Twice a Spy

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“Do you see a ghost?” Alice asked.

“You’d know if I did because I’d mention it.” Charlie fixated on someone or something behind her, rather than meet her eyes as he usually did. “Or faint.”

“Ghost is trade lingo for someone you take for a surveillant, but, really, he’s just an ordinary Joe. When you have to look over your shoulder as much as we have the past couple of weeks, it’s only natural that everybody starts seeming suspicious. You imagine you’ve seen one of them before. It’s hard to find anybody who doesn’t look like he works for Interpol.”

“Interpol would be an upgrade.” Charlie laughed a stream of vapor into the thin Alpine air. “After the past couple of weeks, it’s hard to find anybody who doesn’t look like a veteran hit man.”

Charlie Clark owned no Hawaiian shirts. He didn’t chomp on a cigar. In no way did he match anyone’s conception of a horseplayer: He was a youthful thirty with a pleasant demeanor and strong features in spite of Alice’s efforts to alter them-a brown wig hid his sandy blond hair, fake sideburns and a silicone nose bridge blunted the sharp contours of his face, and oversized sunglasses veiled his intelligent blue eyes. But-tragically, Alice thought-until being thrust on the lam two weeks ago, Charlie had spent 364 days a year at racetracks. And that number would have been 365 if tracks didn’t close on Christmas Day. He lived for the thrill not merely of winning but of being right. As he’d often said: “Where else besides the track can you get that?”

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