Shattered

asked.
        “A Russian or something.”
        “I thought we were friends with the Russians these days,” Alex said, looking at the van in the rear-view mirror and smiling again. “And even if we aren't friends with the Russians these days-why would a spy be interested in you or me?”
        “That's easy,” Colin said. “He has us mixed up with someone else. He was assigned to tail someone living on our block, and he got confused.”
        “I'm not scared of any spy who's that inept,” Alex said. He reached out and fiddled with the air-conditioning controls, brought a gentle, cool breeze into the stuffy car.
        “He might not be a spy,” Colin said, his attention captured by the unimposing little van. “He might be something else.”
        “Like what?
        “Let me think about it awhile,” the boy said.
        While Colin thought about what the man in the van might be, Alex Doyle watched the street ahead and thought about San Francisco. That hilly city was not just a geographical identity so far as Alex was concerned. To him, it was a synonym for the future and a symbol for everything that a man wanted in life. The new job was there, the innovative advertising agency that recognized and cultivated talented young commercial artists. The new house was there, the three-bedroom Spanish stucco on the edge of Lincoln Park, with its spectacular view of the Golden Gate area and the shaggy palm outside the master-bedroom window. And Courtney was there, of course. If she had not been, the new job and the house would not have meant anything. He and Courtney had met in Philadelphia, had fallen in love there, had been married in the city hall on Market Street, with her brother, Colin, as honorary best man and a woman from the Justice Department steno pool as their required adult witness. Then Colin had been packed off to stay two weeks with Alex's Aunt Pauline in Boston, while the newlyweds flew to San Francisco to honeymoon, to meet Alex's new employers to whom he had spoken only over the telephone, and to find and buy the house in which they would start their life together. It was in San Francisco, more than Philly, that the future took shape and meaning. San Francisco became the future. And Courtney became inextricably entwined with that city. In Doyle's mind, she was San Francisco, just as San Francisco was the future. She was golden and even-tempered, exotic, sensuous, intellectually intriguing, comfortable yet exciting-everything that San Francisco was. And now, as he thought about Courtney, the hilly streets and the crisp blue bay rose clearly on the screen behind his eyes.
        “He's still back there,” Colin said, peering through the narrow rear window at the van.
        “At least he hasn't tried to run us into a ditch yet,” Alex said.
        “He won't do that,” Colin said.
        “Oh?”
        “He'll just tail us. He's a government man. “
        “FBI, is he?”
        “I think so,” Colin said, grimly compressing his lips.
        “Why would he be after us?”
        “He's probably got us mixed up with someone else,” Colin said. “He was assigned to tail some-radicals. He saw our long hair and got confused. He thinks we're the radicals.”
        “Well,” Alex said, “our own spies are just as inefficient as the Russians', aren't they?”
        Doyle's smile was too large for his face, a generous curve that was punctuated at each end with a dimple. He held the smile both because he felt so damned fine and because he knew that it was the best thing about his face. In all his thirty years, no one had ever told him that he was handsome. Despite the fact that he was one-quarter Irish, there was too much strong-jawed Italian in him, too much of a Roman nose. Three months after they met, when they began to sleep together, Courtney had said, “Doyle, you are just not a handsome man. You're attractive , certainly, but not handsome. When you say that I look smashing, I want to reciprocate-but I just can't lie to you. But your smile… Now, that's perfect. When you smile, you even look a little bit like Dustin Hoffman.” Already they were too honest with each other for Doyle to be hurt by what she'd said. Indeed, he had been delighted by the comparison: “Dustin Hoffman? You really think so?” She had studied him a moment, putting her hand under his chin and turning his face this way and that in the weak orange light of the bedside lamp. “When you smile, you look