“I’ve been aware of that for some time.”

“It is a convention in Western tragedy that a man is permitted one long speech before he dies. Once he has stepped on the inevitable machinery of fate that will carry him to his bathetic denouement, nothing he can say or do will alter his lot. But he is permitted to make his case, to bitch at length against the gods—even in iambic pentameter.”

“Even if doing so interrupts the flow of the narrative?”

“To hell with it! For two hours of narcosis against reality, of safe, vicarious participation in the world of action and death, one should be willing to pay the price of a couple minutes worth of insight. Structurally sound or not. But have it your way. All right. Tell me, do the governments still remember ‘the Gnome’? And do they still scratch the earth trying to find his lair, and gnash their teeth in frustrated fury?”

“They do indeed, Maurice. Just the other day there was an Amérlo scab at home asking about you. He would have given his genitals to know how you came by your information.”

“Would he indeed? Being an Amérlo, he probably wasn’t risking much. And what did you tell him?”

“I told him everything I knew.”

“Meaning nothing at all. Good. Candor is a virtue. You know, I really don’t have any very subtle or complicated sources of information. In fact, the Mother Company and I are nourished by the same data. I have access to Fat Boy through the purchased services of one of their senior computer slaves, a man named Llewellyn. My skill lies in being able to put two and two together better than they can. Or, to be more precise, I am able to add one and a half plus one and two thirds in such a way as to make ten. I am not better informed than they; I am simply smarter.”

Hel laughed. “They would give almost anything to locate and silence you. You’ve been bamboo under their fingernails for a long time.”

“Ha, that knowledge brightens my last days, Nicholai. Being a nuisance to the government lackeys has made my life worth living. And a precarious living it has been. When you trade in information, you carry stock that has very short shelf life. Unlike brandy, information cheapens with age. Nothing is duller than yesterday’s sins. And sometimes I used to acquire expensive pieces, only to have them ruined by leakage. I remember buying a very hot item from the United States: what in time became known as the Watergate Cover-up. And while I was holding the merchandise on my shelf, waiting for you or some other international to purchase it as leverage against the American government, a pair of ambitious reporters sniffed the story out and saw in it a chance to make their fortunes—and voilà! The material was overnight useless to me. In time, each of the criminals wrote a book or did a television program describing his part in the rape of American civil rights, and each was paid lavishly by the stupid American public, which seems to have a peculiar impulse toward having their noses rubbed in their own shit. Doesn’t it seem unjust to you that I should end up losing several hundred thousand worth of spoiled stock on my shelves, while even the master villain himself makes a fortune doing television shows with that British leech who has shown that he would sniff up to anybody for money, even Idi Amin? It’s a peculiar one, this trade I’m in.”

“Have you been an information broker all your life, Maurice?”

“Except for a short stint as a professional basketball player.”

“Old fool!”

“Listen, let us be serious for a moment. You described this thing you’re doing as hard. I wouldn’t presume to advise you, but have you considered the fact that you’ve been in retirement for a time? Is your mental conditioning still taut?”

“Reasonably. I do a lot of caving, so fear doesn’t clog my mind too much. And, fortunately, I’ll be up against the British.”

“That’s an advantage, to be sure. The MI-5 and –6 boys have a tradition of being so subtle that their fakes go unnoticed. And yet… There is something wrong with this affair, Nicholai Alexandrovitch. There’s something in your tone that disturbs me. Not quite doubt, but a certain dangerous fatalism. Have you decided that you are going to fail?”

Hel was silent for a time. “You’re very perceptive, Maurice.”

“C’est mon métier.”

“I know. There is something wrong—something untidy—about all this. I recognize that to come back out of retirement I am challenging karma. I think that, ultimately, this business will put me away. Not the task at hand. I imagine that I can relieve these Septembrists of the burden of their lives easily enough. The complications and the dangers will be ones I have dealt with before. But after that, the business gets tacky. There will be an effort to punish me. I may accept the punishment, or I may not. If I do not, then I shall have to go into the field again. I sense a certain—” He shrugged, “—a certain emotional fatigue. Not exactly fatalistic resignation, but a kind of dangerous indifference. It is possible, if the indignities pile up, that I shall see no particular reason to cling to life.”

De Lhandes nodded. It was this kind of attitude that he had sensed. “I see. Permit me to suggest something, old friend. You say that the governments do me the honor of still being hungry for my death. They would give a lot to know who and where I am. If you get into a tight spot, you have my permission to bargain with that information.”

“Maurice!—”

“No, no! I am not suffering from a bout of quixotic courage. I’m too old to contract such a childhood disease. It would be our final joke on them. You see, you would be giving them an empty bag. By the time they get here, I shall have departed.”

“Thank you, but I couldn’t do it. Not on your account, but on mine.” Hel rose. “Well, I have to get some sleep. The next twenty-four hours will be trying. Mostly mind play, without the refreshment of physical danger. I’ll be leaving before first light.”

“Very well. For myself, I think I shall sit up for a few more hours and review the delights of an evil life.”

“All right. Au revoir, old friend.”

“Not au revoir, Nicholai.”

“It is that close?”

De Lhandes nodded.

Hel leaned over and kissed his comrade on both cheeks. “Adieu, Maurice.”

“Adieu, Nicholai.”

Hel was caught at the door by, “Oh, Nicholai, would you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

“Estelle has been wonderful to me these last years. Did you know her name was Estelle?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, I want to do something special for her—a kind of going-away present. Would you drop by her room? Second at the head of the stairs. And afterward, tell her it was a gift from me.”

Hel nodded. “It will be my pleasure, Maurice.”

De Lhandes was looking into the fading fire. “Hers too, let us hope,” he muttered.

Hel timed his arrival at the Biarritz airport to minimize the period he would have to stand out in the open. He had always disliked Biarritz, which is Basque only in geography; the Germans, the English, and the international smart set having perverted it into a kind of Brighton on Biscay.

He was not five minutes in the terminal before his proximity sense intercepted the direct and intense observation he had expected, knowing they would be looking for him at all points of departure. He lounged against the counter of the bar where he was taking a jus d’ananas and lightly scanned the crowd. Immediately, he picked up the young French Special Services officer in civilian clothes and sunglasses. Pushing himself off me bar, he walked directly toward the man, feeling as he approached the lad’s tension and confusion.

“Edxuse me, sir,” Hel said in a French larded with German accent. “I have just arrived, and I cannot discover how to make my connection to Lourdes. Could you assist me?”