He reached for her hand through the bars, lacing his fingers through hers. "Margaretha, listen to me. They're not going to shoot you. They lied about the evidence and I can prove it."

She seemed to be smiling. Her eyes were still closed, but her lips seemed to be parted in a faint smile. "I love you, Nicky. I always have, but I don't think I really knew it, or accepted it, until right now."

"Margaretha, please. The telegrams were—"

"And I know you love me too, but I'm afraid we simply don't have much luck together."

It went on like that for a little while longer ... a few more disconnected sentences, a few more dreadful moments of silence as they clung to one another through the gate. When he tried to tell her that she mustn't lose hope, she merely shut her eyes again and smiled. When he tried to explain about the telegrams again, she shook her head and said that he shouldn't make himself a target, too.

Then their time was up—fifteen minutes past the hour, and the guard had finished his cigarette. As she moved away, she mumbled something else about that Spanish monastery—a last try at a private joke. She was trying to make him feel better? Or was it that she clung to the hope that in the end they would not condemn her? As she vanished down the rear staircase, it occurred to him that he had actually brought her nothing except promises—not chocolate, not orchids, not even another bloody drawing.

The night collapsed rapidly after that; first with three or four drinks in cafes that had lost their appeal, then with Southerland in a cheap hotel not far from the prison at Saint-Lazare. It was nearly midnight, always one of Zelle's better hours. The streets were still wet from an hour of rain, and, Gray thought, she might have been part of the reflection in every pool of water below . . .

"Nicky ... I think I have found our witness," Southerland had said when Gray had met him earlier. "Used to be one of my people, but Dunbar has him working with his coding team now."

Then, in a taxi before the rain had stopped: "He's convinced that someone fiddled with those Mata Hari cables, possibly inserted at least three forgeries into the sequence. And he's willing to talk to us. That much is certain . . ."

Except that once they had reached the hotel room, nothing seemed very certain. The room had been done in shades of brown: a frayed carpet, a table with a peeling varnish, tattered curtains, and the ruins of wallpaper—all brown to one degree or another.

"I took it just for the occasion." Southerland smiled. He struck Gray as inordinately apologetic.

There was whisky and three glasses. After a long silence Southerland poured two and handed one to Gray.

"When does he arrive?" Gray asked impatiently.

"Soon . . ."

"And you said that you knew him before?"

Southerland nodded.