“Shit!” She exhaled loudly, then wadded up the paper and sidearmed it across the room into the wastebasket

Before she could raise her guard, the compulsion to pray washed over her, and this time she had a fleeting vision of the room full of prehistoric goddesses and heard the echoes of Thalia’s words. Zoe sat back on the bed and clasped her hands together between her knees. Then she bowed her head.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” she said quietly, beginning the Twenty-third Psalm, that they had memorized in Sunday school and had recited at the beginning of every class. Only now Zoe saw a woman’s face on the shepherd.

“I shall not want,” Zoe continued, struggling to remember, the words faded from decades of neglect

“She maketh me to lie down in green pastures; she leadeth me beside the still waters.

“… the paths of righteousness for her name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.

“Fear no evil.”

The thought eased the knot in her heart. She stood up and paced the room, trying to exhume the words buried so deeply.

“Thy rod…” she struggled. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Zoe smiled wanly as she remembered how the boys snickered about this line and about how her cheeks had burned when she’d finally learned the reason why.

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over…”

When the idea hit, it jolted her physically, halting her in mid-stride.

Oh my God, she thought as she looked up. “That’s it!” She smiled broadly as her eyes inventoried the room, seeing it as if for the first time. “That’s the way out of this hole.”

Zoe’s whole body seemed to tingle as she struggled with the sudden epiphany. “Why didn’t I see that before?” she wondered. “Nothing’s changed. Everything’s been here in plain view for months.” She considered that it could have been months’ worth of mental preparation, the committing to memory of every possible detail, the constant working with scenarios, combinations, and recombinations—all of that focused into action by the intensity of impending death.

Could have been, she thought. Then she thought of the biblical story of somebody-or-other who had had the scales removed from his eyes. Then she said:

“Thank you, God.”

FIFTEEN

A cross the trolley tracks and a little west of the main train station in Amsterdam is a bar that has been serving gin for five hundred years. Not the effete gin favored by feverish English cricket players and American tennis dilettantes, but a richly flavored Dutch gin with an integrity its makers call genever.

The bar is old and dim and filled with dark wood, stained darker still by centuries of tobacco smoke. Its wooden plank floors are worn thin by centuries of feet, and the deep spaces between the planks are filled with a grime that has come off shoes worn by the likes of Rembrandt and van Gogh. Inside, it is always hazy with talk and tobacco.