Condley alternated his gaze from the happily smiling young woman to the serious gaze on the face of the man he once thought he fully understood. “You haven’t seen her for—”

“Twenty years,” said the colonel. “That does not mean I don’t love her. I send her money every month. Not much, but she is my daughter. My wife approves. Family, Cong Ly. Very simple but very complicated.”

Colonel Pham checked his watch. “What time do you want to leave tonight for our . . . obligation?”

“Seven o’clock,” said Condley.

The colonel smiled, putting an arm on Sasha’s shoulder. “So you don’t mind if I leave you until then?”

“See you at seven, Colonel.”

Condley stood silently as Colonel Pham exited the hotel’s front door with his daughter on his arm. Yes, behind those forty-year-old industrial-strength glasses and that rabbit-skin hat that stank of mothballs was a man less different from himself than he had ever fully imagined. Finally he chuckled, muttering to himself, “Well, that wasn’t in Skip Rogers’s folder.”

And then he went to lunch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A huge repair truck was parked incongruously at the edge of Red Square where they entered it, apparently broken down and abandoned for the evening by its crew. Passing it, Condley noticed a muddy old military hat hanging loosely where the gas cap used to be. The Square itself was fairy-tale gorgeous with its colorful spires and ancient buildings, all lit up with spotlights in the crisp night air. They walked briskly through it, gawking like tourists on their way to the subway. Condley shivered uncontrollably as they walked, the flaps of his fur cap down over his ears and his gloved hands pushed deep inside his overcoat. It had been decades since he had experienced winter, and Moscow in January was belly-whimpering cold.

He had shown Colonel Pham the map that Skip Rogers left inside his folder, and the old Viet Cong soldier had immediately taken charge of their hapless little patrol. On the far side of Red Square they reached the subway platform and marched down the steps toward the trains. They passed grand statues and walls covered with mosaic murals, all depicting heroic, muscled workers engaged in the never-ending struggle against—what? thought Condley, thinking of the decades since the murals had been done. Capitalism? Corruption? Or who knew, maybe in the end, communism itself? No matter, he decided. They were beautiful and if nothing else had provided someone with a job.

The train was nearly empty. They did not speak to each other as Colonel Pham counted the stops. The colonel sat expressionless, glancing now and then at the map and then outside, as if navigating. Condley stared straight ahead, rehearsing over and over in his mind the possibilities of the encounter to come, wrapped in an intensity that resembled the last moments before a combat mission.