“Agreed,” said Rosofsky, bobbing his head across from him, as though listening required motion to penetrate his brain.

“Then you’ll also agree that Mario kicks Sonic’s ass every hour of every day from now into eternity and infinity.”

“I will concede that the Wii is indeed a fantastic console. For six-year-olds who scare easily.”

“I’m starting with the porn,” said Pearl, so completely immersed that he was unaware of the non sequitur. The first images opened on his screen.

Fisk bailed out for a break once words started swimming before his eyes. He went to the base, grabbed a Twix bar from a vending machine, and sat down at the phones, staring off into space, munching chocolate and caramel and cookie. Once his focus returned, he allowed himself one call. He checked the time difference in New York, then pulled on a headset and dialed anyway.

The phone was answered on the second ring. “Ze condor flies at midnight,” said Fisk in a hammy German accent.

“Caller ID comes up as ‘Germany,’ ” said Krina Gersten. “I half expected to hear the chancellor’s voice.”

“Everything sounds a little dirtier when spoken with a German accent, don’t you think?”

“You’ve been working hard, I can tell.”

One Friday evening more than six months earlier, after a long noncourtship of flirtation and denial, the inevitable had happened. They returned late from a day of interviewing baggage handlers at JFK about a missing shipment of magnetic relays, the type that were ideally suited for delayed bomb fuses. They came back together on the Long Island Rail Road from Jamaica in order to avoid the rush hour traffic in a cab. Not much happened on the commute back: each was tired, recharging on the long ride when they switched to a crowded subway car. They got out at Grand Central, since each of them lived on the East Side of Manhattan. It was only as they clicked along the black-and-white tiles on their way through the vast train station that Fisk slowed and raised his eyebrows to her, suggesting a detour with just a look.

They closed the Oyster Bar after two bottles of Australian Riesling, dozens of oysters, a pair of thick crab cakes, and previously untold life stories. Then they found a waiting taxi outside as though it had been part of the plan all along. They held hands in the back of the cab, Gersten resting her head against Fisk’s shoulder, riding in buzzed silence to Fisk’s two-bedroom co-op in Sutton Place.

Inside the apartment door, once it finally closed and it seemed that conversation was again permitted, Gersten said, looking around, “Family money?”

“Yes,” Fisk said. “And the money I make from being an international gigolo.”

She nodded, smiling. “Who’s making the bigger mistake here?” she asked, kicking her shoes to the side and leaning against the wall. “It’s me, right? Always the woman.”

“Don’t say that. I don’t want you to do anything you’re going to regret.”

She looked at him with one eye almost closed, as though viewing him through a surveyor’s instrument. “Exactly what you should say at this moment.”

“Don’t profile a profiler,” said Fisk, shedding his jacket and spilling change on the kitchen counter. “I do have ulterior motives, however.”

“When did you know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

She pointed her finger back and forth between them. “This.”

“When?” He opened his refrigerator, bending down to look. He pulled out two bottles of Amstel Light and went to the cupboard for crackers, something solid, anything. “Hard to say. But I know this. I lock into that first moment we met like it was yesterday. Your hair was still choppy.”

“You liked that.”

She was right behind him now. He straightened and turned. The co-op apartment kitchen was typically cramped. Gersten seemed shorter than he was used to, and then he remembered that she had kicked off her shoes. That started to get him hard. “I think there was something in that moment. But then we both knew it was a bad idea, and so went about wasting months and months pretending to be professionals.”

“Pretending,” she said, licking a bit of lingering oyster sand off her lip.

Fisk showed her the Amstels but she shook her head.

“Bathroom,” she said.

He pointed.

She went.

He put down the bottles and waited.

She returned. He feared that the spell was broken, that she was going to beg off now, having had that conversation in the mirror. She would make plans for tomorrow, then back out via text, avoid him at work Monday morning, always avert her gaze whenever she saw him, and pretend that this night had never happened.

She stood at the kitchen entrance, unfazed by the fact that he hadn’t moved an inch while she was gone.

“Mouthwash,” she said.

He thought about that one. “I’m probably out,” said Fisk.

“Oh, well,” she said.

She didn’t move. Neither did he. Good sign.

“You know, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets,” Fisk told her. “Kind of what I do for a living.”

“Really?” she said, with an exaggerated searching glance at his ceiling. She was terribly attractive when she was unsteady. Probably because so much of their job demanded absolute steadiness. It was nice and dangerous and sexy to see her off-kilter. “That’s funny.” She pushed a hair away from her eye. “Me too.”

“Covert operations,” he said.

She winked, then pressed her forefinger to the side of her nose. “Exactly.”

He gave the enterprise some thought.

“Operation Friday Night Friction,” he said.

She shook her head. “Too crass. Who do you think I am?”

He thought some more. “Operation Class Not Crass.”

“Better. Getting warmer.” She shifted her weight from one stocking foot to the other. “This is such a sweet mix of wrong-right.”

He nodded. “Sour and sweet.”

“It’s good right here. The threshold. I want to hold on to this moment.”

“Not me,” he said.

“I want to know things about you,” she said. “This is just part of it for me.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Me too.” And then, because he didn’t feel like he had convinced her, he added, “The fact is that I would say just about anything right now to keep this night going—full confession. But just reminding you, underlining it, so you know—this didn’t start tonight, for me. And because of that, it won’t end tonight. No matter what happens.”

She nodded, taking his words to heart. “We intersect, but don’t disappear—deal?”

He puzzled over her words as she leaned her shoulder against the doorway. “Fucking profound,” he said. “Where’d you get that from? That’s good.”

She said, “Are we going to stay here, or do you maybe have a bedroom?”

“I have a bedroom,” he said.

In they went. Everything else disappeared. It was quiet and they were serious. They were locked in on each other.

No artificial light in the room, just the city night through the open window blinds. Whispers and slow, careful movements, each one watching the other.

Intensity built. Caresses became squeezing, rhythm became thrust.

“Goddamn, Gersten,” said Fisk—as at once she went from supine to straddling him.

The fucking became frantic, even rough. Her gym-hard body on him, her hair brushing against his face. His hands gripping her hips. Almost like a fight, except that there had to be two winners.

He watched Gersten’s face in the shadow of the city night. He felt her fingertips chewing into the tops of his shoulders. He watched her lose herself, lose all inhibition, moaning. It ended with the headboard banging into the wall . . . and then silence.

A siren four floors down on East Fifty-fifth woke him, not the sunlight. He squinted and found her sitting on the floor against the wall near the door, wearing a pair of his gym shorts and a V-neck undershirt, checking her phone. Her hair hung over her eyes and her legs were crossed. A glass of water stood on the floor next to her.