After a moment he roused himself to ask if she would like something, a beer, maybe, a soft drink, a cup of coffee? Marya signaled for a waitress herself and ordered a cup of coffee and a glass of ice water. When the ice water came she pressed the glass against her forehead. She began circumlocutiously to apologize for the accident, for having ridden so recklessly, the wine at lunch must have gone to her head, of course Gregory was right and she should have been more careful.

He nodded vaguely. He smiled in her direction, without quite seeing her. He was sitting with his shoulders slumped, leaning forward on his elbows, his pale hair in his eyes, his sunglasses crooked. He looked, Marya thought, like a man who has absorbed without flinching a sudden terrible blow. “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” Marya said slowly, “I suppose it must have looked as if— I’m sorry to have been so—”

“Yes. Well. Well, it’s over now,” Gregory said politely.

“What should we do now? How will we get back home? Or should we continue with what we’d planned?” Marya asked. “I’m not sure whether I can—”

Gregory was signaling for the waitress, he wanted another bottle of beer. When the waitress was slow in coming he slid out of the booth and went to the bar himself; Marya heard his voice raised, curt and impatient. His charm had an edge to it, he was accustomed to giving instructions, to being taken seriously. His mild manner could be quite misleading. His anger lay deep, potent. . . . They can’t have dismissed him, Marya thought suddenly.

She waited until he returned to the booth with his beer, which he was already pouring carelessly into a glass. “You called the college, didn’t you!” Marya said. “You broke our promise!”

Her voice was shriller than she had intended. Gregory lifted one shoulder in a shrug, slid into the booth, didn’t meet her eye.

“You called them, didn’t you? and what did they say?” Marya asked.

Gregory made that negligent gesture with his shoulder a second time. His voice was steady, subtly ironic. “About my position, Marya, or about yours?” he said.

Ten

TEN

She was learning of torture in Uruguay, torture in Brazil. Secret police, unmarked uniforms, wraparound mirrored sunglasses, American-built jeeps and vans. . . . Headquarters in the midst of capital cities with stone walls six feet thick. . . . There was an invisible army, Marya learned, of hundreds, thousands, of routine killers; killers-for-hire in the pay of their governments in the pay (not very indirectly) of the United States Government. She had heard much of this before and had read even more of it in recent years but she listened, holding her headphones steady with one hand while she took rapid notes with the other. Her expression was one of pained concentration but her manner as always was professional.