Hey, buddy, he told himself, it's not too late. You'd better get back in line and with the program. Phone the colonel. Tell him you made a mistake but you're better now. Tell him you'll do whatever he wants. You'll be an instructor. You'll stay out of sight. Anything.


But a stronger thought insisted.


Have to find Juana.


He must have said that out loud because a woman's voice was suddenly speaking to him on the telephone. 'What? I didn't hear what you said. Mike? Is that you?'


The throaty, sensuous voice belonged to Holly.


Buchanan straightened. 'Yeah, it's me.' Before leaving San Antonio this morning, he'd called Holly's apartment to make certain she was in Washington, to insure he didn't make the trip for nothing. Six-thirty in Texas had been seven-thirty along the Potomac. She'd been awake and about to go to work when she'd picked up the phone rather than let her answering machine take the message. Assuming that her phone was tapped, he'd used the name Mike Hamilton and made tentative arrangements to meet her.


'Is our late lunch still on?' she now asked.


'If your schedule's free.'


'Hey, for you, it's always free. I'll meet you in McPherson Square.'


'Give me forty minutes.'


'No rush.'


'See you.' Buchanan put the phone back on its hook. The conversation had gone perfectly. Sounding natural, it had nonetheless contained the words 'no rush,' the code they'd chosen in New Orleans to indicate that Holly did not sense a threat. 'See you' was Buchanan's equivalent message.


He picked up his small bag, turned from the phone, and joined a mass of passengers that had just gotten off another flight. Both National and Dulles airports were under constant surveillance from various government agencies. Some of the surveillance was a throwback to the Cold War. Some of it was due to a practical need to know which travelers of importance were showing up unexpectedly in the nation's capital. A lot of it had to do with the increasing conviction that Mideastern terrorists were poised to make their long-postponed assault on the United States.


Buchanan had no reason to suspect that the colonel would have operatives watching the airport in case he passed through. After all, logic suggested that Washington would be one of the places Buchanan wanted most to avoid. Besides, his paper trail would have led the colonel's operatives to San Antonio by now. Before leaving Texas, Buchanan had left his car at an office of the company from which he'd rented it. That would be the dead end of the paper trail. The colonel's people would assume that Buchanan had flown out of San Antonio since the car-rental office was near the airport. But they would have no way of knowing that Buchanan had used Charles Duffy's name and credit card to rent the motel room and buy a plane ticket to Washington.


The only risk Buchanan took in the airport was that someone would notice him by accident, but that would happen only if he drew attention to himself, and he wasn't about to get that careless. Buchanan-Lang-Duffy-Hamilton blended skillfully with fellow travelers, exited into a drab, damp afternoon, got into a taxi, and headed toward downtown Washington. The terminal had not been a threat.


But McPherson Square would be another matter.


2


In New Orleans, before Holly had gone back to Washington, Buchanan had explained to her that if he phoned and suggested they get together, she was to choose a public place in the area. The place had to be part of her routine. ('Do nothing conspicuous.') It had to have numerous entrances. ('So we don't get trapped.') And it had to be dependable in terms of not being closed at unpredictable hours. ('I was once told to meet a man at a restaurant that had burned down the day before. Nobody on the team advising me had checked the location to make sure the rendezvous site was viable.')


In terms of those criteria, McPherson Square was ideal. The park was hardly likely to have burned down. It was as public as a restaurant but far more open, and it was only a few blocks from Holly's office, hence a natural place for her to meet someone.


Buchanan managed to reach the rendezvous area before the forty-minute deadline. Watching the newspaper building from a crowded bus stop farther along L Street, he saw Holly come out of The Washington Post and head down 15th Street, but at the moment, he wasn't so much interested in her as he was in anyone who might be following her. He waited until she was out of his sight, waited another fifteen seconds, then strolled with other pedestrians toward the corner. There, while waiting for a traffic light, he glanced in Holly's direction down 15th Street toward her destination on K Street.


She wore a London Fog raincoat, tan, an excellent neutral color when you didn't want to stand out in a crowd. A matching cap had the extra merit of concealing Holly's red hair, which she'd tucked up beneath it. The only thing conspicuous about her was the camera bag that she carried in lieu of a purse.


It was enough for Buchanan to distinguish her from other tan raincoats in the crowd. He followed slowly, glancing unobtrusively at store windows and cars, subtly scanning the area to see if Holly had anyone observing her.


Yes. A man in a brown leather jacket on the opposite side of the street.


As the man walked, he never took his gaze away from Holly. On occasion, he adjusted something in his left ear and lowered his chin toward his right chest, moving his lips.


Buchanan studied the street more intently and saw a man on the corner ahead of Holly. The man wore a business suit, held an umbrella, and glanced at his watch a couple of times as if waiting for someone. But he too adjusted something in his ear and did so at the same time that the first man was lowering his chin and moving his lips. Hearing-aid-style audio receivers. Lapel-button miniature microphones.


But which group - the colonel's or Alan's - was tailing Holly? Were they military or civilian, from special operations or the Agency? As Holly reached K Street and crossed toward the park, Buchanan got a look at the backs of the men who went after her. They had narrow hips, their torsos veering upward toward broad shoulders, a distinctive build for special-operations personnel. Their training was designed to make them limber while giving them considerable upper-body strength. Too much muscle in their legs and hips would slow them down. But muscle in the upper body didn't interfere with anything, creating only advantages. Buchanan himself had once possessed that body build, but since it would identify his background to anyone who understood these matters, he'd cut back on building up his arms and shoulders, going instead for activities that gave him stamina and agility.


Now that he had a distinctive silhouette to look for, he noticed two other men dressed in civilian clothes and with a special-operations build. The colonel must certainly be apprehensive about her, or else he wouldn't have so many men on her, Buchanan thought. The two men he'd just noticed were ahead of Holly, staking out the park. The only way they could have known to get to the park ahead of her was if they had her phones tapped and knew where and when she had arranged to meet someone named Mike Hamilton. He'd been right to be cautious.


Instead of following Holly into the park, Buchanan hung back, turned right on K Street, and went around the next block. His approach returned him to 15th Street but this time farther south, where 15th intersected with I Street. From a busy entrance to the Veterans Administration Building, he looked across to the leafless trees in the park and glimpsed Holly sitting on a bench near the statue of General McPherson in the middle of the square. Pedestrians came and went, but the four broad-shouldered men had spread out through the park and were now immobile, on occasion touching an ear or lowering a chin, concentrating on Holly, then switching their attention to anyone who seemed to be approaching her.


How do I get a message to her? Buchanan thought.


Continuing along I Street, he came to a black man who held a small sign that said I'LL WORK FOR FOOD. The man needed a hair cut but had shaved. He wore plain, clean clothes. His leather shoes looked freshly shined but were worn down at the heels.


'Can you spare the price of a hamburger?' the man asked. His eyes showed subdued bitterness. Shame struggled with anger as he tried to maintain his dignity even though he was begging.


'I think I can do better than the price of a hamburger,' Buchanan said.


The man's eyebrows narrowed. His expression became puzzled, with a trace of wariness.


'You want to work?' Buchanan asked.


'Look, I don't know what's on your mind, but I hope it isn't trouble. The last guy stopped told me if I wanted to work, why the hell didn't I get a job? He called me a lazy bastard and walked away. Get a job? No shit. I wouldn't be out here beggin', lettin' people call me names if I could find a job.'


'How does this sound?' Buchanan asked. 'Five minutes work for a hundred dollars?'


'A hundred dollars? For that much money, I'd. Wait a minute. If this is about drugs or.'


3


At a safe-site apartment five blocks north of The Washington Post, the phone barely rang before the colonel stopped pacing and grabbed it off its hook. 'Home Video Service.'


'Looks like it's a no-show,' a man's voice said. 'Whoever this Mike Hamilton is, he was supposed to meet her at twenty after two. But now it's quarter to three, the drizzle's turning to rain, and she's making moves as if that park bench she's sitting on is awfully cold.'


'Keep watching until she goes back to work and our man in her department can take over watching her,' the colonel said.


'Maybe that's what she's doing now. Working,' the man's voice said. 'Just because the guy at the desk next to hers never heard her talk about anybody named Mike Hamilton, that doesn't mean Hamilton still can't be a source for a story she's working on. Hell, for that matter, he might be a friend she knew when she worked in California.'


'Might be, Major? I don't like my officers to make assumptions. The tapes of the conversations don't mention California or anything else. She and Hamilton talk as if they've got some kind of relationship. But what? It's all smoke.'


'Well, most people don't review their life history when they phone somebody for lunch.'


'Are you being sarcastic, Major?'


'No, sir. Definitely not. I'm just trying to think out loud and analyze the problem. I'm guessing that if this meeting with Hamilton has anything to do with us, she wouldn't be doing it in plain sight. Besides, we checked our computer records. No one named Hamilton was ever associated with our operations.'


'No one named Hamilton?' the colonel said. 'Doesn't it seem relevant to you that one of our specialties is pseudonyms? Damn it, what if Hamilton isn't his real name?'


The line became silent for a moment. 'Yes, sir, I get your point.'


'Since she came back from New Orleans, everything she's done has been routine. Now, for the first time, she's doing something that can't be fully explained. For her sake, I hope it doesn't involve us. I want to believe what she told Buchanan, that she's given up the story. But I also want to know who the hell Mike Hamilton is.'


'Colonel, you can depend on me to. Hold it. I'm getting a report from the surveillance team. Somebody's approaching the woman.'


The colonel stopped moving, stopped blinking, stopped breathing. He stared at the opposite wall.


'False alarm, sir,' the voice said. 'It's a black guy with a sign about needing a job. He's trying to beg from everybody in the park.'


The colonel exhaled and seemed to come out of a trance. 'Maintain surveillance. Keep me informed. I want to know what that woman's doing every second.' With force, he terminated the connection.


From a chair in the corner of the room, Alan studied him. 'Why don't you give it a rest? Whatever happens will happen regardless if you're staring at the phone.'


'You don't seem to take this seriously.'


'Oh, I take it very seriously,' Alan said. 'To me, this is a sign of how out of control this operation has become. Instead of taking care of business, you're wasting all your resources worrying about Buchanan and this reporter.'


'Wasting?'


'As far as I'm concerned, both problems are solved. Let Buchanan keep digging a hole to bury himself. He's gone, and I say fine. He'll act his way into oblivion. About the reporter - hey, without Buchanan she doesn't have a story. It's as simple as that. If she breaks her agreement, we'll deny everything she says, accuse her of putting her career ahead of the truth, and challenge her to produce this mysterious man she claims was God knows how many people.'


'Maybe she can.'


'What are you talking about?' Alan asked.


'She's the reason Buchanan walked away from us,' the colonel said. 'But maybe it's not just professional. He tried to protect her, after all. Maybe there's something personal between them.'


Alan frowned.


'One of Buchanan's talents is changing his voice, imitating other people,' the colonel said. 'Hasn't it occurred to you that no matter what this guy sounds like on tape, Mike Hamilton could be Buchanan?'


4


Before Holly had returned to Washington from New Orleans, there hadn't been time for Buchanan to explain all the basics of how to behave if she thought she were being watched. The most important thing, he'd emphasized, was not to become so self-conscious that she exaggerated her movements as if putting on a show for someone. 'Never do something that you wouldn't normally do. Never fail to do something that you would normally do.'


At the moment, what Holly would normally have done would have been to stop sitting on a goddamned park bench when the drizzle turned to rain. She'd been on the bench since twenty after two, the rendezvous time she'd established with Buchanan. Now he was twenty-five minutes late, and in New Orleans he had told her that thirty minutes was the maximum time she should ever wait for him to show up. Otherwise, if she were under surveillance, she would make her observers wonder why she was lingering. That she was lingering now became even more conspicuous given the recent turn in the weather.


Holly strongly suspected that she should do the natural thing and leave right now. Buchanan had told her that if he ever failed to show up, she should return to the rendezvous area twenty-four hours later, provided he didn't get a message to her in the meantime. Returning tomorrow would be conspicuous, yes, but it was a lot less conspicuous than seeming not to have the brains to get out of the rain. There weren't many people in the park any more; most had headed toward the shelter of buildings. She felt as if she were center stage and hoped that she seemed natural when she looked around. When she made up her mind and stood, she abruptly noticed movement to her left.


The movement had been there for about a minute. She just hadn't paid attention to it. It was so common that she took it dismally for granted. But now, turning, she saw a black man with a cardboard sign that said I'LL WORK FOR FOOD approach a woman who was hurrying through the park. The black man said something to her. The woman shook her head with force and kept hurrying. The black man continued through the park. The rain had begun to streak the inked letters on his sign so that now it said I ORK OR OOD.


Holly felt a pang of sympathy as the black man approached another hurrying pedestrian, a man this time, who strode quickly on as if the beggar were invisible. Now the black man's sign began to droop.


Oh, hell, at least one good thing will come out of this, Holly thought. She reached in her camera bag, took a dollar from her wallet, and handed it to the man as he reached her. She felt so dejected that she would have given him more, just to heighten her spirits, but she kept remembering Buchanan's instruction not to do anything unusual. A dollar at least was better than a quarter.


'Thank you, ma'am.' What he said next startled her. 'Mike Hamilton says you're being watched.'


Holly's pulse faltered. 'What?'


'You're to go over to the Fourteenth Street entrance to the Metro. Take the train to. Metro Center. Go out the east doors. Walk toward the. yes. the National Portrait Gallery. He'll be in touch.'


Pocketing the dollar Holly had given him, the black man moved on.


Holly's instinct was to rush after him, to ask for a more detailed explanation, to question him about how Buchanan had known she was being watched.


But her instinct was totally wrong, she knew, and she fiercely repressed it, ignoring the black man's retreat, acting as if he were an inconvenient interruption, glancing around as if still in hope that the person she waited for would arrive. She didn't dare act immediately after speaking to the man. If so, whoever was watching her might suspect that she'd been given a message.


She waited. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Drops of water fell from the brim of her hat. What was the most natural thing to do? To check all around her one more time, then shake her head with annoyance, and walk away.


She headed back toward work, then stopped as if she had a better thought, and changed direction, moving in the opposite direction toward the 14th Street entrance to the Metro. Certainly the conflict she acted out was true to what she was feeling. Two days ago, Buchanan had scared her during their talk on the paddlewheeler in New Orleans. He had made the potential threat to her seem disturbingly vivid. Because of the story she was researching. The story about him. Seeing the deadly conviction in his eyes had made Holly feel cold. This man had killed. The men he worked with had killed. They didn't operate by any rules that Holly understood. A Pulitzer Prize wouldn't be any consolation to her in the grave.


But what about journalistic responsibility? What about the courage of being a professional? Holly had dodged those issues by postponing her decisions, by telling herself that if she waited for further developments, the story might get even better. She hadn't walked away from the story; she was merely letting it cook. Sure. Then why was she so terrified because Buchanan had gotten in touch with her? What did he want? If she were the reporter she'd always believed she was, she ought to be eager. Instead she had the feeling a nightmare was starting.


Ten minutes later, amid the echoing rumble of trains behind her, she climbed the congested stairs from Metro Center, exited onto noisy, traffic-glutted G Street, and walked through the rain toward the huge Greek-Revival quadrangle that housed the National Portrait Gallery. Despite the weather, the sidewalk was crowded, people hurrying. And here too there were indigents, wearing tattered, rain-soaked clothes, asking for quarters, food, work, whatever, or sometimes holding signs that announced their need.


One of them had a sign identical to that of the black man in the park. I'LL WORK FOR FOOD. She started to pass.


'Wait, Holly. Give me a quarter,' the indigent said.


To hear him call her by name shocked her as if she'd touched an exposed electrical wire. Overwhelmed, she stopped, managed to make herself turn, and saw that the stooped man in the tattered clothes and droopy hat with grime on his face was Buchanan.


'Jesus,' she said.


'Don't talk, Holly. Just give me a quarter.'


She fumbled for her wallet in her camera case, obeying, liking the way he said her name.


Buchanan kept his voice low. 'Drummond. Tomez. That's all I have. No first names. The sort of people who'd need protection. Find out everything you can about possible candidates. Pretend to make a pay-phone call at the gallery. Meet me at eight tonight. The Ritz-Carlton. Ask the hotel operator to connect you with Mike Hamilton's room. Keep moving.'


All the while, Buchanan held out his hand, waiting for Holly to give him the quarter. He took it, saying louder, 'Thanks, ma'am. God bless you,' turning to an approaching man, saying, 'Can you spare a quarter, just a quarter?'


Holly kept moving as Buchanan had instructed, proceeding toward the National Portrait Gallery, hoping that she looked natural. But if she managed to keep her pace steady, her mind swirled from fear and confusion.


