As she hung up, it occurred to her that her father had been suggesting this ever since she was a child: Come home. He’d treated her scholarship to Harvard as an inconvenience that would likely damage his frail daughter, and when she thrived in Boston he tried to lure her back to Virginia with health problems—he was suddenly diagnosed with arteriosclerosis, celiac disease, and depression. She’d resisted the pull, but during much of her college career she’d lived with the fear that her mother would call with the news that he was dead. Over time, of course, he’d emerged from his ailments stronger than ever, finally aiming his daggers at Emmett: What kind of life is all this moving around? It’s no good for Sophie—can’t you see that? What about roots? Emmett had shrugged it off better than she, cruelly referring to her father as “euthanasia’s poster child.”
She found Glenda napping on the sofa, television off. Fiona pointed at the Jim Beam; apparently, Glenda had been sipping at it from the moment she showed up. Gerry Davis reappeared—from where?—and announced that the Hungarian police had arrived.
To avoid waking Glenda, she met with them in the dining room, but it was only one man—the same older man from the night before, Andras Something. Andras Kiraly—key-rye, with a rolled r—which she knew meant King. He had the slow-moving, depressive presence of popular television detectives, and she realized that she was more comfortable with him than with any of the people she’d met that day. He smiled only now and then, always in embarrassment, and she found this charming. Gerry Davis hovered protectively behind her, occasionally asking if she was too tired to do this, but she locked eyes with Andras Kiraly and said that she was happy to help the Hungarian police with their investigation.
“I should be up-front, Mrs. Kohl,” Kiraly told her softly. “I’m not actually police—I’m from the Alkotmányvédelmi Hivatal, the Constitution Protection Office.”
She knew of this office—until the previous year, it had been called the Office of National Security, the Nemzetbiztonsági Hivatal. He, like Reardon and Strauss, and like Stan, was a spy. When they came out, they came out like hives.
He asked the same questions as her CIA visitors, but she found herself elaborating a bit more, perhaps from practice. This time, she didn’t dwell on her infidelity. He said, “Do you mind if I show you a few photographs?”
Behind her, Gerry Davis cleared his throat. Kiraly looked up, but Sophie couldn’t see what Gerry Davis was trying to communicate to him. Whatever it was, the Hungarian didn’t seem interested in playing ball. “It’s up to Mrs. Kohl,” he said.
She said, “Please. Show me your photographs.”
Gerry Davis pulled out the chair beside her and sat close. Despite how scrubbed he looked, he smelled of sweat. “There may be security issues here, Sophie. That’s my only concern.” To Kiraly, he said, “May I see the pictures first?”
A laconic shrug, and the Hungarian reached into his jacket and took out some passport-sized snapshots that he passed on to Gerry Davis, who held them up like a hand of tiny cards to examine. There were four in all, she saw, and on one he paused. He took it out and placed it facedown on the table. He pushed it over to Kiraly. “The rest are fine, just not that one.”
Kiraly lifted the photo, glanced at it, and slipped it into his pocket. “Please,” he said. “Let Mrs. Kohl see the others.”
Reluctantly, Gerry Davis gave her the three remaining photos, and she saw two men in their late thirties or early forties and a much older man, nearly sixty. She didn’t recognize any of the faces, but what struck her was the color of their skin. “I don’t understand,” she said aloud.
“Yes?” asked Kiraly.
“These men—they’re not Hungarian, are they? I mean, unless they’re Roma.”
He shook his head. “No, they are not.”
“Where are they from?”
“Do you recognize them?”
She gave them another look. Not only different ages, but different forms of dark-skinned masculinity. Middle Eastern or North African. The overweight one who looked addicted to smiles. The thick-necked thug—a darker model of the one who killed Emmett. The older one in glasses, maybe their leader, or maybe just nearsighted. “No,” she said. “I’ve never seen them before. What about the other?”
“They’re from different places,” Kiraly said, ignoring her question by answering her previous one. “Turkey, Egypt, Bosnia.”
“And what do they have to do with Emmett?”
Kiraly pursed his lips, then reached out to accept the photographs. “Nothing, perhaps. But we sometimes follow many different cases, and if incidents occur around the same time, then it’s a good idea to see if they are connected.”
“These aren’t?”
More of the lips, then he shrugged.
“I think Mrs. Kohl has answered enough. She’s tired.”
“I’m not tired,” she said, tired only of Gerry Davis’s shepherding. “And I’d like to know who you’re hiding in your jacket pocket.”
Kiraly looked as if he might bow to her demand, but instead he deferred to Gerry Davis, who just gave back a cool stare. Sophie turned on him.
“Why not, Gerry?”
He inhaled, finally giving her his full attention. “National security, Sophie. And if those other men aren’t connected to Emmett, then this one won’t be, either.”
“But I’d like to see the picture.”
Kiraly said in a tired voice, “Gerry, it’s just a face.”
Gerry Davis turned to the Hungarian, maybe angry, and after a full four seconds dredged up a smile. “Well, okay. If it’ll make you feel better. Go ahead, Andras.”
Kiraly reached into his jacket and handed over the final photograph. It wasn’t, despite what she was beginning to suspect, the gunman, nor was it Zora Balašević. Instead, it was another swarthy man in his thirties, a shadow of a smile on his face. Clean cheeks, dark eyes. He seemed different from the others, though she couldn’t place how. Healthier, maybe. Less a victim of a hard life.
She looked up at Kiraly. “Egyptian?”
He shook his head and began to speak, but Gerry Davis cut him off: “You don’t recognize him?”
She didn’t, and she admitted as much.
Like the CIA men, Kiraly gave her his business card and asked her to call if anything occurred to her. Perhaps sensing that Sophie was angry with him, Gerry Davis left with Kiraly, promising to remain in touch.
Then it was a home of women. Glenda had recovered and was in the kitchen cooking something with an entire chicken and a bottle of wine in a large pot. Fiona was flitting between CNN and her cell phone. She smiled when Sophie came in, then patted the sofa cushion next to her. “How you doin’?” she asked as Sophie sat.
“What’s the deal with Gerry Davis?”
“Gerry?” Fiona considered the question. “He’s very good at his job.”
“What’s his job?”
“Some kind of liaison. Quite fluent in Hungarian.”
“Is he a spook, too?”
A high-pitched laugh. “Gerry? He’s more of an errand boy.”
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “It’s how he was described to me.”
Together, they watched footage from Libya, young rebels in need of razors looking sweaty but optimistic on the desert roads, carrying rifles they sometimes waved over their heads. She could imagine the men from Kiraly’s photographs in these newsreels.
Smelling something burning, Sophie went to check on Glenda, who shooed her from the kitchen and told her to take a rest, but then opened a bottle of Emmett’s Chilean red and insisted she take a glass. Sophie lingered, and as they drank Glenda asked about Kiraly, whom she had seen leaving. “He didn’t look like a cop to me.”