“What good could possibly be served by telling the world about this? Do you think it would stop hate crimes? Do you really think that it would end the violence in the Middle East?”

I sighed and turned away from him.

“Of course it wouldn’t,” he said sadly. “It would throw gasoline on it.”

“What happened to ‘the truth will set you free’?” I growled.

He sighed. “As much as I hate to say it, Cowboy, sometimes a lie is better.”

“Ignorance is bliss? Is that our stance?”

Rudy didn’t answer, because there was no answer.

And the world? It didn’t end. It still leans heavily on a crooked axis, and it still turns.

But as the weeks passed I saw something I hadn’t expected.

Throughout the region the guns have fallen silent. Tensions are down across the Middle East. No one exactly knows why. At least, no one in the press seems to know.

Without gasoline on the fire, maybe the fire is finally going to burn itself out.

That would be nice.

We’ll see.

(3)

Violin?

They never found her body, of course.

Burned, they said, along with so many others. Human and vampire. Charred to dust, blown away by the hot winds of an unforgiving desert.

I saw Lilith, very briefly, at the joint-use base. She wouldn’t even look at me.

Everybody needs somebody to blame.

Maybe she’s right to pin it on me. Violin wasn’t just looking for the scrambler. She came looking for me. She told me that much, and it’s all we ever got to have.

(4)

The name on the young man’s passport was Gerald Hopkins. He did not look at all like the person he had once been; no one he had ever known would be able to pick him out of a lineup. People who had known him last year couldn’t even do that. The face and fingerprints of Gerald Hopkins matched the computer records. No bells or alarms rang. The airport security officers in Germany did no more than an ordinary search of the man and his possessions before passing him through.

“Have a safe flight, Mr. Hopkins,” said a cheerful man at the gate.

“Thank you,” said Hopkins, but he was not smiling. He found his seat and buckled in and sat staring out the window for the entire flight. He did not fly first class.

When his plane landed in Canada there was no one to greet him. He hired a cab and, except for the name of his hotel, Hopkins said nothing at all on the drive. The hotel was a modest one, second or third tier. He checked in, locked his door, set his bags down and spent the next full day sleeping.