5


The large, blue helicopter cast a streaking shadow over the dense Yucatan jungle below. In the rear compartment, Alistair Drummond's scowl became so severe that its wrinkles added years, making him look the eightysomething that he was. He'd been sitting rigidly straight, but now, with each piece of information that Raymond told him, Drummond sat even straighten His brittle voice managed to be forceful despite the whump-whump-whumping roar of the aircraft's engine. 'Brendan Buchanan?'


'An instructor for Army Special Forces, assigned to Fort Bragg. He rented a car in New Orleans and drove to San Antonio to visit the woman's parents. Our sentry there called to say that Buchanan used the name Jeff Walker when he claimed he was a friend of their daughter and asked if they knew where she was.'


'Is he a friend?' Drummond squinted through his thick glasses. 'Why would he use an alias? Obviously he's hiding something. But what? What does he want with the woman?'


'We don't know,' Raymond said. 'But the two men assigned to watch the Mendez house are missing now. So is one of the men assigned to the target's house outside San Antonio. His partner found recent blood beneath a carpet and a bullet hole in the ceiling. It would be foolish not to make the connection between Buchanan's appearance and their disappearance. If he shows up again, I've given orders to have him killed.'


Drummond's ancient frame trembled. 'No. Cancel that order. Find him. Follow him. Maybe he'll lead us to her. Did they work together at Fort Bragg? Learn his connection with her. He might know places to look that we haven't imagined.'


6


While flying from San Antonio to Washington National, Buchanan had used an in-flight phone and Charles Duffy's telephone credit card to call several hotels in Washington, needing to make a reservation for the night. As he'd expected, the task was frustrating. Most of the good hotels in Washington were always full. He'd started at the middle of the price scale but finally decided to try the high end, reasoning that the recession's effect might have made extremely expensive hotels less popular. As it happened, Buchanan got lucky with the Ritz-Carlton. The early morning checkout of a Venezuelan group due to a political emergency at home had caused several rooms to be available. If Buchanan-Duffy had called a half hour later, the hotel clerk assured him, the rooms would have been spoken for. Buchanan was able to reserve two.


The Ritz-Carlton was among the most fashionable hotels in Washington. Filled with an amber warmth, designed to seem like an English club, it had numerous European furnishings as well as British paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most of the artwork depicting dogs and horses. After Buchanan's brief contact with Holly near the National Portrait Gallery, he had noticed that Holly continued to be followed but that none of her surveillance team appeared to be interested in him. Even so, he had needed to be sure and used extensive evasion techniques involving the subway, buses, and taxis to determine if he was followed. Those techniques took two hours, and Buchanan assumed that if the surveillance team had been interested in him and had managed to stay with him, they'd have picked him up by then. So he felt reasonably protected when he checked in at the Ritz-Carlton shortly after five p.m. He showered, applied new dressing and bandages to the stitches in his knife wound, changed into dry clothes from his travel bag, ate a room-service hamburger, and lay on the bed, trying to muster his energy as well as focus his thoughts.


The latter was difficult. The last two days of constant travel had wearied him as had his activities throughout the afternoon. Eight years earlier or even last year, he wouldn't have been this tired. But then last year he hadn't been nursing two wounds. And he hadn't been suffering from a persistent, torturous headache. He'd been forced to buy another package of Tylenol, and he wasn't a fool - he knew that the headache could no longer be treated as a temporary problem, that it had to be related to the several injuries to his skull, that he needed medical attention. All the same, he didn't have time to worry about himself. If he went to a doctor, he'd probably end up spending the next week under hospital observation. Not only would a stay in the hospital be a threat to him, keeping him in one place while his hunters tracked him down, but it would increase the danger for someone else.


Juana. He couldn't waste time caring about himself. He'd done too much of that for too long. He needed to care about someone else. Juana. He had to find her. Had to help her.


7


The telephone rang at eight in the evening. Precisely on time. Good. Buchanan sat up in bed and reached for the phone, answering with a neutral voice. 'Hello.'


'Mike?' The deep, sensuous female voice was unmistakably Holly's.


'Yes. Where are you?'


'I'm using a house phone in the lobby. Do you want me to come up? What's your room number?'


'At the moment, it's three-twenty-two. But I want you to go to five-twelve. And Holly, you have to do it in a certain way. Take the elevator to the third floor. Then use the stairs to go up to the fifth. Anybody watching the numbers above the elevator in the lobby will assume that you didn't go any farther than the third floor.'


'On my way.' Tension strained her voice.


Buchanan broke the connection and pressed the button for the hotel operator, telling her, 'Please, don't put through any phone calls until eight tomorrow morning.'


He left the light on, picked up his travel bag, walked out of the room, put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, made sure that the door was locked behind him, and headed toward the fire stairs. As he started toward the fifth floor, he heard the elevator stop behind him on the third.


Holly arrived at room 512 a minute after he did. The room was registered to Charles Duffy. It and Mike Hamilton's room had been rented using Charles Duffy's credit card. Buchanan had told the check-in clerk that Mike Hamilton would be arriving soon. After showering and changing, he'd gone back down to the lobby, waited until the clerk who'd checked him in was off on an errand, and then had checked in again with a different clerk, this time as Mike Hamilton.


When Buchanan turned from letting Holly in and relocking the door, she surprised him, dropping her camera bag and a briefcase onto a chair, putting her arms around him, holding him tightly.


She was trembling.


Buchanan wondered if she were putting on an act, trying to seem more distraught than she actually was.


'How do you stand living this way?' She spoke against his shoulder.


'What way? This is normal.' He responded to her embrace.


'Normal.' Her voice dropped.


'It's just stage fright.' He smelled her perfume.


She stepped away, looking depressed. 'Sure.' As rain pelted against the window behind the closed draperies, she took off her wet London Fog hat and overcoat, then listlessly shook her hair free.


Buchanan had forgotten how red her hair was, how green her eyes.


She wore a sand-colored, linen pant suit, a scooped, white T-shirt, and a brown belt. The outfit complimented her height and figure, the flow of her hips and breasts.


He felt attracted to her, remembered how her breasts had felt against him, and forced himself to concentrate on business.


'I wanted a room where we wouldn't be disturbed if the men following you decided to barge in,' he explained. 'This way, if they talk to the desk clerk, they'll think they know where you are and who you're seeing.'


'That part I understand.' Holly slumped on the Victorian sofa. 'But what I don't understand is why you told me to pretend to make a call from a pay phone at the National Portrait Gallery. Who was I supposed to be talking to?'


'Mike Hamilton.'


Holly ran her fingers through her hair and didn't seem to follow his logic.


'Otherwise how were you supposed to know Mike Hamilton wanted to meet you here?'


'But.' She frowned. 'But you'd already told me as I came out of the metro station.'


'The people following you didn't know that. Holly, you have to remember: in this business, everything's an act. You want your audience to know only what's necessary for you to maintain an illusion. Suppose I'd just let you go back to work and then had phoned you and told you to meet me here. Your phones are tapped. This hotel would have been staked out fifteen minutes after I completed the call. They'd have found out who Mike Hamilton was. Regardless of the switch in the rooms, you and I would be being questioned right now.'


'Nothing you do is uncalculated.'


'That's how I stay alive.'


'Then how do I know I'm really being followed? How do I know that this business in the park and at the Metro station isn't just a charade to frighten me into cooperating with you and staying away from the story?'


'You don't. And I can't prove it to you. Correction. That's wrong. I can prove it to you. But the proof might get you killed.'


'There. You're doing it again,' Holly said. 'Trying to frighten me.' She crossed her arms and rubbed them as if she were cold.


'Have you eaten?' Buchanan asked.


'No.'


'I'll order you something from room service.'


'I don't have any appetite.'


'You've got to eat something.'


'Hey, fear's good for losing weight.'


'How about some coffee? Or tea?'


'How about telling me what the names you gave me have to do with my story?'


'They don't,' Buchanan said.


'What? Then why did you get in touch with me? Why did you put me through all this, being followed and passing secret messages and-?'


'Because I didn't have any choice. I need your help.'


Holly jerked her head up. 'You need my help? What could possibly-?'


'Drummond and Tomez. People important enough to need protection. What did you find out about them?'


'Why do you need to know?'


'It's better if you don't know anything about-'


'Bullshit,' Holly said. 'Since I met you on the train to New Orleans, you've been playing games with my mind. Everything has to be your way, and you're damned good at manipulating people into doing it. Well, this is one time that isn't going to happen. If you need my help, there has to be something in it for me. If it isn't about the story I was working on, what is it about? Maybe I can use that as a story. Quid pro quo, buddy. If I have to give up something, I want to get something in return.'


Buchanan studied her, then feigned reluctance. 'Maybe you're right.'


'Jesus, you are really something. You never stop acting. I get the impression you meant to tell me all along, but this way it looks like you're doing me a favor instead of the other way around.'


Buchanan slowly grinned. 'I guess you're too smart for me. How about that coffee?'


'Tea. And if you're going to tell me a story, I think I feel my appetite coming back.'


8


'It concerns the woman I told you about in New Orleans,' Buchanan said after ordering food. 'The friend who sent me a message asking for help. The one I was supposed to meet at Caf‚ du Monde. Except she didn't show up.'


Holly nodded. 'Your former lover.'


'No. I told you we were never lovers.' Buchanan brooded. 'In fact, I think that's when a lot of my problems started. Because I didn't commit to her.' He remembered how much he had wanted to, how much he had denied himself for the sake of duty.


Holly's face didn't change expression. But her eyes did, narrowing, assessing him.


'One of the last things I told her,' Buchanan said, 'was that she couldn't be in love with me because she didn't know me - she only knew who I pretended to be.'


Holly's eyes narrowed more. 'It certainly seems you never stop acting. For example, right now. I can't tell if this is the truth or more manipulation.'


'Oh, it's the truth. Even if you don't believe it, it's the truth. This is one of the most honest things you'll ever hear from me. I want to help her because I want to be the person I was when I knew her. I want to choose to be somebody and to stay that somebody. I want to stop changing. I want to be consistent.'


'Because of all the people you impersonated?'


'I told you I don't know anything about-'


'Don't act so defensive. I'm not trying to get you to admit to anything. You want to stop changing? Why make it so complicated? Why be somebody else? Why not be yourself?'


Buchanan didn't answer.


'You don't like yourself?'


Buchanan still didn't answer.


'This woman, what was her name?'


Buchanan hesitated. All his instincts and training warned against revealing information. He prepared to lie.


Instead he told the truth. 'Juana Mendez.'


'When you knew her, I'm assuming you were on an assignment together.'


'You know what you can do with your assumptions.'


'No need to get touchy.'


'Since the first time I spoke to you, I have never revealed confidential information. Everything I've said about my background has been hypothetical, a "what if scenario. As far as you're concerned, I'm an instructor in military special operations. That's all I've ever admitted to. This has nothing to do with the story you abandoned. I want that understood.'


'As I said, no need to get touchy.'


'After you left New Orleans.' He told her about his drive to San Antonio, his discovery that both Juana's and her parents' homes were under surveillance, and his search of Juana's records. He omitted all reference to the man he'd killed. 'Drummond and Tomez. The files for those names were the only ones that seemed to be missing. Juana was a security specialist. I have to assume those people were clients.'


'Important enough to need protecting.' Pensive, Holly walked toward the briefcase she'd set on a chair and opened it. 'I used the reference system at the Post.'


'That's why I had to get in touch with you. I didn't have access to anyone else who could get the information I needed as quickly as you could.'


'You know.' Holly studied him. 'Sometimes you might consider trying to impersonate somebody with tact.'


'What?'


'I don't delude myself that you'd go to all this trouble if you didn't have something to gain. All the same, it wouldn't have hurt you if you'd also left the impression that you found me interesting.'


'Oh. I'm sorry.'


'Apology accepted. But if you were this charming with Juana Mendez, it's no wonder things didn't work out.'


'Look, I'm trying to make up for mistakes.'


Holly didn't speak for a moment. 'Let's see if this helps. Drummond and Tomez. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to check thoroughly before I made any conclusions.'


'Drummond is Alistair Drummond,' Buchanan said. 'I more or less figured that already. The last name brings him immediately to mind. He's rich, famous, and powerful enough to fit the profile.'


'Agreed. I kept checking, but he's the only Drummond I think we should consider.' Holly pulled a book and several pages in a file folder out of the briefcase. 'Bedtime reading. His biography and some printouts of recent stories about him. I'd have given you his autobiography, but it's such a public-relations whitewash that for dependable information it's useless. Certainly it doesn't show any skeletons in closets, and in Drummond's case, skeletons in closets might not be a figure of speech.'


'What about Tomez?' Buchanan asked.


'That was harder. I'm a Frank Sinatra fan myself.'


'What's he got to do with.?'


'Jazz. Big bands. Tony Bennett. Billie Holiday. Ella Fitzgerald.'


'I still don't see what.'


'Listened to much Puccini lately?'


Buchanan looked blank.


'Verdi? Rossini? Donizetti? Not ringing any bells? How about titles? La Boheme. La Traviata. Lucia di Lammermoor. Carmen.'


'Operas,' Buchanan said.


'Give the man a cigar. Operas. I guess you're not a devotee.'


'Well, my taste in music.' Buchanan hesitated. 'I don't have any taste in music.'


'Come on, everybody likes some kind of music.'


'My characters do.'


'What?'


'The people I. Heavy metal. Country and western. Blue grass.


It's just that I never got around to impersonating anybody who liked opera.'


'Buchanan, you're scaring me again.'


'For the past week, I've been thinking of myself as a man named Peter Lang. He likes Barbra Streisand.'


'You really are scaring me.'


'I told you I'm changeable.' Buchanan-Lang smiled oddly. 'But no one I've ever been had an interest in opera. If he had, believe me I'd be expert enough on the subject to give you a lecture. What does opera have to do with the name "Tomez"?'


'Maria Tomez,' Holly said. 'The name occurred to me immediately but not as strongly as Alistair Drummond. I wanted to make sure there weren't any famous or rich or powerful people named Tomez whom I didn't know about.' Holly took another book and file from the briefcase. 'And indeed there are some, but they're not pertinent here. Maria Tomez - to quote from her press releases - is the most controversial, charismatic, and compelling mezzo soprano in the opera world today. As far as I'm concerned, she's the only candidate for your attention.'


'What makes you so sure?'


'Because for the past nine months Alistair Drummond and Maria Tomez have, despite the difference in their ages, been an item.' Holly paused for effect. 'And Maria Tomez disappeared two weeks ago.'


9


Buchanan leaned forward. 'Disappeared?'


'That's what her ex-husband claims. Don't you read the newspapers?' Holly asked.


'The past few days, I haven't exactly had time.'


'Well, this morning the ex-husband went to the New York City police department and insisted that she'd been missing for at least the past two weeks. To make sure he wasn't treated as a crank, he brought along a couple dozen newspaper and television reporters. It turned into quite a circus.'


Buchanan shook his head. 'But why would he think he'd be treated as a crank?'


'Because he and Maria Tomez had a very public and very nasty divorce. He's been badmouthing her ever since. He recently filed a lawsuit against her, claiming she lied about her financial assets when they divided their property during the divorce. He insists he has a right to ten million dollars. Naturally the police might think she dropped out of sight to avoid him. But the ex-husband swears he honestly believes something has happened to her.'


Holly gave Buchanan a page from the previous day's Washington Post and a photocopy of a profile in the Post's Sunday magazine from five years earlier. Buchanan scanned the newspaper story and the profile. The ex-husband, Frederick Maltin, had been an agent who discovered Maria Tomez when she was twenty-two, starring in a production of Tosca in Mexico City. While a few male Hispanics, Placido Domingo, for example, had achieved significant careers in opera, no Hispanic female had ever had similar success. Until Maria Tomez. Indeed, despite her talent and fiery stage presence, the fact that she was Mexican had worked against her, relegating her to regional operas, mostly in South America. Traditionally, female opera stars got their training in Europe and America. For Tomez to have been trained in Mexico meant that she was combating a professional prejudice when she auditioned for major opera companies in the United States and Italy.


But Frederick Maltin, who had been on vacation in Mexico, had been enchanted from the moment he first heard Maria Tomez sing. He had sent flowers to her dressing room after the performance, along with his business card and his Mexico City telephone number. When he received a call the next morning, he considered it significant that the call had come so early and that it was Maria herself who had called, not her representative. Which tended to suggest that she either didn't have a representative or else didn't have confidence that the representative would contact him at her request. Professionally speaking, she was available.


Maltin invited her to lunch. They continued their conversation after an afternoon rehearsal and later, at dinner, after an evening performance of a different opera, Rigoletto. As Maltin repeatedly emphasized, in those days Maria's schedule had been brutal, and he had sworn to her that if she agreed to let him represent her, he would change all that. He would make her a worldwide opera phenomenon. He would arrange it so that she performed only where and when she wanted to. Two years later, he had achieved his promise.


