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now.

’

‘

No.

’

‘

Good.

’



Attard

picked up his coffee.

‘

The Valletta December light does this to some people. I do not know why. I have a theory about the stone reflecting at a specific angle, but I have not confirmed it.

’

‘

It is a good theory.

’

‘

Most of my theories are good. Some of them are even correct.

’

He went into the back. Elias finished the delivery.

He was working on a shelf in the history section when a customer came in at 10:20, a woman of perhaps sixty-five with a cloth bag and the specific quality of someone who knew what she was looking for before she walked in. She went directly to the Malta section near the window. She picked up two books. She looked at the spines. She put one back. She carried the other to the counter and paid with exact change and left.

Elias watched her go. She came here regularly and knew the section. He considered why she had put the first book back, whether because she already owned it or because she had read it and decided she did not need to own it. Those were the two options. He had been running two-option assessments on customers since the third week. He was usually right and occasionally wrong, and being wrong was informative.

Attard

reappeared at 11:30 with a box of inventory from the storeroom. He put it on the counter and looked at the history section where Elias had been working.

‘

You moved the

Bonanno

biography,

’

he said.

‘

I moved it next to the

Scicluna

. Thematically they respond to each other.

’

Attard

studied the shelf. He was silent for a moment and then said,

‘

That is correct.

’

He spoke with the quality of a man who did not give approval easily and was giving it accurately.

‘

You would have found it eventually,

’

Elias said.

‘

I would have found it in 2029.

’



Attard

picked up the box.

‘

The woman at 10:20. She comes here regularly.

’

‘

Professor

Camilleri

. She teaches medieval history at the university. She comes every Tuesday for forty years. Her husband used to come with her. He died in 2019. She still comes every Tuesday.

’

He spoke without sentiment, as a fact, which was how

Attard

carried things that were sad, the way of someone who had been in the same place for a long time and had watched time pass through it.

Elias put the last book on its shelf and stepped back and looked at the shelf for a moment. The shelf was straight. He did not straighten it again.

* * *

He walked along the Upper

Barrakka

Gardens at noon.

He did this most days when the weather allowed, which in December meant most days, because the Maltese December was mild in the specific way of islands in the Mediterranean in winter, which was a mildness that was not warmth exactly but was the absence of the cold that continental cities produced in December, a different relationship with the season. The gardens were above the Grand

Harbor

and the view was the Grand

Harbor

view, which was one of the views in the world that deserved the name, which was the specific quality of a view that had been looked at for a long time by many people and which had not been diminished by the looking.

He sat on the bench he used most days, the one facing southeast, and he looked at the harbor.

He thought about the

Bosphorus

. He thought about it less than he had in September and October, which were months when he had thought about it with the specific frequency of something that had been important and was still present, and he thought about it now with the frequency of something that was moving into the category of experiences that were over and complete rather than the category of experiences that were unresolved. He was not certain this was progress. He noted it without deciding what it meant.

He thought about

Derya

.

He had received a communication in October that she had been transferred from the facility where she had initially been held to a facility in Ankara whose conditions were described in the communication as better, which was a relative term and which he had sat with for a while. He had passed the information through

Lior

to two people who were in a position to exert the specific kind of pressure that improved conditions in Ankara facilities, and he had received confirmation that the pressure had been received, and he had not received any further communication since, which was either confirmation that the conditions had improved or confirmation that the channel was closed, and he did not know which.

He thought about

Farideh



Nazari

. He had received a photograph on a device in November from a sender he had still not traced, which was itself information, because the sender had maintained the operational security of the channel for three months without it degrading, which meant the sender was someone who knew how to maintain a channel or someone who was being helped by someone who did. In the photograph she was in a cafe reading. He had looked at the photograph for a long time. He had closed the device and gone outside.

He had looked at the photograph again the following morning.

He thought: she is alive and she is in a cafe reading something and she is twenty-six years old and she threw a drive into the Gulf of Oman and was held for fourteen days and released, and whatever comes next for her is hers to determine, and the photograph is a message that says she is alive and possibly a message that says something else, and he did not know what the something else was and he was going to wait until it became clear, which was how he handled most things that were not operationally urgent.

