All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer Page A

and pepper sauce for me—he does so with an almost surreal level of cheerfulness. Once he’s gone again, I say, “What do you think? You think he’s here?”
    His face settles, and for an instant I think I can see what he’ll look like when he’s very old. “I don’t know. I’m almost ready to admit defeat.”
    â€œDoesn’t sound like you.”
    He rocks his head from side to side.
    â€œAnd that necktie doesn’t look like you. What’s up?”
    Self-consciously, he tugs at it, then looks past me, toward the entrance. I wait. He reaches a hand across the table to hold mine. “I’ve been thinking.”
    â€œYou know how I feel about thinking,” I tell him.
    He smiles. “You want to move in?”
    It takes a moment to register. I leave my hand on the table, under his. It’s warm. “In?”
    â€œWell, we have choices. You can move into my place, I move into yours, or—and I think this is the better option—we get something bigger. In the Innere Stadt. Down by the river.”
    â€œYou’ve got it all figured out.”
    â€œWell, not really,” he says, leaning back and bringing his hand with him. “It’s just—well, we’ve been at this a while now, haven’t we? There’s not a lot of next steps available to us.”
    â€œWe could just get married,” I say.
    He laughs aloud at that, as if it’s a joke. It is, but still. I give him a smile in return, a comforting one. He calms a little. “Well?”
    Holding on to the smile, I shrug. “Let me think about it.” When I see his expression, I say, “Not the answer you expected?”
    He leans forward again, pushing aside the martini so he can reach both hands across the table to grip mine. “It’s exactly what I expected, Cee. You’re a careful girl. It’s something I love about you.”
    But I’m not careful, and I think he knows this. I think he knows that a part of me gets a thrill from being with a field agent who sometimes comes to my house with bruises he refuses to explain, or stands me up because of “last-minute things” that, I know in my heart of hearts, he might not survive. A part of me wonders if domestication will kill what we have, while another part, which tingles down my back as he squeezes my hands, imagines the danger of cohabitation, of sudden departures in the night, of the potential for enemies to know where I live.
    I give him a sly wink, or as sly a wink as I know how to pull off, and I wonder how it would look, that dangerous life. As we sip our drinks and play at significant silence, I wonder how far it could be pushed. First, we share the mortgage. We share towels and orange juice. We share friends and a Facebook account. We share vacation photos with family and at some point share the pedestal in a chapel, either here or back in the States, telling a small, select crowd that we’re going to share our lives permanently. We send off Christmas cards, like clockwork, with shots of us sharing a shore in Martinique or Dubrovnik, and eventually we share genes, making one or two little ones whose lives we’ll share unto death even if the marriage doesn’t work out.
    I’m jumping ahead of myself, I know, but if I’ve learned nothing else from the Agency, I’ve learned that it pays to think ahead. Eighty percent of an Agency brain is devoted to repercussions and possible futures, even when you’re just thinking about moving in with your boyfriend.
    I sip my wine and wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.

 
    9
    We return to the embassy just in time to get shuffled back into Vick’s office to listen to a message from the Austrians, relayed through Ernst: They’ve discovered Ilyas Shishani’s lodgings, a run-down boardinghouse in Floridsdorf. Though Shishani’s not there, they’ve gone through his few possessions and staked