rdquo.

When he was satisfied that she could lock and unlock the desk without any trouble, the Frenchman climbed back up the spiral stair, thinking of how he could charm her back.

One of his poetry books for the little writer. A real ink pen, presented in a box lined in velvet, notwrapped in plastic—with a ream of fine sepia paper. Or an Italian leather journal. Or earrings. Fine, bright jewelry to sparkle against her dark hair.

But she already wore simple gold studs. Perhaps a play. It seemed she could follow along well enough, with her German. Was she too young for the opera?

He pondered these things while he flicked open his knife and slit the seal of the envelope.

The upholstery on the seat-back in front of him had lines that went up and down and sideways like the lines in a labyrinth.

He had lived through situations that switched from serenity to fatality in the time it took for him to open his knife, but until the moment he opened those orders, he hadn’t realized the same could happen with joy and despair.

A shaft of light illuminated the office window behind the doctor’s desk. Dust motes glimmered in and out of the light. If justice existed (which it didn’t; if one could have found any of his victims, they would have attested to that), the doctor would be sent to Prague with him. Or just be sent away—what did it matter where? Just as long as he was away from the girl…

No. Less than a month here, then gone, and her alone with the doctor, and THAT would be a May-December romance, no doubt.

Looking back, he realized that he’d had very little proof that the doctor had been interested in Cat as a lover. But at the time, all he’d seen was her charm, and he simply assumed that everyone else would be after it, the charm of his Cat.

He wasn’t even the main player in the game. The Frenchman was to serve only as a distraction. The Australian would make the kill. Which meant the Frenchman could not use his discretion to end the mission early.

He heard the doctor’s shoes ring on the staircase well before the man himself appeared in the doorway. After he had settled at his desk, the doctor’s eyes went to the envelope in the Frenchman’s hands.

The Frenchman shook his head. “No, yours are—I can get them for you.” He stood up from his chair. “Please, make yourself comfortable.” He was at the doorway. “I’ll be right—oh, Cat.”

She had the doctor’s envelope with her. She gave him a quick smile, but ducked past to go to the doctor, color high in her cheeks. The Frenchman watched them, watched her give the orders over, watched the doctor return her smile. The sunlight behind them was brilliant and blinding, and for the first time—the only time, Dieu merci—the Frenchman thought about planting his knife deep in the doctor’s back.

Knowing now what he hadn’t known then, the Frenchman felt ashamed. He rested his forehead against the seat in front of him.

“A new person is coming to the office?” Cat asked the doctor in German the next day.

Somehow—probably through Scott, that loudmouth—Cat had learned that the Australian was due in tomorrow. From his chair, the Frenchman watched them over his newspaper. She stood at polite attention in front of the doctor’s desk. The window was cracked open, allowing in the muted drone of road traffic.

“He’s…not…new,” said the doctor. “And he is not staying long. Fräulein, he’s more of a visitor. He will be here, then gone again. Like our Russian friend.”

Her ears turned a startling red. “I thought the office—all of us, the new man, even Scott—could go to the café for lunch.”

The Frenchman lowered his newspaper with a crackle. She began to back out of the room. “We have the…the…” she stopped backing away. “How do you say ‘petty cash’?&rdquo.

The doctor hmmed, looking at the Frenchman. He understood. A member transferring in before a mission wasn’t much of an affair. If word got out, what would the rest of the League think.

Cat spoke again to the doctor. “I’ll make cookies.” She wriggled when she said this.

“‘Good old-fashioned chocolate chip,’” the Frenchman murmured to himself. He could remember the exact way she said it, the tone, the lilt, the proud lift in her chin.

In the last town, he had picked up a sandwich for lunch. He took it out of his pack, unwrapped it, and bit into it.

The entire cell, including Cat and the Australian, met outside the office on the sidewalk. Winter was sneaking into the fall, making the afternoon cloudy and damp, but bright. So far, no rain.

The Australian wore a cold-weather sheepskin coat and yellow aviator sunglasses. He was one of the Frenchman’s preferred collaborators, a big-game hunter who’d turned to hunting men when the League offered him better pay—and more time to go on safari.

“Always be prepared, right, love?” The Australian said this to Cat on their way to the café. He walked on Cat’s other side, shortening his long-legged stride to match pace with her. Cat, of course, trotted next to the doctor. Scott and the Frenchman brought up the rear.

There was a moment when the Frenchman met Scott’s eye—and realized there would be competition for the seat next to Cat. The boy narrowed his eyes in a stare that must have intimidated the lesser hoodlums back home. The Frenchman squared his shoulders and looked straight ahead.

They made a strange group as they walked the city streets together. The doctor and the Frenchman looked intimidating in their dark overcoats, the Australian tall and dashing in his sheepskin. The boy looked…American, wearing short pants with his windbreaker. (He would be wearing those shorts until spring, if he was going to win the Russian’s money.) None of the men could match the splendor of little Cat in her black knit coat, the collar lined in soft fur.

