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“Now there, you’ve gone and done it. You’re supposed to use his code name. Anyway, eight o’clock if you’re interested. And all things considered, you should be.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“They don’t need a special occasion to have a party. It’s just one long bacchanal up here on the mesa. Of course, if they are celebrating something, we don’t allow them to say so.”

Connolly grinned. “Okay. Maybe I’ll see you there later. An ordinary party might be nice.”

“Well, ordinary for here.”

Afterward he lay on Bruner’s bed, too tired to change it, his mind drifting from the file to the expressionless room around him. Some rooms were so inhabited with personality that their occupants refused to leave; you could feel their presence like a kind of haunting. But this wasn’t one of them. Bruner had never been here. But of course he had been-nobody left without a trace. Connolly’s eyes moved slowly around the room. Perhaps the neatness itself was a clue, a life all tucked in, put away, leaving nothing behind to give it away.

His things had been unremarkable. A crossword puzzle book-to perfect his English or just to pass the time? — and a German-English dictionary on the desk. No mail. A photograph in the drawer of a couple dressed in the dated clothes of twenty years ago, presumably his parents. A random collection of reading books- For Whom the Bell Tolls, an illustrated book of Southwest Indian life, Armed Forces paperback westerns, an anthology of war correspondent dispatches. Connolly leafed through the latter, suddenly back at OWI, with burly prima donnas throwing tantrums over troop transport passes and scheming to go on bombing raids so their bylines would end up in collections just like this. There would never be a bigger story.

Suits, a few pairs of socks, and a tie rack in the closet. Connolly took out the empty suitcase to fill it with the folded, ordinary clothes in the drawers. A Dopp Kit with the usual brushes and razors, a box of prophylactics, and special denture powder. A project account book with orderly rows of regular deposits. Only when he took out the sweaters to pack them did he find anything interesting-a few pieces of Indian jewelry, silver and turquoise, hidden in one of the folded sleeves.

Now, on the bed, he held them up to the light, playing with them. A belt buckle inlaid with turquoise, a pendant (no chain), links for one of those necklaces Spanish cowboys wore around the crowns of their hats. Why jewelry? Bruner’s clothes were conservative-hard to imagine him drawn to anything so flashy. A present? The same night he used the prophylactics? Anything was possible. Maybe he simply liked the stuff. The meager bookcase suggested some interest in Indians. Perhaps the turquoise was no more than a hobby collection, like FDR’s stamps-Bruner’s unexpected passion. Connolly imagined him taking the pieces out of the sweater at night to look at them, their glow of silver and blue-green lighting up the drab room like Silas Marner’s gold. And then again, maybe not. He put them down on the bed and picked up the file instead.

What no one had mentioned was that Bruner was good-looking. Not conventionally pleasant, but striking, his high cheekbones and bush of dark hair arranged in an original angular way that drew attention to his eyes. Even in the file photo they had a frank, direct stare that still seemed alive. There was no humor in them, but a kind of hard vitality that put the rest of his face in shadow. Nothing else, not the stubble of afternoon beard covering the chin, not the hollow cheeks or surprisingly full lips, registered. What seemed at first the pale Jewish face of a hundred other photographs was now rearranged, as if the sensitivity had been stamped out to leave something hard, more determined. Connolly wondered if the extraction of the teeth had literally changed the shape of the face or simply the man who looked through it.

How could it be otherwise? The pain must have been crippling, all the worse for being repeated without end. Had Bruner counted the teeth left, wondering as his raw mouth puffed up with pain whether he could stand another day, ten? Or had the Nazis months before already beaten his face to another form? Connolly looked at the nose in the picture for the sideways slant of a break, but it was straight, and again he came back to the eyes. They were so bright that for a split second he thought he could reach through to the man, but the more he looked, the less they seemed to say. They stared without any comment at all, as if simply being alive were enough.