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furniture: a desk, three file cabinets, two chairs with cracked green plastic seat cushions. It reminded him of his own office at Northern Cal. A neat small man in suit and tie sat behind the desk. He didn’t greet Gideon, but continued to write with a slow, precise hand on a yellow lined tablet. Gideon could see from the format that he was composing a memorandum. He came to the end of a sentence and placed the period carefully. Gideon waited for him to look up, but the man put the tip of his pencil to his tongue and then began another sentence.
    Gideon, who was not slow to take offense when warranted, spoke somewhat sharply. "Mr. Marks? You wanted to see me, I think?"
    The man put down his pencil and took a half-finished cigarette from an ashtray before looking at Gideon. He had a natty, carefully trimmed little mustache and short dark hair. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, he made no effort to hide the boredom in his eyes. Gideon didn’t like him at all.
    "Have a seat. Glad to see you," he said, the words brimming with bureaucratic indifference. "Do you go by doctor or mister?"
    "I go by doctor." Ordinarily, it would have been, "Call me Gideon."
    "Doctor. Fine. Well, I suppose Charlie Chan told you who I am?"
    "Mr. Marks, if you have some questions, please ask them. I have some things to do this afternoon."
    "He didn’t, I see. Well, I didn’t call you in about the incident last night. I’m not in law enforcement."
    "You’re not in the NATO Security—in NSD?"
    "Yes, I’m in NSD, which you’re apparently unfamiliar with, so let me give you the two-bit lecture." His weary sigh was so elaborate that Gideon began to wonder if he was being offensive on purpose.
    "The NATO Security Directorate is concerned with threats to the international security of the NATO community, with particular emphasis on terrorism and espionage. To oversimplify things—"
    "Wait, hold it a minute. What does this have to do with me? Did that attack have something to do with espionage? Were they terrorists?"
    Again a sigh, this time an exasperated one. Marks leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and looked at the ceiling. "Dr. Oliver, I’ve already told you once; I’m not interested in that incident. I’ve examined it with care, and it is of no interest to me. This interview has no connection with it. Period."
    With an effort, Gideon stifled the impulse to say it was pretty interesting to
him
    "Now," Marks went on, "to oversimplify things, there are four main branches of NSD. Three of those branches deal with espionage, more or less. The other, Safety, functions in effect, like an ordinary police department—an international police department, however. It’s concerned with protection of life and property. Murder, robbery, that sort of thing. That’s your friend Lau’s province. Now, the Second Bureau, of which I am a deputy director, is, so to speak, the counterespionage branch. Our job is to counteract enemy agents and terrorists. There is another branch concerned with routine intelligence operations, and then there is Bureau Four, our own little internal secret police."
    It was an ill-chosen term to use in this building, Gideon felt, but Marks smiled as if he had said something witty. "The Fourth Bureau keeps us all honest," Marks went on. "It polices our own agents, as well as nationals of member countries who are suspected of spying for the other side."
    He stopped abruptly. The two-bit lecture was over. "Any questions?"
    "Yes. You’ve given me an awful lot of so-to-speaks and in-effects. If it’s all the same to you, I’d appreciate having my information more precise. And I don’t know that oversimplifications are necessary."
    "Dr. Oliver, this isn’t a college classroom. Everything you need to know, you’re being told."
    "Damn it, you asked me if I had any questions."
    The little mustache twitched, the brow contracted, and apathy suddenly changed to clear-eyed, man-to-man candor. "All right, in all frankness, we need your