Declare

the stale reek of her Gauloises cigarette butts. Hale lowered the radio onto the drawing room rug and tiptoed to her bedroom door.
    She didn’t awaken when he turned the knob and pushed the door open on silent hinges—he could dimly see her long body in the bed, lying on her side facing him, and he could hear her regular breathing. The window was open to the autumn night breeze, and the blanket was down around her waist; moonlight faintly highlighted her bare shoulders, and he knew that he would be able to see her breasts if the electric light were on.
    “Elena,” he said softly—and then froze, for when she sat up he heard the snap-and-click of an automatic pistol being chambered.
    “Bless me,” he said clearly, recalling that she had said the phrase was code for Things are not what they seem—trust me. “It’s Lot,” he went on, keeping his voice level. “Or Marcel Gruey,” he added, giving his cover name.
    In the thick silence he heard the snick of the safety catch being pushed up, and then the gun clunked faintly on the bedside table. She glanced around quickly, as if to make sure this was her own room, and he realized that she was still half-asleep. “What have I—” she muttered in Spanish. “Lot? Yes, it is you. What have I said to you here? I did say—” She was clearly confused, and he opened his mouth to explain that he had only this moment stepped into the room, and that she had not said anything to him, when she spoke again, in a hoarser voice: “Oh, but do take off your clothes.”
    Hale’s breath caught in his throat. Yes , he thought; the compromising message is three weeks old!—and if the Abwehr had broken it we would have been arrested by now. “I—love you, Elena,” he stammered, stepping toward the bed. He would tell her about the message afterward, in the morning.
    And what would she think of him then, when she learned that he had kept her ignorant in mortal danger for several extra hours? Or even for half an hour?
    Still in Spanish, she whispered, “And I know I have said I love you.” She shifted in the bed, clearly to make room for him.
    He could pretend to find the message later today…
    … Thus not only keeping her in unknowing danger but lying to her as well. What would he think of himself, if he did that?
    “Ah God,” he wailed softly. “Remember that I love you. I’ve deciphered a message that was sent to one of the other Razvedupr networks—you understand?—it was enciphered with a one-time pad that Centre used more than once. The message”—Will we ever be in this position again? he thought despairingly—“refers to our network and gives the address of this house.”
    She was out of bed in an instant, and he glimpsed her naked body in the moonlight only for as long as it took her to scramble into her skirt and blouse.
    “You should have run, with the radio set,” she said in clipped French as she buttoned the skirt and stepped into her shoes.
    “And left you to the Gestapo,” he said in a shaky voice. “Yes, of course.”
    “I’ll have to report your dereliction of duty, once we’re clear,” she panted, stuffing the gun into her purse. “We are loyal to each other only in service to the Party.”
    “I’ll add a postscript to your report, when I send it,” he said giddily. “ ‘I did it because I love her.’ ”
    “Oh, you fool.” She kissed his cheek as she stepped past him into the drawing room. “I won’t make a report. Let them imagine that I was with you when you deciphered it, and we will both forget foolish things said while half-asleep in the middle of the night. That’s the radio set? Good. Come on, we leave now. Peculiar evasion measures are called for, and it’s high time you got practice at them—though you will never speak of them again after the sun comes up this morning, not even to me.”
    They descended the stairs to the ground floor, and then paused in the dark entry hall just inside the street door while she explained how they were to walk. Two people, she explained, even a young couple, risked drawing suspicious attention; so they would emulate the clochards , the homeless gypsies who slept under the bridges and bathed in the Seine. “The boche do not like to trouble the clochards,” she said nervously, “even during the day, when they can see them. I learned this from a Hungarian agent named Maly, who had been a Catholic priest before the Great War, and they say that a man ordained as a Catholic priest