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“Angel” merely savoring futuredelights? Yet her smile seemed discordant with the deadness of her stare. He shifted an expressionless glance to his son, whose smile was less ambiguous. His eyes fairly shone with a pleased anticipation and something disturbingly akin to lust. Vlora turned away, disgusted, and quickly strode out of the room. Outside, two guards saluted him smartly, cracking their rifle butts down on the floor, and then one cupped a hand to his mouth and hissed loudly, signaling to guards posted further along that an authorized person was approaching as, boxed within the smoulder of his thoughts, Vlora moodily moved along the shadowy hall amid the eeriness of echoing cracks and hisses.
    Inside the chamber, hell went on.
    The Interrogator’s secretary heard him approaching. Languid and dark of eye, in her thirties, she puffed at a Turkish cigarette while fanning out a match and then placing it into the crease of a book to mark her place before she closed it.
    “Some calls for you, Colonel Vlora.”
    She handed him the message slips, then appraised him without expression as he quickly and distractedly sorted through the stack. The fever was still in his eyes and she saw that his hands held a touch of tremor. She would like to have him now, she thought. “Nothing urgent,” she murmured in a diffident voice. She drew deeply on the cigarette again, held the smoke, and then blew it out gently at a sidewise angle. Vlora handed back the slips without comment, noticing the cigarette butts mounded high in the purple glass ashtray resting on the desk. Stamped on its sides in cracked green letters was a faded inscription: SOUVENIR OF DOBRACI.
    “This habit will kill you, Leda,” he scolded.
    She nodded and cast down her eyes.
    “I know,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette’s glow.
    “It is simply a matter of will,” he persisted.
    The telephone rang. Grateful, Leda answered. “Section Four,” she said crisply. Listening, she lifted her eyes to the Interrogator and saw that he was shaking his head. She nodded, understanding. “Colonel Vlora isn’t in,” she informed the caller in a tone that was vaguely annoyed and chilly, as if in response to some impropriety. It was her tactic for deflecting further questions. “Do you want to leave a message?” she added tersely. The Interrogator turned and walked away. For a moment she stared at his back morosely, then reached to her desk for a fresh cigarette.
    As he entered his office Vlora winced, blinded by the unexpected midday sunlight shafting through the small square windows of the room like the fiery blessings of a troublesome saint. He had been in the darkness of the torture chamber for hours. Striding to an old wooden desk he sat down with his back to the clear and relentless light, for in no other way could he protect his delusions, and so briefly he rested, waiting for peace; then, as if wanting to reassure himself, he slid open a drawer of the desk and looked down at his ribbons and decorations: the Partisan Star, the Order of Skanderbeg, the Order of the National Hero. He gave them grudging recognition, pushed the drawer shut, and examined his hands. He saw that they were still, that at least he was calm. He picked up the telephone receiver on his desk, punched into an unlit station and dialed.
    In accordance with some arbitrary sense of balance that shifted within him from day to day, he adjusted certain objects on his desk: a paper clip tray; a clutch of fresh-cut flowers propped in a glass half-filled with water; an in-basket stacked with reports on the Prisoner; and an old framed photo of amelancholy woman, his mother, and a five-year-old boy with green eyes. Beneath the layers of tinting and the graceless touch-up strokes, their smiles seemed dreamy and distant, like wan, blurred greetings from a bygone time. On top of the papers that were resting in the basket lay a crudely formed paperweight heart made of clay and cheerily painted in a swirl