The toast might have sounded funny coming from most men, but it didn't from him. We drank and lapsed into our separate thoughts and memories. I caught a faint whiff of cigarette smoke and, looking around, spotted an empty tin ashtray on the table. I set my glass down and got out my pack of cigarettes. I proffered him one, but he declined, saying he didn't like mixing it with beer. He told me to go ahead, so I did.

He sat in the middle of the sofa with his knees wide apart, holding his beer bottle by its neck between them. I took a chair by the table, ashtray at my elbow. For the first time, I noticed his face was drawn and tired, and I remembered him saying he had worked during the night.

"Where do you work?" I asked.

"I'm a guard at the Reading Power Station."

"Always work nights?"

"Usually. The other guys don't like it much, but I do. It's quiet, and no one's around. I can get some reading done."

"I guess working nights is easier when you're single."

"I'm not single," he said in a low voice. "I'm a widower. But I suppose it amounts to the same thing, as far as working nights is concerned."

His eyes went to a point over my shoulder, and I swiveled my head to follow his gaze. There, on the nightstand by the bed, stood a picture. I had to cant my head and squint to see it fully. It showed a man and a woman standing close together, the man dressed in a suit and tie and the woman in a white dress and a veil that was pulled back, exposing her face. A wedding photo. The man was Michael Shamir and the smile on his face was as bright as a chandelier. The woman was an attractive brunette, and for the second time that day I found myself staring at the familiar face of a person whom I had before only seen in a picture. Mira Roth's picture.

What was her name?

I fumbled in my mind for the elusive memory, feeling it slip through my mental fingers a couple of times, till I finally caught it. "Talia," I muttered. "Your wife's name. It's Talia, isn't it?"

He stared at me in apparent shock, but did not answer. He probably wondered where I had learned the name. I explained about the picture Mira had shown me and watched his expression soften. Now I understood what Mira had meant when she said Michael Shamir had given up his family for the cause of the Irgun. For hadn't Mira said that Talia Shamir had also taken part in that raid and died during it?

"I'm sorry. Your wife was very beautiful."