The Sphinx of Section 204

Elias sat in Section 204, row 12, seat 8—his father's old seat at Wrigley, inherited like a genetic predisposition for disappointment. The baseball game blurred below him: ants in polyester swatting at a white sphere. He wasn't here for the game. He was here because she'd said: *Meet me where we watched the Cubs lose in '99.*

That was the year they'd both been recruited. Young, hungry, stupid enough to think being a spy would taste like martinis and tailor-made suits. Instead it tasted like airport coffee and lies you told yourself until they became true.

A woman slid into the seat beside him. Same sharp cheekbones, eyes like flint. Older now. They all were.

"You brought the cat?" she asked.

Elias stiffened. "How did you—"

"I saw your window. Seventh floor. Orange tabby, sits on the sill every morning at 7." She smiled thinly. "I've been across the street for three weeks, Elias. I'm surprised they didn't teach you to look up."

The cat—Barnaby—was the only living thing that still looked at him without calculation.

"Operation Sphinx," she said, and his stomach dropped. "It's declassifying next month. Everything. Including what you did in Cairo."

"I followed orders."

"You burned an asset who trusted you. A woman." She turned to face him fully. "Her name was Amira. She had a daughter."

Below them, the crowd roared. A home run. Elias didn't blink.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to testify. I want you to look that daughter in the eye and tell her why her mother had to die for something that didn't even work."

The sphinx had riddles. Elias only had silence, and lately, even that was crumbling.

"Or," she said, standing up, "I could release the tapes early. Your cat would need a new home. You'd need a new life, assuming anyone would hire you."

She paused, waiting.

On the field, a pitching change. The organist played something mournful.

"Meet me tomorrow," Elias said, the words tasting like ash. "Same time."

She walked away without looking back. Elias stayed until the ninth inning, until the last out, until the stadium emptied and he was alone with the ghosts of every lie he'd ever told. Somewhere in an apartment seven floors up, a cat was waiting to be fed, innocent as a sphinx, watching him like it already knew everything he'd done.