Declare

switch off the ignition. In the sudden silence he swung his legs out of the car and straightened up; blinking over the car’s roof before Theodora unfolded himself from the passenger seat, Hale looked out across what he now recognized as wheat fields. No farmer was visible, and Hale wondered if there were still working tractors here.
    When Theodora had stood up straight and replaced his hat, he strode west along the shoulder, his hands clasped behind the tails of his coat and his head down to be sure of keeping his shoes out of puddles. Hale trudged along after him.
    When they had walked a hundred feet away from the Renault, Theodora turned around and fixed Hale with a chilly stare. “Well?”
    “The stone is buried under fresh cement, sir,” said Hale, “about two hundred feet from the Brandenburg Gate on the western side, pretty much centered. I’ve done drawings,” he added, reaching into his pocket for the diagrams he had made that morning, “indicating the exact position—I can amplify them to make them more precise, now.”
    Theodora took the papers and glanced at them. “Good, I think this is clear.” Again he turned his cold eyes on Hale. “Go on. Tell me every detail.”
    Hale began easily by telling him about his visit with the American Flannery and hearing that Kim Philby was in Berlin; then he recounted the pursuit of the fugitive from the Soviet Sector, and told Theodora how the man had seemed to be herded to the spot where the stone would soon be buried, and how the fugitive had been killed there. Hale became aware of a reluctance when he came to describing meeting Elena and Cassagnac at the restaurant by the Reich stag, and Philby’s intrusion and odd behavior with the insecticide. And when his narrative got to the point when he had stood up from the table to go get food, he abandoned the story he had concocted on the drive west to Helmstedt and just stopped talking.
    “Food,” said Theodora impatiently, “right. Did you get some bloody food, or what?”
    “No, sir, not then.” Hale felt dizzy, and he didn’t even know whether he hoped he was ending his SIS career here, or not. At last, slowly and deliberately, he went on: “There was a radio playing in the restaurant, and the music it had been playing was interrupted by—by an interference which I had learned in Paris meant—super-natural—attention—being paid.” He was sweating again, and he discovered that it was no easier going on with this than it had been starting. “Magic, that is, sir,” he said, feeling as if the words were coins he had tried to smuggle out, surrendered now as he pushed them out past his lips. “I think I should amplify the report I made to you concerning my three months in occupied Paris in ’41,” he added, “by the way.”
    Theodora exhaled, and Hale wondered how long the man had been holding his breath. “Good lad. Good lad. So many promising agents manage to convince even themselves that they didn’t see what they saw—but go on. And don’t tell me, in tones of apology, that ‘It gets more weird’ —I do know that.” “Right. Well …” Hale ground out the story of the rest of the night, omitting only the gallows-marriage on the boat and going to bed with Elena—in this version of the story, he and Elena had parted outside the restaurant.
    The sun was high when at last, with relief, he described ditching the gun and driving back up the hole to the Helmstedt checkpoint.
    Theodora strode away across the mud, careless now of his shoes. He was nodding, and after a few paces he turned around again to face Hale. “Good. I did want to know where the stone was put, and I’m glad to learn of Philby’s participation—oh, he was there about the stone too, lad, don’t doubt it—and I think I’m alarmed at how aware the French DGSS is—but this was a test, too, to find out if you’re worth all the years and money we’ve expended on you. Happily, you are. And I trust you are discreet with your little Spanish judy, no secrets revealed over the pillow. Eunuchs for agents would be best, I sometimes think. Impossible to get it past the Foreign Secretary, of course. Your work will be—of a different nature, now that you’re an initiate. You’ve learned all you can from the old files, I expect, and it’s time to put you in the field. When you get back to Broadway, you’ll be sent to Fort Monkton for a six-week training course in the paramilitary arts, and then you’ll be posted to