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float there, but then he saw them sucked downward as the water receded. He lowered his head, hearing the door of the room open. He stepped out of the bathroom and looked at the man who had come in, a dark middle-aged man, a picture of some mindless viciousness. And he couldn’t move, couldn’t make himself move. All he could think of was his own mistake, his own utter stupidity and, behind that, behind that on some other stratum of awareness, how everything now was so senselessly lost.
    Sharpe’s office was air-conditioned, a fact for which Tarkington was thankful. Sharpe had his feet up on the desk. His eyelids were heavy, half lowered, giving him the appearance of some kind of lizard. His mouth was tight, like a rubber band drawn to its limits. Tarkington looked at the green filing cabinets and wondered what they contained. Secrets. The reasons for everything. You took orders because of what passed across Sharpe’s desk and went into those fucking cabinets. One day, Tarkington thought, I’d like to look.
    He felt uneasy here. The inner sanctum. Sharpe by nature. You had to keep on your toes or else it was Shanghai or Warsaw or bloody Reykjavik. Tarkington had had his fill of faraway places. He rubbed his huge hands together and slipped a thumb inside the white belt of his leisure suit. Getting fat, he thought. Time for the rubber suit.
    He gazed back at the cabinets.
    â€œWhen he went to the restaurant what was he carrying?” Sharpe suddenly asked.
    â€œHe had a case. One of the small square kind. You know.”
    â€œWhen he left, what was he carrying?”
    Tarkington felt a certain dryness in his mouth.
    â€œWas he still carrying the case?” Sharpe asked. He had picked up a yellow pencil and was pointing it toward Tarkington.
    â€œSure he was,” Tarkington said. “I saw him.”
    Reykjavik, he thought.
    The restaurant had been crowded. The day hot. He had dreamed at times. He had watched the hostess. He had watched her tits and the movement of her buttocks beneath the long dress.
    â€œDid you see Thorne arrive?”
    â€œI was gone by then,” Tarkington said. “I followed the old man outside. I called you.”
    Sharpe closed his eyes. He gave the impression of a man who has spent a lifetime suffering around clowns, incompetents, and plain old-fashioned jerks.
    â€œThen Lykiard will get the case later?”
    â€œWhen he goes through the room, sure,” Tarkington said.
    â€œSure,” Sharpe said.
    Tarkington lit a cigarette, watching Sharpe’s face for some sign of disapproval, and finding none. He relaxed a little. He hadn’t seen the old geezer leave the cocktail lounge. He just hadn’t noticed. A moment’s distraction. You turn your head away, a split second. The balance is gone. He stared at the half-open slats of the Venetian blinds. The sky over D.C. was growing dark.
    Sharpe smiled unexpectedly, slyly: “Then it’s going to be clean. Clean as a whistle.”
    â€œSure,” Tarkington said. He watched the smile fade, the soporific expression come back. Christ, he thought. You never know where you stand with this baby. A case, an attaché case, he tried to remember, he tried to sift the snapshots of the recent past. Zilch. Christ. He felt a sudden hopelessness. You go along, you take orders, you assume there’s some sense, some deeper meaning, to them, you don’t ask questions, you don’t know, maybe you’re curious and maybe not, but you do what you’re told anyhow—then one time you look away. A girl’s tits. The sight of her thighs. And you’re screwed.
    Let there be a case in the old man’s room.
    Sharpe looked at his watch again. He glanced at some papers in front of him, then at the telephone. Tarkington thought of Lykiard. Lykiard never asked any questions either.
    They drank martinis and watched TV, but Thorne could not concentrate on the movie. It was something of