They married in the interim, and working relentlessly on her behalf, advising her about her clothes, her hairstyle, and her makeup, insisting that she lose weight, hiring a physical trainer to give her body definition, calling in every favor owed to him by anyone of influence in the opera world, Maltin promoted Maria Tomez as a singer in the passionate tradition of Maria Callas and Teresa Stratas. The former was Italian, the latter Greek, and Maltin's genius was in making his client's weakness her strength, in making audiences associate Maria Tomez with those divas because of a common denominator they shared, their ethnic origins. For Maria Tomez at least, it suddenly became fashionable to be Hispanic. Out of curiosity, European audiences came to hear her sing. Impressed, they stayed. Enthusiastic, they kept attending her other performances. After Frederick Maltin finished creating her public image, Maria Tomez never had any performance that wasn't a sell-out.


Buchanan rubbed his throbbing forehead. 'This guy Maltin sounds like a cross between Svengali and Professor Henry Higgins.'


'That's why the marriage failed,' Holly said. 'He wouldn't stop controlling her. He supervised everything she did. He dominated so much that she felt smothered. She endured it for as long as she could. Then fifteen years after she met him, she abruptly left him. It's almost as if something inside her snapped. She retired from performing. She went into seclusion, making occasional public appearances, mostly keeping to herself.'


'This started.' Buchanan picked up the newspaper article to jog his memory. 'She divorced him six months ago, a few months after she took up with Alistair Drummond. But why would a comparatively young woman - what is she? thirty-seven now? - choose a man in his eighties?'


'Maybe Drummond makes no demands. I know that seems out of character for him. But maybe he just wants to shelter her in exchange for the pleasure of her company.'


'So she went into seclusion, and now her ex-husband claims she's disappeared altogether.' Buchanan frowned. 'He could be wrong, or he could be lying. He's an expert in publicity, after all. He could be trying to attract so much attention that to get any peace, she'll have to deal with his claims about the property settlement.'


'Or maybe something really happened to her.'


'But what?' Buchanan became impatient. 'And what does that have to do with Juana? Was Juana protecting her? Are they both hiding somewhere? Are they...?' He was about to say'dead,' but the word stuck in his throat, making him feel choked.


Someone knocked on the door. Buchanan spun.


'Room service,' a man's voice said from the hallway.


Buchanan breathed out. 'Okay.' He glanced toward Holly and lowered his voice. 'In case this is trouble, take your camera bag and the briefcase. Hide in the closet.'


Holly's brow knotted with worry.


'I think everything will be fine. It's only a precaution,' Buchanan said. 'Here, don't forget your coat and hat.'


'I asked you before. How do you stand living this way?'


After shutting the closet, Buchanan approached the room's entrance, peering through the small lens in the door, seeing the distorted image of a man in a hotel uniform next to a room-service cart in the hallway.


Buchanan no longer had his handgun. Having traveled with it from Fort Lauderdale to Washington to New Orleans to San Antonio, he'd finally been forced to throw it down a storm drain. His trainers had emphasized - never keep a weapon that links you to a crime. Plus, the urgency of his self-imposed deadline had required him to use a commercial airline to get back to Washington, and he wasn't about to risk getting caught with a handgun in an airport.


With no other weapon but his body, Buchanan concealed his tension and opened the door. 'Sorry I took so long.'


'No problem.' The man from room service wheeled in the cart. A minute later, he'd turned the cart into a table and set out the food.


Wary about having to compromise his hands, Buchanan signed the bill and added a fifteen percent tip.


'Thanks, Mr Duffy.'


'Don't mention it.'


Buchanan locked the door behind the waiter. Slowly he relaxed and exhaled.


Holly emerged from the closet, her features strained. 'I guess in your line of work you have to distrust everybody.'


'I was taught early - a person's either on the team or not.'


'And if not?'


'There aren't any innocent bystanders.'


'Cynical.'


'Practical.'


'And what about me?'


Buchanan took a long time answering. 'You're not a bystander.'


10


Buchanan had ordered pasta primavera for both of them. Now, instead of eating, he glanced at his watch, saw that it was ten o'clock, and went to the phone. Before leaving San Antonio, he and Pedro Mendez had chosen a pay phone near where Pedro worked. Buchanan had instructed Pedro to be waiting next to the phone at nine - ten o'clock in Washington. An enemy could not have anticipated that location and eavesdropped on the line when Buchanan called to make certain that there hadn't been any trouble after the prisoners were released.


Pedro had been told to use English if he was being pressured. To Buchanan's relief, he used Spanish.


'Any problems?'


'The men followed the agreement,' Pedro said. 'When I let them go, they did not harm us.'


Buchanan imagined the courage that Pedro and Anita had required in order to go through with their part of the bargain.


'But I do not think they are far away,' Pedro said. 'I have to believe that they are nearby, watching us.'


'I think so, too,' Buchanan said. 'I never believed them when they said they'd leave town. Don't remove the microphones from your house. Do everything as usual. The two things protecting you are that they believe you don't know anything about your daughter's whereabouts, and that they need you alive and well in case Juana tries to get in touch with you. If they harm you, they're destroying a potential link with her. Pedro, I need to ask you a question. It might have something to do with Juana, but I want you to think carefully before you let me ask it. Because if it helps explain why Juana disappeared, you'll be putting yourself in danger. You'll have exactly the kind of information that whoever's trying to find Juana needs to know.'


The line was silent for a moment.


'I don't have a choice,' Pedro said. 'If this is about my daughter, if it might help her, I must do my best to answer your question.'


Buchanan's respect for Pedro kept increasing. 'Does the name "Maria Tomez" mean anything to you? Did Juana ever mention her? Does Maria Tomez have anything to do with-?'


'Of course,' Pedro said. 'The singer. I don't know anything about opera, but I saw her perform. A year ago, she came to San Antonio to sing at HemisFair.' Pedro referred to one of San Antonio's main attractions. The site of the 1968 world's fair, it had been converted into a cultural-athletic complex, linked to the city by a canal. 'I remember because that was one of the few times Juana told us anything about her work. She was hired to do the security for the performance. In fact, she gave us front-row seats. I didn't want to go, but Anita made me, and I was surprised that I liked it. I don't remember the name of the opera. It was about students living in slums. Maria Tomez played somebody who was dying from a disease. The words were in Italian, but Spanish is close enough to Italian that I understood. Maria Tomez sang like an angel. I was stunned. But what does this have to do with Juana and what happened to her? How would an opera singer who came here a year ago.?'


'I don't know yet. Listen carefully, Pedro. From time to time, I'll phone your office to make sure no one's bothering you. I'll use the name "Ben Clark". Can you remember that? Ben Clark. I'll ask about a Ford you're supposed to be repairing. If you tell me it'll cost a lot of money to fix, I'll know you're in trouble, and I'll get there as soon as I can to help you.'


'. Ben Clark.'


'Right. Take care, Pedro.'


'Jeff Walker, whoever you are, thank you.'


Exactly, Buchanan thought as he set down the phone. Whoever I am.


When he turned, he saw Holly watching him.


'What's the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?'


'Ben Clark? A Ford? In this room, you're Charles Duffy. Downstairs, you're Mike Hamilton. You mentioned something about Peter Lang. That doesn't include. How the hell do you keep it all straight?'


'Sometimes I wonder.' To avoid the topic, he sat down and started eating, not realizing how ravenous he was until the first bite of food hit his stomach. During his phone call, the pasta had gotten cold. It didn't matter. He couldn't get enough of it.


Holly set down her fork. 'You've been constantly on the go since you left the hospital,'


Buchanan kept eating, trying to ignore his headache.


'Don't you think it's time you slowed down?'


'Can't. As soon as we finish eating, I'll get you out of the hotel. Then I have to take a trip.'


'Where?'


'It's better if you don't know.'


'You don't trust me? After I proved I want to help? You said I was on the team.'


'It's not a matter of trust. What you don't know won't hurt you -and it won't hurt me if.'


'What you're trying not to say is if I'm questioned, I can't give away your next move.'


Buchanan swallowed a piece of bread and stared at her. 'The men watching you have nothing to do with what happened to Juana. But if they see us together, they'll assume you're back on the story about them, and they'll do everything they can to protect themselves.'


'Now you've done it.' Holly shuddered.


'What?'


'Scared me again. Just when I get to feeling normal, you remind me.'


'Nothing is ever normal.'


'Right. I keep forgetting.'


11


Buchanan went with her down the fire stairs to the third-floor landing. Her instructions were to take the elevator from that floor down to the lobby. That way, to anyone watching the numbers above the elevator in the lobby, it would seem that Holly had been in Mike Hamilton's third-floor room all evening. 'If anybody stops you, tell them to leave you alone or you'll call a cop. But if it gets serious, tell them a version of the truth. You're doing a story on the Maria Tomez disappearance and whether there's some connection between Tomez and Drummond. If they pressure you about Mike Hamilton, tell them he's a confidential source who works for Drummond. Tell them the man contacted you, using a false name. He's a disgruntled employee. He wants to make trouble for Drummond, but he doesn't want the trouble to be traced to him. So far he hasn't been much use.'


At the third-floor fire stairs, Buchanan motioned for Holly to wait while he checked that the corridor was safe. After peering cautiously out the door, he stepped back, his expression concerned enough to make Holly frown.


He motioned for her to follow. 'We have to hurry. Two men are outside Mike Hamilton's room.'


Before leaving 512, Buchanan had packed, made sure that the books and research files were in his travel bag, and filled out an early check-out form, putting it on the bed. A note explained that Mike Hamilton was checking out, too, but that as agreed all expenses were to be on Charles Duffy's credit card. 'I don't want any more people looking for me than necessary. Quickly. Let's go.'


He hurried with Holly down the fire stairs to the exit for the lobby. 'Wait until some people get off the elevator. Go out behind them. Where do you live?'


She told him.


'I'll leave a minute after you. I'll take a taxi, and if I'm not followed, I'll have the driver go past your place. By then, your own taxi should have brought you home. Leave a light on behind an open window in front. If I see that a window's open, I'll know you're okay.'


'Taxi? I brought my car.'


'Then you'll get home faster. The elevator's opening. Now.'


She touched his cheek. '. Be careful.'


Buchanan felt the impression of her fingers for quite a while after she was gone.


12


'Buchanan!'


It must have been the result of fatigue.


'Buchanan!'


Or else it resulted from his conversation with Holly. Although he'd come to Washington thinking of himself as Peter Lang impersonating Charles Duffy and Mike Hamilton, he'd been distracted into talking to Holly as the core identity he'd been trying to avoid.


'Buchanan!'


So when he heard a man call his name as he walked along the rain-misted street away from the hotel, Buchanan almost turned reflexively to see who wanted him.


It was a mistake, he instantly realized, and he caught himself before he fully turned, but he did twist his head partially, and that was all the indication his hunter needed.


'Yeah, you! Buchanan!'


Buchanan kept walking, not changing his pace, not appearing to feel pressured, although he did feel pressured. A lot. Nerves quickening, he heard rapid footsteps behind him on the wet sidewalk. One person, it sounded like, but Buchanan didn't dare look to see if he was right.


The time was nearly ten-thirty. Traffic was sparse, sporadic headlights gleaming through the beads of moisture in the gloomy air. Buchanan had glanced casually from side to side when he'd left the hotel, a natural thing to do, one that allowed him to check for any sign that Holly had been detained or that anyone was outside watching him. Seeing no problem, he had turned off Massachusetts Avenue, heading south on 21st Street.


Now, heart pounding, he realized that 21st was a one-way street and that the traffic was headed in a southern direction just as he was which meant that all the cars approached from behind him. Unless he looked over his shoulder, he had no way to tell if a vehicle would be veering toward him. But if he did look, he would reinforce his pursuer's suspicion. Plural. Other urgent footsteps had joined the first.


'God damn it, Buchanan!' a different voice yelled.


The voice was directly behind him, close enough to attack.


With no other viable option, Buchanan whirled, seeing a well-built, short-haired man in his mid-twenties lurch to a sudden, defensive stop.


But not quickly enough. Buchanan struck the man's chest with the palm of his right hand. The blow was hard but controlled, calculated to knock the man off balance but not to break his ribs.


The man was jolted backward. He exhaled forcefully, a practiced reaction that helped him absorb the impact. That reaction and the resistance the man's solid chest provided told Buchanan that this wasn't a civilian. The man was military: trim hips, broad shoulders for upper-body strength. While the man briefly lost his balance, Buchanan swung his right leg hard, twisting it so that his shin bone struck along the outside of the man's left thigh. A major, sensitive nerve ran down each leg in that area. If the nerve were traumatized, the victim suffered not only intense pain but temporary paralysis in the leg.


As Buchanan anticipated, before the man could retaliate from the blow to his chest, he grunted, grasped his leg, and toppled sharply. That left a second man rushing toward Buchanan, cursing, reaching beneath his windbreaker. Buchanan threw his travel bag toward him, forcing the man to zigzag while raising a hand to deflect the bag. Before the man could recover from this distraction and draw the handgun he was reaching for, Buchanan came in close, rammed the palm of his hand sharply against the bottom of the man's nose, and felt cartilage snap. The man's vision would blur. The pain would be intense. That gave Buchanan enough time to jab an elbow into the man's solar plexus and yank the man's pistol away as he doubled over.


Immediately Buchanan whirled, grabbed the first man struggling to stand, and walloped him against a lamp post. The man's head made a whunking sound. Then Buchanan whirled yet again, back to the second man, who lay sprawled on the sidewalk, fighting to breathe through his broken nose, spewing blood.


If this had been combat, Buchanan would have killed them. As it was, he didn't want to make the incident even more serious than it was. If he eliminated the colonel's men, the next time their orders would be to do the same to him instead of to detain him. Or perhaps these men had been ordered to kill him. Otherwise, why would the second man have been drawing a weapon?


From where Buchanan had come, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 21st Street, a well-dressed, elderly man and woman gaped in Buchanan's direction. The woman pointed a trembling arm, her outcry shrill.


Buchanan grabbed his travel bag and ran. His reaction wasn't caused only by fear that a police car would soon arrive. What sent adrenaline surging through him in even greater quantity, with greater urgency, were the two men who'd scurried around the corner in response to the woman's cry. Seeing Buchanan, they charged, and their chests were as muscled, their shoulders as broad as the men on the sidewalk.


Buchanan ran harder, the stitches in his knife wound threatening to tear open. He didn't care. He had to keep straining. Because when the second two men had seen him and raced toward him, both had reached beneath windbreakers, pulling out handguns, and there was no question now. This wasn't just a surveillance team. It was a hit team.


What had they done to Holly?


But he couldn't let himself think about that. He had to concentrate on staying alive. The first priority was to get off this damned one-way street, where the direction of traffic left him vulnerable from behind. Approaching P Street, he risked wasting time to look behind him on his left, saw an opening between two approaching cars, and darted between them, hoping that the cars would shield him, having noticed that the men were raising their weapons. A horn blared. Brakes squealed. He scrambled onto the opposite sidewalk and skidded on a slippery puddle but kept his balance, then bolted around the corner as the cars stopped shielding him and two gunshots roared, bullets shattering a window across from him.


Tightening his grip on the pistol he'd taken from the man whose nose he'd broken, Buchanan raced in a greater frenzy. The misty rain seemed thicker, the night darker. There wasn't any traffic. The rain discouraged pedestrians. Ahead, opposite, on the right, a murky street light revealed a lane that headed south, bisecting the block between 21st and 20th. Buchanan lunged toward it, his travel bag slowing his momentum, but he couldn't ditch the bag. He couldn't give up the books and files that were in it.


Behind him, he heard curses, strident breathing, rapid footsteps. The sign for the lane said Hopkins. Sprinting from P Street onto it, he flinched as bullets struck the corner he passed. At once, he whirled, crouched, and aimed one-handed with his elbow propped on his bent knee, controlling his trembling arm. Sweat merged with beads of mist on his brow. Leaning out from the corner, he wasn't able to see clearly enough to line up the front and rear sights of the pistol. But if he couldn't, his pursuers couldn't aim clearly, either. Judging as best as he could, he squeezed the trigger rapidly, firing three times, the shots echoing in the narrow street, assaulting his eardrums.


Nonetheless he heard the clink of ejected cartridges striking the pavement and a groan as if he'd hit one of the men, although he had no way of knowing if any of his bullets had connected because both men dove flat on the pavement and shot in his direction, their gun muzzles flashing. A bullet blew a chunk off the corner of the building, nearly hitting Buchanan's eyes. He flinched and shot three more times toward the men, who now rolled in opposite directions, seeking cover behind parked cars.


