We went down the stairs without speaking. When we got outside, he kept walking to the front gate. The guards looked at him and then at me. I shrugged and followed him to the street. Finally, he stopped and turned around. "If I shot you right here, do you think anyone would mind?"

"Nice to see you, too."

He lit a cigarette. "You still don't smoke, I assume. No problems of conscience. Just left me for dead and danced home. I wondered what I'd say if I ever saw you again."

"What did you decide?"

"I forget." He threw away the cigarette. "You didn't even look surprised when you saw me."

"It crossed my mind." I started to walk. "Let's keep moving."

He fell in alongside, but didn't say anything.

"Where have you been in the meantime? We'd have run into each other sooner if you'd been in-country."

"Here and there. It took a few years to recover. Pretty good job, the way they put me together again. Good doctors. Very dedicated." He held up his hand. "Too bad I'm left-handed."

"Must make it hard to count."

He stopped. "I think I'll use two bullets. The first one so that it hurts, really bad. And the second one, so it hurts even more." He paused. "I can still count to two."

"You should be able to make it to three, but you're not even armed, so maybe we can skip through the tough talk." He'd lit another cigarette; his good hand was shaking a little, not much. "What did your crowd want with the foreigner?"

"Doesn't concern you." The smoke from the cigarette drifted slowly out of his mouth, as if he weren't breathing. "I'll tell you this, though. There's going to be hell to pay that he got out of the country. You know where he's from?"