The technician cleared his desk, briefed his replacement, put on his coat.
He did not know that after that decent interval the intelligence men of old enemies, new friends, would drink together, chuckle, and forget together.
The technician left the building for his bus, and his home with the thin curtains and his bed. What he did know — he no longer heard the machine-gun, as he had through the night, but he saw a beach where the sea had not yet wiped away the footprints of men who had run for the water, and the sun caught the bloodstains and nestled on discarded cartridge cases, and the gulls wheeled, and the silence had fallen.
The technician felt the anger hurt him.
It had been a big show — but at a cost.