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say nothing more?”
    “Of course he said more, but that’s all he told me to tell you.”
    “Oh. It’s just that, maybe if you could share a bit more of your conversation —”
    “Share my conversation? You’ve got the whole thing taped somewhere. I’m not here to make your life easier, I’m just here to tell you what Julius told me to tell you. Understand, Major?”
    Della Torre stood up. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Mrs. —”
    “Good day to you, Major. And when you find Julius, tell him he’d better get home soon or he’ll regret it.”

HIS EYES AND nose were still prickling from Mrs. Strumbić’s perfume when the door opened. A tall man stepped in.
    Major Anzulović, twenty years della Torre’s senior, had been one of the Zagreb police force’s most successful detective inspectors before being put in charge of the secret police’s internal affairs unit. He’d personally recruited della Torre to be a part of Department VI, hired him to investigate UDBA ’s history of external assassinations. Until della Torre’s recent promotion, given to him as an enticement to help the Americans, Anzulović had been his boss. Even though they now officially held the same rank, della Torre knew his place. Anzulović carried the authority of wisdom and experience. And a tenacious ability to survive.
    “Hear you’ve had a visitor, Gringo,” Anzulović said, invoking the nickname that della Torre so hated. He’d grown up in the United States; as a teenager, after his mother’s death, he’d come back to Zagreb. The local kids, all of whom fanatically read strip cartoons and watched films about cowboys and Indians, had rechristened him.
    Anzulović was holding a big mug of coffee. It was one of his few affectations. He was a movie buff, in particular an enormous fan of Hollywood westerns and film noir. And that’s the way Americans drank their coffee. Not long after he’d recruited della Torre, Anzulović had asked the younger man to make him a pot of “real” cowboy coffee. Della Torre had offered up a thin, dirty concoction of instant grounds in tepid water, and Anzulović had walked around with a mug of something like it ever since. Though, della Torre reflected, he’d never actually seen Anzulović drink any.
    “You are uncannily well informed for an officer in military intelligence,” della Torre said, taking in Anzulović’s pot belly, the tufts of black and grey hair sprouting from his ears, and his long, bulbous nose — a face like an old saddle.
    “Got a cigarette?” Anzulović asked, sliding into the faux leather office chair opposite della Torre’s desk.
    “Lucky Strike?”
    “If I must,” Anzulović said. He was too frugal to buy foreign cigarettes, and he’d never been one for corruption, claiming to be too lazy and too fond of a quiet life to expend his energy on covering his ass. So he lived in a modest apartment in the new town with his wife, two daughters, son-in-law, and a decrepit yellow poodle he loathed.
    Della Torre lit Anzulović’s cigarette and his own. “Let me guess, you’re here to find out what Mrs. Strumbić wanted.”
    “Not really. I’ve got some news,” Anzulović said. “But if you’d like, that can wait. What did our esteemed erstwhile colleague’s wife want? Her husband?”
    “Actually, no. She came to give me a message from Julius.”
    Anzulović sat up a little straighter. “From? What’d he say? Where is he? He must know that a few people have some questions for him.”
    “That’s the thing, the message was in a kind of code.”
    “I’m waiting.”
    “Something about a staircase and staying with mutual friends, and he’s naming a pub.”
    Anzulović sighed. “So he’s back in London?”
    “I guess so,” della Torre said. Where else but in Britain were there pubs? The staircase reference meant nothing to della Torre, though his shattered elbow had bled up the stairs to Strumbić’s London apartment earlier in the summer. As for mutual