While they waited at the café to be seated, the Frenchman stared at her coat, wondering how she would take it if he removed his leather glove and touched the fur of her collar. But while he ruminated on this, the Australian did it. One moment, the Australian was announcing in his ear-bending accent that he’d just get “his usual”; the next, he had leaned down to her level and was taking the fur-lined collar between his fingers. Cat watched his hand without alarm or ire.

“Let me guess. Not rabbit…not mink…But of course it’s real, you can tell just from lookin’…good ol’ fox?” He grinned when she nodded, and withdrew his hand.

The Frenchman couldn’t remember being seated, or what he ordered. He found he couldn’t focus on anything anyone was saying. There was only the rushing of blood between his ears. His deep-breathing training kicked just in time for him to catch the last of the Australian’s anecdote.

“You kidding me, hotshot? You saw—what, like, five cheetahs? In real life? No way. You can hardly see ‘em at the zoo, and they’re in cages there!”

“Oddly enough, a man sees a lot of things in a blind.” The Australian winked at Cat. She chuckled at his little pun.

The Frenchman felt the tension in his shoulders ratchet up another notch. But before he could calm down, he caught the examining look the Australian was giving him.

The Australian looked away. The Frenchman took another deep breath and forced himself to relax.

He retrieved his canteen from the pack and took a small sip. It wouldn’t do to drink it all before he reached the city.

The Australian leaned back in his chair and took a long pull of water. He set it down with a sigh.

The team exchanged a brief look. Then their eyes slid to Cat, then to the Australian. The hunter nodded, just. With the League’s enemies about, the less she knew, the better.

The Australian covered up the pause. “For cryin’ out loud! No stories from any of you blokes? Miserable. Pathetic. I’m sure the little one here could put you all to shame, couldn’t she?&rdquo.

The Australian looked over his yellow glasses at her. “What about it, love? What have you seen since you’ve been here?”

“Well,” she said. She leaned back, staring up into the sky. The Frenchman looked up—right, they were seated outdoors, he hadn’t noticed—and saw the gray clouds swimming overhead. Did the clouds do this often over the city? He had never noticed before.

“I got a museum pass, so I’ve been using it on my time off,” she said. “I liked all the animals at the Naturhistorisches. . .”

“And the Venus of Willendorf was neat, but I didn’t know she was so small! She’s only doll-sized. Not huge like I thought.

“But the best thing I’ve seen so far was this painting of Mercury in the underworld.”

“The underworld? Cat, that’s creepy!” said the boy. The Frenchman shot him a look.

The Frenchman watched the way her eyes went soft, imagining the painting again. “It’s a whole wall, Scott, and the souls of the dead are barely there, it’s so dark, but around Mercury, he’s all light.” She shook her head. The Frenchman craved that little smile.

He had seen the painting—afterward. The Souls of Acheron. It hung in the museum with the sphinxes in the courtyard. And now here he was, he thought as the train clattered its way forward. On his own river Acheron. Could she see him now? Would she see him “all light”?

After work, when the Frenchman was halfway to his flat, the Australian revealed himself.

“I thought I was being followed,” said the Frenchman. The chill air made his cigarette smoke white.

“Bullocks,” said the Australian. “You haven’t been lookin’ at anything straight. ‘Cept her.”

The Frenchman replayed the afternoon in his head…The doctor ordering for her, the way she batted her eyelashes at him back at the office when praised for the cookies. The Frenchman scowled.

“Sorry if I stepped on your toes there, mate. Didn’t know you had your sights on her. Cute little sheila, isn’t she?”

The Australian waved it aside. “You gotta go for it, mate. I mean, if it’s something—”

“Listen, if you think you’ve got a chance, I’ll try to get us back early.”

“You might if you get on it. Foundation and all.” The Australian adjusted his slouch hat. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Don Juan never died, did he?”

“Well.” The Australian considered this. “Good thing you’re not him, then.”

The Frenchman watched out the window. The rhythm of the train drained the energy from him. Had he dozed off? He blinked hard. He couldn’t remember much, and the landscape was all the same: dusty, dry, with ragged scrub. Lifeless. So unlike her. Maybe he’d heard wrong. He took a sip of water.

He and the Australian had up until the exit date to plan the mission’s details, memorize their cover stories, and change their appearances. They met mornings at the office. The Australian only stayed for half-days, preferring to spend the afternoons at the firing range. The doctor now spent the mornings in Operating, to give them privacy.

When the Frenchman failed to answer “yes” by the second week, the Australian added a groan of disgust after his partner’s reply.

It wasn’t that the Frenchman was afraid to approach her. Rather, every approach he could think of sounded atrocious, like something the boy would say. Will you…Would you want to…You should come along…His inner Don Juan had been replaced with a teenaged boy.

