through the cherry trees, he found himself thinking about Sarah Fontaine. Not about Sarah, the grieving widow, but about Sarah, the woman. The name fit her. Sarah with the amber eyes.
Nick quickly shook off the thoughts. Of all the women in Washington, she was the last one he should be thinking about. In his line of work, objectivity was the key to doing the job right. Whether it was issuing visas or arguing a jailed American’s case before a magistrate, getting personally involved was almost always a mistake. No, Sarah Fontaine was nothing more to him than a name in a file.
She would have to remain that way.
* * *
Amsterdam
THE OLD MAN loved roses. He loved the dusky smell of the petals, which he often plucked and rubbed between his fingers. So cool, so fragrant, not like those insipid tulips that his gardener had planted on the banks of the duck pond. Tulips were all color, no character. They threw up stalks, bloomed and vanished. But roses! Even through winter they persisted, bare and thorny, like angry old women crouched in the cold.
He paused among the rosebushes and breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of damp earth. In a few weeks, there’d be flowers. How his wife would have loved this garden! He could picture her standing on this very spot, smiling at the roses. She would have worn her old straw hat and a housedress with four pockets, and she would have carried her plastic bucket. My uniform, she’d have said. I’m just an old soldier, going out to fight the snails and beetles. He remembered how the rose clippers used to clunk against the bucket when she walked down the steps of their old house—the house he’d left behind. Nienke, my sweet Nienke, he thought. How I miss you.
“It is a cold day,” said a voice in Dutch.
The old man turned and looked at the pale-haired young man walking toward him through the bushes. “Kronen,” he said. “At last you’ve come.”
“I am sorry, meneer. A day late, but it couldn’t be helped.” Kronen took off his sunglasses and peered up at the sky. As usual, he avoided looking directly at the old man’s face. Since the accident, everyone avoided looking at his face, and it never failed to annoy him. It had been five years since anyone had stared him boldly in the eye, five years since he’d been able to meet another person’s gaze without detecting the invariable flinching. Even Kronen, whom he’d come to regard almost as a son, made it a point to look anywhere else. But then, young men of Kronen’s generation always fussed too much about appearances.
“I take it things went well in Basra,” said the old man.
“Yes. Minor delays, that’s all. And there were problems with the last shipment…the computer chips in the aiming mechanism…. One of the missiles failed to lock in.”
“Embarrassing.”
“Yes. I have already spoken to the manufacturer.”
They followed a path from the rosebushes toward the duck pond. The cold air made the old man’s throat sore. He wrapped his scarf a little tighter around his neck and forced out a thin, dry cough. “I have a new assignment for you,” he said. “A woman.”
Kronen paused, sudden interest in his eyes. His hair looked almost white in the sunshine. “Who is she?”
“The name is Sarah Fontaine. Geoffrey Fontaine’s wife. I want you to see where she leads you.”
Kronen frowned. “I don’t understand, sir. I was told Fontaine was dead.”
“Follow her anyway. My American source tells me she has a modest apartment in Georgetown. She is a microbiologist, thirty-two years old. Except for her marriage, she has no apparent intelligence connections. But one can never be certain.”
“May I contact this source?”
“No. His position is too…delicate.”
Kronen nodded, at once dropping the subject. He’d worked for the old man long enough to know the way things were done. Each man had his own territory, his own small box in which to operate. Never must one try to break out. Even Kronen, trusted as he was, saw only a part of the picture. Only the old man saw it all.
They walked together along the banks of the pond. The old man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the bag of bread he’d brought from the house. Silently he flung a handful into the water and watched the crumbs swell. The ducks splashed among the reeds. When Nienke was alive, she had walked to the park every morning, just to feed the ducks her breakfast toast. She had worried that the weak ones would not get enough to eat. Look there, Frans, she would say. The little ones grow so fat! All on our breakfast crumbs!
Now, here he was, throwing bread on the water to the ducks he cared nothing about, except that Nienke would have loved them. He carefully folded the wrapper and stuffed it back into his pocket. As he did this, it struck him what a very sad and very feeble gesture it was, trying to preserve an old bread wrapper, and for what?
The pond had turned a sullen gray. Where had the sun gone? he wondered. Without looking at Kronen, he said, “I want to know about this woman. Leave soon.”
“Of course.”
“Be careful in Washington. I understand the crime there has become abominable.”
Kronen laughed as he turned to leave. “Tot ziens, meneer.”
The old man nodded. “Till then.”
* * *
THE LAB WHERE Sarah worked was spotless. The microscopes were polished, the counters and sinks were repeatedly disinfected, the incubation chambers were wiped clean twice daily. Sarah’s job required strict attention to asepsis; by habit she insisted on cleanliness. But as she sat at her lab bench, flipping through the last box of microscope slides, it seemed to Sarah that the sterility of the room had somehow extended to the rest of her life.
She took off her glasses and blinked tiredly. Everywhere she looked, stainless steel seemed to gleam back at her. The lights were harsh and fluorescent. There were no windows, and therefore, no sunshine. It could be noon or midnight outside; in here she’d never know the difference. Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the lab was silent.
She put her glasses on again and began to stack the slides back into the box. From the hallway came the clip of a woman’s heels on the floor. The door swung open.
“Sarah? What’re you doing here?”
Sarah glanced around at her good friend, Abby Hicks. In her size forty lab coat, Abby filled most of the doorway.
“I’m just catching up on a few things,” said Sarah. “So much work’s piled up since I’ve been gone….”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sarah! The lab can manage without you for a few weeks. It’s already eight o’clock. I’ll check the cultures. Go on home.”
Sarah closed the box of slides. “I’m not sure I want to go home,” she murmured. “It’s too quiet there. I’d almost rather be here.”
“Well, this place isn’t exactly jumping. It’s about as lively as a tomb—” At once Abby bit her lip and reddened. Even at age fifty-five, Abby could blush as deeply as a schoolgirl. “Bad choice of words,” she mumbled.
