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compliment,” Solange said. “Yes, I think so. You are very handsome. But now you make me feel so old.”
    “You’re beautiful and you know it.”
    “But fading,” she says. “Perhaps I should go see this doctor …”

8
    H AVERFORD CAME that afternoon.
    He inspected Nicholai’s face as if it were a product to be testmarketed and then pronounced it satisfactory. “He did a good job.”
    “I’m pleased that you’re pleased,” Nicholai answered.
    They sat down in the dining room. Haverford spread a file out on the table and without preamble began, “You are Michel Guibert, twenty-six years old, born in Montpellier, France. When you were ten years old your family moved to Hong Kong to pursue your father’s import-export business. You survived the Japanese occupation because your family were residents of Vichy France and therefore at peace with the Axis powers. By the time the war ended you were old enough to go into the family business.”
    “Which was?”
    “Arms,” Haverford said. “La famille Guibert has been in the weapons black market since the ball-and-musket era.”
    “Is there an actual Guibert family,” Nicholai asked, “or is this a total fiction?”
    “Papa Guibert is quite real,” Haverford answered.
    “And does he have a son?”
    “He did,” Haverford answered.
    He spread out photographs of what certainly could have been a young Nicholai happily playing in a Chinese courtyard, helping the cooks, smiling over a birthday cake. “Sadly, Michel was in a terrible car crash. Disfiguring, I’m told. Requiring massive reconstructive surgery. He looks somewhat like his old self.”
    “Did you arrange for this ‘accident’.?” Nicholai asked.
    “No,” answered Haverford. “My God, do you think we’re monsters?”
    “Mmmmmm … The mother?”
    “She died just recently. You were very torn up about it.”
    “You amaze and appall me,” Nicholai said.
    “You’ve matured quite a bit,” Haverford continued. “You used to have quite the reputation as a gambler and ladies’ man and Papa banished you back to France for the last three years. You blew a shitload of the family’s money at Monaco, repented of your profligate ways, and have returned to redeem yourself.”
    “How so?” Nicholai asked.
    “You don’t need to know yet,” Haverford answered. “Study the file. Solange will help quiz you on the details. When you’re thoroughly conversant with your new past, I’ll brief you on your new future.”
    My “new future,” Nicholai thought. What a uniquely American concept, perfect in its naïve optimism. Only the Americans could have a “new” future, as opposed to an “old” one.
    “Now we need to take some photos,” Haverford said.
    “Why?”
    Because they were assembling a file on Guibert, explained Haverford. No one in the arms trade would go very long in this day and age without acquiring a jacket in every major intelligence service in the game. The photos would be placed in CIA, Deuxième Bureau, and MI-6 files, then leaked to the Chinese through moles. Photos of Michel Guibert would be inserted into old Kuomintang police files that the Reds were currently sifting through. The “wizards in the lab” would make Guibert appear on streets in Kowloon, casinos in Monaco, and the docks of Marseille.
    “By the time we’re done,” Haverford chirped, “you’ll believe you’re Michel Guibert and that you sat out the war in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, from now on you answer to ‘Michel’ and only Michel. Not ‘Nicholai.’ Got it, Michel?”
    “As difficult a concept as that might be,” Nicholai answered, “I believe I have a grasp of it, yes.”
    Solange came back into the room carrying a stack of clothes that she draped over the back of a chair. “Your new wardrobe, Michel. Très chic .”
    She went back out to get more.
    Nicholai examined the clothes, which appeared to be secondhand. Of course they were, he thought. It makes perfect sense — when you