When Cat was around (and she was around daily, dropping off the mail and asking questions about the doctor), she proved a formidable distraction. When she turned to leave, the Frenchman couldn’t help but toss questions into the air—”Was it in Africa or Russia where you saw that leopard cub trying to sneak into your backpack?”—that made Cat do an about-face in the doorway, eager for the rest of the anecdote.

The Australian soon abandoned any hopes of preparing the mission when Cat was in the room. Instead, he began maneuvering the conversation so that the Frenchman could join in. But the Frenchman couldn’t bring himself to make a move.

The week of their departure, the Australian did not begin their morning with the question, as the Frenchman was coming to think of it. The Australian sat down, took off his hat to run his hand through his hair, and said, “Scott’s asked her out.”

He gave the Frenchman some time to process this, which was wise, because these words made the bottom fall out of the Frenchman’s stomach.

The Australian snorted. “He’s probably on top the opera house right now, crowin’ about it. Little jackal. But if he can do it and get a yes…” The Australian ended by pointing a finger in the Frenchman’s face. When he was sure his meaning had gotten across, the Australian relaxed and pulled out a map. He leaned over it. “So by 18:00 on December twelfth, you’ll have the wife positioned over in this area of the building…”

More dust. More heat. More nothingness. What was he doing here? The wasteland went by, unchanging.

It was Wednesday evening. The next day was a holiday, and the day after that, the Frenchman would leave for Prague.

It was closing time. The doctor had been called out to an emergency surgery and hadn’t come back. The Frenchman was staying late in order to review his papers. He had failed to devise the perfect way to approach the girl, and now the mission was two days away. He probably knew everything he needed to know, but he didn’t know it cold. Now he was scrambling to catch up, something he hadn’t done in years.

He was drilling himself on his cover when he heard her on the stair. He looked up, then stood when she entered the room. Only his lamp was on. Her gaze searched the doctor’s side of the office.

The Frenchman took her in. She was wearing the fox coat, but hadn’t buttoned it up yet, so he could see her red blouse beneath.

The Frenchman slipped his papers inside his attaché case and went to her. “He might have been called to a surgery. You shouldn’t worry over him.”

“Oh—I’m not worried,” she said. She ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s just…there’s a little fair on the Donau tomorrow and I hoped he’d come with me. Do you know where I could reach him?” She tilted her head up at him in her Cat-ish manner.

He looked into her dark eyes and decided to lie, decided, to hell with the doctor.

“But of course,” he said. He watched as the beginning of an eager smile rose to the surface of her face.

Now came the lie. “But tomorrow morning, he will be taking the train to Salzburg. He mentioned something about spending the day there.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked past him, out at the dark night. The disappointment on her face filled the Frenchman with an alarm he couldn’t name.

She looked up. The severe expression had disappeared, but now her eyes were skimming over him like he was a new book she might like to read…or put back.

He tried to invoke Don Juan again, but nothing came. He fumbled and rearranged words in his head, wishing he could make them say what he really meant. The Frenchman swallowed. “And I will take you anywhere else you want to go. The whole day.” Then, feeling bold, thinking of foundations, he stepped close. “Your collar, chérie.” He pretended to adjust the fur, enjoying the trusting way she exposed her neck to him. He ended by smoothing his hands over her shoulders. He kept them there.

“A beautiful girl shouldn’t be alone on a holiday.” He smiled at her and waited to see what she would do.

In the window’s faint reflection, the Frenchman caught himself smiling at the memory. She had given him one of those wide, pleased smiles that made the corners of her eyes crinkle and had said yes. He remembered that he couldn’t remember walking home—only that he had reached his flat, almost shaking. The possibility of winning her over in that moment had felt real.

The next morning, the Frenchman stood in front of Cat’s door. The flowers he had bought that morning seemed romantic one minute, desperate the next. At least he’d had the sense not to bring red roses!

He pulled his breath in for a long count, out for the same count, then knocked. He stood there a few moments, feeling his guts churn until she opened the door.

Cat appeared. She blinked, then leaned forward, peering at him. Then her eyes went wide in realization.

“You shaved!” She stepped forward, bobbing left and right to examine his jawline. “Can I?” She lifted her hand. He leaned down and closed his eyes, enjoying the tickling feeling as her fingers brushed his chin.

“Um.” She pulled her hand away, suddenly bashful. When she looked down, she saw the flowers.

“For you, Cat.” He had decided on an autumn bouquet. He didn’t know if it said what he wanted it to say, but it was orange and yellow and cheerful-looking and it reminded him of her. When she reached out to stroke one of the petals, he let out a soundless sigh of relief.

“They’re beautiful.” She took the bouquet from him and twirled it in her hands. “Thank you. I’d better get them in some water, huh?” She stepped back. “Come in.”

She turned left, into a kitchen nook. On instinct, the Frenchman scanned the apartment. He couldn’t believe it. There was no place to hide…no place to execute a kill shot unseen…nothing to barricade the door with. There was only a faded green armchair and a table. Even the walls were bare.

