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another. If he was just looking for a place to try on clothes he would have stopped with the first
     one.
    If I was wrong I would apologize.
    He pushed on the unfastened door to my cubicle and I seized his hand. I levered him forward hard, slammed him in the wall.
     I smashed his face against the wall and he ooofed. You got to love an oof. Then I cracked his head again.
    I wrenched his arm hard against his shoulder blades. Checked the left ear. Empty. Right ear. Oh, there it was, like a tiny
     beige fleck of wax. The earphones get smaller every year. I reached down, flicked off the lead for his mike under his shirt.
    ‘Who sent you?’ I asked.
    He didn’t answer.
    ‘Special Projects?’ That was the secret CIA branch I worked for; they have trouble saying goodbye.
    He didn’t answer. He tried to lever back and free his arm. I kept my grip above his wrist, on the cloth of his shirt.
    I don’t believe in giving multiple chances to cooperate. I battered the juncture of neck and shoulder, twice, and he folded.
     I took the mike, the earplug, and put them on, switched them to live. I searched his pockets. There was a wallet that I left
     alone, but a telescope, palm-sized. I took it. I put the unconscious shadow up on the small seat in the changing room. He
     was breathing just fine.
    ‘Gato, respond.’ He was being called. I knew the voice. So I answered in Special Projects code.
    ‘He did a four-nine.’ I’d heard him speak in the grocery, the barest tinge of a Boston accent, when the cashier asked if he
     had coupons. So I copied it. It only had to be good enough and I’m a decent mimic. Four-nine meant the subject had cut me
     loose in a crowd.
    ‘Lucky, respond.’ Now the speaker was calling the other agent; I figured this was the older woman from the subway. I looked
     around for her as I tossed the shirt I hadn’t tried on back to the clerk and scooped up my bag of groceries. I hurried back
     onto the street.
    ‘I don’t have visual confirmation,’ she said. ‘He did not return to subway station.’ She had hung close to the subway to pick
     me up if I doubled back.
    ‘Return to base,’ the voice said. ‘We’ll see if we can pick him on the traffic cameras.’
    Yes, please, return to base. I waited. I had nothing more to contribute to class discussion, as Gato, so I stayed quiet. If
     the unconscious man was found an alarm might be raised. And I had to hope that they were the only two on me. Normally a team
     of four would have been used. Either I didn’t matter or resources were thinner than usual. I didn’t care about the reason.
     This stopped now.
    I melded into the constant stream of pedestrians on Seventh and cast my gaze down the street with my palm curved around the
     telescope, as though shading my eyes. I caught the woman walking away from me, back the way we’d come. She pushed back her
     hair and in the telescope I could see her blue earrings I’d noticed before. I followed at a distance.
    Several blocks later, along West 58th Street, I saw herapproaching a parked van. It advertised a floral delivery service. I thought that was funny because it’s an old CIA joke that
     Langley does more to keep florists and chocolatiers in business because spouses get neglected and we have to make frequent
     apologies.
    I don’t have to worry about that any more.
    I ran. I caught up with her, put my palm under her ribs, and gently – and rather gentlemanly, I thought – propelled her forward.
    ‘Open the door,’ I ordered.
    She did. She was smarter than Gato. She tapped on the van door, three times, and it opened.
    My best friend sat on the other side. August Holdwine is a smart Minnesota farm boy: big, broad-shouldered, cherub-faced,
     with a blond burr of hair and ruddy cheeks and eyes of sky-pale blue. I love him like family. He frowned at me. ‘Well. You
     can wipe the Cheshire cat smile off. Where’s my guy?’
    ‘Sleeping it off.’
    ‘Don’t tell me you actually hurt