Her “Whr R U now?” had been sent “about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck.”

“Paris,” typed Milgrim, “man following us, seen yesterday in London. Is he yours?” He clicked the update button. Sipped at his espresso. Refreshed the window.

“Describe,” this less than five seconds ago via TweetDeck.

“White, very short hair, sunglasses, twenties, medium height, athletic.” He updated. Watched people passing, through the window.

Refreshed the window. Nothing but a short URL, sent forty seconds before from TweetDeck, whatever that was. He clicked on it. And there was Foley, wearing what might be the olive-drab version of the black jacket, with a black knit skullcap rather than the forage cap. Oddly, his eyes were concealed by a black Photoshopped rectangle, as in antique porn.

Milgrim glanced at the page’s header and the image’s caption, something about “elite operator’s equipment.” He concentrated on the photograph, assuring himself that this was in fact his man. “Yes,” he wrote, “who is he?” and updated.

When he refreshed, her reply was thirty seconds old. “Never mind amp; try not 2 let hm no ur on hm,” she’d written.

Know, he thought, then typed “Bigend?”

“When U back”

“Hollis thinks we’re back tomorrow.”

“Ur lucky ur in paris out”

“Over,” he wrote, though he wasn’t sure that was right. Her telegraphese was infectious. He saved the URL of the elite operator’s page to bookmarks, then logged out of Twitter, out of his webmail, and closed the computer. His Neo began to ring, its archaic dial-phone tone filling the tobacco shop. The man behind the counter was frowning.

“Yes?”

“You’re lucky to be in Paris.” It was Pamela Mainwaring. “Not ours.”

His first thought was that she’d somehow been watching his Twitter exchange with Winnie. “Not?”

“She rang us. Definitely not. Be lovely to have a snap from Paris.”

Hollis. Pamela’s call constrained now by Bigend’s suspicion of Sleight and the Neo. “I’ll try,” Milgrim said.

“Enjoy,” she said, and hung up.

Milgrim hoisted his bag to the zinc counter, unzipped it, found his camera. He loaded it with a fresh card, Blue Ant having kept the one he’d used in Myrtle Beach. They always did. He checked the batteries, then put the camera in his jacket pocket. He put Hollis’s laptop in his bag and zipped it shut. Leaving a few small coins on the zinc counter, he left the shop and headed back to the Salon du Vintage, walking quickly again.

Was he still angry? he wondered. He was calmer now, he decided. He knew he wouldn’t be telling Bigend about Winnie. Not if he could help it, anyway.

It was warmer, the cloud burning away. Paris seemed slightly unreal, the way London always did when he first arrived. How peculiar, that these places had always existed back-to-back, as close together and as separate as the two sides of a coin, yet wormholed now by a fast train and twenty-some miles of tunnel.

At the Salon du Vintage, after paying five euros admission, he checked his bag, something he never liked doing. He’d stolen enough checked luggage himself to know this arrangement as easy pickings. On the other hand, he’d be more mobile without it. He smiled at the Japanese girl, pocketed his bag check, and entered.

He was more at home in the world of objects, his therapist said, than the world of people. The Salon du Vintage, he assured himself, was about objects. Wishing to become the person the Salon du Vintage would want him to be, hence somehow less visible, he climbed a handsomely renovated stairway to the second floor.

The first thing he saw there was that poster of a younger Hollis, looking at once nervy and naughty. This was not the actual poster, he judged, but an amateurish reproduction, oversized and lacking in detail. He wondered what it would be like for her, seeing that.

He had left relatively few images himself over the past decade or so, and probably Winnie had seen most of those. Had them ready, perhaps, to e-mail to someone she wanted to be able to recognize him. Most of those had been taken by the police, and he wondered whether he’d recognize them himself. He’d certainly recognize the one she’d taken in the Caffe Nero in Seven Dials, and that would be the one she’d use.

The young man in the forage cap and foliage green pants, his black jacket still zipped, emerged from a side aisle of racks, his attention captured by a darting shoal of young Japanese girls. He’d removed his mirrored wraparound sunglasses. Milgrim stepped sideways, behind a mannequin in a delirious photo-print dress, keeping his man in sight over its massively padded shoulder, and wondered what he should do. If Foley didn’t already know he was here, and saw him, he’d be recognized from Selfridges. If not, he supposed, from South Carolina. Winnie had been there, watching him, and someone, he’d assumed Sleight, had photographed her there. Should he tell her about that? He flagged it for consideration. Foley was walking away now, toward the rear of the building. Milgrim remembered the man with the mullet, in the mothballed restaurant. Foley didn’t have that, Milgrim decided, whatever that had been, and it was a very good thing. He stepped from behind the Gaultier and followed, ready to simply keep walking if he was discovered. If Foley didn’t notice him, that would be a plus, but the main thing was for Milgrim not to be thought to be following him. His hand in his jacket pocket, on his camera.

Now it was Foley’s turn to step sideways, behind a neon-clad mannequin. Milgrim turned, toward a nearby display of costume jewelry, conveniently finding Foley reflected, distantly, in the seller’s mirror.

A red-haired girl offered to help him, in French.

“No,” said Milgrim, “thank you,” seeing Foley, in the mirror, step from behind his mannequin. He turned, pressing the button that extruded the camera’s optics, raised it, and snapped two pictures of Foley’s receding back. The red-haired girl was looking at him. He smiled and walked on, pocketing the camera.

23. MEREDITH

Maybe Milgrim was the one who was hallucinating here, she thought, as she climbed the Scandinavian stairway again, a tall paper cup of quadruple-shot Americain held gingerly in either hand. The coffee was steaming hot; if Milgrim’s possibly imaginary stalker suddenly manifested, she thought, she could hurl the contents of both cups.

Whatever that had been, down in the deserted blue-lit disco, if it had been anything at all, it now seemed like some random frame-splice from someone else’s movie: Milgrim’s, Bigend’s, anyone but hers. But she’d avoid that elevator, just in case, and she were still on the lookout for vaguely Nazi caps.

Milgrim had issues, clearly. Was in fact deeply peculiar. She scarcely knew him. He might well be seeing things. He looked, pretty much constantly, as though he were seeing things.

She carefully kept the blow-up of the Corbijn portrait out of her field of vision as she reached the second floor and the Salon du Vintage. Keeping her mind off the basement as well, she wondered exactly when coffee had gone walkabout in France. When she’d first been here, drinking coffee hadn’t been a pedestrian activity. One either sat to do it, in cafes or restaurants, or stood, at bars or on railway platforms, and drank from sturdy vessels, china or glass, themselves made in France. Had Starbucks brought the takeaway cup? she wondered. She doubted it. They hadn’t really had the time. More likely McDonald’s.

Her antique denim dealer, intense and ponytailed, was busy with a customer, laying out a pair of ancient dungarees that seemed to have more holes than fabric. He looked as though he should have supplemental lenses hinged to the edges of his rimless rectangular spectacles. He didn’t see her pass.

And here, past the inflatable orange furniture, came a funeral, and Olduvai George marching jauntily along beside it, smiling.