After that, a man read from the Big Book, which at one time I’d known by heart though I was clearly in need of a refresher, even in Italian. After the meeting, there was coffee, and I talked to a sexy Italian woman in her fifties, divorced twice she said. I told her I’d never taken the plunge, and she told me not to, then invited me home. Another time, I would have said yes, but not anymore. I was clearly committed to a woman I had just pushed away, possibly forever.

69

I brushed past Smith and collapsed into the one comfy chair in his hotel room.

“Hello to you too,” he said.

“Don’t start. I’ve been back and forth to Paris in less than twenty-four hours and hardly slept.”

“It’s an hour flight,” he said, “and it was your choice, not mine.”

“An hour and forty minutes,” I said, yesterday’s conversation with Alex still playing in my mind like an old record stuck on repeat. “Let’s get to work.”

“Have something to eat. I got some rolls and cheese and coffee.”

I was starving and tired, emotionally drained, touched that Smith had thought of getting food though I couldn’t bring myself to say so. I ate a roll and drank some coffee, Smith smoking a cigarette, waiting.

“You know, I may have given up the love of my life for this,” I said, a thought I hadn’t meant to say aloud.

“We all make concessions,” Smith said. “I’ve made plenty.”

I didn’t want to get into a pissing contest but pointed out that his concessions were part of his job, a rung up the INTERPOL ladder; my concessions were personal.

Smith shook his head and stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray so hard the thing almost toppled. “This isn’t part of my job.”

“What do you mean?”

Smith eyed me, looked away, then back. “I’m a criminal intelligence analyst, a researcher,” he said, then paused, “not a police officer of any kind. There’s no such position at INTERPOL. Our job is to gather information about a crime and turn it over to police in the countries that subscribe to INTERPOL.”

“Wait… So you have no authority here?”

He nodded slowly, the secret he’d been hiding, the one I had glimpsed.

“Does INTERPOL know what you’re up to?”

Smith shook his head.

“So why are you doing it, taking such a risk?”

“Because I’m as interested in solving this mystery as you are.”

“And if you solve it, you’ll be a hero at INTERPOL?”

Smith scoffed a laugh. “Let’s just say if we figure this thing out, make a major discovery, it will make it difficult for them to fire me.”

“I knew you were lying to me about something.”

“Yeah, and you lied to me about everything. So we’re even.” He sighed. “You think it’s easy for a man like me to move up the ladder at a place like INTERPOL?”

“No idea,” I said.

“I dedicated twenty years to this job. Man, did I ever have dreams. I was going to be the next James Bond.” He snorted a laugh. “When I joined INTERPOL, I thought I’d arrived, that I was finally somebody, no longer a fatherless kid from the projects.” He shook his head. “But you know, taking this crazy risk, it’s almost like I’ve started over, like I’m somebody again.”