The Elegant Lie

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When the guard came to his cell, Nathan Carter was already awake and sitting on the edge of his bunk. It was 5 a.m. He had not slept all night, afraid that this was only one of many dreams he’d had, in which the day of his release from Langsdorf military prison turned out to be nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

Carter was six foot tall with dark, short-cropped hair and brown eyes in which the irises could barely be distinguished from the pupils. His chin and cheeks were scruffed with a week’s growth of beard and his normally slim build had been made considerably slimmer by the time he’d spent in prison. He had a habit of keeping his fingers tucked inside his palms, as if permanently conscious of their vulnerability. The expression on his face was thoughtful and closed, but otherwise unreadable. He looked like what he was◦– a man who kept his feelings to himself◦– but he also possessed the extraordinary ability of being able to walk into a crowded room and, with no outward sign of effort, emerge from that room with every other person having noticed he was there. Or he could step into that same space and leave again without anyone being able to recall with any certainty that they had spoken to him, or heard a single word he said, or even seen him there at all. To be remembered, or not remembered, was a skill he had turned to his advantage. It had also saved his life on more than one occasion.

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