Buchanan wasn't about to get caught outnumbered in a stationary gun battle. The moment he lost sight of the men, he ducked backward, rose, and charged toward the end of the narrow street. The gunshots had caused lights to come on in upstairs apartments. People foolishly showed their silhouettes at windows. Buchanan kept racing. He heard a distant siren grow louder. He heard a window open. He heard a shout above him. But the rapid, echoing footsteps behind him were the only sounds he cared about.


Spinning, seeing the two men appear at the entrance to the narrow street, Buchanan fired twice more. The men separated and lunged into doorways.


Buchanan zigzagged, trying to confuse their aim. A bullet tugged at his left sleeve; another forced tickling air past his right ear. But this time, he didn't hear gunshots, only eerie muffled sounds as if hands were striking pillows. The men had put sound-suppressors on their weapons, making the noise of Buchanan's own weapon seem even more explosive when he spun again and fired. More lights came on in upper apartment windows. The siren sped closer, louder. Another joined it.


Buchanan sprinted from the narrow street, racing through the misty rain across O Street, charging to the left toward 20th Street. Relieved to be temporarily out of the line of fire, he suddenly tensed as headlights blazed behind him. In the middle of the street, not knowing which way to dive, he had to spin, and the headlights streaked directly toward him. Brakes squealed. But the car wouldn't be able to stop soon enough. Buchanan had to leap forward, onto the hood of the car, sliding along it to absorb the impact, his face pressing against the windshield, stunned to see the unmistakable red hair of Holly McCoy behind the steering wheel.


Holly's face was contorted in a shocked, silent scream. Then a flapping windshield wiper struck the side of Buchanan's face, and he snapped his head up, peering over the top of the skidding car, seeing the two gunmen appear at the exit from the narrow street. Breathing rapidly, Buchanan raised his weapon and fired along the roof of the car, unable to aim effectively but shooting four times, often enough to send the men scurrying back into the cover of the narrow street.


'Drive, Holly! Don't stop! Drive!'


The car quit skidding and increased speed. Sliding, Buchanan banged his face against the windshield. He glanced frantically over his shoulder, seeing that they'd reached 20th Street. A one-way heading north, it forced Holly to veer left into a break in sparse traffic. But the momentum caused Buchanan to slide sideways on his stomach, to his left, across the car's wet hood. With a travel bag in his left hand and a pistol in his right, he couldn't grab for anything. But even if his hands had been free, there wasn't anything on the slick hood to grab.


The car kept veering. He kept sliding. He anticipated his impact on the pavement. Tuck in your elbows. Roll. Keep your head up, he mentally shouted to himself. He couldn't afford another trauma to his head. And then he was slipping off the left side of the hood. Heart pounding, seeing the sideview mirror, he hooked his right elbow around it, bent his legs up under him, felt a jolt, and dangled. The sideview mirror sagged from his weight. He kept his elbow crooked around it, dangling lower, his shoes inches above the pavement. The car skidded. His shoes touched the pavement. The car slowed. When the sideview mirror snapped off, Buchanan landed hard, rolling in a puddle, the wind knocked out of him, but not before the car had stopped, its momentum throwing him forward.


He lurched to his feet. More headlights blazed toward him. He heard sirens. He thought he heard racing footsteps. Then he definitely heard Holly shout from inside the car. She pressed a button that unlocked the doors.


But instead of opening the passenger door in front, Buchanan yanked open the door in back and dove in, slamming the door behind him. Sprawling out of sight, he yelled, 'Go, Holly! Move!'


13


She obeyed, squinting ahead past the flapping windshield wipers, darting her gaze toward her rearview mirror, straining to see if the sirens belonged to police cars chasing her. But the headlights behind her remained steady, and no men appeared on the sidewalk to shoot at her, and the sirens became farther away, less intimidating.


'What happened?' she asked in dismay.


As she turned right onto Massachusetts Avenue, steered a quarter of the way around Dupont Circle, and then headed south on Connecticut Avenue, Buchanan quickly explained, all the while remaining low on the back seat, out of sight. Even though their hunters knew what type of car Holly drove, they'd be looking for a man and a woman, not a woman alone.


Holly's hands were sweaty on the steering wheel. 'Are you hurt?'


'I pulled some stitches.' His voice was taut. 'If that's the worst, I'll be fine.'


'Until the next time.'


'Thank God you just happened to be driving along that street.'


'There was nothing "just happened" about it.'


'What do you-?'


'When you started down Twenty-First Street and they chased you, you ran from the sidewalk and darted between two passing cars.'


'Right, but how did you know about-?'


'The second car, the one that beeped at you, was mine. After the hotel's parking attendant brought it to me, I decided to drive around the block to see if I was being followed.'


'Sounds like you're learning.'


'And I also wanted to see if you got out of the hotel okay. I was driving toward you when I saw the fight, but you ran in front of me before I could get your attention. Then you disappeared along P Street. I was past that intersection, so I figured if I turned left onto O, I might get a glimpse of you coming from Hopkins or Twentieth Street.'


'But what if I'd stayed on P Street?'


'You don't strike me as the type to run in a straight line.'


'You really are learning,' Buchanan said.


'Evasion and escape.' Holly exhaled. 'I missed that course when I was in journalism school.'


'I didn't mean to get you involved. It was the farthest thing from my mind. I'm sorry, Holly.'


'It's done. But I helped make it happen. I didn't need to agree to meet you. I could have kept my distance. I'm a big girl. I stopped letting people control me a long time ago. Do you want the truth? I thought you wanted to meet me to tell me something that would put me back on the story. I got foolish and greedy. Now I'm paying the price.'


'Then you understand.' Staying low in the back seat, Buchanan spoke reluctantly. 'You realize that because they caught us together, they think we're both a threat to them. It was a possibility before, but now your life really is in danger.'


Holly tried to control her breathing. 'I had another reason for agreeing to meet you. An even more foolish reason. It had nothing to do with the story. Deep down, I wanted to see you again. Dumb, huh?'


Except for the flapping of the windshield wipers and the drone of the engine, the car became quiet.


Holly waited.


She finally said, 'Don't respond. Just let what I said hang there. Make me feel like a jerk.'


'No. I...'


'What?'


'I'm flattered.'


'You'd better say something more positive than that, or so help me, I'll stop this car and.'


'What I'm trying to explain is, I'm not very good at this. I'm not used to anybody caring about me.' Buchanan's disembodied voice came from the darkness of the back seat. 'I've never been in one place long enough to establish a relationship.'


'Once.'


'Yes. With Juana. That's right. Once.'


'And now I'm risking my life to help you find another woman. Wonderful. Great.'


'It's more complicated than that,' Buchanan said.


'I don't see how.'


'It's not just that I was never in one place long enough to establish a relationship. I was never one person long enough. It isn't me who wants to find Juana. It's Peter Lang.'


'Peter Lang? Didn't you say he was one of your pseudonyms?'


'Identities.'


'I think I'm going to scream.'


'Don't. Later. Not now. Get us out of town.'


'In which direction?'


'North. Toward Manhattan.'


'And what's in-?'


'Frederick Maltin. The ex-husband of Maria Tomez. There's one other thing we have to do.'


'Get you a shrink.'


'Don't make jokes.'


'That wasn't a joke.'


'Stop at a pay phone.'


'I'm beginning to think I'm the one who needs a shrink.'


14


At one a.m., between Washington and Baltimore, Holly parked at a truck stop on I-95. Buchanan got out and used a pay phone.


A man answered, 'Potomac Catering.'


'This is Proteus. I need to speak to the colonel.'


'He isn't here right now, but I'll take a message.'


'Tell him I got the message. Tell him there won't be any trouble. Tell him I could have killed those four men tonight. Tell him to leave me alone. Tell him to leave Holly McCoy alone. Tell him I want to disappear. Tell him my business with Holly has nothing to do with him. Tell him Holly doesn't know or care about him.'


'You sure have a lot to tell him.'


'Just make certain you do.'


Buchanan hung up, knowing that the number of the pay phone would automatically have shown itself on a screen on the catering service's automatic-trace phone. If the colonel wouldn't accept Buchanan's attempt at a truce, a team of men would soon converge on this area.


Buchanan hurried back into the car, this time in the front. 'I did my best. Let's go.'


As she pulled out into traffic, he reached for his travel bag. The effort made him wince.


He took off his pants.


'Hey, what do you think you're doing?' Holly asked.


His legs were bare.


'Changing my clothes. I'm soaked.' In the flash of passing headlights, he squinted at the waist of his pants. 'And bleeding. I was right. Some stitches did open up.' He took a tube of antibiotic cream and a roll of bandages from his travel bag, then started to work on his side. 'You know what I could use?'


'A normal life?'


'Some coffee and sandwiches.'


'Sure. A picnic.'


15


The colonel frowned and set down the phone. In the safe-site apartment five blocks north of The Washington Post, Alan - who'd been watching the colonel while listening on an extension - set down his phone as well.


The only sound was the faint drone of a car that went by outside.


'Do you want my advice?' Alan asked.


'No.' The colonel's narrow face looked haggard from strain and fatigue.


'Well, I'll give it to you anyhow.' Alan's portly cheeks were emphasized by whisker shadow. 'Buchanan's waving you off. He's asking for a truce. Agree to it. You've got nothing to win and everything to lose.'


'That's your opinion, is it?' the colonel asked dryly. 'I'm not used to taking advice from civilians, especially when they don't understand the serious nature of Buchanan's offense. A soldier can't be allowed to just walk away from his unit, certainly not Buchanan. He knows too much. I told you before, his behavior makes him a security risk. We're talking about chaos.'


'And gun battles in the street aren't chaos? This has nothing to do with principle or security. It's about pride. I was afraid of what would happen when the military became involved in civilian intelligence operations. You don't like taking advice from civilians? Well, maybe you ought to read the Constitution. Because taking advice is exactly what you're supposed to do. Without the Agency's oversight on this, you'd be autonomous. You'd love that, wouldn't you? Your own private army to do with as you want. Your own private wars.'


'Get out of here,' the colonel said. 'You're always grumbling about never seeing your wife and kids. Go home.'


'And give you control? No damned way. I'm staying with you until this issue is resolved,' Alan said.


'Then you're in for a long, hard ride.'


'It doesn't need to be. All you have to do is leave Buchanan alone.'


'I can't! Not as long as he's with that reporter.'


'But Buchanan says that his business with the reporter has nothing to do with you.'


'And you believe that?'


'He's not a fool. I was talking about gains and losses. He has nothing to gain if he turns against you, and everything to lose. But if you hunt him, he'll turn against you out of spite, and frankly, Colonel, he's the last person I'd want to be my enemy.'


ELEVEN


1


Buchanan woke to a throbbing headache aggravated by banging metal and a roaring engine. He roused himself and blinked through the windshield at where a sanitation crew was emptying cans and throwing bags of refuse into the back of a garbage truck. He glanced at his watch - 8 a.m. Holly was driving north on Madison Avenue in New York City.


'You should have wakened me.' Buchanan shielded his eyes from the hazy sunshine.


'So you could keep me company? No. You obviously needed the rest. Besides, I didn't mind the quiet. It gave me a chance to think.'


'About what?'


'I realized I can't go back. Not until we find a way to convince them this has nothing to do with them. I have to keep moving forward.'


'But there's only so far you can keep going until you drop. I'm not the only one who needed rest.'


'I took your advice,' Holly said.


'I don't remember giving.'


'Last night, I asked you how you'd managed to drive all the way from New Orleans to San Antonio, as tired as you must have been after having been wounded. You said you'd napped at rest stops along the way. So whenever I had to stop to go to the bathroom, I locked the car doors and closed my eyes. You're right. People make so much noise, slamming their car doors, it's hard to sleep more than a few minutes.'


'You certainly don't look like you've been up most of the night.'


'The miracle of cosmetics. Thanks to sinks and mirrors at rest stops. If we're going to pull this off, by the way, you need a shave.'


Buchanan rubbed his jaw, reached into his travel bag, pulled a safety razor from a pouch, and began to scrape it along his beard-stubbled cheeks.


'Ouch,' Holly said. 'Doesn't that hurt?'


'You get used to it. A lot of times on assignments, this was the only way to try to keep clean.'


He waited uneasily, hoping that she wouldn't take advantage of the reference and ask him questions about those assignments.


Instead she passed the test and merely concentrated on her driving.


'Have we got any coffee left?' he asked.


'We drank it all. But now that you mention it.'


She pulled over to a curb, parked with the motor running, ran into a coffee shop, and returned in a minute with two styrofoam cups of coffee and four Danish.


'You're a good provider.'


'And you'd better keep being a good teacher,' Holly said. 'The Sherry-Netherland's one block over on Fifth. It was mentioned in yesterday's article in the Post. How do you want to do this?'


'First, we find a parking garage that has space.'


'Easier said than done.'


'Then we look for somebody watching Frederick Maltin's apartment.'


'Why would someone be watching-?'


'To tie up an unfortunate loose end. I don't think he was expected to be as big a problem as he's become, going to reporters, drawing attention to Maria Tomez's disappearance. My guess is, whoever's responsible will want to take care of that.'


2


The Sherry-Netherland was diagonally across from the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Immediately across from it were the Grand Army Plaza and an entrance to Central Park. Despite the upscale address, so many people came and went, lounged and loitered in the area that it wasn't difficult for Buchanan and Holly to portray a convincing version of two tourists when they arrived an hour later. It was cool but pleasant for early November. They strolled around the block, admired buildings, checked out the entrance to the park, and effectively scouted the busy area.


'Somebody could be watching from neighboring buildings, of course,' Buchanan said as he took a photograph of a skyscraper, using Holly's camera. 'But it doesn't look like anybody in the crowd is doing that.'


They sat on a bench near the gold-gilded statue of William Tecumseh Sherman.


'What now?' Holly asked.


'Time for you to do some role-playing. But I'm afraid it's a tough one.'


'Oh?'


'You're going to have to impersonate a reporter.'


She jammed her elbow into his ribs.


'Hey, Jesus, watch it,' Buchanan said. 'That came close to where I was stabbed.'


'I might stab you myself if you keep acting that way.'


Buchanan laughed. 'You brought your reporter's ID, I hope.'


'Always. It's in my camera bag.'


'Well, I just became your assistant. Call me. who was that guy who tagged along with you in New Orleans?'


'Ted.'


'Right. Call me Ted. We're about to pay a professional visit to Mr Maltin. You'd better let your assistant carry the camera bag.'


'You know, you don't do that often enough.'


'Carry your bag?'


'No. A moment ago, you were smiling.'


They waited for the light, crossed at 59th Street, and headed north along crowded Fifth Avenue toward the canopied entrance to the Sherry-Netherland. Nodding to the uniformed doorman who was getting a taxi for a well-dressed, elderly woman, Buchanan pushed the revolving door and entered ahead of Holly to check out the lobby.


Gentle lights gave it a golden hue. Colorful flowers stood in a vase on a side table. Ahead, on the right, a short corridor led to elevators. On the left, across from the corridor, the reception counter was next to a newspaper-magazine shop. A uniformed clerk stood in the lobby, another behind the counter. A middle-aged, spectacled woman straightened things next to the cash register at the magazine shop.


No sign of a threat, Buchanan decided as he waited for Holly to come out of the revolving door and join him.


'Yes, sir?' The clerk in the lobby stepped forward.


Typically the clerk singled out the male of a couple. But because Buchanan was supposed to be Holly's assistant, he straightened the camera bag around his shoulder and turned to her, his eyebrows raised, waiting for her to answer.


Holly immediately assumed her role. 'I'm a reporter.' She held out her press ID.


The clerk glanced at the card, his inspection cursory, probably paying attention to the newspaper's name and little else, Buchanan hoped. Holly hadn't volunteered her own name, and with luck, the clerk wouldn't have noticed it on the card.


'I'm here to see Mr Maltin.' Holly put the press card away.


'Did you have an appointment?'


'No. But if he's free, I'd appreciate ten minutes of his time.'


'One moment.' The clerk walked over to the counter and picked up a phone, pressing numbers. 'Mr Maltin, there's a reporter from The Washington Post to see you. A lady with a photographer. Yes, sir, I'll tell them.' The clerk set down the phone. 'Mr Maltin doesn't wish to be disturbed.'


'But yesterday, he couldn't get enough of reporters.'


'All I know is he doesn't wish to be disturbed.'


'Please, call him back.'


'I'm afraid I-'


'Really, it's important. I have information about his missing wife.'


The clerk hesitated.


'He'll be very unhappy if he finds out you didn't give him the message.'


The clerk's gaze darkened. 'One moment.' He walked back to the desk, picked up the phone, pressed numbers, and this time spoke with his back turned so that Holly and Buchanan couldn't hear what he said. When the clerk pivoted in their direction and set down the phone, he looked irritated. 'Mr Maltin will see you. Come with me.'


