All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer

understood.
    â€œHe speaks Russian,” he says.
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œWhich suggests?”
    â€œThat he really is in town,” I answer, though we both know that it’s just a suggestion, not evidence. But with his arrival in Barcelona the stars seem to be aligning. “Should I come back?”
    â€œHave a proper dinner,” he tells me. “Talk to Mr. Right about this, too. His time over there, and all.”
    When I find Mr. Right at the Restaurant Bauer on Sonnenfelsgasse, I’m thinking less about Ilyas Shishani than I am about fashion, because it occurs to me that my lover dresses down. I’ve dated more men than I care to think about, most for less time than it takes to read a menu, and by and large they were fastidious about their appearance, keeping a comb in their pocket for emergencies, shaving once or twice a day, ensuring their clothes were pressed, often by ancient local women who performed the service for pennies an item.
    Henry, though, is his own kind of anomaly, the first field agent I’ve taken to bed. His primary duty is to blend in, to look like everyone else, which on the streets means looking disheveled. Were he to get an assignment spying in a government office, I’m convinced some untapped vanity would erupt in him, to the point of suspected homosexuality. This evening it’s no different, but with the addition of a black necktie—tied correctly, I note—it’s obvious he’s making an effort.
    He’s already ordered drinks, and as he manhandles his martini, a Blauer Portugieser waits for me. He gets up and kisses my lips before helping me into my seat, all gentlemanly and suspicious. As we sit, he asks, “Progress?”
    I shrug, then tell him about the most recent revelation from Ahmed Najjar. His eyebrows rise, then narrow. “Are they thinking the Russian embassy’s involved?”
    â€œIlyas Shishani speaks Russian, doesn’t he?”
    He frowns, thinking about this, nodding, then says, “I never told you about him, did I?”
    â€œJust that you’d met him in Moscow.”
    Moscow is not a topic we bring up often. I know of the letter he sent to Langley, disparaging the administration’s reaction to the Dubrovka Theater hostage crisis, and the disillusionment that led him to flee Russia. Now a look crosses his face. It’s pained, as if he’s been stuck with a knife from behind, and I get the feeling we’re crossing into sensitive territory.
    â€œWhat is it?” I ask.
    He shakes his head, waving it away, but gives me something. “I told you I was ordered to hand the FSB a list of my sources, right?”
    I nod. “That’s why you wrote the letter.”
    â€œIt’s one reason,” he says, his eyes darting around the busy dining room before returning to me. “Ilyas was one of them. One of my sources. A week later I tried to make contact, but he had disappeared. No one knew what had happened to him.”
    â€œHe left town?”
    â€œMaybe, but there was no reason. His life was there, had been for at least fifteen years. He baked bread, for Christ’s sake. Why would he pick up and leave?”
    â€œYou never found out?”
    He shakes his head. “After I wrote my letter, they pulled me off the street. Then I came here. Later, I heard he’d ended up in Tehran. But he wasn’t a radical when I knew him, and I wonder sometimes if my giving his name to the Russians pushed him over the edge.”
    â€œYou blame yourself,” I say, and as the words come out I realize that I like this about him. I like this nugget of self-hatred. It makes him human.
    But he just shrugs.
    I watch him a moment, and then the waiter arrives. He’s an aging Austrian with a grandiose mustache, a throwback these days but somehow fitting in the gemütlich setting, and when he takes our orders—rabbit risotto with chorizo for Henry; stuffed squid with lemon