“Todor will need brothers,” she said.

“That is true.”

“And it has been half a year since his birth. It is time.”

“Yes. But what if we produce a girl?”

“A daughter?” She considered this while I handled her fine body. “But it is good for a boy to have sisters. And you will return again, Evan, so that there will be time for more sons.”

“For Macedonia.”

“For Macedonia,” she agreed. “And for me.”

And I touched her some more, and we kissed, and she ran out of words as I ran out of thoughts. Her thighs parted in welcome, and her arms and legs gripped me fiercely, and the rude straw mattress groaned beneath our passion. I forgot about the Letts and the Colombians and the pudgy man from Washington. I even forgot my sleeping son, for once I cried out in passion, and Annalya gripped me tight.

“Hush,” she whispered. “You will wake Todor.”

But the little angel went right on sleeping.

Later, a long while later, I put a few more logs on the fire. Annalya rounded up a jug of honey wine, and we sat in front of the fire sipping it. It was too sweet to drink very much of, but in small sips it went down nicely and helped the fire warm us.

“In a few days you must leave,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It would please me if you could stay longer. But you have your work to do, do you not?”

“I do.”

“Tell me where you are going.”

I took up a twig from the woodpile and scratched a rough map on the floor of the hut. She watched with interest as the map took form.

“Here is Macedonia,” I said. “And here is Kavadar, and Skoplje, and Tetovo. And here” – a line to the south – “is the border between Greece and Yugoslavia. And the other parts of Yugoslavia – Croatia and Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia and Montenegro. You see, here is Belgrade, the capital.”