AMONG the questions submitted to Zelle were the matters of Rudolph Spangler's secret espionage center in Berlin and of the secret identity he used in Paris when briefing and debriefing his French agents. In fact, the German intelligence effort was at this time still headed by Walter Nicolai, and as for Spangler's secret French identity—he was actually living quite openly in Geneva as an art dealer named Otto Broome . . .

He generally began his days early here, rising at about seven for a brisk morning walk along the quai des Bergues. After a light breakfast in his hotel he would walk again, weather permitting, to a cramped gallery south of the canal. There he would conduct his ostensible business until five or six in the evening. The only women in his life were an occasional prostitute or a chance encounter from the cafes. His agents—and there were about thirty at this point— were mainly serviced at night in a nondescript house off the Grand-Rue.

Like any spy in a foreign city, Spangler depended for his survival here largely on a strict adherence to dozens of small precautionary measures. He always made a point, for example, of comparing faces in crowds to his memory of faces in restaurants where he dined. He made a point of noting the faces of guests in the hotel where he lived, and of the neighbors surrounding the house where he conducted his secret life. He never left that house without wedging matchsticks above and below the lock, just as he never entered without pausing a moment to listen at the door. Although he rarely carried a pistol, he did carry a deceptively heavy stick—not unlike the stick he had once used on Gray.

The stick was ebony, and weighted with a lead rod. The ferrule was steel, tapered to a point. The handle was brass and detached to reveal an eight-inch dagger. In moments of stress Spangler maintained a low grip so as to wield the thing like a club . . .

He held it in this fashion now as he approached the house off the Grand-Rue to draft a report about an agent in Milan. Although nothing specifically had alarmed him, the approach to this house had always left him uneasy, particularly at night when the darkness collected in the back streets. He also disliked the garden entrance with its two flights of unlit stairs to the gate. Yet he felt most vulnerable along the last passage to the door—a twisted flagstone walk beneath shadowy junipers.

So he held the stick low in his right hand, watching for a sign in the blackness ... the branch that became an arm, the clustered vines that became a face.

Gray, however, remained as still, as faceless as any fallen tree until Spangler was all but on top of him. Then, stepping out like any shadow from the trenches, he brought up his knee into Spangler's groin.