A couple walked past the bench with a dog that was interested in the pigeons. He watched the dog for a moment. The dog did not catch any pigeons.

He thought about

the

Bosphorus

less than he had. Th

is might be what better looks like from the inside, which was the specific quality of better that was not dramatic and did not arrive with announcement but was instead the quiet fact of sleeping eight hours and watching the light on the history section and being right about the Caravaggio and wrong about where it should go.

A man who had been sitting at the other end of the bench since before Elias arrived stood at 12:45 and left. He had been reading a newspaper in Maltese, folded to the crossword, mostly complete. Elias watched him go and considered that he was retired, that this was a daily practice, and that he did not know what he had given him, seven minutes of watching a man do a thing he did because he had done it for years. It was the most ordinary kind of human being in the world. It was what Elias had been looking for when he went to Lisbon six years ago. Lisbon had given it to him. Istanbul had briefly returned it. Valletta was cautiously offering it again.

He thought,



I am fifty-four years old and I am sitting on a bench watching the Grand

Harbour

and a man has just walked away from a completed crossword and the

Bosphorus

is not the fi

rst thing I heard this morning.

This

is the information. This is what better looks like.

He sat for another ten minutes.

He walked back along Archbishop Street at 13:20.

* * *

He was in the shop at 14:55 on Thursday when the phone rang.

Not the phone on the counter, which was for the shop. The phone he carried, which was the phone that rang when the people who had the number called, which was a small number of people and which included one person who called at 3 AM from a London country code.

He looked at the screen.

The country code was not London.

‘

Yes,

’

he said.

‘

I am sorry to call at this time,

’



Lior

said.

‘

It is three in the afternoon,

’

Elias replied.

‘

I know. I mean I am sorry to call.

’

‘

I know what you mean. What is it?

’

There was a pause, not the pause of the connection but the pause of a man choosing the order in which to say what he had to say. Elias had been listening to

Lior's

pauses for twenty-six years and read them the way he read faces, as information rather than absence.

‘

There is a woman. In the eastern IRGC structure. Post-war reorganization. She is building something.

’

Elias did not respond.

‘

She has narrowed the field. For the Lisbon Ghost question. She is at four names. Three of the four are wrong. She knows three of the four are wrong. She is being methodical.

’

‘

How long.

’

‘

At her current pace, six weeks. Possibly eight. She is not rushing. Rushing is a vulnerability. She knows this.

’

‘

Who is she?

’

‘

Sara Tehrani. Former Quds Force. Forty-seven. She ran eastern operations. She is not

Rahmani

. She is something

Rahmani's

generation did not produce.

’

‘

What is different?

’

‘

Rahmani

built from grief. He had reasons. The reasons were personal and they were the engine. She is building from analysis. She spent six months reading every post-mortem of how

Rahmani

was found and she removed every vulnerability one by one. Now she has a Russian partnership providing air defense components and a network architecture that has no center and no single failure point and no single person who holds the full picture, including herself.

’



Lior

paused.

‘

She designed it that way specifically. So that the loss of any individual, including herself, does not compromise the architecture.

’

‘

She designed out her own criticality.

’

‘

Yes.

’

This was the silence after. Elias let it be a silence. He looked at the history section. The light had moved off the spines. It was 15:00 in December and the light was beginning its early withdrawal.

‘

The Russian partnership.

Zarev

.

’

It was not a question.

‘

We believe so. The confirmation is indirect. The partnership document exists. The components are in transit or delivered. The eastern command infrastructure has new coverage that was not there in October,

’



Lior

said.

‘

And you are calling because,

’

Elias asked.

‘

Because she is going to find you. And because when she finds you, the question of what she does with that information is a question we would rather answer before she asks it.

’

‘

You want me to come in.

’

‘

I want to have a conversation. Not a mission. A conversation. In person. In a place that is not this phone.

’

‘

Where.

’

‘

I am in Rome for three days. There is a cafe on Via

della

Croce called Antico

Caffe

Greco. Tuesday at ten.