His shock turned into annoyance. He should have drawn this conclusion earlier, much earlier. To the League, she was a mere secretary—no, not even that, but a front, a façade. Why invest in window dressing.

He wondered what she would have made of his spacious flat, furnished in wood and Moroccan artifacts and soft rugs.

He watched her pull something like an oversized pickle jar out from under a cabinet. She filled it with water from the tap, then arranged her bouquet inside.

He studied the back of her fox coat. He’d always assumed she wore it because it was her favorite. But now that he thought about it, she wore the same few things over and over again, didn’t she? Well—if he got his way, she would be the best-dressed girl in the city.

“This is the first time I’ve ever gotten flowers. Outside of piano recitals, I mean.”

She nodded. “I think so.” She shook herself. “Sorry—” she put a new smile on her face. “I didn’t really greet you, did I? Good morning.”

“Good morning.” His Don Juan instincts urged him to kiss her cheek, as though she were another mark. He rejected the urge with a flash of anger. He wouldn’t fall back on old tricks. Somehow, he was going to tell her the truth about how he felt—even if only in small pieces.

“You look lovely,” he said. The skirt and the coat were the same, but he’d never seen this jewel-toned blouse on her before. She must save it for special occasions, he thought. Then it hit him: Heconstituted a special occasion.

Outside, Cat locked her flat behind them and put away her keys. The moment her hand left her purse, he swooped her hand up in his. She looked up at him, uncertain.

“It’s the custom in my country,” he said. He tried to read her face, but her expression hadn’t changed. Maybe she had a better lie detector than he’d thought. “Unless you are uncomfortable?”

He dropped the hand he was holding and took the other one between his palms. He rubbed vigorously until it was warm. She beamed with delight the whole time, even laughing a little. When he stopped, she did not pull away.

The Frenchman’s back pressed into the backrest; the train was leaning upwards, ascending a mountain. The desert had given way to pines and cool shade.

He wished he had been braver. He wasn’t sure if what he was doing now was brave, or just foolish, but if he had been brave back then, maybe things could have been different.

They walked hand in hand to the subway. She asked him little things: how many newspapers did he read, anyway? Did he have any pets, where did he live…When work came up, more than a few of her questions were about the doctor. He quickly declared work a verbotensubject on this outing and found with relief that she didn’t press the issue. Opera was not out of her reach, he discovered. When she described Madama Butterflyas the most beautiful-sounding train wreck she had ever seen, the Frenchman threw back his head and laughed.

Sitting next to her on the subway train, he resisted the urge to put his arm around her. That, he thought, would be pushing it.

The fair was small. Fewer than a hundred people were walking through the grassy aisles. “More a farmer’s market,” she said, looking it over, “than a real fair.”

They walked through the stands anyway. She only stopped at one stall, where clusters of oversized grapes hung. She held one up and showed him how they glowed like gems in the sunlight, another thing he had never noticed before. But soon, there was nothing left to see. They boarded the subway back into the city.

He opened his mouth, ready to say something easy, but changed his mind. “I am disappointed in the fair because it disappointed you.”

“Also, gut.” She nodded to herself to make it final. The subway began to move. He watched her reflection as the world slid away from them outside the window.

Ah, yes. She had suggested the Döner Kebabstand—whether out of frugality or Scott’s bad influence, he couldn’t tell. (The Frenchman had once overheard the boy boasting that he ate one every day; the Frenchman suspected the idiot was addicted.) He recalled how her face lit up when he took her to a proper restaurant instead—and then the way she’d cupped her hand over her mouth (but disguised it as a rubbing gesture) when she realized there were no prices on the menu. He replayed that memory often.

The rest of the day was everything the fair should have been. He suggested things, and what sounded good to her, they did. They spent the crisp, bright day together, window-shopping the bookstore on Mariahilferstrasse, visiting the Anker Clock, more little things that seemed to add to the possibility of success. He left her side only once, at the gelato shop. He excused himself around the corner for a smoke.

He was returning to their bench, but stopped and ducked back behind the wall, when he realized he could hear Cat humming. Not like a bored person, but like a musician would, adding dumpah dumpahsand other strange spoken rhythms into the song, her own accompaniment. Only once did she sing, and then, only one line: Out where the sun always shines…

It was a jaunty tune, it was all Cat. He kept hidden around the corner and listened a few more seconds, but she did not start again.

The sun had gone down long before their walk back to her flat. Her fox coat, though fur-lined, didn’t seem to stop her from shivering, so he put his arm around her until they reached her building. That wasn’t taking it too far, was it.

She unlocked the door. He reached over her head and held it open for her. Inside, their steps echoed around the foyer. There were other doors facing the central area, no doubt belonging to other tenants, but it felt to the Frenchman as though they were the only ones in an empty building. Stairs led up to the first floor, and to her flat.

