He sensed movement in front of him and he looked up in time to see a middle-aged brunette with a small backpack hanging off her shoulder standing at the foot of his little bistro table. For an instant he thought she looked familiar, but he could not place her. She looked down at him, though, like she knew him well.

An uncomfortable feeling for an intelligence officer, to be sure, especially when he recognized the person, but he did not know from where.

“Mr. Alvey?” she asked.

English. That caused him to refine his hunt to put a name to the face. A name was on the tip of his tongue for an instant, and then it melted off. No.

“Who are you?” he asked. Refusing to confirm his ID before getting more information.

“My name is Catherine King. I am with the Washington Post.”

Instantly he knew exactly who she was; he’d seen her on television, and he’d read hundreds of columns she’d written over the years. He began to stand to leave. His eyes flickered all around, hunting for a suitable escape route.

“Please wait. Sit down with me a moment. I’m not going to ask you anything. Not yet, anyway. I need to tell you something. After I tell you, if you like, you can get up and walk away, and I promise I will not pursue you.”

Alvey kept the nervous furtive eyes, but he lowered back to his seat.

The waiter came and she ordered an espresso. Alvey declined her offer to buy him another.

Soon she said, “A mutual acquaintance of ours told me this story. It’s a good one. I speak to liars with depressing regularity, but I believe this man believes what he is saying. That doesn’t make it true, mind you. I’m just letting you know I am normally quite skeptical of tall tales.”

“Who is the acquaintance?”

“He wouldn’t give me his name, but you know who he is.”

Alvey smiled. Bemused. “Without his name, I highly doubt that. I know a lot of men.”

“Yes, but how many of them shot you in the stomach in a Hamburg stairwell?”

Alvey measured his breathing carefully. Intent on not giving any of his emotions away. “Not so many.”

“I presumed as much. Well, this man is in serious trouble. He thinks just maybe you might be able to help him.”

The muscles in Yanis Alvey’s neck twitched. “Help him, Ms. King? Help him? If he were sitting where you are sitting right now, I would dive across this table with this butter knife and stab it through his heart. I don’t want to help him. I want to kill him.”

Catherine King had not expected this at all. “But why?”