’

‘

I know it.

’

‘

I thought you might.

’

He spoke with the quality of knowing things that he always carried, not as display but as the simple fact of having paid attention for a very long time.

‘

I am sorry, Elias.

’

‘

You keep apologizing.

’

‘

It is because I keep calling.

’

Elias said nothing.

‘

Tuesday.

’

The call ended. Elias held the phone for a moment. He put it in his pocket. He looked at the shop.

Attard

was in the back. The shop was empty of customers. The light through the east window had moved to the wall now, the later-afternoon version, which was different from the morning version in the specific way that the same light in different positions was always different, which was either a profound thing or an entirely ordinary thing and he had not decided which.

He went to the history section. He looked at the shelves. They were straight.

He did not straighten them.

He stood in the history section for a moment. He was aware of his breathing, which was even, and his hands, which were still. He was aware of the specific quality of the shop around him, which was the quality of a place that was not operational, that did not require him to be what he was in operational spaces, and which was therefore the kind of space in which the knowledge that

Lior

had just called landed differently than it would have landed in a briefing room or a car or a safe house.

It landed as an interruption. It landed as the arrival of the thing he had been sleeping without dreaming about for three days and which had been, for three days, quiet.

Four months. He considered sleeping through the night for three days before the call.

Lior

had apologized, which he did not do unless the matter warranted it. That meant it was not a small thing. It was not, as he had said, a mission. It was the kind of conversation that preceded a mission.





Tehrani had four names and three of them were wrong. She was methodical. She had designed out her own criticality, which meant stopping her was not the same as stopping

Rahmani

. Stopping

Rahmani

had been simple. Find the man who held the activation code. There had been a man who held it. He was gone. The code was gone.

Stopping Tehrani, if that was what Tuesday in Rome was about, was something different. It was a problem without a center. A network designed so that no individual’s loss was critical required a different kind of engagement than a network with a center.

Lior

knew this. He had called to have a conversation about what that different kind of engagement looked like, and that conversation required being in the same room.

He was not certain he wanted to know what it looked like.

He thought about the light on the history section at 09:40. He thought about sleeping eight hours.

He went back to the counter.

Attard

came out of the back at 16:00 with his jacket on, which was the signal that the afternoon was ending.

He looked at Elias.

‘

You are going somewhere.

’

‘

Tuesday. Rome. Back by Thursday,

’

Elias said.

‘

There is a collection on Via del

Babuino

I have been meaning to look at for two years, if you have time on Wednesday,

’



Attard

said.

Elias looked at him.

‘

It is a book collection. A man who died in October left his estate to a nephew who does not read and who has asked a dealer to dispose of it. The dealer is someone I know. She said there are some interesting things.

’



He said it with the quality of a man who was finding a reason for a trip that was also a genuine reason, which was the specific quality of

Attard

, that

his reasons were always both what they appeared to be and something else.

‘

Wednesday afternoon. If I am back,

’

Elias said.

‘

I will tell her Wednesday afternoon.

’

He took his jacket from the hook and put it on. Without looking at Elias he added,

‘

Wherever you are going. Come back.

’

He said it the way he said things that mattered to him, briefly and without elaboration, then moved on, the grammar of a man who did not make speeches and who expected the person he was talking to

to

understand without explanation.

‘

I'll come back,

’

Elias said.

Attard

left.

Elias stood in the shop alone for a moment. The last of the afternoon light was on the wall now, the low Maltese December light doing what it did at this hour in this season, which was preparing to go. He watched it for a while. Then he turned off the lights and locked the door.

He walked back to St. Paul Street in the early dark.

He

thought about Rome on Tuesday,

about Via

della

Croce and the cafe he had been in twice before and the specific quality of that cafe's morning light, which was a different light from Valletta's light, which was the light of a different city and a different history.

He thought about

Lior

’s

apology and the fact that he had been

sleeping through the night.

He bought bread from the bakery on Old Bakery Street that was still open and he carried it up the stairs to the room on St. Paul Street and he made dinner, which was the dinner of someone who had been cooking for one for a long time and who had developed an efficient relationship with it, and he ate it at the table by the window and watched the street below.

