look away.
“Are you OK?” She spoke softly behind him.
“Yes.”
“They get to you, don’t they? The eyes. I can never look at them for long.”
“They’re very expressive.”
“A little frightening, I think. Beautiful, but judgmental. The way religion feels when you’re young.”
“I suppose religion was a much more primal experience when this was painted.”
“I think of all those Renaissance masterpieces.” She was beside him now, speaking quietly, almost into his ear. “Aesthetically, they’re flawless. Mary is always serene. Yet there’s something so much more powerful, or vital, about this. She looks menacing. Godly. Not that Mary is a god, technically.”
“To the Greeks she is.”
“I’m sorry, I’m babbling. I’d blame the coffee, but the truth is I get nervous standing here.”
“Guilty conscience?”
“Could be. I just find the work very unsettling. My grandfather could sit in front of it for hours, I don’t know how.” He felt her breath on his neck as she exhaled deeply, calming herself. “He died in here, actually.”
“Really.”
“Simultaneous heart attack and stroke. Diana, his nurse, found him just exactly where you’re standing.”
He resisted the impulse to move.
“No wonder it bothers you.”
“So is it good work, Matthew?” she asked.
“It’s a shame about the damage, though it only seems to add to the mystique. I’d say it’s excellent work, and very old. Possibly pre-iconoclastic, which would make it quite rare. I’ll know better when I look at it more closely.”
“I guess we should take it off the wall.”
“I’ll do it, if you like. I’m experienced at handling these things.”
She pulled her hair back with both hands and nodded.
“It probably violates the insurance policy, but I would prefer that. We just need to turn off the alarm.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Come help me figure it out.”
Andreas had left a message for Morrison in Washington the night before, and the agency man had called him back at the hotel the next morning.
“What brings you to the States, my friend?”
“My son is ill.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
No doubt he was, but the tone of voice made it clear that he had more pressing business than chatting with a retired Greek operative. Andreas could picture the man, trim, regulation hair and that shifting, nervous gaze, determined to miss nothing while missing everything. Impatience. That was the reason, despite all its resources, that American intelligence was always getting things wrong. They were good at reading satellite photos, but not at reading faces. They could not gauge the mood of a people, or even a single man.
“I have a request,” Andreas continued. “It is a rather delicate matter.”
“I’m sure this line is secure.”
“I would prefer to meet. I believe you are here in New York?”
“Why do you say that?’
“A guess.” One had to become good at guessing when one had no resources. “You often come here. Besides, there are no secure lines in Washington.”
Morrison laughed. “Probably true. OK, but it has to be brief, and it has to be soon. Like right now, this morning.”
“That suits me well.”
Morrison chose a generic coffee shop near Herald Square, the kind of place he always preferred. The man had an encyclopedic knowledge of every faceless, tasteless eatery in every northeastern American city. Morrison’s predecessor, Bill Barber, had taken Andreas to wonderful restaurants where they ate, drank, told stories, and traded information almost incidentally, as if none of it were about business. But Barber hadn’t been much for protocol, and Andreas had been useful then.
He arrived early and chose a booth in back, too near the hot, musty stink of the deep-fryer. Morrison arrived a few minutes later in his trademark blue suit and gray raincoat, the uniform, though today it was appropriate to the weather-windy, and threatening rain.
“You look well.”
“I look terrible, and so do you,” Andreas shot back, as much to unsettle the man as to state the truth. It had been years since they had last met, and the years had not been kind to Morrison. He had gotten heavy; gone gray at the temples; and his gaze no longer darted so much but had a set, glazed cast about it. Perhaps there had been some unpleasant fieldwork. Perhaps family. Andreas could empathize, but the other man was certain not to speak of whatever it was.
“I’m OK, not enough sleep is all. I am sorry about your boy. Alex, right?”
“You went to the trouble of checking my file. I am honored.”
“Jesus, Andy, I happened to remember. You always insult people you need favors from?”
“Yes, it’s a Greek custom. We hate to be in anyone’s debt, so we offend them right at the start to let them know they do not own us.”
Morrison shook his head, appeased or amused.
“Is that true?”
“No. I am an uncivilized old man, my apologies. Yes, Alex.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“A blood disorder. You would know the name if I could remember it. Such illnesses are rare in my family, but for one so young…I do not understand.”
“There’s no understanding these things. God works in mysterious ways, the shit.”
Andreas decided that he liked this older, crankier version of Morrison better than the insolently confident fellow he’d known before. A weary, bleached-blond waitress took silent but visible offense at their order of coffee, and the agency man felt compelled to add eggs and toast.
“Haven’t had breakfast.”
“You should always eat breakfast, Robert.”
“I know, my wife tells me every day.”
“Personally, I would not eat breakfast here, but I am very careful about food.”
“I wasn’t actually planning on it.”
“She intimidated you. She is Peloponnesian, that one, fierce. The cook also, not a very clean-looking fellow. And the Mexican dishwasher has a cold. No, I would not eat here.”
“I’ll have an orange juice to kill the germs.”