Her nose was pink in the warm light of the foyer. Perhaps he stared too long; her eyes darted away. She rubbed her nose with a hand.

“My pleasure, chérie,” he said. She peeked back up at him. Fear grabbed his chest. Did he dare.

She shuffled in place (was she waiting?), pushed her hair off her cheek (was she inviting him?). He took both her hands in his.

A kiss on the cheek, he thought. Then he found himself looking into her eyes. He dropped his gaze, but it was too late. Her smooth face had become like the sands of the Sahara: endless, vast, impossible. He instead lifted her one hand to his lips.

“Cat, I am leaving tomorrow afternoon, it may be for a lo—for a few months, but if—when I come back, can I see you again?”

Her brow furrowed, and she stopped looking at him. He squeezed her hands. There was a slight pull; she was trying to take a hand away. He swallowed, then released it. She was looking over her shoulder, as if seeking answers from her neighbor’s door. His arm hung there, dead weight.

“I—I’m not sure.” She glanced at him again. “A lot can happen in a few months, right?”

The doctor’s face appeared in his head. Maybe he hadn’t had a chance after all. Not a chance in Don Juan’s hell.

“But if I’m still available then, then yes, I’d like to do this again. With you.”

On the train, the Frenchman snapped out of his doze. The sunlight darting in and out of the trees made the scene before him flicker and strobe. Had she said that?He leaned back in his chair.

He’d remembered the scene differently: that she’d turned him down, then stood on tiptoe to give him a chaste kiss (he’d come to think of it as thepity kiss) on his cheek before retiring to her flat.

The Frenchman stared at his pack. I was so sure her answer was going to hurt—

Later, he lay awake in bed. His heart ached. It wasn’t even the honest heartbreak of rejection; it was this horrendous pain of not-knowing, of uncertainty.

Had she planned on making something happen during his absence? Or did she think a promise couldn’t last that long? Perhaps she was only speaking of fate…

His thoughts chased themselves in a great circle all night long. Three in the morning, still no answers. He drank a glass of wine and finally slept. He dreamed of glowing gems of grapes, and the Donau.

The sunlight had stopped strobing through the trees. The train was in the shadow of the mountain now. From his pocket, the Frenchman pulled out a black-papered clove cigarette. He let it hang from his mouth, unlit. During his time with the Australian, he’d gone outside to smoke on a few occasions. Once, he’d come back inside through the front door, where Cat worked. She was at her desk, typing. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t looked at anything but her work, didn’t even miss a key…but she had wrinkled her nose in distaste.

The next day he’d switched to the black-papered kreteks, which had a sweeter smell. After the break, when he had closed the door behind him, Cat paused her work and lifted her head. Eyes focused in space over the typewriter page, she sniffed the air. She moved her tongue and lips as though tasting the scent, seemed to think it over a moment, then resumed typing.

He’d switched back to his old brand after her death, but traveling here, in her country, it had felt right to pack the cloves.

The day of his departure, the Frenchman entered the office through the front door. Scott sat on the edge of Cat’s desk, kicking his feet against the side like a child.

“You’re gonna love this band we’re seein’ next week! They’re just the best, the greatest. Hey and did you know their bass player used to play for the Sox?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about them, you know that!” She reached over to tweak Scott’s hat, but he ducked out of the way.

Early in his career, the Frenchman had received a blow to the back of the head. Remembering that the boy had made a date with her, remembering that a lot could happen in a few months, remembering that she had been seeking the doctor in the first place, it all hit him just like that blackjack.

I should never have come through this door, he thought, right when Cat called to him.

“Is that all you’re taking?” Cat asked. “I thought you said you’d be gone a few months.”

He glanced down at his leather traveling bag, faded to a tarnished gold from years of use. He was glad he’d packed it before yesterday. If anyone asked him now, he would not be able to recall what was in it.

“What, you gonna throw ‘em a party, Cat? They’re big tough guys, they don’t need—”

“Hush,” she said. To the Frenchman’s amazement, the boy did. It must mean—

The doctor was in Operating with the door shut, so the Frenchman was alone with the Australian in the upper office. The hunter’s effects (including a hard-sided rectangular case for his rifle) were stacked next to the Frenchman’s desk, which the Australian was sitting on. The Australian took one look at him.

The Frenchman shook his head. “Later.” If he could make it to the train, all this would be behind him.

The Australian idly thumped the side of the desk with his fist. Tunk…tunk…tunk…

“I did.” The Frenchman muttered this but did not expect the Australian to hear, let alone shout loud enough to be heard on the ground floor.

They scrambled to close the door. When no one came, the Frenchman recounted the previous day for him, ending with her saying a lot could happenand the pity kiss.

“Well…” The Australian sat back, scratching his chin. “At least she didn’t tell you ‘no’ outright.”

“She’d be too polite to,” snapped the Frenchman, and grabbed the mission documents. He hid in them for the rest of the morning.

