Claire felt that Vea had implanted a cause in her, a guiding principle for what she could do with her life, and so she would do anything for him. He never approached her except as a compatriot, alongside the honour of his work, although god knows what his darknesses and hidden emotions were. Vea’s wife, she knew, could map him intricately. She took Claire to symphony concerts and the ballet, things that Vea could not sit still for. Ballet had not enough words to keep him awake. The closest he got to formal was Thelonious Monk, whose music, in the neglected recordings, were, he said, like imprisoned birdsongs. When Claire went to the Veas’ for dinner, he would be once more rebuilding his homemade sound system, and this always led to a discussion of the most recent eavesdropping equipment on the market. ‘There’s a laser scope,’ he would say, ‘that can measure the vibrations in the glass of a window across the street, and then translate them into sounds. From there it’s one step to hearing the conversation going on in that room. And we’re the ones who lost the war....’