They followed the clerk toward a row of elevators, and after they got in, the clerk stared straight ahead, pressing the button for the thirtieth floor. Sure, Buchanan thought. This way he guarantees that we get off where we're supposed to be going.


At the thirtieth floor, the clerk waited until Holly rang the bell for Frederick Maltin's apartment. Only when Maltin opened the door, glowered at Holly and Buchanan, and gestured grudgingly for them to enter, did the clerk step back into the elevator.


Buchanan and Holly walked past Maltin, who shut the apartment door impatiently and strode toward the middle of a spacious room.


Spacious was an understatement. The high, rectangular room was large enough to hold at least four standard rooms. The wall to the left and the long one directly ahead were a panorama of windows that began at thigh-level and went all the way to the ceiling, continuing around the room, giving a spectacular view of Fifth Avenue to the south and Central Park directly across. The furniture, tastefully arranged, was antique. Buchanan had the impression of polished wood and crystal, of expensive fabrics and Oriental rugs, of authentic-looking Cubist paintings. A gleaming grand piano stood in a corner, next to a display of what appeared to be museum-quality ceramics. It wasn't any wonder that Frederick Maltin had complained about the financial terms of his divorce from Maria Tomez. He was obviously used to luxury.


'I don't know what information you think you have about my ex-wife, but it isn't pertinent any longer because I just heard from her.'


Buchanan needed all his discipline not to start asking questions. The scenario made this Holly's show. She had to carry it.


She did. 'Then you must be relieved.'


'Of course. Very much.' Frederick Maltin was a man of medium height and weight, in his middle forties, with a moderate amount of hair with a moderate amount of gray in it. As for the rest of his characteristics, there was nothing medium or moderate about him. His dainty, thin-soled, polished, black shoes and meticulously pressed, blended-wool, double-breasted, blue suit were obviously foreign, custom-designed, and hand-sewn. His brilliant, white shirt and subtle, striped tie had contrasting textures of premium silk. It was impossible for Buchanan not to pay attention to Maltin's diamond cufflinks as the man made a show of impatience by checking the time on his diamond-studded Cartier watch. He had a sapphire ring on the small finger of his left hand. All told, it probably cost him twenty thousand dollars to get dressed in the morning.


'The hotel clerk said you needed ten minutes with me, but I can't spare even that much time,' Maltin continued. His voice was reedy, imperious.


'But surely you're eager to tell the press the good news,' Holly said. 'Yesterday, there was so much commotion about your insistence that something had happened to her. You'll want everyone to know it was a false alarm.'


'Well, yes,' Maltin said, 'of course. I hadn't. You're right. It's important for you and other reporters to inform her fans that she hasn't been harmed.'


Holly sounded puzzled. 'The way you say that. It's as if you haven't called the media yet.'


'I. The news just reached me. I'm still adjusting. I'm so relieved, you see.' Maltin removed a burgundy, silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and wiped his brow.


Yeah, you look relieved all to hell, Buchanan thought.


'I haven't had time to compose myself. To make plans.'


'What did your ex-wife tell you?' Holly asked. 'Where has she been for the past two weeks?'


Maltin looked blank. 'Away. She told me where, but she doesn't want me to reveal the precise location. She wants to stay away a while longer. To rest. After this misunderstanding, reporters will swarm all over her if they get the opportunity.'


'Well, can't you give us a general idea of where she is?'


'France. But that's all I intend to reveal.'


'Did she explain why she dropped out of sight?'


'She wanted to take a trip. In my impatience about these unfortunate legal matters, I made the mistake of assuming that because I couldn't contact her, something disastrous must have happened to her.'


As Buchanan surveyed the room again, he smelled the faint odor of cigarette smoke, but there weren't any ashtrays in this fastidiously maintained room. Nor was there any odor of cigarette smoke on Maltin's clothes. Buchanan was always amazed that smokers didn't realize how pervasive the odor of their habit was. In this case, cigarette smoke from a distant area of the spacious apartment drifted in this direction. And Buchanan had the strong conviction that Frederick Maltin not only didn't smoke but also didn't approve of anyone smoking in his presence, certainly not in his apartment.


'I'll make a confession,' Maltin said. 'I overreacted because Maria wouldn't respond to my telephone calls. When she sold her apartment a few weeks ago and seemed to vanish, I was outraged that she'd ignored me, that she hadn't consulted with me. She used to consult with me about everything. I couldn't imagine she'd be that independent, even though we were divorced. So my pride insisted she must have been the victim of foul play. Ridiculous of me.'


'Yes,' Buchanan said, the first time he'd spoken. 'Do you mind if I use your bathroom?'


'Indeed I do. Very much.'


'But this is an emergency. I have to go.'


Buchanan walked across the room, heading toward a door at the far end.


'Wait. What do you think you're doing?' Maltin exclaimed in outrage. 'You can't. Stop right there. You stop where you are!'


'But I told you I need a bathroom.' Buchanan opened the door, entering a tastefully, expensively decorated hallway.


Maltin charged after him. 'If you don't stop, I'll call the police!'


Buchanan kept on. The cigarette smoke was stronger. It seemed to come from.


He opened a door on his left, revealing an oak-furnished study from which cigarette smoke drifted. A surprised man straightened from where he'd been leaning his hips against a large, polished desk. He was in his middle thirties, wore an average suit, had hair in slight need of a trim, needed a touch-up on his shoes, held a cigarette, and generally looked like the sort of person whom Frederick Maltin would prefer to avoid.


'Sorry,' Buchanan said. 'I thought this was the bathroom.'


'No problem,' the man said.


A handgun, butt forward, bulged beneath the left side of the man's suit. To draw the weapon, he would have to use his right hand, but his right hand held the cigarette. The man leaned forward as if to flick ashes into a waste can. What he did instead was drop the cigarette into the waste can and grab for his weapon.


Not soon enough. Buchanan didn't want gunshots to alarm anyone in the building. Clutching the strap of the camera bag, he turned as if to leave. And kept turning. Gaining momentum, he swung the bag hard and fast. The bag collided with the side of the man's jaw. It hit with a loud, sharp whack. The man arched sideways. His eyes rolled up in his head. Blood flew out of his mouth. With a groan, he landed on an Oriental carpet, skidded, and slammed his skull against the bottom of a shelf of leatherbound books. He breathed but otherwise didn't move.


'Jesus Christ.' Frederick Maltin had rushed along the hallway and now gaped in shocK at the man on the floor. 'Jesus Christ, what have you done?'


'I think he didn't want me to use the bathroom.'


'Oh, Jesus Christ.'


'Yeah, I get the idea. But Jesus isn't going to help you.'


Buchanan drew his own gun, which made Maltin gasp and Holly, behind him, flinch. Approaching the man on the floor, Buchanan aimed the weapon at the man's head while he took the man's.357 revolver away. Then he checked the man's pulse, turned the man's head so that he wouldn't choke from the blood in his mouth, and straightened, shaking his head. 'Sorry about the blood on the carpet, Fred. You ought to be careful about the people you hang around with or rather.' Buchanan noticed a satchel on the desk and opened it. 'Or rather the people you do business with. How much money is in this satchel? It sure is a lot of hundred-dollar bills. Banded in five-thousand-dollar units.' Buchanan took them out and made stacks. 'What would you estimate? Let's see. One hundred thousand. Two hundred thousand. Hard to squeeze all of it in there, and heavy to lug around, but yeah, I'd say that what we've got here, all told, is a million dollars.'


Maltin's mouth hung open. His face had turned pale.


Behind him, in the corridor, Holly looked stunned, not only by the money but by what she was witnessing.


'Fred, get down on your knees.'


Maltin trembled. 'Why?'


'Just do it. Here.' Buchanan went past Maltin, over to Holly, and gave her the revolver. 'If Fred tries to stand up, shoot him.' With a baleful stare toward Maltin, Buchanan went into the corridor.


'But where are you going?' Holly asked.


'To make sure we're alone.'


3


Working cautiously, ready with his pistol, Buchanan proceeded from room to room, searching everywhere. Just because he'd found one man, that didn't mean there wouldn't be others hiding in other sections of the apartment.


But he found no one. Relieved, he walked back into the study, again examined the man on the floor, satisfied himself that the man's life signs were steady, tied his hands with his belt, and turned to Maltin, whose face was beading with sweat that he couldn't wipe away fast enough. Indeed Maltin's burgundy handkerchief was soaked.


'Sit down, Fred. You look as if you're going to faint. Is there anything we can get you? A glass of water? Some brandy? Make yourself at home.'


Maltin's face was the color of concrete. Sweating more profusely, he nodded with a trace of desperation. 'Over there. In the top desk drawer.'


Buchanan opened the drawer and made a'tsking' sound. 'Fred, I'm disappointed in you. You mean to tell me you're a candy sniffer? Naughty, naughty, Fred. Haven't you ever heard of just saying no?'


Buchanan took a vial of white powder from the drawer and set it on the desk. 'But hey, the privacy of your home, an informed adult, blah, blah. Help yourself.'


Maltin glared at him, then pulled the top from the vial, and inhaled cocaine up one nostril, then the other.


'You got a little on your lip there, Fred.'


Maltin wiped it off and licked his finger.


'That's it. Don't be wasteful. Now are you comfy, Fred? Are you ready for some conversation?'


'You son of a bitch.'


Buchanan slapped him so hard that Maltin didn't have time to blink before his head was snapped sideways and specks of white powder flew out of his nose. The slap filled the room like the crack of a whip. It left a raw, red, welting handprint on Maltin's cheek.


Holly raised a startled hand to her mouth.


Buchanan slapped Maltin's other cheek, using even more force, snapping Maltin's head in the other direction.


Maltin wept uncontrollably. 'Please, don't kill me.' He wailed, his eyes scrunched pathetically, tears welling out of them. 'Please.'


'You're not paying attention,' Buchanan said. 'I want conversation. This satchel. This money, Fred. No one carries around this much cash for anything that's legal. What is it? A payoff? Were you already thinking about how to get it to an offshore bank so you wouldn't have to pay taxes on it? I mean, paying taxes on a payoff, that doesn't seem reasonable, does it? So what were you being paid off for, Fred? It had to do with your ex-wife, right? You drew attention to her, and somebody didn't like that. So you were told to shut up, and the inducement was. Well, you had a choice. A bullet in the brain, or a million bucks in the bank. But you're no dummy. Hell, for a million bucks, you'd sell out anybody. It doesn't matter if Maria Tomez is in trouble. She divorced you, so let the bitch take care of herself. Right, Fred? Pay attention, Fred. Tell me I'm right, or I'll slap you till your head's turned around.'


Buchanan raised his hand as if to swing, and Maltin cringed. 'Please, no, don't, no, please.'


'Don't mumble. Fred. The money's a payoff, and we got here while it was happening. The deal was you were supposed to call off the media, and since we were insisting, you decided to interrupt the proceedings and handle us. Except you hadn't worked out your routine yet. But by noon, when you called the reporters you spoke to yesterday, your act would have been perfect. Right, Fred? Right?' Buchanan feinted his hand at him.


Maltin swallowed tears, blubbered, and nodded.


'Now just so this isn't a one-way conversation, I've got a question for you, Fred? Are you ready?'


Maltin struggled to breathe.


'Who paid you off?'


Maltin didn't answer.


'Fred, I'm talking to you.'


Maltin bit his lip and didn't answer.


Buchanan sighed, telling Holly, 'I'm afraid you'd better leave us alone. You don't want to see this.'


'Drummond,' Maltin whimpered.


'What, Fred? You're mumbling again. Speak up.'


'Alistair Drummond.'


'My, my,' Buchanan said. 'Your ex-wife's new companion. And why would Alistair Drummond pay you a million dollars to keep you from telling the media you can't find her?'


'I.'


'You can tell me, Fred.'


'I don't know.'


'Come on, don't disappoint me, Fred. You were doing so well. Why would Drummond pay you off? Think about it. Make a wild guess.'


'I tell you I don't know!'


'Have you ever had any bones broken, Fred?' Buchanan reached for the little finger on Maltin's right hand.


'No! I'm telling the truth!' Maltin yanked his hand away. 'Don't touch me, you bastard! Leave me alone! I mean it! I'm telling the truth! I don't know anything.r


'For the last time, Fred, I'm asking you to make a wild guess.'


'Nothing about Maria has made any sense since she left me and went on that cruise with Drummond nine months ago.'


'Cruise, Fred? Exactly what cruise are we talking about?'


'Off Acapulco. Drummond has a two-hundred-foot yacht. He told her she could relax on board while the divorce was being settled. She may have hated me as a husband, but she relied on me as a manager. After that cruise, though, she wouldn't speak to me about anything. She canceled business meetings with me. She wouldn't take my telephone calls. The few times I saw her in public, at the Met or at charity events, Drummond's bodyguards wouldn't let me near her. Damn it, by not dealing with me, she's costing me money! A lot of money!'


'Relax, Fred. The million dollars you were paid to stop bothering her will keep you in cocaine for a while. But do you want some advice? If I were you, I'd use the money to travel. Light and fast and far away. Because I have a very strong feeling that when this is over, whatever it's about, Alistair Drummond intends to guarantee that you keep quiet, to make sure you don't come back for more money, to give you a jolt of cocaine that'll take you right out of this world, if you get my meaning. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't do it already. My guess is he didn't want it to happen so soon after you were making speeches in front of those reporters. Too coincidental. Too suspicious. But it will happen, Fred. So I suggest you liquidate, haul ass, change your name, and dig a deep hole. Bury yourself. Because they'll be coming.'


Maltin's face contorted.


'Be seeing you, Fred.'


'But.?' Maltin gestured toward the unconscious man on the floor. 'What about.?'


'The way I see it, you have two options. Think up a good story, or be gone by the time he wakes up. Got to run, Fred.'


4


'Lord, I've never seen anything like that,' Holly said.


They had emerged from the Sherry-Netherland, turned right off Fifth Avenue, and were walking along Central Park South. Traffic blared while tourists waited to get on horse-drawn carriages.


'Keep a slower pace,' Buchanan said. The sunlight aggravated his headache. 'We don't want to look as if we're running away from anything.'


'And we're not?' Holly whispered nervously. 'You broke a man's jaw. You assaulted Maltin. He'll have called the police the second we left his apartment.'


'No,' Buchanan said. 'He'll be packing.'


'How can you be sure? Every time I hear a police siren-'


'Because if you've never seen anything like what just happened, Maltin hadn't, either. If he called the police, he would also have called hotel security, but no one tried to stop us when we left.' Buchanan guided Holly into the Seventh Avenue entrance to Central Park. A cool November breeze tugged at his hair.


'Why are we going into-?'


'Backtracking. We'll turn right at this path up ahead and head back the way we came. To find out if we're being followed by anyone connected with the guy in Maltin's apartment. Besides, there aren't many people in the park. We can talk without being overheard. Maltin was terrified.'


'No kidding. I felt terrified myself. I got the feeling you were out of control. Jesus, you were going to break his fingers.'


'No. I knew I wouldn't have to. But you and Maltin believed I would. The performance was successful.'


'Don't you do anything without calculation?'


'Would you have preferred that I did break his fingers? Come on, Holly. What I did back there was the equivalent of doing an interview.'


'Not like any interview I ever conducted.'


Buchanan glanced behind him, then scanned the trees and bushes on either side of them.


'I don't mean just the threats,' Holly said. 'Why didn't you keep questioning him? How do you know he was telling the truth?'


'His eyes,' Buchanan said.


'Your eyes looked as if you were a maniac.'


'I'm good with them. I practice with them a lot. They're the key to being an operative. If somebody believes my eyes, they'll believe everything else.'


'Then how can you be so sure about Maltin's eyes? Maybe he was pretending.'


'No. It takes one to know one. Maltin's a single-role person. A shit who crumbles as soon as his power is taken away. It's no wonder Maria Tomez divorced him. He told me everything I needed to hear. I could have cross-examined him, but that would have wasted time. I already know what we have to do next.'


'What?'


They left the park and entered the din of traffic at the Avenue of the Americas exit.


'Be practical. Check into a hotel,' Buchanan said. 'Get some food and rest. Do some research.'


'And after that?'


'Find Alistair Drummond's yacht.'


5


After using a subway and three taxis to make sure that they weren't being followed, they ended in the general area where they had started, managing to find a vacancy at the Dorset, a softly carpeted, darkly paneled hotel on 54th Street between the Avenue of the Americas and Fifth Avenue. There they brought Holly's car from the parking garage and left it with the hotel's attendant, then registered as Mr and Mrs Charles Duffy and went to their room on the twenty-first floor. Buchanan felt reassured that the room was near the elevators and the fire stairs. They were in so public an area that it was unlikely anything threatening would happen. More, the location gave Buchanan and Holly access to several close escape routes.


