"You did, didn't you? You killed dozens of men, and now you're a ghost, you're one of those living ghosts I keep hearing about." And she squeezed his hand, as if trying to deny it, to find something palpable in him ... in her life.

The storm gave way to a fogbound stillness. Mornings blurred into afternoons, nights were very black. One hardly felt time passing.

"How would you like to travel once we get to Spain?" he asked her. "I could take you to all those out-of-the-way places one never gets an opportunity to visit."

It was the third day of the voyage. Gray had returned from the ship's library with an old guidebook to Spain. He had also found a map of the provinces and a bottle of sherry.

"We could go to the south coast," he said, "I bet you've never been to the south coast."

She seemed to want to smile, but it wouldn't come. "No, never."

"Or Segovia. We could go to Segovia, and see the castles."

She got up from the chair, crossed the room and kneeled beside him on the bed. "What are you trying to tell me, Nicky?"

"They want me to try to get you to Madrid. I told you . . . that's the center of the German espionage effort, and they want you there."

She sighed, collapsing to her elbows. "I despise this, Nicky. I really do."

"So then let me take you away from it. We'll go to the coast and sit on the beach for a month. I know places where they'll never even find us."

She slid off the bed and moved to a view through the porthole. "It's too late for that. Don't you see? Once you've been accused of these things it just never leaves you. People are always talking behind your back, doors are always closing in your face. You might as well retire to a monastery. Or nunnery." She shivered at that last.

He tried to reassure her, not believing his own words. Later that evening she even pointed out the spot on his map: Montserrat, above the river Llobregat, just the place to end a life that seemed not for this world.

Although they were all but inseperable, and continued to sleep in the same bed, by the fourth day he felt she was slipping away again. The pretend game of a new life was over. On occasion she would speak almost enthusiastically about Spain, describing certain restaurants she had known from before, then without warning she would lapse back into depression, with a bottle of sherry or gin, and those stories of the bloody Durga, bitch of schemes.