yanked at her dog, and left.'
'Yes,' said the other, 'they're all like that this year. Pigs' vaginas, tourist trash-'
A few days after he surprised his brother, Hamid decided to abandon his cleanup of the beach. He also decided that the time had come to confront Zvegintzov without letting him wriggle away.
He pulled up in front of La Colombe at ten o'clock, long after the shop had closed. This time there'd be no interruptions, customers intruding, or telephone ringing in the back. Pausing in his car, he studied the iron grill pulled down over the store's facade. He remembered sitting out here one afternoon in May wanting to warn Peter about following Kalinka, then hesitating and finally driving off. This time it was different. He knew the questions he must ask. He also knew that Peter was afraid of him, though he had no desire to exploit that fear.
When, finally, he walked across the street, he heard drumming and music clashing within Dradeb. There were many weddings in the slum that summer night. If he and Kalinka decided to be married, would they celebrate the traditional way?
He looked in through the grill. The lights were off, and there was no sign of movement in the shop. No bell either, so he shook the grill, then noticed a ribbon of light beneath an inner door.
He rapped on the glass. Nothing. He rapped harder. Still no sign. He was about to call out Peter's name when suddenly the shade snapped up.
'Peter-'
'Who's there?' His face was only inches away, but the reflections on the glass must have confused his sight. 'It's me, Hamid.'
'What do you want?'
'Open up.'
'It's late.'
'I want to talk to you. Open up.'
Peter glared out, blinking his eyes. Then he yanked down the shade.
Hamid walked to the front of the shop. A minute later a fluorescent light sputtered on. Peter opened the inside door and spoke to him through the grill.
'I'm closed, Hamid. Come around in the morning.'
'No, Peter. Now. We must talk together now.'
Peter hesitated, then he knelt to unclasp the padlocks which attached the grill. He fumbled but finally managed to undo them. He raised the grill just high enough so Hamid could enter if he stooped.
'You frightened me half to death, Hamid. You should know better than to frighten a man at night.'
'I'm sorry, Peter, but the night is best. We're always interrupted during business hours.'
'Well-you're inside now. You might as well sit down.'
He pulled out a stool, set it in the center of the room, then sat down himself on the yellow hassock where Kalinka used to perch.
'So, Hamid-you've come to expel me. I've been expecting this. I've even packed a bag.'
'I'm not here for that.'
'Oh? Really? Then how much longer is the suspense to last?'
'Look, Peter, you must get this through your head. I've no intention of expelling you.'
Peter was silent.
'You don't believe me.'
'Why should I believe you? You've been after me for months.'
'You have it wrong. I've only come to talk.'
'You want the facts, don't you-the incriminating facts?'
'Incriminating to whom?'
'To me, of course. I'm not stupid, Hamid, though you may think I've been at times. Your dossiers-I know all about them. And that all these months you've been building up your case.'
Hamid squinted at him. The light in the shop was dim. Peter seemed so loathsome, such a loathsome little man.
'Really, Peter, you have things wrong,' he said. 'Kalinka and I have been trying to reconstruct the past, and since you're a part of it, you're involved as well.'
'Am I supposed to believe that's why you're here?'
'Why not? I could have kicked you out anytime.'
'Yes. That's true.'
'Why are you so frightened then?'
'Because you have power, Hamid. I know all about that, you see. I've been kicked out of a country before.' He paused. 'Now there's no place for me to go. There's barely a country left that will take me in. You've already got Kalinka, Hamid. If you expel me I'll lose everything. I'll even lose my shop.'
A silence. Hamid wondered how he could break through so many layers of fear.
'Peter, I give you my word. I have no wish to see you lose your shop. Tell me what I need to know and I'll never trouble you again.'
'And if I incriminate myself?'
'You won't. Not with me. Everything you say will be in confidence. I'm sincere, Peter. You must take me at my word.'
Peter stared at him a long while-Hamid imagined him weighing out his trust with the same caution he used when he weighed a letter on his postal scale.
'All right,' he said finally, 'ask your questions. I don't promise that I'll answer them, but we'll see-'
'I know most of it already, I think-your membership in the party, your friendship with Zhukovsky, Kalinka's mother, Zhukovsky's death, your expulsion from Hanoi.'
'And Poland?'
'Yes. That too. Kalinka's years in school. You were working in a factory there, she said.'
'A shoe factory near Warsaw. It wasn't much of a job.'
'But then you left and came down here. That's my question, Peter. Why Tangier?'
'Ah-' Peter shook his head. 'That was a difficult time for me. I was really up against it-up against the wall.'
'Tell me about it.'
Peter shook his head again, paused as if to clear his memory. Then he coughed and exhaled.
'It was 1954, just after the settlement, the Geneva Conference that ended the Indochina war. I was summoned to the Vietnamese legation in Warsaw. A man there, an old partisan, told me that Major Pham Thi Nha had been killed at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. She'd volunteered to join the siege and, on the twentieth day or so, had somehow gotten killed. I never found out how-a bomb from an airplane, a shell from the French fort. It didn't matter anyway. All that mattered was that she was dead. I was still reeling from that when this man told me his government wanted Kalinka back. At first I tried to argue with him. Kalinka belonged with me. I'd promised her mother. I'd put her in school. I was prepared to bring her up. But there was no arguing. A directive had been issued. Kalinka was an orphan, the daughter of a heroine of the resistance. She qualified for special treatment now. Her place was in Vietnam. Well, in that case, I said, I would go back there with her too. The man smiled at me and shook his head. 'We've won the war,' he said. 'We don't need foreign agents anymore.'
'I knew then they'd never let me back. Marguerite was dead, and they wanted Kalinka too. I was desperate. You can imagine how desperate I was. The thought of losing her-I couldn't accept it. And I knew I had to do something fast if I was to keep her from being taken away.
'I stayed up all that night, thinking, thinking, and the only thought that came to mind was the Bureau, the KGB. They'd sent me to Poland in the first place, found the school, helped me get my job, and they'd told me that if I ever needed help I could always count on them. I was an old agent, you see. They take care of us in a way. I didn't want to go to them. I wasn't even a Communist anymore. I didn't give a damn about any of it, but I was desperate and the Bureau seemed the only place to turn.
'Their offices were in an annex to the Russian Embassy, an old palace cut up into a thousand tiny stalls.