They ordered room service: coffee, tea, salads, steaks, baked potatoes, French bread, plenty of vegetables, ice cream. While waiting for the food, Holly showered. Then Buchanan did. When he came out of the bathroom, wearing a white robe supplied by the hotel, Holly -also wearing a robe - was using a hotel hair dryer.


She turned it off. 'Sit down. Pull your robe down to your waist.'


'What?'


'I want to check your stitches.'


His back tingled as her fingers touched his skin.


She circled the almost healed bullet wound in his right shoulder, then moved her fingers lower, inspecting the knife wound. 'You did pull a few stitches. Here.' She took antibiotic cream and bandages from his travel bag. 'There doesn't seem to be any infection. Hold still while I.'


'Ouch.'


'Some tough guy you are.' She laughed.


'How do you know I'm not acting? How do you know I'm not trying to get your sympathy?'


'You test people by checking their eyes. I have other ways.'


'Oh?'


She ran her fingers up to his shoulders, turned him, and kissed him.


The kiss was long. Gentle. A slight parting of the lips. A tentative probing of the tongue. Subtle. Sensual.


Buchanan hesitated.


Despite his protective instincts, he put his hands behind her, holding her, feeling her well-toned back beneath her robe.


Her breath was sweet as she exhaled with pleasure and pulled slowly away. 'Yep. You definitely want sympathy.'


Now it was Buchanan's turn to laugh.


He reached to kiss her again.


And was interrupted by a knock on the door.


'Room service,' a man said from outside in the corridor.


'You're corrupting me,' Holly said.


'What do you mean?'


'I'm beginning to think your habits are normal. Here.' She reached beneath the pillow. 'Doesn't everybody need this when room service arrives? Tuck this into the pocket of your robe.' She handed him his pistol.


6


It was sunset when Buchanan wakened, dusk thickening behind the closed draperies. He stretched, and enjoyed the feeling of having had a good meal, of having slept naked beneath smooth sheets, of having Holly's body next to him. She wore her robe. He'd discarded his own after making love. Exhaustion had been like a narcotic that made them stretch out and doze. She attracted him: her humor, her sensuous features, her tall, slender, athletic grace. But he had always made a point of never allowing his personal life to interfere with his work, of never becoming physically and emotionally involved with anyone on an assignment. It clouded your judgment. It.


Hell, you never had any personal life. There wasn't any 'you' to have it. All you had were the identities you assumed.


And that's why you're here right now. That's what brought you this far. Because you kept that rule of being uninvolved when you worked with Juana, no matter how much you wanted her, and now you're searching for her, trying to make amends.


Are you going to make the same mistake again, this time with Holly?


What's wrong with me? he thought. Searching for one woman while I'm becoming attracted to another?


Get your mind straight.


He got out of bed, put on his robe, and walked over to a chair next to which he stacked the books and files that Holly had given him. Setting a lamp on the floor where it wouldn't cast much light and wake Holly, he leaned back in the chair and began to read.


Two hours later, Holly raised her head, rubbed her eyes, and looked over at him.


'Hi.' She smiled, lovely even after having just wakened.


'Hi.'


'How are you?'


'Feeling as if I've just seen a ghost.'


'I don't understand.'


'This material you gave me. I think I know what's going on. I don't spook easily, but this makes me cold.'


Holly sat up straight. 'What are you talking about?'


'The photographs in these books. There's something about.'


Holly got out of bed, tied her robe, and came quickly over. 'Show me.' She pulled a chair next to his, then peered at the book in his lap. 'What photographs?'


'This biography of Maria Tomez. I still have a lot to read, but one thing that's clear is that Frederick Maltin didn't just discover her and manage her. In a very real sense, he created her.'


Holly looked curious, waiting for him to continue.


'I've never seen her perform,' Buchanan said, 'but from what I gather, Maria Tomez sings not just well but passionately. That's her reputation, a fiery, passionate diva. An opera critic wouldn't ever go this far, but to put it bluntly, Maria Tomez is.'


'Sexy,' Holly said.


'That's the word. But look at these early photographs.' Buchanan turned pages in the book. 'This is Maria Tomez at the beginning of her career. Before Frederick Maltin. When she was singing in Mexico and South America, and none of the major critics was paying attention to her.'


Buchanan placed his index finger on a photograph of a young, short, overweight, dark-skinned woman with an insecure look in her eyes, a broad nose, an unbecoming hairstyle, pudgy cheeks, and slightly crooked teeth.


'All that hair piled on top of her head,' Holly said. 'And the way her oversized costume hung on her, as if trying to hide the weight.'


'The early reviews are unanimous about the quality of her voice, but it's obvious that the critics are holding back, trying to be kind, talking about her awkward stage presence,' Buchanan said. 'What they're really saying is she's too frumpy to be treated seriously as a stage performer.'


'Sexist but true,' Holly said. 'The big money goes to the woman with a great voice and magnetism.'


'The night Maltin saw her performing Tosca in Mexico City, Maria Tomez wasn't even scheduled. She was the understudy who had to step in when the production's star got sick.'


'I wonder what Maltin saw in her.'


'Someone to dominate. Someone to sculpt and shape. If Maltin had heard her perform under other circumstances, he wouldn't have associated her with a sexy role like Tosca. But once he did, he took advantage of the possibilities. According to this biography, no one had ever shown so much interest in her. Her career was going nowhere. What did she have to lose? She turned herself over to him. She gave him absolute obedience.'


'And?'


'Look at these next few photographs. What do you notice?'


'Well, she's progressively thinner. And her costumes take advantage of that.' Holly picked up the book to examine the photographs more closely. 'Obviously her hairstyle's been changed. Instead of being piled on top of her head, it's now swept back. It's long and thick. It's loose and curled. There's a kind of wild abandon to it.'


'As if a breeze is blowing it,' Buchanan said. 'As if she's on a cliff and the sea is crashing below her. What's the word? Tempestuous? That's what I noticed, too. The hairstyle has a passionate look to it. Now check this photograph.'


Holly did and shook her head. 'I don't know what.' At once Holly pointed. 'Her nose. It's been narrowed and straightened.'


'And check this photograph taken three months later.'


'This time I really don't get it,' Holly said.


'She's smiling.'


'Right.'


'Is she smiling in the previous one?'


'No.'


'And in the one before that?'


'She's not smiling there either, but in this first picture, she is, and. Oh, my God,' Holly said,'the teeth. They aren't the same. They're crooked at the start, and now. She's had them straightened and capped.'


'Or Frederick Maltin did,' Buchanan said. 'He promised her that within two years he'd have her career turned around. What none of the publicity mentions is how much physical alteration was necessary. In the next photograph, three months further along, her eyebrows are different. In the photograph after that, it looks as if something chemical or surgical has been done to her hair to raise the scalp line, to give her more forehead, to help proportion the rest of the face.'


'And all the while, she's been losing weight,' Holly said with excitement. 'Her wardrobe's been getting more stylish. The designs make her look taller. She's wearing expensive necklaces and earrings that glint and look good to the camera. Those changes attract the most attention, so the other, gradual, one-by-one changes become less noticeable. They're subtle and equally important, but done over a long enough period, they don't make anybody realize the degree to which she's been reconstructed.'


'Her fame was still growing,' Buchanan said. 'She wasn't under the same close scrutiny then that she would be in her prime, so a lot of the changes wouldn't have been noticed as she moved from opera house to opera house in various countries. Still, look at these later photographs, after she'd become a sensation. The changes continued. Here. Am I wrong, or has she had cosmetic surgery around her eyes, to make them seem more intense? In this photograph, have her earlobes been shortened? There's something about them that's different and makes her face look more proportioned.'


'Not only that, but her breasts seem higher,' Holly said. 'Possibly some kind of surgery there as well. Her waist seems longer. This is amazing. At first, it just seems that she's maturing and glowing from her success. But I think you're right. She was being sculpted and shaped. Frederick Maltin created her.'


'Once her body matched the passionate roles that Maltin wanted her to play, the critics paid more attention to her voice,' Buchanan said. 'She became an overnight sensation that took two years and who knows how many visits to dentists and surgeons. And all of a sudden she wasn't awkward on stage - because she wasn't selfconscious about her appearance anymore. She'd been made beautiful, and she loved being adored. The more her audiences applauded, the better she improved her stage technique to encourage their applause. Her voice blossomed. She became rich. Or rather she and Maltin became rich. Part of the deal was that she'd marry him. Not that I think Maltin cared about having sex with her. My guess is, he wanted to control her finances, and he could do that better as her husband in addition to being her manager. For fifteen years, he controlled her. Maybe he threatened to reveal the true story behind her success, to release before-and-after pictures, that sort of thing. Then one day at the start of this year, it became too much. She finally left him. She and Drummond met at a charity benefit in Monaco. They struck up a friendship. Drummond became her escort. Maybe he seemed safe to her. After all, he was old enough to be her grandfather. He was thousands of times richer than her. He probably didn't want sex. In fact, on the surface, there wasn't anything she could give him that he needed or didn't already have. So she kept seeing him, but the gossip photographers wouldn't leave them alone, and Drummond offered her a chance to get away from the public eye, to relax and regroup, to keep her picture out of the magazines, not to mention to be out of touch with the jerk she was divorcing. Drummond flew her to his yacht off the western coast of Mexico. A vacation in her home country. She stayed on board three weeks, flew back to New York, bought an apartment, retired from singing, and in effect, like Garbo, told the world that she wanted to be left alone.'


'Now, months later, she disappears.' Holly frowned. 'And your friend who sometimes provided security for her disappears as well. What happened two weeks ago? What's going on?'


'I don't think it happened two weeks ago.'


Holly didn't move for a moment. Then she straightened.


'I think it happened on the yacht,' Buchanan said.


'What happened? I still don't-'


'The photocopies of the recent articles you gave me don't reproduce the pictures very well. But this page from yesterday's Washington Post has clear photographs. A shot of Maltin at his news conference. A recent shot of Maria Tomez during one of her infrequent public appearances. Dark glasses. Concealing hat.'


'Tell me what you're getting at.'


'It looks like Maria Tomez had some work done on her jaw line. It's just a little different. And the ridges on her collar bone are a little different,' Buchanan said.


'A nose job's one thing,' Holly said. 'But changing a jaw line? Altering ridges on a collar bone? That's major reconstructive work.'


'Exactly,' Buchanan said. 'This last photograph. I don't think it's Maria Tomez. The more I look at it. the more I'm sure it's Juana impersonating her.'


7


'But how is such a thing possible?' Sounding frustrated, Holly drove rapidly along the busy expressway. Headlights blazed in the opposite lanes. 'Sure, Montgomery had a double in the Second World War. Movie stars use doubles all the time. These days, theatrical makeup is so realistic that actors can believably change their appearance. But Montgomery wasn't showing up at society charity benefits. As far as the movies go, cameras can play a lot of tricks. This is different. We're talking about a critically acclaimed opera singer. I don't care how good the makeup was, no one could imitate that once-in-a-generation voice.'


'But Juana didn't have to,' Buchanan said, still frozen by the implications of what he'd discovered.


Holly steered quickly around a truck and drove faster.


'The newspaper articles are emphatic,' Buchanan said. 'Maria Tomez retired from performing after she finished the cruise on Drummond's yacht. She went into seclusion in New York, except for brief public appearances, none of which involved singing. In some of these articles, she complains about having had pneumonia, about recurring laryngitis. The reporters note that her voice was hoarse. Since that's the one thing Juana couldn't have faked, she removed the problem by pretending to have problems with her voice. Otherwise, both women are Hispanics, with the same general build and facial characteristics. Maria Tomez kept changing her appearance in gradual ways, after all, so if Juana didn't look absolutely like her, it wouldn't have attracted attention. It would have been just another case of how Maria Tomez continued to change. As long as Juana's special makeup guaranteed that the similarities far outnumbered the differences. How many people know Maria Tomez intimately? Her ex-husband, whom she refused to see. Her other business contacts, whom she shut out after she retired. Her entourage, which she apparently changed after the cruise. Alistair Drummond, who continued to see her after the cruise and accepted her as Maria Tomez. We're talking about a woman who guarded her privacy to begin with. All Juana had to do was take a few phone calls from time to time, complain about a cold, appear briefly in public, get her picture in the paper, and no one would suspect that she wasn't the person she pretended to be.'


'Except you.' Holly steered around another vehicle, squinting from the glare of headlights. 'You suspected.'


'Because I had a reason to suspect. Because I'd seen the makeup room in Juana's house. Because I became more struck by Juana's resemblance to Maria Tomez as I looked at the photographs. Juana was on my mind, so I made the connection. What she did was brilliant. I can't get over what a genius she was at impersonating. I could never have done the equivalent.'


'The question is, why?' Holly said. 'Why did Juana impersonate her?'


'One common denominator is Alistair Drummond. The retirement, the need for seclusion, came after the cruise on Drummond's yacht. Drummond accepted Juana as Maria Tomez, and it was someone working for Drummond who paid Frederick Maltin to stop talking to reporters about his ex-wife. The disappearance. I think I understand,' Buchanan said quickly.


The tone in his voice made Holly shiver. 'What?'


'There were two disappearances.'


'Two?'


'It wasn't Maria Tomez but Juana who disappeared a few weeks ago. Drummond's doing his damnedest to find her. Why? Because if I'm right, nine months ago Maria Tomez never got off Drummond's yacht. That was Juana, and Drummond doesn't want anyone to know about the switch.'


Holly clenched the steering wheel. 'What in God's name happened on that yacht?'


8


LaGuardia Airport. To get there, they'd used Holly's car rather than a taxi because after checking out of the Dorset, they didn't want to attract attention by leaving her car in the hotel's garage for an indefinite period. At the airport's parking ramp, however, it wasn't unusual for cars to be left for quite a while.


They'd been forced to rush. They had needed luck with reservations and traffic. Nonetheless they'd managed to get two tickets on the last flight out of LaGuardia for Miami, and although they got to the boarding gate with only seconds to spare, that didn't matter. The point was, they were on the plane.


During the flight, both were too tense to sleep. They had no appetite. Still, they ate the lasagne the airline served, needing to maintain their strength.


'Your itinerary. Cancun, Merida, and Fort Lauderdale,' Holly said.


'I've never admitted to being in any of those places,' Buchanan told her.


'But the rest aren't in doubt. Washington, New Orleans, San Antonio, Washington again, New York, now Miami and points south. All in two weeks. Hanging around with you could be exhausting. And this is normal for you.'


'Better get used to it.'


'I think I'd like that.'


Back at the Dorset, Buchanan had wondered if the home port for Drummond's yacht would be the same as the city where Drummond's corporate headquarters were located. Knowing that all large vessels were required to file a float plan indicating the length and itinerary of an intended voyage, he had phoned the coast guard in San Francisco. However, the officer on duty told him that the yacht was based somewhere else - they didn't have a float plan for it. Buchanan had then phoned the National Association of Insurance Underwriters at its main offices in Long Beach, California. Eight p.m. east-coast time had been five p.m. west-coast time. He made contact just before the office closed.


'My name's Albert Drake.' He pretended to be agitated. 'My brother, Rick, works on. God, I can't remember. The Poseidon. That's it.' Buchanan knew the name from the research Holly had given him. 'Alistair Drummond owns it. A two-hundred-foot yacht. But Rick didn't leave an itinerary. Our mother's had a stroke. I have to get in touch with him, but I don't know how else. The coast guard suggested.'


Large vessels require such large amounts of insurance that the underwriters for the insurance companies insist on knowing where those vessels are at all times. As soon as Drummond's yacht reached a new berth, its captain was obligated to report his location to the insurance officials.


9


Key West.


After arriving in Miami past midnight, Buchanan and Holly used Charles Duffy's credit card to rent a car and began the 150-mile drive south along the Florida keys. During the trip, they stopped for take-out coffee and alternated driving while the other dozed, mercury-vapor lights along the extensive forty-two bridges of the Overseas Highway hurting their eyes and adding to their fatigue.


It was just before dawn when they arrived at their destination, the southernmost community in the continental United States. Key West, only four miles long and one-and-a-half miles wide, had a permanent population of almost thirty thousand. One of the last bastions of the counterculture in America, the sand-and-coral island remained synonymous with the unorthodox life style of Hemingway, who had once lived there and whose home - with its numerous cats supposedly descended from the novelist's original pets - was a national historic landmark. The town's atmosphere and architecture were an exotic blend of Bahamian, West Indian, and Cuban influences. It was known for its deep-sea fishing and its tropical foods. There was a U.S. naval air station. John James Audubon once had been in residence, also Harry Truman. The singer-novelist Jimmy Buffet was its most famous current spokesman.


