Declare

smile as he resumed walking, and in a particularly Oxbridge accent he said, “You seem awfully confident that I will not elect to be killed, rather. Do you remember Thomas Browne’s remark in Religio Medici? —‘I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof.’ ”
    But Hale remembered the words of the half-stone king of Wabar: I am still secure from judgment. We do not go on, we do not face… leveling. And he guessed that Philby had always arrogantly lived on the assumption that although he might airily betray his country, he would never be so ill-bred as to… use the wrong fork, not be able to hold his liquor, not be able to quote Euripides in a proper Attic accent, be afraid to die. For all his treason, Philby was a product of the old British Raj, a graduate of Westminster and Cambridge accustomed to upper-class privilege, at home in the Athenaeum and Reform clubs of Pall Mall. But Hale suspected that, having renounced loyalty and honesty and faith, Philby would find that courage had correspondingly become an undercut platform, not able to take his weight. Philby might hate the idea of being a living prole in Moscow, but not as much as he hated the idea of being a dead aristocrat in Beirut.
    “Yes,” remarked Hale, trudging along beside his half-brother, “I am awfully confident of that.”
    Philby was silent for several steps, and then his only reply was a cry of “Serveece!” to one of the white taxicabs cruising past on Weygand Street; and there were already three Arab passengers in the cab as Hale and Philby climbed into the back seat, so it was only natural that the two spies did not speak until they had alighted on the curb at the Normandy Hotel.
    “B-brace yourself for f-forty lashes,” said Philby to Hale as they climbed out of the cab.
    Hakob Mammalian was waiting for them on the steps to the lobby, but he hurried across the sidewalk to where Hale and Philby stood, and without speaking he took hold of each of them by an elbow and turned them back toward the lanes of the Avenue des Français, and the blue sea beyond.
    The three of them strode out across the breezy street, Philby and then Hale waving their free hands in apology as cars honked at them and donkey drivers shouted.
    When they had reached the far sidewalk and stepped down from the pavement onto the hot pale sand, Mammalian turned to Hale and stared angrily into his face. Mammalian’s right hand was inside his blue-striped robe. After several seconds he reached up with his free hand and prodded Hale’s bruised cheek with one finger, and then scratched with his nail at the fresh cut.
    Hale flinched back. Even though he was only wearing a shirt, he was already sweating in the direct sunlight. “What the hell, Hakob!” he protested.
    “My hand is on a gun,” said Mammalian curtly. “Open your shirt.”
    Hale sighed. “I assume you’ll tell me why,” he said as he began unbuttoning his coffee-stained shirt.
    Mammalian prodded Hale’s bare stomach, looking into his eyes as Hale winced.
    “When the sûreté was questioning you,” Mammalian snapped, “you said the arrest was like a dog. What kind of dog?”
    “I, I told them it was a dog that wouldn’t hunt,” said Hale, remembering the remark from the hastily scrawled transcription he had read before leaving Hartsik’s office. It had in fact not struck him as the sort of thing he would say.
    “What did you mean by that?”
    “It’s an—ow,” Hale said, for Mammalian was still palpating his stomach. “Would you stop? It’s a saying. It means a plan that won’t work out; I meant that their arrest would not stand up—I wasn’t guilty of anything.”
    Mammalian squinted at Philby. “Is that a common saying?”
    Philby blew out air through his pursed lips. “Sure, one h-hears it.”
    At last Mammalian stepped back from Hale, his right hand still inside his robe. “You were out of our sight for an hour. In a police station. Tell me one reason why I should not abort this mission.”
    “Yes, yes,” said Hale, nodding, “I do see your point of view. I would worry too, in your place.” He shrugged and looked up and down the beach. “Let’s see—you know some of what was said. Do you know it all? Did it sound as if the police and I were talking in a code? Any of the three of us here could recognize code exchanges, I think.”
    “No,” said Mammalian. “It did not sound like a code. But if you are an SIS plant, a Declare plant!—then there might have