“What about this Talas report?” Barbara asked Jayewardene. Klaus started at her comment and started to glance down at his own reports. “That’s Kazakhstan, right? Not the one in Kyrgyzstan or Turkey, but the old Silk Road area? Ink seems concerned about it—do your people have more, or do you have a feeling about it?”

“Nothing more from my sources,” Jayewardene answered. “But…” He gave a shrug of thin shoulders. “I don’t like reading this…” Barbara raised an eyebrow, glancing at Klaus. Klaus just shrugged, however.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I see Ink’s marked it, but there’re so many places that seem worse off and more in need of attention. The South Korean stuff—maybe it’s time we showed the DPRK where they really belong in the global scale of things.”

“Sending aces to the DPRK would just make them think they’re more important than they really are,” Barbara responded as Jayewardene nodded. They all felt the jet banking, and Barbara’s ears popped as the cabin pressure dropped slightly. Klaus yawned, whether to clear his own ears or not, Barbara couldn’t tell.

“I suppose,” he said, pushing his chair away from the table. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be wheels down in just a few hours, and I don’t know about you two, but everything I see here can wait until we’re back in New York at the office. I’m going to see if I can grab something to eat, then try to get some sleep before we’re back. Barbara?”

She shook her head. “I want to give Ink a call and see if any new reports have come in since she printed out these.”

“More paper…” Klaus gave another shrug, shaking his head. “Whatever you want,” he said. “We’ll talk about what’s next later, then.”

He nodded to Jayewardene, and left the room. As the door closed behind him, Barbara turned to find Jayewardene’s dark brown eyes on her. “Everything is good with you? And with Klaus?”

“Sure,” Barbara told him. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Just concerned. Klaus looks … tired.”

“He is,” Barbara told the Secretary-General. “We didn’t get much sleep the last few nights, that’s all.”

Jayewardene lifted his chin. Barbara smiled at him disarmingly. She wondered whether he’d glimpsed something, or whether someone in the office—Ink, perhaps, she wondered; after all, she’d worked with him—had told him that Klaus was becoming more disengaged from the daily workings of the Committee, that he sometimes seemed overwhelmed, that he was only his old self when he was actively engaged out in the field, that Barbara herself was making more and more of the decisions for the Committee.

He lost an eye, and he lost friends that he’d had for years. She worried about depression and PTSD, but Klaus shut her out anytime she suggested that, or hinted that it wouldn’t hurt him to talk to someone if he needed to. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that it was all putting an increasing strain on their relationship.

“He’s fine,” Barbara told Jayewardene. “We both are.”