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Paris had even heard of the stuff. When their mutton came, he ordered two bottles of bordeaux and flirted with the waitress. The waitress flirted back. Without any direct statements, they arranged an assignation. Sullivan was a world-class womanizer. Either the certainty that the waitress would be in his bed later that night or the alcohol loosened him up. He asked a few questions, endured the answers, told stories that made young N’s jaw drop like a rube’s. Amused, Sullivan recounted seductions behind enemy lines, hair-raising tales of OSS operations, impersonations of foreign dignitaries, bloodbaths in presidential palaces. He spoke six languages fluently, three others nearly as well, and played passable cello. “Truth is, I’m a pirate,” he said, “and no matter how useful pirates might be, they’re going out of style. I don’t fill out forms or itemize my expenses or give a shit about reprimands. They let me get away with doing things my way because it almost always works better than theirs, but every now and again, I make our little buddies sweat through their custom-made shirts. Which brings us to you, right? My last job, and I get a backup? Give me a break—you’re watching me. They told you to report back every single night.”
    “They also said you’d give me the best education in the world,” N told him.
    “Christ, kid, you must be pretty good if they want
me
to polish your rough edges.” He swallowed wine and smiled across the table in what even the young N had sensed as a change of atmosphere. “Was there something else they wanted you to do?”
    “Polishing my rough edges isn’t enough?” asked the suddenly uncertain young N.
    Sullivan had stared at him for a time, not at all drunkenly but in a cold curious measuring fashion. N had known only that this scrutiny made him feel wary and exposed. Then Sullivan relaxed and explained what he was going to do and how he planned to do it.
    Everything had gone well—better than well, superbly. Sullivan had taken at least a half dozen steps that would have unnerved the crew-cut man in the strip mall, but each one, N took pains to make clear during his reports, had saved time, increased effectiveness, helped bring about a satisfactory conclusion. On the final day, N had called Sullivan to see when he was to be picked up. “Change of plans,” Sullivan had said. “You can drive yourself to the airport. I’m spending one more night with the descendants of the Atlanteans.” He wanted a farewell romp with the waitress. “Then back to the civilian life. I own thirty acres outside Houston, think I’ll put up a mansion in the shape of the Alamo but a hundred times bigger, get a state-of-the-art music room, fly in the best cellist I can get for weekly lessons, hire a great chef, rotate the ladies in and out. And I want to learn Chinese. Only great language I don’t already know.”
    On a rare visit to headquarters some months later, N had greeted the man from the strip mall as he carried stacks of files out of a windowless office into a windowless corridor. The man was wearing a small, tight bow tie, and his crew cut had been cropped to stubble. It took him a couple of beats to place N. “Los Angeles.” He pronounced it with a hard
g.
“Sure. That was good work. Typical Sullivan. Hairy, but great results. The guy never came back from France, you know.”
    “Don’t tell me he married the waitress,” N had said.
    “Died there. Killed himself, in fact. Couldn’t take the idea of retirement, that’s what I think. A lot of these Billy the Kid–type guys, they fold their own hands when they get to the end of the road.”
     
    Over the years, N now and again had remarked to himself the elemental truth that observation was mostly interpretation. Nobody wanted to admit it, but it was true anyhow. If you denied interpretation—which consisted of no more than thinking about two things, what you had observed and why you had observed it—your denial was