Wars. They were the easiest things to start and hardest things to end. Shaw knew this, unfortunately, from experience.

He checked his watch again. It was time to go see Anna.

Anna Fischer. Born in Stuttgart, university-educated in England and France, she was now currently living in London, except when she was giving a speech, which she was doing in Dublin. Hence Shaw was here too. He and Anna often hooked up around the world, yet this time was different. And the nerveless Shaw suddenly felt his heart rate quicken and his breathing grow more shallow. It really was time.

THE WALK TO TRINITY COLLEGE took only about ten minutes with Shaw’s long-gaited pace and pent-up anticipation. Her lecture nearly over, he waited for his lady across from a side entrance to the college close to Maggie’s Bookshop, a favorite of theirs. He spent a few minutes chatting with the woman who ran the shop.

On one shelf he found a copy of a book that Anna had written on the subject of the origins of fascist governments entitled A Historical Examination of Police States. The love of his life was fun-loving in many ways, emotional and romantic, but she also possessed an IQ far to the north of genius level and the issues that dominated her professional life were serious ones indeed. Was there ever a more potent combination to win someone’s heart than brains and beauty?

When Anna came out, the hug lingered. She pressed her long fingers directly into the small of his back, kneading as she moved up the spine. She could always sense pain in him and he was a man who hid such things extremely well.

“Tense?” she asked, her German accent virtually nonexistent. Anna Fischer could speak fifteen languages at last count and all of them like a native. After six years at Oxford writing brilliant research papers and books, she had joined the UN as a simultaneous translator. After that stint, she’d accepted a position at a think tank in London and did work on international policies and global issues of unfathomable complexity with not an easy answer in sight. She was certainly far smarter than Shaw, yet never made him feel it.

“A little.”

“Bad flight from Holland?”

“Ride was great. Just an old rugby injury.” Actually it was the free fall into the canal cesspool, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Boys and their games,” she said in a mock scolding tone. “Is that how you got that?” She pointed to the bruise on his face courtesy of the Iranian who would never see freedom again.

“Luggage came out of the plane bin faster than I thought it would. Looks worse than it is.”

When they finally let go of each other, Anna stared up at him, but at five-eleven and wearing two-inch pumps she didn’t have to crane her neck too much. Still, Shaw had never been more grateful for his imposing height.

“How was the speech?” he asked.

“It was fairly well attended. However, in the interests of full disclosure I have to add that the heightened numbers were probably due largely to the catered food from the best Indian restaurant in town, and the open bar. I’m disappointed you missed it. I could have at least imagined you in your skivvies.”

“Why imagine when you can see it for real?”

She kissed him and intertwined her long fingers through his thick ones.

He held out her book he’d purchased.

“You paid for it? I could’ve given you one for free. They sent me all the unsold copies. They were so numerous I used them as furniture in my office.”

“Well, this one you’re getting the full royalty on. Will you sign it for me?”

She took out her pen and wrote something in the book. When he tried to see what, she said, “Read it later. After Dublin.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re interested in police states?” she asked.

“As much as I get around I’m usually in one at least once a month.”

He’d literally run into her on a Berlin side street three years ago. She was in the process of being mugged by two men and he’d just finished a solo mission not unlike the one in Amsterdam and was not in a particularly good mood. When the thugs saw him they made a big mistake by thinking they’d rob two birds at the same time. The police showed up a few minutes after Shaw called them when he’d finished beating both men unconscious. He’d hit one of them so hard he had nearly broken his hand on the man’s skull.

He’d walked Anna back to her hotel after she refused to go to a hospital. He held ice against her face for an hour and then slept on the floor of her hotel room because she was still so unnerved by the attack.

Shaw had never had a serious relationship with a woman before. That might have stemmed from his relationship with his mother, or rather his lack of one.

Abandonment did that to you.

Yet from the moment he saw Anna Fischer, bruised and bloodied though she was, on that dimly lit avenue in the German capital, Shaw knew that his heart was no longer his alone.

Nearly three years had now passed and her feelings had clearly deepened toward him. He knew that Anna loved him. Yet he could sense her growing bewilderment at his lack of commitment.

Well, that was about to end. Shaw was not yet free from Frank but he could wait no longer. He would make this work. Somehow.

“You’re pensive,” she said over dinner. At age thirty-eight she still wore her hair long. It curved seductively around her sculpted Germanic bones.

“No, just hungry. With men they carry the same expression. I suppose they don’t serve coddle here.” It was a working-class meal of rashers, potatoes, onion, and sausages with pepper poured thick.

“Not here, no, but we can go elsewhere.”

“That’s okay. Food’s gotten better in Dublin over the years.”

“Yes, though I still can’t understand why Irish stew has no carrots.” She smiled impishly over her wineglass. “Even the British have carrots in their stew.”

“And that’s exactly why the Irish don’t.”

Later, as they were finishing their meals she said, “So what were you doing in Amsterdam this time?”

“As little as possible.”

“Your consultancy work slowing down?”

“Come on. I have a place I want to take you to.”

Shaw could feel the strain in his voice and sensed that Anna could too.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You’re acting very mysteriously.”

Shaw tongued his dry lips and attempted to smile. “I thought that was one of the things you liked about me. Mystery?”

He didn’t believe his own words and it was clear she didn’t either.

He rose. His legs quivered a bit and he silently cursed himself.

I jumped into a damn canal from four stories up and beat a gang of nuclear terrorist nutcases almost single-handedly. You’d think I could manage this without acting like a lovesick teenager.

A little later they entered a small pub north of the Liffey, which was the decidedly poorer and less glamorous half of Dublin. Yet Shaw liked it here, as did Anna.

As she’d once said, “How can you possibly not love every molecule of a city that produced Swift, Stoker, G. B. Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Beckett, and Heaney? And the master, Joyce.”

Just to see her reaction he’d answered, “I’m more into Roddy Doyle.”

“And I’m more into Maeve Binchy,” she’d shot back.

He ordered for them, which was unusual. When it arrived she said, “What is it?”

“Barm brack. It’s sort of a fruitcake.”

“Fruitcake! Don’t they use those for doorstops and to poison people?”

Shaw cut her a slice. “Just try it. You’re an adventurous gal.”

Anna stabbed the cake with her fork and it clinked against something. Her wide eyes grew even wider as she probed the barm until her fingers closed around it.

Shaw said, “Legend has it that if you find the ring in the barm brack, you’re destined to be married.”