Twenty

No luck,” Hollis said when voicemail picked up at David’s office at the Justice Department. She hung up. There was no sense leaving another message. She’d already done that on his cell phone, twice.

“First the agent, then Eamon. And now a third man’s gone missing,” Finn said. “It’s getting kind of monotonous.”

“A fourth man if you count our Interpol contact.”

“I wonder if someone was there and saw Moodley and just didn’t want to blow his cover.”

“So he left us to sit there, exposed?”

Finn shrugged. “Or maybe something held him up.”

Hollis didn’t want to think about what that could be. “Are we really going to go to the theater tonight?”

“I guess, if you’re sure that’s what you want to do.”

“That man, Peter Moodley. It’s not like he told us we had to go to the play. It was more like he assumed we were going.”

“Maybe Eamon Byrnes will be there.”

She knew this game that she and Finn were playing. Each one leaving room for the other to back out. Their first conversational game of chicken was when the wedding plans had gotten out of control. Each said they didn’t need a big wedding, in case the other would take the bait and suggest elopement, but without making the kind of definitive statement that could lead to one person feeling forced into doing something they disliked. In the end, their little game had been outplayed by their mothers, who had, without asking, invited dozens of people neither Finn nor Hollis knew.

That hadn’t stopped them from playing chicken, though. Instead they’d refined it over the years, learned to read each other better, finding that it was still the best way to have plausible deniability if something went wrong—the I did it because I thought you wanted to escape hatch.

She also saw they were each fighting a battle of curiosity verses caution. A desire to know was innate in every academic, though usually that knowledge didn’t mean risking one’s life. Still, they couldn’t just sit in the room, and she saw that Finn was looking for an excuse to let curiosity win this round.

“I do know what Eamon Byrnes looks like,” Hollis said. “At least I think that was him in the photo I saw at the shop.”

“If we see him, we can report back to David that he was in Dublin and avoiding us. And if we don’t see him, we can always leave at intermission and spend the rest of our weekend as planned.”

“And we’ll be in a crowd of people,” Hollis assured herself as much as Finn. “It’ll be safe.”

“But we’re not going to do anything,” he said. “We’re just going to observe and see if we’re approached.”

“Unless Eamon is there.”

Finn considered it. “Maybe.” He paused for a moment. “I feel like Michael Collins signing the peace treaty with England in 1921.”

“You may have signed your own death warrant,” she said, paraphrasing the famous words of a soldier and politician, whose negotiations for Irish freedom resulted in civil war and his own death in less than a year. “Let’s hope you’re not as prescient as he was.”

“Let’s do more than hope. Let’s be careful.” As he talked, Finn was getting his jacket. When he put it on, he stuffed his hands into his pockets. Then he paused and pulled out a small metal object. He held it in his open hand, staring.

It was a bullet.

He dropped it onto the desk and they both watched it roll harmlessly to a stop. “It’s a warning. Someone got close enough to slip this in my pocket without my noticing. So they’re close enough to do anything they want.”

“Why threaten us?” she asked. “What do we know?”

“A lot less than people think we know, clearly.”

Hollis picked up the bullet, examining it closely. “Well, we know it’s an unfired nine-millimeter.”

Finn let out a long breath. “Of course you know the caliber. Did you remember that from your days at the … what do they call that place where they train spies?”

“They train agents. And it’s nicknamed the Farm.”

“So do you remember how to identify calibers from the days when you were there, or have you been studying such things behind my back all these years?”

His annoyance sparked her own. “If you read about medieval poetry, I don’t think of it as something you did behind my back.”

“Because I tell you.” He paused. “In excruciating detail.”

She smiled at that truth. “I’ve read about it since my training. Not behind your back; I just thoughtfully spared you from learning all about calibers. You’re welcome.” She turned back to the bullet. “Do you think it could have been Peter Moodley? I know he was carrying a gun, at least I think he was, but I never saw what it was.”

“He doesn’t seem the subtle type.” Finn sat on the bed and took a deep breath. “Besides, the bullet is an anonymous threat. His was right out in the open.”

Hollis sat on the bed next to Finn, putting her hand in his. For a moment they were silent, letting the weight of the threat sink in. She found that, along with fear, she was a little angry—with herself, with David, and with whoever had put the bullet in Finn’s pocket. There was something cowardly about the anonymity of it, she decided. Not that she was looking for a confrontation. “If we can figure out when it got there …”

“I think that’s the first time I put my hand in my pocket all day.”

It could have been anyone, she realized. Peter Moodley, the woman in the red coat who brushed against him at Trinity Library, the older man at the shop, Keiran, or anyone on crowded Grafton Street. “Do we stay here?”

“Are we safer in this room? Didn’t you point out earlier that at least some people know where we’re staying?”

“And we haven’t exactly been hiding it. We’ve walked in and out of the front door of the hotel several times. We’re registered under our own names.” She sighed. “If we can’t reach David, I don’t know what to do.”

Finn got up. “We don’t need David to tell us what to do. The Abbey Theatre is a crowded place, and we have a plan. You still want to go?”

He was back to the you first game. Hollis followed him out the door. She had the feeling that what they were doing was either going to turn out to be incredibly exciting or very, very stupid. And if it was the latter, she wasn’t sure that this time I thought you wanted to was going to be all it took to make things right again.