Paul Ward had not had the sensation of his heart skipping a beat since the moment he had looked upon his father’s remains. No matter how violent or how dangerous his situation, he always remained icy calm . . . until this second. His heart was skipping a whole lot of beats. He parted his lips, but nothing came out.

The colonel raised an eyebrow and with it one corner of his mouth. “I am your counterpart,” he said, “your French counterpart.”

Paul wiped his face clean of expression. Tell him nothing.

“You are surprised, I see,” Colonel Bocage said. “Genuinely surprised. Tell me, how long have the Americans been working on this?”

Paul reminded himself never to play poker with Colonel Bocage. “A few years,” he said dryly.

“My friend, we have been struggling with this problem for fifty years.”

“We cleared Asia.”

“Cleared?”

“We killed them, all of them.”

“Except for Mrs. Tallman.”

“Except for her.”

“Elle est une sauvage, aussi?”

“You call them savages?”

“To keep the record clean. We know what they are. But you come from Asia, where we know you have been working very hard. Why not start in America, where the lives are more important to you?”

“Our first solid lead was in Tokyo.”

At that moment, Charlie and Becky were brought in.

“Ah,” Colonel Bocage said, “your colleagues. Now, please, we shall all sit together.”

“You guys okay?”

“Fine,” Becky said. She looked wonderful when she was angry—her eyes full of sparks, her cheeks flushed, her lips set in a line that was at once grim and somehow suggestive.

Beside her, Charlie played with the damn cigarette machine. His style under this kind of pressure was sullen defiance.

There was a silence. Paul was trying to remember if he had ever felt quite this embarrassed and uncomfortable before. He decided that the answer was no.

“This matter has the very highest level of secrecy attached to it in France,” Bocage said. “Government does not care to inform the population of such matters.” He paused. “You have concluded the same.”

“All governments that we’ve been to have concluded the same.”

“Given that we cannot protect our people, there seems little choice but to hide this until matters are resolved.”

Bocage rested his eyes on Becky, so frankly that she looked away. Paul was fascinated. Becky was the very essence of self-possession, and Becky did not look away.

“You obtained what you needed, I trust,” he said to her.

“Yes.”

He strolled over to his desk. “We used a computer spying program to watch your keystrokes,” he said, his voice rippling with self-satisfaction. There were few things more pleasant in the life of an intelligence agent than getting the drop on a colleague from a friendly country. Paul knew, he’d done it. “If you’d like a copy of your work —” He held a file folder toward Becky and Charlie. “In the interest of friendly cooperation.”