A silly postcard of an English palace, so like Knightsbridge, that in childhood stood as a symbol of all the luxury, stability, honor, and beauty that she could care for herself. From her bench at the foundation of the bridge, she could see the cause and stately walls of Blenheim Palace, draped in white as if for a holiday. This wicked frost would wreak mayhem on their flowers. But aside from the ravages of weather, the old palace looked just as it did on the postcard. The postcard had borne more damage, getting carted about in her bag as she wore out pair after pair of shoes, through a thousand encampments of the gypsy vardos, across the German lines and back. She sighed, tightened her fir-trimmed coat around her neck. Down the wide, crisp-edged drive, Blenheim palace remained stalwart. Buildings never cared who lived and died and watched their own hearts shatter within them. And then, up the drive, a number appeared. The stark black of the man's suit seemed so isolated from the dull surroundings, as if he had been spliced in from another time. Which he had. Adele's breath stopped halfway, and she strained her lungs back into motion. What impossible reality was this? The sculpted hedges sat like ancient stone, the trees spectral. The unit place took on an eerie air, as if Adele sat in a Roman ruin, with stonework starting to decay and odd joints where bricks met mortar. A high whistle, like the address of a hawk, floated toward her as the laconic man in black continued his stately progress. His steps made squeaking, whiny sounds on the frosty grass. He had black hair, and she could get out that he held something like a little black flag in his hand, catching the breeze. That would be his mask. And the air he whistled came in more clear as he approached, now crisp and pitched perfectly- En passant par la lorraine avec mes sabots.En passant par la lorraine avec mes sabots. She stood, no longer knowing what sound her heels made on the flagstones beneath her, no longer caring how the cold flushed her skin. She took a one step out from the bench, as the man came out from below the thin shade of a glistening tree. He had eyes darker than hers, almost aquamarine. His was was pale, freckled very faintly, with strong cheekbones and a high forehead. He had her same height, strong shoulders, long legs, narrow waist. But his hair was dark, and curled. The whistling stopped, and the man who was Saboteur unpursed his lips to make her a grin that looked like the first smile of his life. "Adele," he said, voice flat as the frozen fields of Oxfordshire. "Lucian," she whispered back, and fly into his arms. "Your husband must have told you about the SIS and I," he said. His part was neither the rough sailor's tone nor the scoffing of a gentleman, just flat and uneventful. Adele drew back, hands still digging into his arms. "But your ship went down, near Shangai, back in '38," she paused to encounter a tear away on her fur collar, "We got the letter, and father was so devastated, and everything just fly to pieces." "I got picked up by another ship, and so I was already in another world. The individual who was a baby in Paris was dead, and I let him lie. I tried to get you, during the war, and after-" "Who are you now then? You're still my brother! We're all there is, the death of the Roueches, the two of us against the world." "Always," Lucian's eyebrows cinched together, "I was Saboteur because he was useful. And so he wasn't, and I didn't recognize who to become. All I am is a mask, and I wish out of it. But I think, if I could be your brother again, and be a Roueche again, I wouldn't have to be. hollow. You're the only lifeline I have." Little walls between the cells of Adele's heart seemed to break over and over, until she was flooded a joy that verged on unpleasant. Lucian fumbled with the fighter's mask in his script for a moment, then, "I heard you worked with the Communists in Paris." "Oh, please don't disparage me for that. It's not care a group of Russians showed up in the order one day and proclaimed their intentions to spread tyranny and killing thousands of people. There was a man, he happened to be a Communist. It was different then, anyway, in the heady days later the war ended. We were all friends. And the Communists threw the best parties." "I'm not judging you," said Lucian. He shifted his weight, with the ease and delicacy that Sinclair told her to expect. Of course, Sinclair hadn't known what to really expect. He didn't recognize what it was to make a sibling, then to suffer the former half of your life and carry on alone, without an ally. "I don't recognize how this will bring out. SIS seems contented with the data I gave them on the Communists. Years of life as Saboteur made me suspicious. I've made peace with your husband, but this Agent Hargreave may not have me. I can't do anything that isn't theft or espionage." "No theft!" Adele gave him a squeeze, "They take me well enough. And you possess talents that the SIS needs." "They were really interested in Max, once of the handlers. I should be capable to purchase that." Max. The name conjured up memories like a sample in Adele's mouth. Cheap liquor, bars open until dawn, echoes of triumph in the case of Paris, and that creepy mask with its mirrored surface. "I knew Max," she breathed, then roused herself, "We're a team again. And you're alive! You get to distinguish me everything." "I lost you every day," said Lucian. He rolled the cloak into a small bundle of cloth, and stuck it in the bag of his stolen suit. "You did well for yourself."' Adele laughed and shrugged with careless pride, "We ever were survivors." And the two survivors walked, arm in arm, across the old stone bridge of Blenheim Palace, while the countryside faded into gray and mist about them. Gradually, a light rain washed away any suggestion of the strange, unseasonal frost. Senior Agent Hargreave finished the paperwork relating to the end of one Dr. Guzman, and ordered to make the body cremated. He had a glassful of scotch after dinner, and slept without dreams. Lord Sinclair Smith put his file on the Espinoza girl in the second of the tail left desk drawer and covered the desk with every report he has on Max, his tailored suits, his white hair, and his reflective carnival mask. Max, the Phantom villain who seemed to call Dante from the selfsame pages of history. Max spent the evening in a straightback chair, reading The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, by Karl Marx. His mask sat on the uncomplicated table beside him, lifting up its twisted reflection of Max's naked features. But only Max was there to see it. Bianca St Cyr strode though the holy desertion of Battersea Park, under a starless sky. With her hair combed down over one eye, in the dim light, she thought she must appear like Medea. Almost beautiful, untouchable Medea with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Valentin Khilkov re-bandaged his fingers for the eighth time because the bloody bandages kept coming off. One of the other regulars at the bar recalled last week's fight, and Valentin laughed round the cigar between his teeth. After a few drinks, his feet stopped hurting. The charwoman who calls herself Olivia LaCroix dressed for the theater- black dress with a cowl neck, a small hat with feathers, a shawl of faux snow leopard fur- and for an evening did not conceive of guns or bullet trajectories or British agents smashing her face against the sink. The death of the Roueches, Lucian and Adele, looked so alike arm in arm there was no doubt they were brother and sister. As they talked, his words fell into her patterns, and his voice followed the guidelines of hers. Better to be this than some cheap criminal parody, he thought, and he required to be something before the nothingness swallowed him whole. No grade for loneliness now, Adele told him, its the two of us against a man of mysteries and Communist plots, other people's longing, and other people's vengeance. THEEND
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