Around and Around

Guido was beaming when they left, each walking out of the woods in the center of the park in a different direction. They had praised his work highly and had said they would set up yet another assignment within a week or two. Guido felt he definitely was in with the Americans now, on his way to a career in espionage and to a cushy retirement in the United States. Los Angeles. That’s where he thought he’d go. But maybe San Francisco. Maybe they’d let him work in a cabaret there. No reason for him not to be able to use all of his talents. But then maybe they would want him to go out of the country on assignment. Maybe they realized just how broad and useful his talents were.

Frank and Felix rendezvoused at the Fontainas Café again, knowing that Guido was expected at the Au Fou Chantant cabaret for the first show of the evening and wouldn’t come there to see them at the café when they weren’t expecting to meet him. It, in fact, was one of their favorite places in Brussels. This was where each one of them also came to be comfortable and to find male companionship on nights when the tension of their work threatened to overwhelm them.

“Did you get it?” Frank asked.

“Yes, piece of cake,” Felix answered as he raised the small digital camera for Frank to see. “He had it right there in his jacket pocket. He never felt the exchange.”