I remembered turning the light off, nothing more. Someone had turned it on; someone had opened the door. I had come as a killer in the night; and someone had found me here sleeping, betrayed by my own exhaustion. I sat up, and in that instant realized I was not alone. I turned my head, and looked at the man who sat quietly in the chair on my left, leaning back with his legs thrust out stiffly before him, his hands lightly gripping the arms of a rosewood chair upholstered in black leather. He smiled, and leaned forward. It was like looking into a mirror. I didn't move. I stared at him. His face was thinner than mine, more lined. The skin was burned dark, the hair bleached lighter by the African sun; but it was me I looked at. Not a twin, not a double, not a clever actor; it was myself, sitting in a chair, looking at me. "You have been sleeping soundly," he said. I thought of hearing my voice on a tape recorder, except this voice spoke in flawless French. I moved my hand slightly; my gun was still there, and the man I had come to kill sat not ten feet away, alone, unprotected. But I didn't move. I wasn't ready, not yet. Maybe not ever. "Are you rested enough," he said, "or will you sleep longer before we talk?" "I'm rested," I said. "I do not know how you came here," he said, "but that you are here is enough. I did not know what gift the tide of fortune would bring to me, but there could be no finer thing than this--a brother." I didn't know what I had expected the Dictator Bayard to be--a sullen ruffian, a wild-eyed megalomaniac, a sly-eyed schemer. But I had not expected a breathing image of myself, with a warm smile, and a poetic manner of speech, a man who called me brother. He looked at me with an expression of intense interest. "You speak excellent French, but with an English accent," he said. "Or is it perhaps American?" He smiled. "You must forgive my curiosity. Linguistics, accents, they are a hobby of mine and, in your case, I am doubly intrigued." "American," I said. "Amazing," he said. "I might have been born an American myself ... but that is a long dull tale to tell another time." No need, I thought. My father told it to me often, when I was a boy. He went on, his voice intense, but gentle, friendly. "They told me, when I returned to Algiers ten days ago, that a man resembling myself had been seen here in the apartment. There were two men found in my study, quite dead. There was a great deal of excitement, a garbled report. But I was struck by the talk of a man who looked like me. I wanted to see him, talk to him; I have been so very much alone here. It was a thing that caught my imagination. Of course, I did not know what brought this man here; they even talked of danger...." He spread his hands in a Gallic gesture.