One of his roommates had adopted a stray cat, orange with spooky yellow eyes, three months ago. He had protested, because of what he had read on his science websites. He knew about toxoplasmosis. He knew about the parasite. But his roommates laughed at him, and the cat stayed. Now, he was certain, the parasite was inside him. And, for that, he thanked Allah.

Inside the darkened room, the voice from nowhere was asking its questions about the nature of the universe.

The Koreans, with their camera drone in its case, were reduced to snapping photos the old-fashioned way, with their fingers. This kept them very busy.

In less than a minute, he had two Korean wallets, one from a back pocket, one from a Hello Kitty bag, and he was on his way to the exit.

Helen Sykes

HELEN SYKES

Ambassadors never like the spooks in their embassies. They impose extra security protocols that mean doors the ambassadors can’t walk through or rooms they can’t enter—in their own embassies!—without time-wasting rigmarole. They assume positions—consular officer, deputy cultural attaché—that are nominally under the ambassadors’ control but are not, which mean the ambassadors’ actual complements are perennially short-handed. Worst of all, they are involved with all kinds of spook stuff with local officials that the ambassadors aren’t privy to, so an ambassador can be having a civilized luncheon with a local government official to discuss some issue of trade or politics while completely unaware that, hours before, that same official has been bribed, threatened, or blackmailed (“you don’t want your wife to see these pictures, do you?”) by a CIA officer, so he might be too scared, confused, angry, or flushed with excitement to have a useful conversation about soybean exports or the chances in the next election of the local social democrats.

The CIA chiefs of station aren’t too thrilled with ambassadors, either, considering many of them to be overfed, half-wit millionaires who got their appointments by picking the winning side to donate to in the last presidential election. Those rarely speak the local language (the ambassadors to Britain do, barely); they know nothing of local politics, history, or customs; they have wives (in most cases) whose prime concern is still decor and the menu for the next embassy reception; and they all have the illusion that because they are the ambassador they ought to have some idea of what is going on in their own embassies, so they have to be half-briefed with harmless material at regular intervals.