“That’s the way I like it.”

“I’ll just be a moment.”

He went off to the kitchen and left me in a room comfortably outfitted with traditional furniture, everything showing wear but nothing shabby. It could have been a room in the house I grew up in. There were books in a revolving oak bookcase, the titles running to history and biography. The only art on the walls was an impressionistic landscape in oils in a simple gallery frame.

The coffee was as advertised, almost strong enough to walk on. I expressed approval and he nodded with satisfaction.

“My doctor told me he doesn’t want me to drink strong coffee,” he said, “and I told him he could go to hell. I’m a widower, I’ve no children, and my life’s work is done. Drinking strong coffee is as close as I come to having a bad habit, and I’ll be damned if I’ll change it just so I can outlive a few more of my old friends. You’re William Thompson, or do you prefer Bill?”

“Bill is fine.”

“And if I remember correctly you said you lived here in the building, although I can’t recall seeing you before. Of course it’s a large building.”

“Yes.”

“And you had the chap on the desk call up and announce you, although you could have dropped by unannounced, since I was already expecting you. That was courteous of you. Was that Ramón on the desk, or Sandy?”

Something in his eyes warned me. “I couldn’t say,” I said. “I don’t live here at the Boccaccio, Mr. Weeks.”

“But you did thus introduce yourself the other night, did you not? Or is my memory at fault?”

His memory was as good as ginkgo. “I’m afraid I told an untruth,” I said.

“I don’t suppose that’s anything like a lie, is it?”

I felt as though I ought to have my mouth washed out with soap. “It is,” I said, “and I’m afraid it’s not the only one I told.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not an old friend of Captain Hoberman’s. We met for the first time less than an hour before I introduced myself to you.”

“And this was a stratagem to make my acquaintance?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t have met you at all if things had gone according to plan. When Hoberman and I got off the elevator, it was my intention to get to the staircase before he rang your bell.”

“What went wrong?”

“The elevator operator was watching.”

“So you had to appear to be visiting me. But you had business elsewhere in the building.”

“Yes.”

“What sort of business, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m a security specialist,” I said. “I’d been enlisted to pay a visit to an unoccupied apartment.”

“In the Boccaccio? I didn’t realize that there were any unoccupied apartments here.”

“Unoccupied that evening.”

He considered this. “In other words, the tenants were not at home. And you had been provided with a key?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then you must be a man who doesn’t require one. Don’t hang your head. There’s no shame in being in possession of a skill, even one that’s so often put to a bad use. By God, is that the only reason Cappy Hoberman came over here? So that he could get you into the building?”

“I’m sure he was delighted to visit you,” I said, “but-”

“I wondered what all that was about,” he said. “Cappy’s not made for deception, never was. Very much a meat-and-potatoes fellow.”

“Tobacco and vodka, too.”

“Indeed. I had a call from him just a day or two before you both came over. I was astonished to hear from him, hadn’t had any word of or from him in years. Didn’t actually know if he was alive or dead.” He paused, his eyes probing. “Wanted to see me, he said. Well, I’ve nothing but time these days. I looked forward to an hour or so of talk about the old days. Wednesday night, he proposed. Late, around midnight. He hadn’t much time to spend in New York, he said, and that was the only time he could fit in a visit. I suggested we might meet somewhere for a drink but he wouldn’t hear of it, said he might be late, didn’t want to leave me stranded. Besides, he had something for me, wanted to bring it to my home.” He cocked his head. “I suppose that was all in aid of getting you into the building.”

“It must have been.”

“A lot of trouble to go through. He had a gift for me, a little mouse. On the table to your left.”

It was a little over an inch long and skillfully carved. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Ivory?”

“Bone.” His gaze was less probing now, and his eyes had a faraway look in them. “I’d seen it before, shortly after it was carved. It was pure white then. It’s yellowed with age. ‘I saw it in a shop window,’ Cappy said, ‘and I thought of you. Almost a match for the one the old fellow carved.’ Well, it’s more than a match for old Letchkov’s work, it’s the very specimen. I knew that much at a glance, and I didn’t believe for a moment that Cappy found it in a shop. When was he ever the sort to go looking in shop windows? But he could hardly have kept it all those years. How on earth had he managed to lay hands on it?” His eyes sought mine. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No.”

“How could you? We knew each other many years ago, Cappy Hoberman and I. Along with Wood, of course, and Rennick and Bateman. The five of us were known back Stateside as the Bob and Charlie Show. Rennick and Bateman were both named Robert, you see, and the rest of us were all Charles. Working together, we had to modify our names. Alliteration suggested Rob for Rennick and Bob for Bateman. I remained Charles, but Wood became Chuck, which was what he’d been called as a boy. And we called Hoberman Cappy.”

“Because he was a captain?”

“Ha! All he ever captained was his college football team. He had the air of a leader, that’s all. And we didn’t have ranks. We weren’t military. Officially, we didn’t exist.” He took a sip of coffee. “These are ancient cats I’m letting out of the bag. I can’t think anyone would care at this late date. The Cold War’s over, isn’t it? I don’t know that we’ve won it, but the other side does seem to have lost. Or at least to have wandered off the playing field.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, ages ago. When was Masaryk killed in Czechoslovakia? You wouldn’t remember, but I ought to. 1948? Our little adventure began the year after that. My God, I was only a boy. I thought I was a grown man, I thought I was mature beyond my years, but I must have been callow beyond sufferance.”

“And you were in Czechoslovakia?”

“Why would you think that? Oh, because I mentioned Masaryk. No, we were south and east of Czechoslovakia. We were in the Balkans, mostly. Slipping across borders, exchanging code words in café’s and back alleys. We thought it was a game, and we believed what we were doing was very much in the national interest. And I daresay we were wrong on both counts.”

“What did you do?”

“Raised people’s hopes and risked their lives, and risked our own as well.” He was silent for a moment, thinking about it. “None of it matters now,” he said, “and it can’t have much to do with your recent visit, can it?”

“I think it does.”

“How, for God’s sake? It was almost half a century ago. Most of those people are dead.”

“Let me ask you this,” I said. “Were you ever in a country called Anatruria?”

“Sweet Christ,” he said. “That’s no country. Before Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, they used to say that Italy was just a geographical expression. Anatruria wasn’t even that.”

“They had a king, didn’t they?”

“Old Vlados? I’m not sure if he ever set foot inside his own purported realm. They proclaimed independence around the time of the Treaty of Versailles, you know, but it seems to me they did so from a distance. By the time I heard mention of Anatruria it was three decades later and Vlados was an old man living where you’d expect him to be, in Franco’s Spain or Salazar’s Portugal, I can’t remember which. Anatrurian independence was an idea whose time had come and gone. No one gave it a thought, no one outside of a handful of ethnocentric lunatics who’d been marrying their cousins for a few generations too many.”