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females.”
    Tim gave his friend a sympathetic look. “Let me tell you, Nick. You need to do something. You can’t just sit around and be celibate the rest of your life.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Tim laughed. “Because, dammit, we both know you’re not the priestly type!”
    Tim was right. In the four years since his split-up with Lauren, Nick had avoided any close relationships with women, sexual or otherwise, and it was starting to show. He was irritable. He’d thrown himself into salvaging what was left of his career, but work, he’d discovered, was a poor substitute for what he really wanted—a warm, soft body to hold; laughter in the night; thoughts shared in bed. To avoid being hurt again, he’d learned to live without these things. It was the only way to stay sane. But those old male instincts didn’t die easily. No, Nick was not the priestly type.
    â€œHeard from Lauren lately?” asked Tim.
    Nick looked up with a scowl. “Yeah. Last month. Told me she misses me. What she really misses, I think, is the embassy life.”
    â€œSo she called you. Sounds promising. Sounds like a reconciliation in the works.”
    â€œYeah? It sounded more to me like her latest romance wasn’t going so well.”
    â€œEither way, it’s obvious she regrets the divorce. Did you follow up on it?”
    Nick pushed away what remained of his chocolate mousse cake. “No.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œDidn’t feel like it.”
    Tim leaned back and laughed. “He didn’t feel like it.” He sighed to no one in particular. “Four years of moaning and groaning about being divorced, and now he tells me this.”
    â€œLook, every time things go bad for her, she decides to call good old Nick, her ever-loyal chump. I can’t handle that anymore. I told her I was no longer available. For her or anyone else.”
    Tim shook his head. “You’ve sworn off women. That’s a very bad sign.”
    â€œNobody’s ever died of it.” Nick grunted as he threw a few bills on the table and rose. He wasn’t going to think about women right now. He had too many other things on his mind, and he sure as hell didn’t need another bad love affair.
    But outside, as they walked back through the cherry trees, he found himself thinking about Sarah Fontaine. Not about Sarah, the grieving widow, but about Sarah, the woman. The name fit her. Sarah with the amber eyes.
    Nick quickly shook off the thoughts. Of all the women in Washington, she was the last one he should be thinking about. In his line of work, objectivity was the key to doing the job right. Whether it was issuing visas or arguing a jailed American’s case before a magistrate, getting personally involved was almost always a mistake. No, Sarah Fontaine was nothing more to him than a name in a file.
    She would have to remain that way.
    * * *
    Amsterdam
    T HE OLD MAN loved roses. He loved the dusky smell of the petals, which he often plucked and rubbed between his fingers.So cool, so fragrant, not like those insipid tulips that his gardener had planted on the banks of the duck pond. Tulips were all color, no character. They threw up stalks, bloomed and vanished. But roses! Even through winter they persisted, bare and thorny, like angry old women crouched in the cold.
    He paused among the rosebushes and breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of damp earth. In a few weeks, there’d be flowers. How his wife would have loved this garden! He could picture her standing on this very spot, smiling at the roses. She would have worn her old straw hat and a housedress with four pockets, and she would have carried her plastic bucket. My uniform, she’d have said. I’m just an old soldier, going out to fight the snails and beetles. He remembered how the rose clippers used to clunk against the bucket when she walked down the steps of their old house—the house he’d left