The landscape outside the train had changed. There was greenery, a lake, even pelicans. She, who had been delighted by the sparrows that winter, would have loved them. Maybe, if things had been different, she would have loved him, too.

The train stopped. New passengers boarded. He held the pack close. This place was beautiful, but it wasn’t her home.

That sneaky, sun-baked, Vegemite-swilling bastard had moved their luggage into the lobby, sent Scott on an errand across town, then gone for a last beer with the doctor, leaving the Frenchman alone to guard the luggage—alone with her.

A craven voice inside him told him to retreat up to the office, but he couldn’t. First, the Australian’s rifle was never to be left alone. That he’d left it behind guaranteed that the Frenchman would be stuck guarding it. If Cat hadn’t been on lunch break, the Frenchman could have carried the rifle back up to the office and holed up there for the rest of the day. But on break, she could follow him anywhere, if she so desired. So he sat there with the luggage while she asked her questions.

She listened to him, chewing her Semmel. When he was done, there was silence between them. She folded the remains of her lunch carefully and tipped them into the wastebasket.

“Sounds cold! I don’t know how…Praguers? I don’t know how they stand it. I guess that’s what they have those fur coats for.&rdquo.

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. The typewriter clacked on. He was going to forget all of this. As much as he had hated the mission’s appearance in his life, he found himself thankful for it now. Time away to forget her, that’s what he needed. Time and distance.

The typewriter clacking stopped, and he heard her open the drawer where she kept her pens. There was an ink sound on paper. She began to hum again, at first tunes he hadn’t heard. Then, after a pause that seemed to indicate she was done, she started up on the jaunty one from the gelato shop the other day.

He opened his eyes to watch her nod her head in time. Her foot pressed…kicked up, pressed…then kicked again, like she was at the piano.

She sang a line under her breath he couldn’t decipher, and then he heard it, the same line from yesterday—Out where the sun always shines. The Frenchman leaned forward, thinking he might be able to hear the rest, but his motion had caught her eye. She froze, song abandoned.

After a long pause—during which the Frenchman sat very still—Cat threw herself back over her typing, ears red.

Hours later, she sent him and the Australian off with a handshake. But his last vivid memory of her alive was in that office, with a rifle case, a typewriter, and that song.

That song had brought him here, for better or worse. The train was winding through the ugly desert again. He checked his watch, stuck the unlit kretek away. One hour and he would be in her city.

He thought the mission would erase her from his mind. The business of coordinating his movements in the city with the Australian filled his head the first few days. On schedule, he was in the estate, and the Australian was casing the grounds.

But—and he had known this all along—his role in the mission was to seduce away the wife (who was allowed where bodyguards were forbidden) so that her husband could be killed without any witnesses.

Each time he slipped into his Don Juan persona, he wanted to be sick. He wanted to shout at the wife: This isn’t real love. You old cow, how could you not know it?

The wife was a tittering, frivolous thing. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, but for the first time ever, a woman’s overtures disgusted him.

He tolerated the wife’s touch, and even her kisses, but begged off sleeping with her. He managed to get away with it until the Australian shot her husband dead from half a kilometer away.

Before the funeral, guilt caught up to the wife and she kicked the Frenchman out. He was on the train back home. The Australian had been good to his word; they were back a half-month early.

But not soon enough, the Frenchman thought, stepping off the desert train. It was starting to get dark. He found a hotel and checked in. In the room he turned on the radio, took out a book, and forced his mind to it. There were some memories he did not want to remember past dark.

He slept until morning, straight through. At first he thought his sleep had been dreamless. But when he picked up his pack and felt its weight in his arms, he remembered.

He checked out of the hotel and began scouting the city to see if a right place could be found.

League procedures required the Frenchman to stay home a week after a completed mission, to better mask any possible connections between events and facilitators. At first, he tried falling back into his old routines.

But the second night of staring up at the ceiling and wondering what is she doing? Who is she with? made up his mind for him.

The next evening, an hour or so after work let out, he went to Cat’s building. He waited outside in the chill until an old woman from her building entered the main door. He slipped in behind her and waited in the shadows while she shuffled ahead. When the neighbor’s door had clicked shut, he went up to Cat’s door and knocked. He wondered if he should have brought something for her.

The door opened and a strange man’s face appeared. The Frenchman’s heart froze, then restarted.

“‘Cat’? I don’t know any…” The man tried to shut the door, but the Frenchman barreled forward and the man stumbled back.

The Frenchman stopped scanning the flat and stood in the doorway. He assessed this comment. The apartment walls were no longer bare. Only a serious raise from the League would have permitted her to move out. Unless she had been fired. If that were so, how would he find her again?

He stepped back, adjusted his collar. “I—I’m…my apologies, sir. I have been on holiday a while. She—I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

The Frenchman found a pay phone and called the office. It was after hours, but it was a weekday, and sometimes the doctor stayed late.

To hell with the League.The Frenchman smoked before bed. I shall go in tomorrowand see her there. Even if I am penalized, it will put my mind at ease.

