He asked it. "You know that guy with three fingers?"

"Two fingers, actually; the other one is a thumb. Yes, I do." I sat down and looked out the only window in Pak's office. The view wasn't much, an inner courtyard and, across the way, the Operations Building. It was snowing again, though just a few flakes. Maybe if it snowed more it would warm up a degree or two. My ears still burned from being outside without a hat. This sort of cold gave me an awful headache. "We used to work together."

Pak said nothing, but he didn't go to sleep, either.

"He was in an accident." I didn't think that would end the conversation. It didn't.

"And?"

"And it was a bad accident."

"And?" Pak was going to pull at this, no matter what. He was in that sort of mood.

"The man died. But apparently he didn't."

"To review: You worked together. Somewhere, not to be discussed, he was in a bad accident that killed him, but didn't. And you haven't seen each other since then. Shall I guess the rest, or are you going to tell me? Normally, I wouldn't ask, but this nondead friend of yours seems intent on causing us grief. He was standing in my office this morning, and as far as I'm concerned, that means he has crossed the line from the unmentionable past to a place where none of us want to be-the present. Where was this operation you two were conducting?"

"We were where we weren't supposed to be, not officially, though we had good reason to be there." When I'd left that group, my final orders on leaving were to tell no one what we did-no one, not ever. So far, I'd stuck to that. But this was different. Resurrection hadn't been mentioned as a contingency, one way or the other. "It was supposed to have been worked out ahead of time, our entry into the place we were supposed to visit. Only it wasn't. I thought he was dead, there wasn't anything I could do."

"That's all?"

"More or less. When I got back, they debriefed me, kicked me in the pants, and told me to forget the whole thing.