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But truth is irreducible. It cannot be broken into parts. And therefore, if you have even the smallest scrap of truth, you have the entire thing. The trick is being able to examine those few shards that come your way, and see in them what they always were and always will be. The puzzle is not the pieces; the real and genuine puzzle is the one and only way in which they can be assembled.
    Smiling, he looked again at the dossier. Ha! Just like every new agent, they gave her a month in D.C. and a month at the UN before her first real assignment the San Francisco legation, nice duty for any spy. Of course, same as with every virgin that comes to town, the Agency dispatched various boyos to feel her up. They’re supposed to accidentally bump into her at a bar or a restaurant or a bookstore or wherever, and open a dialog. Worst case, they find out what kind of a critter they’re dealing with; best case they lay the groundwork for a little counterespionage. But not this time. Oh, God, no! She made utter jackasses out of everyone they put next to her. Hellfire and damnation, reading these poor guys’ reports makes even me cringe!
    There’s an art. Students of the craft call it cold reading. Every self-styled psychic in the world uses it. Cheapjack gypsy fortune-tellers at the county fair and high-priced flimflams who charge movie stars and presidents’ wives two thousand dollars an hour for horoscopes they’re all cold readers, each and every one. Cold reading came easily to Charlie. He didn’t even think about it. It was just something he did, a talent, a gift, a knack for seeing the obvious.
    Take a look at a man’s shoes. Are they well kept, but oft-resoled? If so, you know something about that man’s self-image and his economic status. His accent will tell you where he comes from. His vocabulary will tell you his education and his job. His clothing shouts his income. His ring finger proclaims his marital status. His place in society’s hierarchy is evidenced by the authority in his voice. Get him talking and he will, without knowing it, tell you the little things from which large things are easily deduced. Then you own him. You can feed your knowledge back to him and he will gasp: How did you know that? If you want to earn your living as a psychic, you’ve just hooked another sucker. Alternatively, if you want to be a spy…
    Mathematician. Top grades. Applied to night school at Georgetown to earn credits toward her doctorate. Wants to start this fall when she figured she’d be back from turtle duty. This is one motivated lady, a real overachiever. No, wait a minute, this is someone who is more than that. She’s driven, absolutely driven. “Failure” is not in her lexicon. She’s got the talent and she’s got the energy, but most of all, she’s got the need. Oh, yeah, Irina Kolodenkova is someone who has to succeed. Officer’s daughter, champion fencer, top-ranked student she doesn’t know the meaning of the word “lose”; hell, she probably doesn’t know how to spell it.
    Fascinating woman. Damned fascinating.
    Charlie had tried to explain to the Agency how his talent worked. They didn’t get it. Even though every trainee was put through an exhaustive curriculum in cold reading The Extraction of Information from Physical Appearance was the course’s official name they couldn’t understand Charlie’s hat trick. They thought it was magic. Some people thought it was more than that.
    Back in the days when the boneheads piddled away more than a billion dollars researching “psychic warfare,” some especially witless bastard went so far as to order him tested for telepathic powers. Charlie was not known for following orders. However, he was known for taking the scalps of witless bastards. The matter ended swiftly, although not amicably. And afterward, up until the day he left the Agency in disgrace, all that anyone could or would acknowledge was that Charlie McKenzie had gifts that no one else had been