The street below was Valletta at night in December, which was quiet and stone-colored and old in the specific way of this island, which was old in layers, the layers of the people who had needed this harbor over many centuries, each layer visible in the stone if you knew what you were looking at.

He had been learning what he was looking at.

He washed the dishes. He sat at the table for a while after. He thought about the call.

W

hat

Lior

had said and what

Lior

had not said, which was the standard calibration of a

Lior

call, and what he had not said was the thing that was the weight of the call, which was: the woman who is going to find you is more dangerous than the man you stopped, and the

architecture she has built is more dangerous than the architecture he built, and the question of what to do about this is a question that cannot be answered from Malta.

He had known this from the moment

Lior

said her name.

He did not examine whether he had also known, from that moment, what he was going to do. He was going to Rome on Tuesday. He was going to have a conversation. He was going to come back to Valletta on Thursday and tell

Attard

about the collection on Via del

Babuino

.

These were the facts of the next four days.

He went to bed at 22:30.

He slept for eight hours.

In the morning the light came through the east-facing window at 06:40 and he lay in it for a while before getting up, the specific pale Maltese winter morning light, and he thought about nothing in particular, which was the specific quality of a morning in a place that had become, in the past four months, a place he knew.

He got up. He made

coffee. He stood at the window. Tuesday was four days away.

He packed on Monday evening, which was the night before Rome.

He packed lightly, which was how he always packed, which was the discipline of someone who had spent thirty years knowing that what he carried had to be what he could move with. One change of clothes. The document wallet. The phone. The small notebook that was not connected to any system, the one he kept for the specific category of thinking that required handwriting rather than typing, which was the category of thinking that was not yet formed enough to be typed.

He looked at the room before he left it. The room on St. Paul Street had four pieces of furniture that had been there when he arrived and two that he had added, which were a lamp with better light for reading and a wooden chair that he had bought from the market on Saturday and which he had carried back up the stairs himself. The lamp and the chair were things that a person added to a room when they were staying rather than stopping, which was a distinction he was aware of and which he had made without deciding to make it.

He closed the bag.

He thought about what

Lior

had said: she is not

Rahmani

, she is something

Rahmani's

generation did not produce. He thought about what this meant specifically.

Rahmani

had been motivated by grief, which was the most human of engines and also the most unpredictable, because grief could be reached.

Rahmani

had been reachable. He had sat across a table in

Cihangir

and talked for forty minutes and the things he said were the things of a man who wanted to be understood before whatever came next, and Elias had understood him, and whatever came next had come.

Tehrani's engine was analysis. Analysis did not need to be understood. Analysis did not sit across a table and talk for forty minutes. Analysis removed vulnerabilities.

He picked up the bag.

He went to bed. He read for an hour, which was a history of the Knights of Malta that

Attard

had put on the counter two weeks ago without comment, which was

Attard's

method of recommendation. He read until the page became the specific blur of pages in the forty minutes before sleep. He put the book down.

He slept.

In the morning he took the ferry from Valletta to Catania and the train from Catania to Rome, which was the long route and the route he preferred when he was not pressed for time, because it gave him six hours of transit in which he was in transit, which was a mental state he found useful before conversations with

Lior

, because transit was the state of being between positions, and conversations with

Lior

were always conversations about which position came next.

He arrived in Rome at 19:40 and checked into the hotel on Via

Condotti

under the name he was using and ate at a restaurant around the corner and went to bed.

In the morning he walked to Antico

Caffe

Greco on Via

della

Croce at 09:50.

The cafe had been open since 1760 and had the specific quality of places that had been open since 1760, which was that they had decided a long time ago what they were and had not been asked to reconsider. The walls had portraits and the tables had marble tops and the light was the light of a Rome December morning coming through windows that had been in the same positions since before the Risorgimento.

Lior

was already there. He was at a corner table, the table that gave him the sightline to the door, which was the table he always chose, which was the table Elias would also have chosen. Elias took the chair across from him. The chair gave