His last, fragmented thought was of Elena, bravely bound for Moscow, and it might have become a prayer if his consciousness had not been almost instantly snuffed out.

When a guard shook him awake, it was dark outside the window.

Hale was not manacled again, but neither was he given anything at all to eat, before being led back to the green-baize-draped table in the stripped dining room; but a padded office chair had been wheeled in to face the table. Hale gratefully sat down in it and squinted at the faces of his interrogators in the electric lamplight.

The civilian in the business suit was the first to speak. “We did send a man to talk with your solicitor, Henry Corliss,” he said. “And Mr. Corliss expressed only bewilderment at your activities. He was not able to suggest any contacts nor to ‘point us toward an explanation,’ as you claimed he would, and he is not willing to represent you in this action.”

Hale didn’t let his expression change or his shoulders sag, but he was hugely relieved; obviously the only reason Corliss would have failed to mention Theodora was that Theodora himself had ordered him not to. So Theodora was, as he had promised, aware that Hale had returned to England. If I can’t meet you, wait for me.

Hale had decided at some point that he could tell all of his story except for his conversations with Theodora and the “secret purposes,” which he was certain were the pieces that were connected with his New Year’s dreams: the dreams themselves, and the “Palestine” rhythms that had transformed his wireless sending and led him and Elena on their weird predawn clochard walk to the end of the Île de la Cité, and the night of the accelerated Moscow signal and the scorched floor. He was even looking forward now to questions about his Communist contacts.

But the direction of their questions had changed. “What,” asked the old colonel, “did you discuss with James Theodora, on the morning after your arrest in Covent Garden?”

Live your cover, Hale thought. “With whom? Sir?”

“The man who accompanied the Special Branch operatives-he talked to you alone, walked with you through the bombed area by St. Paul ’s Cathedral.”

“Oh, that gentleman. He told me that my scholastic career was over, but that I might avoid the full consequences of my…error, if I would abandon the Communist Party and cooperate fully with the Special Branch.”

“And you convinced him that you would; convinced him so thoroughly that he took full custody of you in the name of-his legal authority, and allowed you to return to your college alone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you were lying to him, weren’t you? Instead of cooperating, you made contact with the Party and fled the country with their help. Is there any way to conclude that Theodora was not a naïve fool?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. He seemed intelligent enough. Perhaps he knew I would run, and had me followed.”

“Theodora ‘seemed intelligent enough,’” said the civilian dryly. “When had you met him before?”

“I never did, sir, before that morning.”

“I should tell you,” the civilian went on as he lit a cigarette with a gold lighter, “that James Theodora has been relieved of his duties and may even face criminal charges.” He exhaled a plume of smoke that glowed in the lamplight. “Why have you for twelve years now been getting monthly payments from Drummond’s Bank?”

“Those are payments from my father,” Hale said promptly. “At least that’s what my mother told me. They weren’t married.”

“Who is your father?”

“My mother never said, sir. She would never speak of him.”

“He was a Catholic priest, wasn’t he?”

“That was the opinion of our neighbors, sir. My mother never said.”

From the hall behind Hale came a man’s cultured drawl: “It was Jimmie Theodora who told you to joe-join the Com-Communist Party, wasn’t it, Mr. H-Hale?”

Hale knew before he turned around to look that he had heard the voice before, but under some peculiar, disturbing circumstance-in the radio-amplified buzzing of les parasites? in a dream, in a nightmare?-and so he was not completely startled to recognize the smiling, dark-haired man who now slouched into the electric light, his suitcoat rumpled as if from recent constriction under an overcoat and his dark brown hair flattened at the top and dusted with snow over his collar. He appeared to be in his early thirties, though his features were already heavy with evident dissipation.

It was the man Hale had dreamed about two nights ago, who in the dream had walked down a sunlit beach toward Hale, speaking in bird cries, and had subsequently split apart into two men.

Braced by the familiarity of the voice, Hale was able to meet the man’s intense stare without any change in his worried, earnest expression-though before the man strode around to the front of the room Hale did furtively button his coat to hide the ankh belt buckle. But his heart was thudding in his chest, for he now realized how very profoundly he had been hoping that all of this morbid and alarming dream stuff would prove to have been left behind in Paris.

Hale glanced levelly past the newcomer at the men behind the table; the civilian nodded and said, “Answer Mr. Philby’s question.”

“I didn’t meet Mr. Theodora until after I had been arrested, sir,” said Hale in a voice no shakier than it had been before. “It was a friend from CLS, who was attending one of the other Oxford colleges, who suggested I join. He was a member already.”

Philby nodded genially. “You’re all C-Communists these days, aren’t you? Jimmie p-probably didn’t even have to suggest it. Why was it the sss-the City Police, rather than the Metrop-po-politan force, that detained you in Covent Garden?”

Hale lifted his hands and let them fall. “I have no idea, sir.” There was a sheen of sweat now on the Philby man’s forehead, and Hale wondered if he always stammered.

“I don’t believe your father is a C-Cath-cth-a priest,” said Philby. “Was he, is he, in the s-secret service? Drummond’s is the preferred secret service bank. Theodora could h-h-hardly be your father-who is?”

“I don’t know,” said Hale clearly.

Philby’s pouchy face was still cheerful, but his voice was strident and almost angry as he said, “You were born in P-Phh-fucking- Palestine , allegedly on the Feast of the Epiphany-and you’re a, a Ca-tho-lic, Roman variety, Papist!-‘Our Father which art in Amman, Hajji be thy name!’-so you m-must know that Ep-p-piphany is when the Three Why-Wise Men arrived at last in Bbbeth!-lehem! just south of Jerusalem, ‘following yonder star.’” He took a deep breath and let it out, and then gave Hale a bright, boyish smile. “True?”

Hale remembered telling Elena his own interpretation of the passage she had quoted from the Book of Job: If the world is run according to any rules at all, those rules are beyond Job’s comprehension. And beyond mine too, he thought now fearfully; even here at home, in England.

“Uh,” Hale said, “Yes, sir.” His hesitation in answering had probably not looked unnatural-even the men behind the table were now staring at Philby uncertainly.

Philby sighed, and then went on in a more quiet voice, “Theodora stage-managed your skewed C-Covent Garden arrest, in order to set you up as one of his p-private spies to undermine the Soviet n-networks in France-and he did it in d-d-isobedience to his masters at…in Whitehall.”

Hale supposed this was the exact truth; but “not even Churchill,” Theodora had said; and ever since his mother had taken Hale to meet his “godfather” in ’29, Theodora had for good or ill been his image of the King’s Man, the representative of the Crown.

“But I wasn’t doing anything the Theodora person had told me to do,” said Hale, “and I certainly wasn’t undermining the Sov-”