To start from the beginning go here.

I reclined in my chair as my lie clouded Sartre’s thoughts. Watching him, it suddenly occurred to me who probably told Sartre I was working with Mitnick. “Maybe it was Atwell.” I felt something warm bloom in my chest, unfurling as it pulled others in.

The invocation of Atwell by name produced the normal level of revulsion from Sartre. “Why would that worm tell Mitnick?”

“I don’t know. I just know he might have known where you stashed the Ukrainian.” Sartre squinted at me with a thousand questions. I blocked all of them with a placid, “He’s been having you followed.” Sartre’s nebulous cloud of questions condensed into a thunderous glare. I provoked it further with a shrug, “I thought you knew.”

As Sartre’s anger continued to distill I pretended it was directed at me. I help up a conciliatory hand to ward that off. “OK, ok. I’ll find him and ask if he knew about the Ukrainian.”

This gave Sartre pause and I realized that part of his anger was from impotence – Atwell may well be a worm in his eyes, but as a U.S. agent he was also largely untouchable. I had just offered to take the problem he didn’t know I created off his hands.

Sartre twiddled his fingers and the chip in his hand disappeared. “And if he did?”

“Then I tell you and you decide what happens to him.” I shrugged again. “But it might be useful to know why he told Mitnick.” I paused, then adding to the fog of uncertainty with, “If he did.”

Sartre’s hand fluttered like a perched bird knocked from its ledge. At this familiar signal, the rook standing next to him fitted a cigarette to his mouth and lit it. I had been in Europe long enough to get used to second-hand smoke, but in the close quarters of the holding room it was cloying. I tried to keep from making the useless gesture of waving it away from my face while Sartre considered what I said. It went on long enough that it took some self-control.

Sartre eventually continued. “There was a fire. With the Ukrainian. The authorities will have difficulty identifying the bodies.”

I stared at Sartre, giving him my best dog with a puzzle expression as I tried to (quickly) figure out why he would tell me this information. What came out of my mouth was, “Bodies? As in, more than one?”

Sartre nodded slowly. With the smoke rolling over his face under the overhead light, you might have thought he had his own cinematographer.

“Did you have more than one there?”

He shook his head, barely disturbing the wisps rolling up to the ceiling.

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to find a plausible explanation. “There was a fight?”

Sartre flicked his cigarette ash. “There may have been a struggle.”

I let my eyes dart around the rooks before settling back on Sartre. “With your guys?”

At this question Sartre only responded with another slight shake of his head. Through his smoke I could see him watching me very carefully. But that warm bloom in my chest was coursing through my body and I felt his X-ray vision bounce off of me.

Having provided some truth, I added a twisted bit of it in. “Some kind of falling out in-between the Russians?”

Sartre slapped the table like a man who just won a bet at the craps table. “You see, this is why I ask you these questions. You are very smart, American.” Cigarette between fore and index fingers, he pointed it at me with a sawing gesture. “If this is the what is happening, it would be exploitable.” I stared at him in honest confusion for a moment before I translated the French of ex-pla-taub-la into the correct English word for my brain. When Sartre saw I understood he continued, “You will find this out for me.”

To read the next chapter, go here.

To read the previous chapter, go here.

To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.

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