“She didn’t suspect?”

“Of course not. I told you. I charmed her. I made her coffee. I complimented her on that suit. It’ll be a piece of cake, Max.”

“You hope. You don’t understand women, Rowland. You never did.”

“Have faith.” Rowland ignored Max’s remark. He watched the black Volkswagen accelerate to the exit, where, signaling right, it turned left. It narrowly avoided a large truck, whose brakes screeched. Max closed his eyes.

“Just never drive with Lindsay,” he said. “That’s my only advice, Rowland. Whatever damn fool plans you may have—avoid that. It’s dicing with death. Especially when she’s in a temper.”

“She isn’t in a temper.” Rowland turned away from the window. “I told you. Two days ago it was war. Now it’s détente. It’s easy to win a woman like Lindsay over, once you set your mind to it.”

He picked up one of Max’s sandwiches and began to nibble on it in a contemplative way. Max, repressing a smile, lit a cigarette.

There was a brief companionable silence during which Rowland, whose mind never left work for very long, flicked through the contents of the file he had brought Max, and Max, watching his friend—his extraordinarily handsome friend, who had never understood his own effect on women—had plenty of time to savor the latest development in the ongoing tragicomedy of Rowland McGuire’s life.

“Listen, Rowland,” he began, deciding on a word of warning, “about Lindsay. She isn’t nearly as invulnerable as she pretends, and Charlotte and I are both very fond of her. I know how important this story is to you, and I understand why her help could be useful…”

Rowland was not listening. He was rereading the latest report from his U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency contact in Amsterdam, submitted to Max a short while before. Max did not know the name of this contact, and was unlikely to be given it: that was the way Rowland worked.

“Sure, sure,” he said, closing the file and waving Max’s remarks to one side. “Stop fussing, for God’s sake, Max. Next you’ll be asking me what my intentions are.”

“Unlikely. You wouldn’t tell me if I did.”

“Work,” Rowland said in an impatient tone, picking up a sheaf of photographic prints from Max’s desk and leafing through them. “My intention is to work. To get this whole story tied up. Lindsay’s peripheral. If she’ll condescend to help, fine. If she won’t—too bad. I’ll continue the charm offensive—”

“Give me strength.”

“These pictures…” Rowland laid them back on the desk. “They’re the latest from Pascal Lamartine?”

“Yes.” Max picked them up. “I want to use one tomorrow. Page one. Photo editor wants this one.”

“He’s wrong.” Rowland indicated the photograph in Max’s left hand. “You should use that one. People are getting complacent about Bosnia. Shock them out of it, Max.”

“Maybe,” Max replied, knowing that Rowland was right. He looked down at the picture Rowland had recommended. A group of mourning women were clustered around the body of a boy; the boy’s right hand still grasped a Kalashnikov; his left lay, outflung, in a pool of blood. The boy’s face, mercifully, was hidden, but the faces of the women were not. Lamartine would have had less than thirty seconds in which to capture this grief; this was his great gift, Max thought, the gift that put him in a class by himself: technical brilliance, informed by compassion. The photograph had haunted Max all morning. If one of my own children were to die, he thought, that is how I would feel, that is how my wife would look.