The attack that had ruined Cat’s city was still in evidence. Some gaudy neon signs had been built—or perhaps rebuilt, he wasn’t sure—but there were just as many mountains of rubble where the steel skeletons of buildings splayed and twisted in the air. The remaining residential areas were ghost towns, save for where the construction workers lived.

Nowhere did he see anything vibrant, green, or beautiful; nothing worth the song she had sung. He wiped sweat from his brow. The heat here was pitiless.

Any glamour the city retained was not visible during the day, and the Frenchman’s stomach turned at the thought of staying here one more night. He returned to the train station and bought another ticket.

He smoked half the night away. He spent the other half in fitful dreams where he sought the Australian in a Venice filled with endless, unfamiliar alleys, and he could feel time running out…

When morning came, he found he had come to his senses. A simple phone call duringoffice hours would clear things up.

“You are going to feel very silly about this,” he said to himself. “She will have moved in with family—”

Not Cat. Coffee roiled in his empty stomach. The Frenchman asked for the doctor and was connected.

“Doctor.” The Frenchman wet his lips. After some time to think, he settled on the simplest question.

“Do you or do you not know how to get into contact with her?” This was it, this is where the doctor would say she had moved in with him, and she didn’t need to work anym—

“I don’t believe you.” The Frenchman grabbed the receiver with his other hand, trying to steady it.

“Listen…” said the doctor. “Come in the back way tonight at nine. Check the alley before you enter it. Don’t be seen.&rdquo.

The Frenchman kept pulling his hand out of his pocket. His habit was to open and close the knife, but this train station was busier than the last one. Families with children surged by in infrequent herds, most going on to California to visit relatives, from the overloud chatter of their mothers.

He hated this dry, ugly place. He cursed the song that had brought him here. It was too hot to even think of smoking, so he stood there, sweating, feeling the knife in his pocket and the weight of his pack.

At the appointed time, the doctor let him in the back door. They moved in darkness, save for the doctor’s small torch. Only one lamp was on in their office.

“What is this nonsense you speak of?” he said. “About Cat—you must be mistaken. The League—”

“She was here late, finishing a report for headquarters.” The Doctor rubbed his forehead, looking older than ever. “She went out back to empty the wastebasket, I think, before she went home. I was…” he lifted his hand, dropped it, “holed up in Operating, cleaning. I didn’t hear anything.”

The Frenchman watched the doctor’s throat bob as he swallowed. “I went out the back way and I almost stepped on her.&rdquo.

The doctor looked at him. “They did it,” he said. “I can’t prove it, but I know they did it.”

The Frenchman stepped onto the train, face drawn and grim. He found another seat alone and apart from the families. He remembered returning home that awful night, and thinking to himself, I stepped over her bloodstains.

“She was so quiet at first, I thought she’d gone into shock. But when I checked her vitals, she spoke.

“She told me they took the garbage bag. All papers from the shredder—worthless! She was killed for secrets she didn’t have!&rdquo.

The doctor buried his face in his hands for a long while. The Frenchman lit a cigarette. It was a kretek and right now it tasted foul.

“Sorry,” the doctor said, head still not raised. “If I think about it too much…it’s like I lost—I lost…”

The Frenchman just stared at him. “What happened next?” His voice sounded distant and dull to him. The doctor raised his head.

“I told her it was okay, it wasn’t her fault. I could see she wasn’t going to make it, it was…there was a lot of blood loss.” He went quiet. The Frenchman’s cigarette burned. The doctor began again.

“I think…she knew, when I didn’t bring her up here, that she was…she knew what was going to happen.”

The doctor looked into the Frenchman’s eyes. It was a look of weariness the Frenchman had never seen before, nor since.

“She cried and said she wanted to go home. Over and over again. I think I said something stupid about her flat, and she said, ‘No, to my home-home!’ To her Zuhause.” The doctor stared at the floor, seeing nothing. “Of all the men here I was the best one to save her, and I couldn’t even do that. All I could do was hold her while she cried.”

They sat for a long time after that, in the dark. The cigarette burned to ash on the Frenchman’s lips.

“She’s not,” said the doctor. The Frenchman groaned. Burned up, his beautiful Cat.

“She’s in Operating, in one of the cold drawers.” The doctor gave him a look, until the Frenchman comprehended.

“A week ago? Less? Mnh,” the doctor shook his head, “probably less. It feels like forever. The League wants it kept quiet. They sold off her apartment and told me to…dispose of her.”

The doctor nodded. “I bought a plot in Hallstatt some time ago, in case—ha!—in case the League ever needed a quiet burial. There’s a Beinhausthere, one more or one less skull in a year won’t be noticed.” Images of the ossuary flitted through the Frenchman’s mind, but he pushed them away. Too much, right now.

“I was hoping you would be back soon,” said the doctor. “I wanted your help. I know you’ve had some experience with…night burials.”

