Declare

of them.” The old man smiled, showing the shape of his skull under the wrinkled, parchment skin. “We were MI-1C in those days, and the Petrograd station chief vetoed our idea; but I still think that would have nipped the whole Communist enterprise in the bud.”
    “I’ll nip it in the… sere and yellow leaf.” Hale released the grip of the Seecamp .32 in Nigel’s trouser pocket and stretched in the chilly spring morning breeze. From somewhere high up on the stone wall he could hear pigeons cooing, and the sound made him sleepy—he hadn’t slept or eaten or changed his shirt for thirty hours, and above the spicy scent of crushed thyme he could smell his own old sweat. “Do keep in mind too that I’m the only one who can do this. If you establish the truth about me, then you won’t ever be able to do the same for Philby, much as you might one day wish to. He’s vulnerable to injury on his birthday, of course—but you know the Kremlin will keep him in a bomb-proof subterranean vault on that day, every year; and on any other day of the three-hundred-and-sixty-five, the only person who can get past his magical defenses to injure him is the one other person who also is him at least according to the angels’ silhouette-recognition cards.”
    “But they’re all dead. The angels.”
    Hale stared at Theodora. “Jimmie. The ones on Ararat are all dead. With luck. But in Arabia, Egypt, India—no. China , even, probably.”
    “Oh. No, of course not, I do see. China. Hmm.”
    Watching the old man’s sagging gray face now in the morning sunlight, Hale thought that in fact Theodora had not known that Declare had killed only one major colony, albeit probably the biggest colony in the world, of djinn. And for several seconds Hale didn’t speak, but let Theodora arrive on his own at the conclusion that the destruction of the Soviet Union must stand as the major accomplishment of the old man’s career. And don’t forget the risk of cremation if you wait, Jimmie, Hale thought.
    “I came across the Channel on a French cattle boat,” Hale added finally, with some tension, “because I can’t fly in an airplane over about ten thousand feet anymore. I learned that bit of data on an Air Liban flight out of Kuwait a month ago—the plane had to land in the gulf, off Bahrain, with half the fuselage ripped off. The spirits of the upper air are still up there in the Heaviside Layer, and they’re aware of me when I get up that close to them; and they’re—angry at me, still.”
    “Really.” The old man was staring off across the lawns, nodding slowly. “That must have been exciting. You’ll have to travel by boat, then, and overland by rail—but that will look good, actually, not at all the behavior of a modern spy.”
    He sighed heavily. “Yes, very well, I’ll get you reactivated and assigned to Moscow, under journalistic cover, with orders to investigate the Burobin employment agency. Human interest angle, ostensibly, focus on the little people who keep the show rolling, as it were; hobbies, filthy ethnic foods, framed pictures of the old Bolshevik parents on the shabby apartment walls. There are still newspapers that will let us force a foreign correspondent on them. And then—I’ll be as shocked as anyone else, if you do something crazy while you’re in Moscow.”
    “And of course in the meantime,” said Hale gently, “you’ll make sure that any old verification orders concerning me are switched off.”
    “Oh, my dear, I’m sure there never was anything like that!” Was there an ironic glint in the old man’s eye? “You insult me. But of course I will get on the telephone and explain your status. It might be best for you to stay here tonight, not try to go into the city. Right? We should certainly have you in Moscow by the middle of April, even at your slow rate of travel.”
    That will do, thought Hale. He allowed himself to sit down on the damp green grass.
    He recalled a story in the Thousand Nights and One Night, in which a poor traveler had been hired by a jewel merchant to allow himself to be sewn into the skin of a freshly killed mule. When it had been done, an enormous eagle snatched up the dead mule with the traveler hidden inside and flew to an otherwise inaccessible mountain peak, and the bird flew away in surprise when the man climbed out of the carcass. He found that the mountain-top was littered with human and mule bones, but also that the stones lying about were all jewels;