Declare

went on quickly, “Who were you with, on that night?”
    Hale’s face tingled in sudden alarm, and he concentrated on taking hold of his brandy glass, and lifting it to his lips, and not glancing at Elena. New Year’s Eve of ’41 had been their last night together in Paris, the night he had thought of ever since as their wedding night. What intelligence sources did horrible old Philby have access to? Had he somehow been in Paris then?
    Hale heard Elena’s breezy reply: “On New Year’s Eve?—I am sure I was with some handsome young man.”
    Peripherally Hale could see Philby nod and turn toward him; but the choppy murmur of conversation in the long room was muted then by the sudden roar of rain falling outside the building, and Hale saw dark lines of water begin to streak the boards across the glassless windows.
    Philby shifted on the bench to look toward the leaking windows, and Hale heard him mutter, “Constant to the old covenant.” Philby glanced back and smiled faintly as he met Hale’s startled gaze. “St. Paul’s epistle to the Crustaceans,” he said lightly. From his pocket Philby took a corked bottle of some clear fluid, and then he popped it open and poured the liquid into the brandy glass he’d emptied. Hale caught a whiff of something like turpentine and ether. “Flit,” Philby said. “A sample of bug killer, fr-from our American c-cousins.”
    Other diners in the room had turned to look at the rain-streaked boards over the windows, and now an unshaven man in a baggy old business suit came shuffling diffidently up to the table. In German he said, “Rain washes away blood.”
    Philby frowned at him, and answered in English. “You wish it were so, mein H-Herr Schimpf . I’ve t-told you before to s-sell your f-f-filthy old secrets to the Om-Om-Americans.” He pointed sharply to the street door, and the man shambled away in evident confusion.
    Hale knew that schimpf meant disgrace or insult, and he was intrigued to see a dew of sweat on Philby’s forehead.
    “The city’s f-full of ex-Abwehr who’ve t-turned into freelance intelligence agents,” said Philby to the table in general, “and the American Counter-Intelligence Corps and OSS are p-paying them; the British s-simply arrest them. Creatures like that f-fellow will sell you a Soviet code book on Monday, and then c-come back on Wednesday to sell you the news that the relevant coded traffic will be all d-deception now, since on Tuesday he sold word of the original tr-transaction to the Russians; and then on Thursday he’ll go b-back to the Russians again.” He scowled in the direction the diffident man had taken. “It’s a g-g-good way to achieve abrupt, total retirement at the hands of some double-crossed g-government agency. ‘There is truth to be found on the unknown shore, and many will find what few would seek.’ ” With that he snatched up a glass and drained it—and then grimaced and spat, for it had been the glass of insecticide.
    “Hah!” he coughed. “ That wasn’t brandy!” He blinked through watering eyes at Hale. “Better than the l-local g-g-gin, at least, hey?”
    “I—haven’t tried the local gin,” said Hale blankly, wondering if Philby had seriously poisoned himself just now. He looked at Elena and Cassagnac, and they were both staring at Philby in moderate alarm. “I guess I won’t,” Hale added, just to be saying something. But Philby’s action had reminded him of something from his Section One archival researches, and he wanted to get away from the man’s physical presence for a moment, away from the intrusive insecticide smell, and pin down the memory. Hale sneaked a glance at his wristwatch below the table edge; it was nearly ten o’clock. “How does one get food here?” he asked.
    “There is a table by the kitchen wall,” spoke up Elena in French, “and they will serve you a plate of potato pancakes or lung hash or Sturdy Max.”
    “Sturdy Max sounds good,” said Hale, who didn’t know what it might be. He stood up and walked through the tobacco and cooking smoke toward the indicated far table, where two big moustached men were stirring pots and clanking ladles on plates; and he wondered if he were drunk, for he felt an almost centrifugal resistance to progress away from the table, as if he were walking uphill.
    Intrusive . That was it—six months ago Hale had been reading a file of brittle 1916 Secret Service telegrams from the Arab Bureau in Cairo, whose telegraphic