“You know what it is.” Pastore nodded. “I’ve been talking to Luba. She has an idea that Tuesdays are some sort of psychological low-point. It’s an interesting theory—you talk to her about it. She thinks Tuesdays are the worst.”

A SENSE OF MISSION

“Carry your bags, Miss?”

It was the first remark addressed to her by those she had come to serve.

“A taxi?”

She nodded, reluctant to begin by speaking English, startled to find her language apparent. She spoke to the porter slowly in Italian, the lingua franca of this island. Someone was to have met her; they hadn’t come. Yes, she would go to the hotel. Which hotel? Well—what hotels were there? A Bristol, a Cecil? A Majestic, perhaps?

The porter smiled. What she wanted was the Hotel of the Roses.

Only hours since she had stepped into the plane from the winter night of a northern city, Miss Clelia Kingslake was breathing mild morning air by the Aegean. The sun streamed down on valley, rock, and green hill, and the driver leaned against his taxi in his shirtsleeves. Miss Kingslake’s pang of ecstasy was not a bit the less for her having recently entered her fortieth year—quite the reverse, in fact. All the same, when her baggage was aboard and they drove off, she became distracted from her new surroundings, wondering if she could possibly have missed her as yet unknown colleagues. She was to have been met at the airport; so she had been assured before leaving Organization Headquarters the night before. There had been no one the least colleague-like in the waiting room, and in any case they would have approached her. It didn’t matter—she could manage for herself and they had more important things to do. For the time being, the entire region was dependent on their vigilance. After all, wasn’t this an emergency mission?

The taxi rattled through a fertile valley toward the sea. When they reached the corniche, the driver slowed down, pointed out a row of Turkish houses, asked her why she had come to Rhodes.

She explained, on an assignment for the Organization.

“Ah sì. La NATO.”

Oh no, no. NATO was a military organization. Hers was a peace-keeping one.

The driver shrugged at this subtlety. He could not be bothered splitting hairs, and lost interest. Did she see those mountains across the sea? That was the coast of Turkey. And here, as they swung around a curve, was the city of Rhodes.

Clelia Kingslake had a glimpse of golden walls, of white shipping, of a tower, a fortress. She was revisited by ecstasy. A moment later she found herself in a driveway.