Free All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer

as they struggle to put together a functioning government. We receive daily reports from agents within both parties, but the intel, I note in an aside, lacks real substance, and as a result we’re unable to predict the outcome. Questions arise: Can this moment of indecision be used to our benefit? Or would an approach to President Heinz Fischer at this juncture be pointless, given Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel’s lame-duck status?
    No, this is not the kind of work my lover does, and I don’t think he’d be any good at it. Henry abhors the alphabet soup of Austrian political parties. To him, the ÖVP, the SPÖ, the BZÖ, and the FPÖ are all “umlaut hoarders” who are no better than B-grade movie stars. And the Greens? “Sellouts.” I blame Moscow for his pessimism.
    I’m about ready to send off my report when, a little before eleven, and just as Bill lumbers out of the elevator, we all receive a forwarded e-mail from Europol. I give it a quick read as I’m getting up, then give it a second look.
    Bill looks as if he’s been badly ironed. Gutted eyes; slack, damp lips; wrists puffy as an old alcoholic’s, though he isn’t one. Not yet. I follow him into his office and close the door. “Tell me, Bill.”
    He settles, groaning, behind his desk and runs a hand through his gray hair. “She’s going to kill me, you know.”
    â€œIs she all right?”
    â€œIf you can call it that.” His hands settle on the desk. “I didn’t realize it at the time. Only now, driving to the embassy. It wasn’t real. The heart pains, the fainting, the weeping. It’s … well, I’m the victim of a long con. That’s what I’ve realized. That, or an extended Pavlovian experiment. Rewards and punishment growing more intense, and now she’s graduated to the next level. Before, she controlled my behavior by attacking me. Now, she’s discovered how to control me by attacking herself.”
    I sit across from him, puzzling over this. “So she’s … not sick?”
    â€œIt’s a kind of sickness,” he replies, then hesitates. “The human body can make itself sick at the drop of a hat. For all kinds of reasons, including revenge.” He finally raises his eyes to meet mine. “I tried to leave her. Late last night. I told her I was going. Then she went on one of her rampages. At first she attacked me, and then, after she’d calmed down, there was the pain in her arm. She told me it was nothing. She told me to just go to sleep, seeing as I didn’t care about her anyway. So of course I didn’t sleep. I just lay there as she moaned in pain, wanting no help from me. Then this morning she went to make coffee and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Blood—she bled from her nose. Christ. ”
    â€œThe doctors?”
    He shakes his head. “Nothing. Nerves, maybe. Bed rest, they told her, and she’s staying the night for observation.”
    I wonder how to answer this, but my mouth doesn’t bother wondering anything. It says, “Plenty of time for you to move out your stuff. Take my apartment.” I’m not even wondering if moving in with Henry is a good idea or not; I just want Bill to get away from that monster.
    By the time he raises his head again, though, I know I’ve pushed too far and too hard. He licks some of the moisture off his lips, but it does no good. He’s a wreck. “It’s not that simple.”
    â€œOf course it is,” I say, heedless of the part of me that knows I’m not helping the situation. “Everybody claims it’s not, but it is. She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself. Visit her with flowers if you like. Pay her medical bills. But her being sick doesn’t make your marriage any more bearable.”
    A long silence follows as he stares blindly at the screen of his computer. He sniffs twice, then says,