“And Thibodeau,” Ricci said. “He’ll make sure I remember to pull the store gate at night.”

Nimec inhaled, exhaled.

“Thought I rated better than that sort of comment,” he said. “You were gone a long time. I know what it took for you to leave. How much it took out of you to come back without finding our man. But we have to put it away for now. Move on.”

Ricci nodded, seeming to look straight past Nimec at some point several feet behind him.

“Sure,” he said in his null, automatic tone. “Got anything to mention besides?”

Nimec considered whether to push ahead. Though Ricci had returned from his alligator hunt three months ago, it mostly felt as if he were still elsewhere. And that sense of his continued absence just intensified when you tried stepping close to him.

Finally Nimec shook his head.

“Maybe later,” he said, and glanced at his wristwatch. It was almost eight P.M. “I’m driving on over to HQ. There’re lots of odds and ends that need wrapping up before my trip, and I might as well get some things done while the building’s quiet. You want to stay, work in some more practice, that’s fine with me. I won’t worry about you pulling the gate afterward.”

Ricci stood without moving and watched as Nimec turned to leave the room.

“Pete,” he said.

Nimec paused near the door, looked at him.

Ricci nodded toward his darkened shooting lane.

“I’ve got a question,” he said. “Strictly about procedure.”

“Go ahead.”

“That hostage situation before the timeout,” Ricci said. “If you’re in my place when it comes up, how would you handle it?”

Nimec thought about it a second, then shrugged again.

“Hope to God I never have to find out,” he said.

The personal ads appeared on the first Thursday of every month in newspapers throughout Europe. Although each entry was different from the preceding month’s, its content would be identical to those printed on the same date in various countries and languages. In Italy the personals ran in l’Unita. In Germany, Die Zeit. The London Times carried them in Great Britain, Liberation in France, El Mundo in Spain, and De Standaard in Belgium. Because Cyrillic script had to be avoided out of practicality, the ads were placed in English versions of Hungarian, Czech, and Russian papers—the Budapest Sun, Prague Post, and Moscow Times, respectively. Also for practical reasons, the Greek daily chosen to print them was the German-language Athener Zeitung. As in eastern European nations, the character sets unique to Greece’s alphabet would interfere with a consistent application of the simple code embedded within the messages. And a code without fixed rules amounted to no code at all.