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first floor and rang a bell. How much my life has changed, thought Jean-Pierre, since the last time I waited at this door!
    Monsieur Leblond opened it. He was a short, slight, balding man with spectacles, and in his charcoal gray suit and silver tie he looked like a butler. He led them to the room at the back of the building where Jean-Pierre had been interviewed. The tall windows and the elaborate moldings indicated that it had once been an elegant drawing room, but now it had a nylon carpet, a cheap office desk and some molded-plastic chairs, orange in color.
    “Wait here for a moment,” said Leblond. His voice was quiet, clipped and as dry as dust. A slight accent suggested that his real name was not Leblond. He went out through a different door.
    Jean-Pierre sat on one of the plastic chairs. Raoul remained standing. In this room, thought Jean-Pierre, that dry voice said to me You have been a quietly loyal member of the Party since childhood. Your character and your family background suggest that you would serve the Party well in a covert role.
    I hope I haven’t ruined everything because of Jane, he thought.
    Leblond came back in with another man. The two of them stood in the doorway, and Leblond pointed at Jean-Pierre. The second man looked hard at Jean-Pierre, as if committing his face to memory. Jean-Pierre returned his gaze. The man was very big, with broad shoulders like those of a football player. His hair was long at the sides but thinning on top, and he had a droopy mustache. He wore a green corduroy jacket with a rip in the sleeve. After a few seconds he nodded and went out.
    Leblond closed the door behind him and sat at the desk. “There has been a disaster,” he said.
    It’s not about Jane, thought Jean-Pierre. Thank God.
    Leblond said: “There is a CIA agent among your circle of friends.”
    “My God!” said Jean-Pierre.
    “That is not the disaster,” Leblond said irritably. “It is hardly surprising that there should be an American spy among your friends. No doubt there are Israeli and South African and French spies, too. What would these people have to do if they did not infiltrate groups of young political activists? And we also have one, of course.”
    “Who?”
    “You.”
    “Oh!” Jean-Pierre was taken aback: he had not thought of himself as a spy, exactly. But what else did it mean to serve the Party in a covert role? “Who is the CIA agent?” he asked, intensely curious.
    “Someone called Ellis Thaler.”
    Jean-Pierre was so shocked that he stood up. “Ellis?”
    “You do know him. Good.”
    “Ellis is a CIA spy?”
    “Sit down,” Leblond said levelly. “Our problem is not who he is, but what he has done.”
    Jean-Pierre was thinking: If Jane finds out about this she will drop Ellis like a hot brick. Will they let me tell her? If not, will she find out some other way? Will she believe it? Will Ellis deny it?
    Leblond was speaking. Jean-Pierre forced himself to concentrate on what was being said. “The disaster is that Ellis set a trap, and in it he has caught someone rather important to us.”
    Jean-Pierre remembered Raoul saying that Rahmi Coskun had been arrested. “Rahmi is important to us?”
    “Not Rahmi.”
    “Who, then?”
    “You don’t need to know.”
    “Then why have you brought me here?”
    “Shut up and listen,” Leblond snapped, and for the first time Jean-Pierre was afraid of him. “I have never met your friend Ellis, of course. Unhappily, Raoul has not either. Therefore neither of us knows what he looks like. But you do. That is why I have brought you here. Do you also know where Ellis lives?”
    “Yes. He has a room above a restaurant in the rue de l’Ancienne Comédie.”
    “Does the room overlook the street?”
    Jean-Pierre frowned. He had been there only once: Ellis did not invite people home much. “I think it does.”
    “You’re not sure?”
    “Let me think.” He had gone there late one night, with Jane and a bunch of other people, after a