But there was only one thing in Key West that Buchanan cared about, and after he and Holly caught a few more hours of sleep at a cheap motel that accepted cash in advance (he was getting nervous about using Charles Duffy's credit card), they cleaned up, ate, then got to business. An hour's stroll around the crowded harbor, where they bought sandals, short-sleeved pullovers, and cut-off jeans so they wouldn't be conspicuous, gave Buchanan ample chance to pose seemingly casual questions to vendors and fishermen. Soon he and Holly were able to stand on the wharf, lean forward against the railing, breathe the humid, tangy, salt air, and study their target.


Drummond's yacht, gleaming white against the green-blue of the Gulf of Mexico, was anchored a hundred yards off shore. Two hundred feet long, with three decks and a helicopter pad on the top (the chopper had taken off yesterday, heading south, Buchanan had been told by a fisherman), the yacht should have inspired awe but instead made Buchanan feel cold despite the eighty-five-degree temperature. The sleekly styled profile seemed threatening, like the curved tip of a massive hunting knife. The large sunning area at the stern, with windows providing a view from the upper decks, made Buchanan think of voyeurs and exhibitionists. Regardless of its resplendent white exterior, the yacht appeared cloaked in a black pall of gloom.


'Sometimes,' Holly said, 'when you're deep in thought, your eyes and face change. You look like a stranger.'


'How?'


'Solemn. Troubled.'


'Just so we understand each other, this has nothing to do with Maria Tomez,' Buchanan said. 'I want to know what happened to her, yes. But more than anything, I want to know what happened to Juana.' He turned his attention from the yacht and focused on Holly, who concentrated on his gaze, confused. 'A lot of this doesn't make sense to me. What I feel about you, for example. But I have to settle old accounts before I start new ones. After this is over, you and I can talk about what we have.'


Her red hair blowing in the wind, Holly thought about what he had said and nodded. 'I never assumed there were any guarantees. I never planned this. I got swept along. Fine. We understand each other. First things first. So now that we've found the yacht, what do we do?'


'You noticed the way I spoke to the fishermen and vendors in the area? A little conversation combined with a few well-chosen questions. The technique is called elicitation. It's the equivalent of what you'd call doing an interview. But the difference is that your subjects almost always know they're being interviewed whereas my subjects must never know. Sometimes, if they realize they're being pumped for information, their reaction can be lethal.'


Holly listened attentively.


'I thought you might be offended because I'm telling you how to do an interview,' Buchanan said.


'This whole thing's been a learning experience. Why should it stop now?'


'Good,' Buchanan said. 'Okay, elicitation.' He told her about his training, how he'd been required to practise by going into bars and striking up conversations with strangers, getting them to reveal such intimate data as their social security numbers and their birth dates, not only month but year.


'How did you manage that?' Holly asked. 'I'd have thought you were snooping.'


'I'd sit next to my target, have a few drinks, make small talk, comment on the television program that was showing above the bar, and at one point say that I'd learned something interesting today. The response, of course, would be "What?" I'd pull out my wallet and show him my forged social-security card. "These numbers all mean something," I'd say. "I thought they were assigned sequentially, but if you break down each group, you see that the numbers tell all kinds of things like when and where I was born. See, this number means I came from Pittsburgh, and this group of numbers was assigned to whoever was born in nineteen-sixty, and this number here tells which month, and. Here, I'll show you. What's your number? I'll bet you a dollar I can tell you where and when you were born."'


Holly shook her head in amazement. 'Is that really true?'


'That I was trained that way?'


'No. About the social security number.'


'What's yours? Let's see if I can tell you when and where you were born.'


Holly laughed. 'It works. You make up a place and date, and to show how wrong you are, the person you're interviewing tells you the information you want. Slick.'


'Elicitation,' Buchanan repeated. 'The art of extracting information without allowing your target to realize that you're extracting it. It's a standard method used by operatives trying to obtain military, political, and industrial secrets. It usually happens in bars, and the targets are usually assistants, secretaries, officers of lower rank, the kind of people who might feel frustrated in their positions and don't mind talking about their problems at work, provided they're stimulated with proper subtlety. A few drinks. A show of interest. One piece of information leads to another. It usually takes time, several meetings, but sometimes it can be done quickly, and in this case, it has to be because I have to find out what's happened to Juana. If she's still alive.' Buchanan's voice tightened. 'If she's still alive, I have to get the pressure off her.'


Holly studied him. 'What do we do?'


'What you have to do is be just what you are: sexy and desirable.'


Holly looked puzzled.


'While we've been talking, a launch from Drummond's yacht has been coming toward shore. Three crew members are on board.'


Squinting from sunlight off the water, Holly followed Buchanan's gaze.


'We'll watch where they go,' Buchanan said. 'Maybe they're in town on an errand. But maybe this is their day off. If they go into a bar, I'll.'


10


'Damn it, I didn't want to drive all this way in the first place,' Buchanan said. 'What's in it for me? Every time I turn around, you're winking at some young stud with a bulge in his shorts.'


'Keep your voice down,' Holly said.


'Harry warned me about you. He said to watch you every second. He said you'd screw any male old enough to get an erection, the younger the better.'


'Keep your voice down,' Holly said more strongly.


'I notice you don't deny it. You just don't want anybody to know the truth.'


'Stop it,' Holly warned. 'You're embarrassing me.'


They were in the Coral Reef Bar, sitting in a corner that had fishing nets on one wall and a stuffed marlin on the other. The small circular table had a cloth with wavy lines and numbers that made it look like a nautical chart. The ceiling lights were chandeliers that resembled the rudder wheel on a ship.


Buchanan slumped in a captain's chair and swallowed half a glass of beer. 'Keep my voice down. That's all you say. I'll make you a deal. I'll keep my voice down if you keep your pants on. Waiter, two more beers.'


'I'm not thirsty,' Holly said.


'Did I say I was ordering for you? Waiter! I've changed my mind. Make it a bourbon on the rocks.'


'You already had two at the other place. Two beers here and.


Dave, it's only noon, for God's sake.'


'Just shut up, okay?' Buchanan slammed the table. 'I'll drink when I want to. If you'd stop jumping into bed with every-'


'Sir,' a voice said, 'you're disturbing the other customers.'


'Tough shit.'


'Sir,' the man said, a big man, blond, with a brush cut and muscles straining at his T-shirt, 'if you don't keep your voice down, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'


'Ask all you want, pal, but I'm staying right here.' Buchanan swallowed the rest of his beer and yelled to the waiter, 'Where's that bourbon?'


People were staring.


'Dave,' Holly said.


Buchanan slammed the table again. 'I told you, shut the fuck up!'


'Okay,' the big man said. 'Let's go, buddy.'


'Hey!' Buchanan objected as the big man grabbed him. 'What the-?' Jerked to his feet, pretending to stagger, Buchanan fell against the table, upsetting glasses. 'Jesus, watch my arm. You're breaking it.'


'I'd like to, buddy.'


As the big man twisted Buchanan's arm behind his back and guided him toward the exit, Buchanan glared backward toward Holly. 'What are you waiting for? Let's go.'


Holly didn't answer.


'I said let's go!'


Holly still didn't answer. She flinched as Buchanan kept shouting from outside the bar. Slowly she raised her beer glass to her lips, sipped, squinted at her trembling hand, lowered the glass, and wiped at her eyes.


'Are you all right?'


Holly looked up at a good-looking, tanned, slender man in his twenties who wore a white uniform.


She didn't answer.


'Hey, I really don't mean to bother you,' the man said. 'You've had enough of that already. But you do look a little shook up. If there's anything I can do. Can I buy you another drink?'


Holly wiped at her eyes again, straightening, trying to look dignified. She directed her gaze, frightened, toward the door. 'Please.'


'Another beer for the lady.'


'And...'


'What?'


'I'm. I'd really appreciate it if you could make sure he doesn't hurt me when I leave.'


11


Buchanan leaned against the railing on the dock. Surrounded by the activity of tourists and fishermen, he wouldn't be noticed as he watched the launch cutting through the green-blue water, passing cabin cruisers and fishing boats, returning to the three-decked, two-hundred-foot-long, gleaming, white yacht that was anchored beyond the other vessels, a hundred yards off shore. The overhead sun was now behind him so that he didn't have to squint from the reflection of sunlight off the Gulf of Mexico. He had no trouble seeing that among the three crew members returning to the yacht, a gorgeous, red-headed woman was chatting agreeably with them, one of the crew members allowing her to put her hand on the wheel of the launch's controls.


As they boarded the yacht, Buchanan nodded, glanced around to make sure he wasn't being watched, and strolled away. Or seemed to. The fact is that as he wandered along the Key West dock, he persistently, subtly studied the yacht, pretending to take pictures of the town, using the telephoto lens on Holly's camera as a telescope. After all, Holly might get in trouble over there, although she'd been adamant that she was able to take care of herself. Even so, if she came out onto one of the decks and looked agitated, he had told her he would get to her as fast as he could.


Near five o'clock, the launch left the yacht again, coming toward shore: the same three crew members and Holly. She got out on the dock, kissed one of the men on the cheek, ruffled another's hair, hugged the third, and walked with apparent contentment into town.


Buchanan reached their small, shadowy, motel room a minute before she did. Worry made the time seem longer.


'How did it go?' he asked with concern as she came in.


She took off her sandals and sat on the bed, looking exhausted. 'They sure had trouble keeping their hands to themselves. I had to stay on the move. I feel like I've been running a marathon.'


'Do you want a drink of water? How about some of this fruit I bought?'


'Yeah, some fruit would be nice. An orange or. Great.' She sipped from the Perrier he brought her. 'Is this what you call a debriefing?'


'Yes. If this were business.'


'Isn't it? You make the agent you've recruited feel comfortable and wanted. Then you.'


'Hey, not everything I do is calculated.'


'Oh?' Holly studied him for a moment. 'Good. In that case, the yacht. There are fifteen crew members. They take turns coming ashore. They think Drummond's - to quote one of the crew members - a domineering asshole. He scares them. While he's aboard. But when the cat's away, the mice play, sometimes bringing women aboard. To show off the yacht and get even with Drummond for the way he abuses them.'


Buchanan set a pencil and a notepad on the dingy table. 'Draw a diagram for the layout of each room on each deck. I need to know where everything is, where and when the crew eat and sleep, every detail you can think of. I know you're tired, Holly. I'm sorry, but this is going to take a while.'


12


It wasn't difficult getting a wetsuit. There were plenty of dive shops in Key West. The water was warm enough that Buchanan normally wouldn't have needed to rent the insulating suit, but the stitches in his side made this an abnormal situation. He needed to protect the healing knife wound. He wanted to minimize the amount of blood that would dissolve from the scabs around the stitches and disperse through the water. As in Cancun, when he'd escaped the police by swimming across the channel from the island to the mainland, he worried about sharks and barracuda. Back then, of course, it had been blood from a bullet wound that had worried him, but the difference was the same. At least, this time he'd been able to prepare, although another element from the Cancun swim continued to trouble him - his headache.


His skull wouldn't stop throbbing. He felt as if his nerves were leather cords being stretched to the snapping point. But he couldn't let the pain distract him. He had to keep going, swimming through the three a.m. water, his black wetsuit blending with the night. He kept his arms loose at his sides, moving his feet gently, stroking with his fins, trying anxiously not to make noise or create whitecaps in the water. He kept his face down as much as possible, even though he had blackened it before leaving shore so that it wouldn't contrast with the dark water. The stars glistened. A quarter moon was beginning to rise. That would be enough light for him as he eased closer to the yacht.


Then he touched the anchor chain. Peering up, he heard no footsteps or voices. Although the wetsuit made the water feel even warmer than it was, he shivered involuntarily, his testicles receding toward his groin. He squinted back toward the lights of Key West, thought of Holly waiting for him, mustered his resolve, took off his mask and flippers, tied them to the chain, and began to climb. The effort strained his shoulder and his side. But he had to keep moving. Slowly, soundlessly, he pulled himself up the chain until he reached where it went into the hull. The hole was too small for him to enter, but it and the bulky chain gave him places to wedge his mesh-rubber slippers while he fought for balance, reached up, and grasped the edge of the bow. Drawing himself up, he peered over the edge, saw no one, looked for intrusion detectors, saw no evidence of them either, and squirmed over the railing onto the softly lit deck.


As he scurried for cover beneath an exterior stairway, he knew he left a trail of water, but that couldn't be avoided. Fortunately most of the water had drained from his wetsuit while he'd climbed. Soon the remainder would stop trickling out. Until then, he had to take advantage of the time he had.


A few windows were lit on the decks that loomed above him. The stairways, corridors, and walkways had lights as well. But they glowed, separate enough and weakly enough that there were abundant shadows into which Buchanan could creep. The mesh-rubber slippers that he'd worn beneath his fins had ridges along the soles that gave them traction. He left almost no water as he made his way softly along a walkway, into a corridor, and up a stairwell.


He followed Holly's instructions. Her description of the yacht's layout had been detailed. So had her assessment of the crew, who evidently were unmotivated when the master wasn't there to intimidate them. Buchanan listened intently, heard no one, emerged from the stairwell, and crept along a corridor on the middle deck, passing doors on each side. Only one door attracted him - at the end on the right. Holly had said that was the one area the crew hadn't shown her.


'Off limits,' they'd told her.


'Why?' she had asked.


'We don't know. It's always locked,' had been the answer.


The door was situated between the door to Drummond's sleeping quarters on the right and the door to the yacht's reception area, a large, luxuriously appointed room that occupied a third of this level and had windows that looked down on the sun deck at the stern.


'Well, you must have some idea what's in there,' Holly had said to the crew members.


'None. We were told we'd lose our jobs if we ever tried to get in.'


The door had two double-bolt locks. Buchanan removed two short metal prongs from a pocket of the wetsuit. He'd finished picking the first lock when he heard footsteps on the stairway at the opposite end of the corridor. Fighting to keep his hands steady, he worked the pins in the second lock.


The footsteps came lower, closer.


Buchanan didn't dare look in that direction. He had to keep concentrating on the lock, manipulating the metal prongs.


The footsteps were almost to the bottom.


Buchanan turned the knob, slipped into the murky room, and closed the door. He held his breath, pressed an ear against the bulkhead, and listened. After thirty seconds, still not having heard any sound from the corridor, he found a light switch, flicked it, and blinked from the sudden illumination.


What he saw made him frown. In this narrow room, which was connected by a locked door to Alistair Drummond's sleeping quarters, there were several rows of television monitors and video tape recorders.


Buchanan turned down the sound controls, then activated the monitors. In a moment, the glowing screens revealed numerous rooms and sections of decks. On one screen, he watched two crew men in the control room. On another screen, he saw two other crew members watching television. On a third screen, he saw a half-dozen crew members sleeping on bunks. On a fourth, he saw a man - presumably the captain - sleeping in a room that he had to himself. On other screens, Buchanan saw numerous empty bedrooms- Those dark rooms and the others in which people slept appeared with a green tint, an indication that a night-vision lens was being used on the hidden cameras that monitored those areas. The monitors that showed exterior sections of the yacht were also tinted green. Presumably the cameras would automatically convert to a normal lens when the indoor lights were on or during daylight.


So Alistair Drummond likes to eavesdrop on his guests, Buchanan thought. The old man goes into his bedroom, locks his door, unlocks the door to this adjacent room, and comes in here to see what his crew is doing when he isn't around, more important to see what his guests are up to - undressing, relieving themselves, fucking, doing drugs, whatever. And all of it can be recorded for repeated viewing enjoyment.


Buchanan directed his attention to a locked metal cabinet. After picking its lock, he opened the cabinet and found row upon row of labeled video tapes. August 5, 1988. October 10, 1989. February 18, 1990. Buchanan glanced quickly over them, noting that they were arranged sequentially. At least a hundred, Alistair Drummond's greatest hits.


The cruise Buchanan wanted to know about had occurred during February. He found a tape for that month, put it into a player, and pressed the 'on' button, making sure that the sound was off. The video quality was remarkably clear, even when the images had a greenish tint. The cruise had been well attended. Various shots of various locations showed guests in their most intimate, revealing, compromising positions. Oral sex and sodomy were especially popular. Buchanan eventually counted thirteen men and twelve women. The men - in middle age - had an overbearing manner, as if addicted to wielding power. The women were attractive, well dressed, and treated as if they were hookers. All the men and women were Hispanic.


Buchanan noticed an ear plug and inserted it into the television monitor. After adjusting the sound, he was able to hear what was on the tape. As he concentrated to translate the Spanish voices, he realized from comments they made that the women were indeed hookers and that the men were high-ranking members of the Mexican government. At once he realized something else. These tapes weren't intended merely for Drummond's voyeuristic pleasure.