“I think she was looking forward to your return. At least, she was asking after you recently.&rdquo.

The Frenchman bowed his head. After a time, the doctor pushed himself out of the chair. “Come, if you want.” The doctor went down the stairwell and did not wait for him.

The sun outside was so bright, it bleached the remaining color from the desert, from the sky even. Children squalled. The train drove on. All he could do was wait.

The white sheet made her slight frame seem even smaller in death. The doctor reached for the corners of the sheet. The Frenchman grabbed his wrist.

He looked upon her and imagined possibilities, mourned them. Walking her through the sphinx park, sharing his favorite poets with her, giving her a velvet-lined box…All memories that could never be; a future that would only exist in his imagination.

The scenery outside was changing again. The sharp rock and scrub were giving way to softer-looking grasses and purple-red mountains.

Two nights later, they smuggled her body out and buried it in snowy Hallstatt under a faint moon.

“She would have liked it here, I think,” said the doctor, the next day. They were walking alone on an empty road that wound tightly against the side of the mountain. The doctor’s breath steamed in the cold air. “In September the mountains are green, and there is fog on the lake. A good place for a budding writer, oder?”

They walked a while before the doctor spoke again. “She was alone in the city—she told us while you were gone,” he said. Their footsteps crunched on the gravel. “I wish we could have taken her home, instead of here.” The doctor nodded at the mountain. “The village is beautiful, but it isn’t her Zuhause.”

The Frenchman tapped ash off his cigarette. “She didn’t tell me,” he said. He looked out over the dark lake.

The train stopped and let him out in the more-beautiful country. She had died in a city where the sky was only seen in narrow strips between old white buildings, but her home was big sky country.

He waded through time like it was mud. After some months, the numbness eased into a sort of daze. Some days he questioned if she had been real, but then the boy would say, “Hey Doc, you remember the time when Cat…?”, or there would be a bunch of grapes, or a woman who resembled her, and Cat would come back into sharp focus.

He made it through spring, summer, and fall. When winter came, he thought memories of her would choke him dead, but somehow he made it to the other side.

In the distance, the sunset reflected off the lake. Birds sang and twittered afar off, almost on the edge of his hearing. Cloud edges caught the gold of the sun, bent the light into orchid reds and magentas.

Perfect, the Frenchman thought. He reached into his bag and unfolded the little shovel.

During that first year, the Australian sent mail the Frenchman did not reply to. Not at first. But after the first winter, normalcy began to restore itself. He missed her, but it was comprehensible now.

“Sometimes I wish that I had a picture of her,” said the doctor once. They sat in a quiet corner of a nearby pub. “For my desk.” The doctor lifted his glass as if to drink, then set it back down. “I never had a family. But when I was with her, it was like…it was like I had found the daughter I was meant to have.”

He paused later, to rest. When he had heard the song after her death, it had felt like some kind of miracle—for he wasn’t just in the right place at the right time to hear it, but also, he thought, in the right state of mind.

It was the second summer after her death. Along Kärtnerstrasse, the Frenchman leaned against a tree, apart from a large group of assembled families and tourists. They faced a makeshift stage where some American children’s choir was performing. He blocked out the music and tried to enjoy his cigarette.

His next mission began tomorrow. The manila envelope had come with an eight-month assignment, deep cover documents, and a note from his administrator indicating that anything less than a stellar performance would be grounds for dismissal. She had included a dozen surveillance photos of him taken unawares.

The Frenchman forgot to exhale. It couldn’t be.But by the time they reached the chorus, he knew. He staggered into the crowd. At the foot of the stage, he listened to the words. He thought they would bring him solace, but what the Frenchman heard left him thunderstruck.

When the song was over, he left. The Frenchman chewed on his lip the entire subway ride home. He had held a key to the puzzle for a long time, but had never even known there was a puzzle—until now.

He went to Hallstatt and found her grave by sunset. While the town slept, he took what he needed, burned his manila envelope, and was on a flight to America the next morning.

He had done the art and lettering himself, hand steady after a year and a half of mourning.

Before he left Hallstatt this second time, he visited the Beinhausin order to study. Inside the ossuary, the skulls of the townspeople, collected for hundreds of years, were carefully arranged. Some were decorated, their names painted in script across the smooth brow of the skull; others had crowns of flowers painted on, or crosses added.

Cat’s skull wouldn’t have looked out of place in Hallstatt. On her right temple, he had painted a red rose; on her left, a round sparrow in winter plumage. Between these images, he had written her name in the best calligraphy he could manage. He thought she would have liked it. Perhaps someday—he hoped, someday— she would tell him so herself.

The sun had gone down behind the mountains. He walked back to the train station, the sky glowing behind him.

Home means Nevada
Home means the hills
Home means the sage and the pines
Out by the Truckee’s silvery rills
Out where the sun always shines
There is a land that I love the best
Fairer than all I can see
Right in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me