***

They stopped at other places in the Old Town—most of them boisterous, inane, and Nate smiled at several of the scenes in a way that indicated her distance from them—but didn’t stay anywhere very long. Rather, the sense of a direct goal was sharpening. Nate was looking, improbably, for something or someone, and she’d know when she saw it. These weren’t the places.

They headed, at Henry’s suggestion, to the other side of town. On their way they crossed the river, unfrozen, cold, reflective, beckoning. Another in the series of fathomless galaxies Nate seemed anointed to probe. She looked out of her window while they were stopped in traffic on the bridge, but the view was better out Henry’s window. She slid to him and leaned. Her shoulder on him, her left hand to his right knee. Attaché pressed between them. She stayed that way, looking avidly at the moving water, Henry’s breath at her temple. She spoke:

“What’s going to happen to me, Henry?”

Henry thought, Let the man stand who would have an answer to that question from this woman.

Nate let her body soften then, let her right eyebrow rest against Henry’s lips for a minute. Then sat back into the seat next to him and stayed there, didn’t slide back over behind the driver. She looked out the window, still, and gestured out, urged on to metaphor by the fractal tableau of the night, the river, the bridge. ‘I keep looking over the edge of things,’ she said.

“Like what?”

“Everything,” she said. “Power, reality; whaddya got?”

They started to move again toward the glitz of the city’s new side, its high, lit glass. Henry looked down at her hand, her arm, the attaché, and surprised himself with a question, a non-sequitur, but one which, in his previous life, he’d have asked hours ago. “What’s in the bag, Nate?”

“You know,” Nate began, “what nobody can ever admit, even in the dark nights of their little rabbity souls, is that successful foreign policy is only a function of whatever happens to work. The variables, within and between bureaucracies, are infinite, you can’t control for them all, and in such complex systems, initial conditions can never be known precisely—this is chaos theory, by the way—which means that even if something works, or seems to have worked, you’ll never know why, or how.”

“For instance,” she went on, “I love Kissinger, but sometimes even he, the ultimate tactical contortionist, could be a little dogmatic, insisting on this strict, almost utopian congruity between stated policy and actual capabilities. Our NATO conventional force posture…” (She tried doing the voice, the rumbling and the Bavarian accent.) “…must conform to our ‘flexible response’ strategy of repelling a Soviet attack on Western Europe for 90 days. Well, sure, Henry, in a perfect world maybe, but tensions are minimal, Moscow’s responsive on several fronts, even without a conventional force buildup. Kennan said it: you’ve got to take into account intentions, not just capabilities. Warsaw Pact troops ain’t marching on Brussels, Henry. Sometimes you gotta see particular trees, not just the forest.”

“Are you talking to me now?” Henry asked. “Because the Warsaw Pact hasn’t existed for decades, and I can’t even remember whether Kissinger’s still alive or not…”

“He’s fine,” she answered. “I had lunch with him last Tuesday.”

“I see. Not just alive, but still managing to hang out with beautiful women.”

Nate looked out the window. “The point I was trying to make, Henry, is that once you’ve gone through something that was previously unimaginable, nothing is unimaginable anymore.”

***

The Sky Bar was 33 floors up, atop the Radisson hotel. Through its glass walls the city was visible: dense in splendor, a slow chaos of men’s intentions built up within the hills. Cars, a pair of drifting river barges, streams of people seeming hushed and permanent at this remove. Mute light. Didn’t anybody ever sleep or go home, Henry wondered.

And inside, everything sleek, appealing. Including Nate, who looked immediately into the back corners upon entering, and saw what she wanted. This was the place.

“Let’s get a drink at the bar,” she said. Then, “See anyone you know?”

Henry followed as she bladed through the loose crowd, hand clamped on the flap of her attaché. He looked around. It was hard to tell, but no, he didn’t recognize anyone. “Uh-uh,” he answered.

At the curved, chrome bar, Nate greeted the elaborately mustachioed bartender perfunctorily. “Gin, please,” she said.

He gave a look of incomprehension. “Only gin?” he asked.

Nate thought. “Ice,” she conceded.

The bartender shrugged. “Ok,” he said. “Gin, ice for you.” Then, looking at Henry, “For you?”

“Whatever. Scotch, please.”

“OK. Whatever scotch for you.”

When he’d turned away to get the drinks, Nate said, “This guy’s funny. And good-looking.”

Henry was momentarily and absurdly wounded by this, but it didn’t last long. Nate motioned for him to lean very close. He did, and she put her lips to his ear. Her breath played down his neck as she spoke, and he tried not to admit to himself that this made him quiver.

“See that guy in the back left corner?” she asked. “Dark suit, light shirt, no tie? Sitting between the three beefy mooks with shaved hair?”

Henry looked without moving his head, and saw who she was talking about. The man had a thick rug of dark hair, a Semitic complexion and nose. Henry didn’t recognize the guy, who was checking his phone; the glow of the screen produced a dull halo around his hands, in front of his face.

“We’re going to get our drinks, stand here with them for a minute or two, and then go talk to him,” Nate explained.

Henry straightened up and looked at her. “What?”

She motioned for him to lean in again, and he did. “He’s the Belorussian opposition leader, in town for an energy conference. He’s running for president in the fall. He isn’t going to win, but he might strengthen the opposition’s standing marginally. With a little help.”

Henry straightened up again, this time in full comprehension of everything. Spacey, electronic music played, and he fought a moral battle with himself. “What’s in the bag, Nate?” he asked.

She motioned for him to lean to her one last time. He did, and she very courteously licked his ear.