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playing, and, almost invisibly, become one of their group,
though never the leader. Every time, they accepted him as if he had
long been a part.
    He learned French with no more difficulty
than tying his shoes. Karl was attractive and charming, but not in
a way that caused too much memory of him, which was good. Karl
needed to disappear. Rather, Karl needed to stay disappeared.
    She had taught him much in the four years of
tutelage. Martha’s many trainings during her own childhood, matters
of espionage, modes of survival, languages and non verbal
communication if one did not know the language, means of very rapid
language acquisition, techniques to disappear, as much as he could
absorb, she taught. She invented games for him to play and learn,
so that he could stay alive, possibly even thrive, in their harsh
and bizarre milieu.
    Finally, she understood
her destiny or perhaps her mission in life. She had shaped it in
the hours since the call. Her nerves, the fibers of who she was,
realigned as she oriented her mind to this goal, her true work. It
might and probably would consume her entire life, perhaps cause her
death, and require inhuman patience. Her existence might be spent
waiting, watching, then dying of old age, having done nothing. One
brutal act of separation lay ahead, before the waiting and hiding
began. Not began, but entered a new level, aloneliness.
    He was born to do so. Not dying, or ceasing
to be involved. But to be invisible and untraceable, seemingly
designed that way. It was an innate skill in him, one which she had
learned, been forced to learn, painfully, and was good at. But he
was impeccable, completely natural. He was invisible, not by being
separate, but by being part of. He had the touch of blending in,
fading into crowds, causing another’s focus of gaze to slide away,
just past the shoulder. The best way was not to cut their interest,
but rather slip it off like water. There were techniques: looking
over the other person’s shoulder, or back over one’s own, as if
something interesting was there, or ‘going beige,’ so that one was
not interesting, even dropping money surreptitiously to shift
attention away, or making the other person self-conscious by
staring for an instant at them. But Karl had that unteachable
skill, which Martha did not.
    He could vanish.
    In the larger circle of disappearing, Martha
had taught Karl more sophisticated technique: creating trails in
other cities, leaving multiple witnesses who were certain you had
gone to a false location, appearing on paper elsewhere by using
credit cards, hotel room records, and legal documents, paying
people to plant evidence, but making them think they were doing
something else. He was too young to understand it, but she would do
it for him. Eventually, he would understand. If he lived. If he
remained free.
    Why so soon? Painful irony, to leave him now, only to wait for
years. She had more to teach him, more to learn from him. He needed
love and had no one else to offer it. And so did she. It was not
fair, but fair was useless, probably dangerous.
    They ate in one of the sizeable plazas in
Grenoble, a simple affair with square stone pillars creating a
covered walkway and a large, central open space made of large and
rough, rectangular stone tiles. She vaguely watched the low pulse
of the fountain. He ordered an American burger, fries, and a coke,
then attacked it. She got a salad and a milkshake. The taste and
smell nauseated and she couldn’t force herself to eat. Gripped in
the cold bright squareness of the steel chair, she could only sit
frozen and watch him recede. Each tick of the hand on the church
clock measured her last moments of sensibility. She had always
known the day would come. Technology could no longer be outrun.
    She couldn’t tell him much
more of value. Most of it was explained in a note in his pack.
Places where money was hidden, the little she knew of his true
identity, what to say if he was caught. Never to