The bench was also cold, like spears of frozen steel. The sun was a pale disk in the sky. It's as though I've always been here, Dunbar thought. As though I've always been sitting right here waiting for what I'm hearing right now.

"I've suggested to Cummings that you coordinate the overall surveillance, Charles. We've got plenty of people in the area to help, but I’d like you to run the show. I mean, you do know the woman, don't you? Know her moves, her habits, her bloody routine. Anyway, I personally think you'll do a damn good job."

"But to what end?"

"Well, if Rudy Spangler has fallen in love—" he spread a hand in a gesture of mock sympathy—"don't you think it would only be proper if we were to help him along?"

Dunbar glanced down to his feet. Conceivably, he thought, the reverse might also be the case. "How would I start?"

"Slowly, carefully. And see if you can't find out who's on the sidelines."

"I'm sorry?"

"Spangler's agents, the bread and butter of his western networks."

"What about my current duties?"

"Oh I think Allenby can clear your table."

"And my supervisor?"

"Well, you're working directly for the Fourth Floor now, aren't you?"

In the beginning Dunbar's file on Mata Hari consisted of only eighteen pages, distilled from field reports collected from resident agents in Madrid, and primarily concerned with the romantic side of her relationship with Spangler. There were notations regarding an evening along the Castellana, and select observations from the lobby of the Ritz. The file was housed in a single steel cabinet adjacent to the window. Individual entries were typed on onionskin. The subjects were tagged with green cards. Although cataloging would change as surveillance shifted from Madrid to Berlin, the picture remained the same: a unique vision of a woman supposedly in love with a killer . . . perhaps the only man who had ever been able to leave her.

He often worked nights because he welcomed the silence, and the solitude. He shared his work with no one, afraid that they would not understand. On occasion he actually spoke with an agent who had seen her in Paris or Madrid, but on the whole his vision was oblique, filtered through the eyes of others.

On entering his office the ritual was always the same. First he would adjust his reading lamp, an enormous brass contraption with a green shade. Then he would bolt the door, draw the curtains, unlock the cabinet, and lay down the first file. At this point it seemed that anything might happen.

Privately he tended to think of these files as dossiers, and gradually filled them with the stuff of any clandestine surveillance. There were observations of agents positioned in restaurants and theaters. There were notes collected from wastepaper baskets, and copies of intercepted letters. Later he would include fragments of conversations overheard with the aid of a pneumatic listening device through the walls of adjoining rooms.