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that religion is the opiate of the people.
    Piotr Borisovich had laughed like a schoolboy. But what do you think? he had persisted, trying as usual to get past the cliché. Speaking as an atheist, the Potter had observed, I think that no amount of mosaics can obscure the fact that a church is essentially a lie. Piotr Borisovich had shaken his head. You forget what Spinoza said, he had remarked, his voice unaccustomedly moody: there are no lies, only crippled truths.
    Crippled truths, the Potter reflected now, making his way up a dark staircase, the stench of urine drifting past his nostrils at each landing, may be better than no truths at all. In what sense? he could imagine Piotr Borisovich inquiring encouragingly. In the sense, he could hear himself replying, that if something is worth doing, an argument can be made that it is worth doing badly.
    The Potter struck a match and peered at the number on the door. It was missing, but the outline of where it had been was unmistakable. The Potter shook out the match and deposited it in a trouser cuff and knocked lightly on the door.
    "Come."
    The room had two windows with their shades drawn and an uncomfortably bright electric light and two folding metal chairs and a calendar on a wall set to the previous month.
    "We are September, not August," the Potter observed. He walked over and tore off August and crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto the floor. As an afterthought, he glanced behind the calendar. All he found was more wall.
    "So," said the man sitting on one of the two folding metal chairs. He was of medium height, unshaven, with a silver-rimmed pince-nez wedged onto the bridge of a long, lean Roman nose. "I thank you for taking advantage of our taxi service."
    "Your precautions were impeccably professional," the Potter said.
    The man accepted this with a nod. "Coming from the novator, I take that as a compliment. I shall pass it on to my associates, yes? They too will take it as a compliment."
    He was being buttered up, the Potter realized, by the man with the accent he couldn't quite place. There was a hint of German in it, a hint of Polish; a Ukrainian, perhaps, who had spent his formative years in a German concentration camp in Poland. Or a Pole who had been pressed into the Red Army. Or a bilingual German.
    "So," the man began again, clearing his throat nervously, "for the purpose of this conversation, it may be useful for me to have a name, yes?"
    "It would be useful," the Potter agreed.
    "You will call me Oskar. So: my associates and I are prepared to get you out of the country-
    "I have a wife," the Potter said stiffly.
    "When I speak of you, it goes without saying I mean you and your wife."
    "Such details go with saying," the Potter corrected him grimly.
    "I take your point," Oskar acknowledged affably.
    "You talk of getting us out of the country. Out of the country where?"
    "Initially, you will go to Vienna, yes? The debriefing will be conducted there. In pleasant surroundings, it goes without ... it goes with saying. The representatives of several intelligence services will want to buy time with you. After all, it is not every day that we can come up with a novator, yes?"
    "Yes," the Potter agreed. Buy time. That made Oskar a free-lancer.
    Though in all probability he was a free-lancer on a leash. But whose leash? "It is not every day."
    "After Vienna," Oskar continued, "we will supply you with identities, with a legend, with bank accounts, with a modest business even. A pottery studio might be appropriate. You can live where you want."
    "Could we go to Paris?"
    Oskar smiled for the first time. "You have been to Paris, yes?"
    "Yes." In fact the Potter had passed through Paris on the way back from his tour of duty in New York. "My wife dreams of it."
    "Paris is entirely within the realm of possibility," Oskar said with the tone of someone who considered the matter settled.
    "How do you plan to get us out of the country?" the Potter wanted to know.
    Oskar