Declare

landscaped lawns around the newer pastel office buildings, and the tall fiberglass GULF OIL signs and the modern asphalt of the streets, at the south end of the docks Hale saw ragged Arabs crouched over the old checkers-like dama boards by the side of oiled-sand roads, and beyond them the teak hulls and reefed lateen sails of fishing dhows dragged up onto the shore slope.
    Judging by the street numbers, he was now within a few doors of the welding shop’s address; and he was glancing around at the carpet-sellers’ shops and car-repair garages as he strode purposefully down an awning-overhung sidewalk, when a car horn in the street tapped out the old SOE code group that meant emergency attention .
    It was a crazy old yellow Volkswagen weaving down the oiled road, and its Arab-dressed driver was convincingly trying to get the attention of someone over by the beached boats on the shore. The man tapped out another series of honks as he drove on past, looking squarely away from Hale, and the nasal electric beeps were the fugitive-SOE code for go to and W-I-N-D-O-W and here .
    Hale had permitted himself only the most casual glance at the Volks wagen, and now he returned his attention to the shops he was passing. Obediently he looked at the windows, and behind the dusty glass display flanking the recessed doorway of a pearls-and-antiques shop he could dimly see a bearded figure in a black robe.
    Hale walked on past, then stepped in under the awning and glanced up and down the street, shivering in the eddying wind and wishing he had not lost his jacket at the airport. When he glanced at the old man behind the window six feet away, he saw that the man had breathed a patch of steam onto the inside of the entryway glass, and with a fingernail had written in tiny English letters: STAND + DECLARE. The letters were painstakingly drawn, and Hale guessed that the old man probably didn’t even know the meaning of the symbols he was tracing in reverse on the glass.
    Hale closed his eyes in a slightly protracted blink to show that he had understood; and then he looked the other way. This was fairly extreme caution—not even to go to the indicated address, and now to be redirected by this evanescent writing. And it occurred to him that only someone standing as close to the shop as he was would even see the old man in the darkness inside, much less the faint letters in the dampness on the glass.
    Hale glanced back and saw that the old man had wiped out the two words and written, less legibly but still readably in the moisture: WATCHED—BRIEF IN BEIRUT.
    Hale was apparently not being redirected, here.
    His stomach churned, and his face was hot in the cold breeze as he turned away from the window. The planned briefing here in Kuwait had apparently been called off, with no fallbacks until he somehow got to Beirut. But he needed his script, he needed to know what story he was supposed to give the expected Rabkrin recruiter. Damn it, he thought worriedly, what am I supposed to say?
    The unwelcome answer was written in a fresh patch of steam when he glanced back after another blind look in the other direction:
    GIVE ’48 ARARAT MATH: ALL WRONG.
    This time he looked away to hide his face, even just from this stranger behind the glass.
    Hale was numb and dizzy, and for a moment his mind simply recoiled from comprehending the words he had read. The math— the strategy and the calculations and the orders given to the men he had led up the road below Ararat—had been of his own devising. “All wrong”? Was it actually possible?
    With a desperate leap of logic he decided that it was not. Cold sweat of relief dewed his forehead as he told himself forcefully that his secret purpose here had been found out by the Rabkrin, that this was a gambit to trick him into revealing to their recruiter the valid deductions and strategy that he had assembled in ’48. His mission here was blown, Cassagnac had been shot uselessly, but at least Hale was not guilty of having killed his own men through a mistake fourteen years ago. It was obvious, so obvious that he didn’t need to prove it by trying to get confirmation of this “order,” even if he could make contact with Theodora…
    But the thought of Theodora brought back the old man’s words yesterday morning— You’ll probably doubt its validity… this right now, what I’m telling you, is your confirmation-in-advance. If you hate it, it’s the genuine instructions .
    Too obviously this was