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Page 59.

“Very good,” Crane said. “And what street does your mother live on?”

“Orange Street.” Elm trees all around, green, leisurely waiting for the mailman on endless summer afternoons, cool glass of orange juice... “Why?”

“Just some questions I need to ask. To make sure you are who you say you are.” Crane flicked ashes out a partially cracked window, and said patiently as if explaining gravity to a child: “Major Malone was not only starting to deal drugs to pay his gambling debt—he was working both sides of the fence. That’s what got him killed.”

“Meaning?”

“Malone was a good officer and a good soldier. He hated the Nazis and the Communists as much as you do. It’s just that he compromised himself.”

“And the woman with him?”

Crane made a disagreeable face. “Wife of a prominent Belgian mining official named Clery. It’s caused quite a flap, and we’ve had to cover it up. It’s one of these social things. The husband is in Katanga, having affairs, and she’s bored and stepping out up here. The simple solution is to say they were on a plane together with several others and went down over the jungle.” Crane grinned. “Convenient, having one of the world’s largest primordial rainforests all around us. Don’t you think?”

“Yessir.” Something about Crane didn’t sit right with Tim, but he wrote it off to the fact that the colonel was in the intelligence business. That seemed to speak for itself. Unsavory, but necessary.

“We’ll put you up in a nice hotel room for a few days,” Crane said. “I want to show you what we are into here. Very important stuff. I hope you will help us out.”

“We, Sir?”

“O.S.S., Tim. Office of Strategic Services. We don’t like to advertise, except when we are recruiting a guy, like I’m doing here, now, with you.”

“I’ll think about it. I’ll do my best, sir. Not my cup of tea, I’ll be honest.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Lieutenant.”

“I am so damned glad to be safely back in American hands that I’ll be happy to help my country in any way I can. I just hope...”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to get back stateside soon, Sir. I’ve been away for a long time.”

“I understand. A lot of good men and women have been serving in dreadful little corners all over the world.”

“Of course.” And the poor guy with a wooden hand, yet! Putting it that way shamed Tim into thinking he ought to square his shoulders and accept whatever he could do for his country.

It was a long ride, and as they talked, Crane sometimes scribbled in a small notebook with a tiny pencil. Sometimes he rubbed his prosthesis absently with his other hand, as if the artificial limb ached. Outside, plantations passed in the afternoon sun, and everywhere black people were on the move, walking, carrying bales, hanging wash out before blue or green houses, children running in alleys, policemen on bicycles, Belgian officials in big cars...

They came to a group of two story cinderblock office buildings in the austere modern style, lots of glass, flags in front, very official, very colonial, with black men looking subservient in ill-fitting suits opening and closing the doors of cars that pulled into the front arcade.

The car drove past all that, around the side of the buildings. All but Tim, Crane, and the driver got out. Crane put a finger on his lip to signal Tim to be quiet. The car went around the back, into a garage, up to a set of indoor gasoline pumps where men in Marine Corps fatigues stood wearing .45s.

“We get out here,” Crane said.

A Marine Corps corporal opened the door and stood at attention, saluting.

Tim and the colonel got out. Crane casually returned the corporal’s salute. The driver of the car handed off the keys to a private and left by another way as Tim and Crane walked across the indoor parking lot to a small doorway. In a small lobby. The lobby was refreshingly cool, dark, and paneled in polished marble swirling with tomato and white veins. They took an elevator up two flights and emerged in a solarium with its own receptionist, a man in a white shirt wearing a gun in a shoulder strap. He had a crew cut and looked very Bouvardish as he pushed a clipboard across the counter for Crane and his companions to sign in. Crane ordered coffee and pastries from a small canteen in passing—just poking his head in, speaking French to a heavyset black woman in a gray smock, who nodded and turned to relay his order back into the tiled kitchen.

They sat together in Crane’s spacious office, which had carpeting, walnut furniture, big glass windows, and cool air coming out of a wall duct. “Air conditioning,” Crane said noticing Tim’s stare at the ceiling. “Really helps us to concentrate here.” Crane sat behind the desk while Tim sat in a plush leather chair before the desk. It was a client-manager kind of arrangement and felt comforting to Tim, as if he were now in safe and competent hands.

“I am sorry you’ve been through all that,” Crane said.

Coffee and pastries arrived, served by two young Congolese whose skin was so black it seemed to glow with bluish highlights. A white-haired Congolese man named Pierre supervised. His left hand had been cut off at the wrist.

“Merci,” Crane said patiently. With a few friendly nods, the men left. The old man closed the door loudly and turned the handle with a noticeable click to indicate they’d have privacy in the office.