Blackmail crossed Buchanan's mind at the same time as he reacted with shock to the sight of Maria Tomez on the screen. At least, he believed it was Maria Tomez. Thinking about doubles, he couldn't be sure. He needed to study the image carefully before he was convinced that it was definitely Maria Tomez and not Juana impersonating her. The night-vision lens tinted the image green. It showed what appeared to be the sun deck at the rear of the yacht. The angle was from above, downward, as if the camera had been hidden in an upper wall or beneath an elevated walkway. A digital display indicated that the time the tape had been made was 1:37 in the morning. The sound track was somewhat crackly. Nonetheless Buchanan was able to hear distant party music, a woman laughing faintly.


Maria Tomez, wearing an elegant, low-cut, evening gown, leaned against the stern's railing, her back to the camera, apparently watching the wake of the ship. A man spoke to her in Spanish, and she turned. A tall, slender, thin-faced, hawk-nosed, Hispanic male, wearing a dinner jacket, stepped into view. He spoke again. This time, Maria Tomez answered. The quality of the sound became better, presumably because Drummond had used a remote control to adjust the directional microphone hidden on the sun deck. 'No, I'm not cold,' Maria Tomez said in Spanish.


The camera zoomed in as the man approached her.


13


'My God,' Holly said. She watched the tape and felt sick. 'Jesus.'


Dismayed, Buchanan had sealed the tape in a plastic bag that he'd found in the room. Muscles rigid from tension, he had made a copy of the tape but otherwise left everything the way he had found it. Then he had locked the door behind him and crept down to the main deck. His head continued to ache all the while he'd climbed down the anchor chain, retrieved his mask and fins from where he'd tied them, and swam back to shore, this time on his back, keeping the tape above water.


The tape ended, and Holly continued to stare at the screen in disgust. 'God damn him to hell.' What she had seen on a video player that Buchanan had rented when he returned to the motel was the rape and murder of Maria Tomez. Or possibly the sequence was in the reverse - murder and then rape, if it was possible to rape, as opposed to violate, a corpse. 'Rape' implied overcoming someone's will whereas a corpse couldn't object to anything, and perhaps the latter was what the tall, slender, hawk-nosed man had liked, an absolute lack of resistance.


The man had approached Maria Tomez, asking again if she felt cold. He'd put his arm around her with the pretense of warming her. Maria Tomez had taken his arm away. The man had persisted, and Maria Tomez had begun to struggle. 'Now, now,' the man had said drunkenly, 'you must not be cold to me. I forbid it.' He had chuckled, pinning her with his arms, kissing her face and neck, trying to kiss the tops of her breasts all the while she squirmed and twisted her face from side to side and tried to push him away. 'Be warm,' he had said in Spanish. 'Be warm. I am warm. Can you feel it?' He had chuckled again. When she shoved at him, he had laughed and shaken her. When she slapped his face, he had punched her. She had spat at him. 'Puta,' he had said and struck her with an uppercut that jolted her up, then back, then down. As she toppled, he grabbed for her, his fingers catching the top of her gown, ripping, exposing her breasts. As the back of her skull hit the deck, he lunged and kept ripping, exposing her stomach, her groin, her thighs, her knees. He tore off her lacy underwear. For a moment, he paused. The camera showed Maria Tomez motionless, naked on her back on the deck, her dress spread out on either side like broken wings. The man's paralysis lasted another second. Abruptly he opened his belt, dropped his pants, and fell upon her. His breathing was rapid and hoarse. His buttocks kept pumping. Then he moaned and slumped and chuckled. 'Now do you feel warm?' She didn't answer. He nudged her. She didn't move. He slapped her again. When she still didn't move, he groped to his knees, grasped her face, squeezed her cheeks, twisted her head from side to side, and breathed more hoarsely. Urgently he stood, buckled his pants, glanced furtively around, lifted Maria Tomez to her feet.


And with an expression that combined fear with disgust, threw her overboard.


As Holly continued to stare in dismay at the static-filled screen, Buchanan stepped past her to shut off the VCR and the television. Only then did Holly move. She lowered her gaze and shook her head. Buchanan slumped in a chair.


'Was she dead?' Holly asked quietly. 'When he dropped her into the water?'


'I don't know.' Buchanan hesitated. 'He might have broken her neck when he hit her. She might have suffered a fatal concussion when her skull struck the deck. He might have smothered her while he was on top of her. But she might also have been in shock, catatonic, still alive when he threw her into the water. The son of a bitch didn't even take the trouble to make sure. He didn't care if she was alive. All he cared about was himself. He'd used her. Then he threw her away. Like a sack of garbage.'


The room was dark. They sat in silence for quite a while.


'So what happened next?' Holly asked bitterly. 'What do you figure?'


'The man who killed her probably thought he could convince people that she fell off the yacht. He was drunk, of course, and that would have affected his judgment in several ways. Either he would have had the false confidence to report having seen her fall. Or else a part of his mind would have warned him to go to his cabin, sober up, and seem as confused as everybody else when Maria Tomez was reported missing. Then he could have plausibly suggested that perhaps she'd been drinking, had lost her balance and fallen over the railing.'


'Except that Alistair Drummond knew the truth,' Holly said.


Buchanan nodded. 'He'd watched everything on the monitor in his private video-surveillance room. And a tape of a rape-homicide is so much more useful than oral sex, sodomy, and drug use when you want to blackmail a member of the Mexican government. Drummond must have been delighted. I imagine him going to her murderer, revealing what's on the tape, and arranging a coverup in exchange for certain favors. The initial stage wouldn't have been difficult. All Drummond needed to do was order his pilot to fly the yacht's helicopter to the mainland. Then Drummond could have told his guests that Maria Tomez had left the cruise early. They'd have no reason to suspect differently.'


'After that, though,' Holly said.


'Yes, after that,' Buchanan said. 'Drummond must have felt inspired when he thought of Juana. Perhaps Maria Tomez had told him about the clever way she had of avoiding tedious social events by using Juana to double for her. Perhaps Drummond found out another way. For certain, though, he did find out. He needn't have told Juana anything incriminating. All he had to do was explain that Maria Tomez wanted absolute privacy and offer Juana an irresistible amount of money to impersonate Maria Tomez for an extended period of time.'


'So complicated and yet so simple,' Holly said. 'If I weren't so disgusted, I'd call it brilliant.'


'But what does Drummond want from the person he's blackmailing?' Buchanan said. 'Obviously not money. Drummond's so rich it's hard to imagine that money alone would motivate him, especially the comparatively small amount that even a wealthy Mexican politician could give him. You're a reporter. Do you recognize the man on the tape?'


Holly shook her head. 'Mexico isn't my specialty. I wouldn't know one of its politicians from another.'


'But we can find out.' Buchanan stood.


'How?'


'We're going back to Miami.' His voice was like flint against steel. 'Then we're flying to Mexico City.'


14


'This is Buttercup.' Clutching the phone, speaking urgently, the husky-voiced woman used the code name she'd been assigned.


On the other end of the line, a man's sleep-thickened voice was tinged with annoyance. 'What time is.? Lord, it's almost five in the morning. I got to bed only an hour ago.'


'I'm sorry. This was the first chance I had to call.'


'They've been looking everywhere for you.' The man had said his name was Alan, although he was probably using a pseudonym.


'That's what I was afraid of. Is it safe to talk?'


'This call is being relayed from another phone,' Alan said. 'The two phones are linked by scramblers. Why are you calling me? I told you it had to be an emergency.'


'I'm with Leprechaun.' The woman used the code name they'd agreed upon.


'Yes. I assumed.'


'You have to understand. He's been telling the truth. What he's doing has no involvement with.' She tactfully didn't mention Scotch and Soda.


'I assumed that as well. I believe he genuinely wants out. It's his superiors who need reassurance.'


'But how?'


'It's a little late to ask that,' Alan said. 'You're part of the problem, after all. If you'd stayed away from him.'


'But in Washington, he came to me.'


'Same difference. You're together. Guilt by association. His superiors believe that the two of you reneged on your bargain not to publicize their activities.'


'This has nothing to do with their activities. How do I get that across to.? Should I phone them? Give me a number to call and.'


'No,' Alan said sharply. 'You'll only make things worse. They can instantly trace any call you make. You'd be guiding them to you.'


'Then what do I do?'


'Sever ties with Leprechaun,' Alan said. 'Go to ground. Wait until I tell you it's safe to reappear.'


'But that could take months.'


'True.'


'Damn it, I wish I'd never listened to you. When you approached me, I should have told you I wasn't interested.'


'Ah, but you couldn't,' Alan said. 'The story was too good to ignore.'


'And now it might get me killed.'


'Not if you're careful. Not if you stop making mistakes. There's still a way to salvage things.'


'You son of a bitch,' she said. 'You're still thinking of the story.'


'I'm thinking of approaching another journalist, who might be interested in telling your story. That would draw so much attention to you that they wouldn't dare make a move to have you eliminated. I could bring you in. The two of us could still get what we want.'


'What you want. All I want is a normal life. Whatever that is. Lord, I'm not sure anymore.'


'You should have thought of that before you accepted my information,' Alan said. 'But I repeat, if you're careful, if you do what I tell you, I think I can eventually bring you in safely. For now, go to ground. Assume another identity.'


'And what about Leprechaun?'


Alan didn't answer.


'I asked you, what about Leprechaun?' Holly said.


'Sometimes we can't get everything we want.'


'What are you talking about?'


'I never wanted this to happen. Really. I'd hoped that. He's a soldier. He'd understand more than you. Sometimes there are.'


'What?'


'Casualties.'


As Holly turned from staring at the phone in the booth down the lane from her room in the Key West motel, she saw a man's shadow next to ferns in the pre-dawn gray. In the numerous palm trees, birds began to chirp.


'I can't talk anymore,' Holly said into the phone.


'Trouble?' Alan asked.


'Let's just say I didn't win the Publisher's Clearing-House Sweepstakes.'


Holly set down the phone.


Buchanan stepped out of the shadows. Despite a pre-dawn breeze off the ocean, the air was humid.


'I thought you were taking back the wetsuit gear,' Holly said.


'I was. I paid the motel clerk to return it for me when the dive shop opens.' Buchanan stopped before her. 'Who were you calling?'


She glanced away from him.


'At least, you're not trying to lie,' Buchanan said. 'And at least, you had brains enough not to make the call from the motel room where there'd be a record on the bill. Not that it matters. The area's so small that automatic tracing equipment will tell our hunters we're in Key West.'


'No,' Holly said. 'The number I called is private. Your people wouldn't know about it.'


'So you say. In my business, I don't take anything for granted unless I do it myself. All phones are suspect. It must have been really important for you to make the call.'


'I did it for us.'


'Oh?'


'I was trying to get us out of at least part of the mess we're in,' Holly said.


'What part is that? Right now, it seems we've got plenty of mess to go around.'


Holly bit her lip. 'Shouldn't we talk about this when we're back in our room?'


'And give you time to think up believable answers? No, I think we ought to keep talking.' Buchanan grasped her arm. 'Exactly what part of the mess were you trying to get us out of?'


He guided her along the lane. The sky was less gray. The breeze was stronger. Birds scattered into the sky.


'All right, I've been wanting to tell you since we were in New York,' Holly said. 'God, I'm so relieved to. At the start, the reason I knew you were in Cancun, the reason I was able to get to Club Internacional ahead of time and watch you talk to those two.' She almost said'drug distributors,' then looked around the shadowy lane and chose other language, wary of being too specific before she reached their room. '. businessmen. The reason I.'


'Someone in my unit set me up.' Buchanan opened the squeaky door to their room.


Holly spun in surprise. 'You knew that?'


'It was the only explanation that made sense. Someone on the inside. No one else could have known where I'd be. The same person who told you about Yellow Fruit, Seaspray, the Intelligence Support Activity, and Scotch and Soda. That information could have come only from one of my superiors.'


Still grasping Holly's arm, Buchanan led her into the room, turned on the light, closed the door, locked it, and guided her to the bed. He set her down firmly. 'Who?' he asked.


Holly fidgeted.


'Who?'


'What will you do? Beat it out of me?'


'No.' Buchanan studied her. 'Cut my losses.' He put his toilet kit into his travel bag, glanced around the room to make sure that he hadn't forgotten anything, and walked toward the door. 'There are buses that'll take you back to Miami.'


'Wait.'


Buchanan kept walking.


'Wait. I don't know his real name. I only know him as Alan.'


Buchanan paused. 'Medium height. Chubby face. Short, brown hair. Early forties.'


'Yes. That's him.'


'I know him. He was my controller a while ago. He's with the.'


The hesitation seemed to be a test for Holly. She decided to fill in the gap. 'The Agency.'


Buchanan seemed reassured by her candor. He walked toward the bed. 'Keep talking.'


'He was very straightforward about what he wanted. He doesn't approve of the military's involvement in civilian intelligence operations. American servicemen, armed, in civilian clothes, using false ID, conducting Agency operations in foreign countries. It's bad enough to have a civilian caught as a spy. But a member of Army Special Forces? On active duty? Pretending to be a civilian? On a strike team intended to topple unfriendly foreign governments or engage in an unsanctioned private war against major drug dealers? If the public realized how out of control the relationship between the CIA and the military had become, Congress would be forced into a major investigation of American intelligence tactics. The Agency is under enough pressure, as it is. One more controversy, and it might be replaced by an intelligence bureau with stricter limits. That's what Alan's afraid of. So he came to me and gave me certain information, insisting that he never be named, that he be cited only as a reliable government source. To make my story look less like a setup, he didn't tell me everything. He gave me just enough hints that my work in checking them out and linking them would provide me with evidence to maintain the fiction that I'd come up with the story on my own. Why are you looking at me like that?'


'It doesn't make sense. If Alan was afraid that exposing the Agency's use of unauthorized military action would threaten the Agency, why the hell would he give you the story? It's exactly what he doesn't want.'


'No.' Holly shook her head. 'He was very specific about that, and I agreed. You and only you were to be the object lesson.'


'Oh, Christ,' Buchanan said.


'The idea was that I'd expose you as a single example of the dangerous use of the military in civilian intelligence operations. The government wouldn't have any more information than what was in my story. I'd testify that I didn't know anything further. The congressional investigation would eventually end. But the message would be clear. If the CIA was using military strike teams, it had better stop, or else the Agency and certain Special Operations units would be severely limited, if not disbanded. Careers would be destroyed.'


'Sure.' Buchanan's voice was strained. 'And in the meantime, you'd be a journalist celebrity. And Alan would have the shop back in his control.'


'That was the idea,' Holly said.


'Politics.' Buchanan made the word sound like a curse.


'But it's not the idea any longer.'


'What are you talking about?'


'That's why I phoned Alan,' Holly said. 'To cancel my agreement with him. I told him I wanted out. I told him I wanted to talk to your superiors, to assure them that what we're doing isn't related to them, that you aren't a risk to them and neither am I.'


'You honestly expected he'd go along? No hard feelings? Nice try? We can't win 'em all? That sort of thing? Jesus.'


'Alan told me he was sorry things got out of hand.'


'I bet.'


'We're still being hunted. He suggested I distance myself from you while he figures out a way to bring me in.'


'Damned good advice.' Buchanan squinted. 'Distance yourself.'


'No,' Holly said. 'I won't let you go.'


'Just how the hell do you think you're going to stop me?'


'Follow.'


'Lots of luck. What is it with you? You still think I'm a front-page story?'


No answer.


'Then maybe you figure it's safer to stay with me and run from them than to try to do it by yourself.'


Still no answer.


'Look, I don't have time to guess what you're thinking. I've got to get out of Key West before your phone call brings a hit team down here.'


'You.'


'What?' Buchanan frowned.


'You,' Holly said. 'That's why I want to go with you.'


'Make sense.'


'I can't make it any plainer. I want to be with you. It's not just because I feel safe with you, although I do. It's. I didn't expect you to be what you are. I didn't expect to feel attracted to you. I didn't expect that I'd get so used to being with you that my stomach cramps at the thought of your going away.'


'Now who's playing a role?'


'I'm telling the truth! I got used to you. And as long as we're spreading blame around, don't forget you're the one who came to me the second time. I wouldn't be in danger if you hadn't decided to use me. Hell, in Washington I saved your life. That ought to prove something.'


'Yeah, and I'm so wonderful that you fell in love with me.'


She started to say something.


'Save your energy,' Buchanan said. 'You're going to get your wish.'


Holly's eyes widened in surprise.


'I can't leave you behind,' Buchanan said. 'I just realized I made a mistake. I told you where I was going.'


'Yes. Mexico City,' Holly said.


'Because of Juana, I can't change my plans. I swore I'd help her if she ever needed me, and I intend to keep that promise. Which means I can't let you wander around until you're caught and you tell them where I've gone and what I'm doing. Pack. I want to get off this island before they get here.'


Holly breathed out. 'Thanks.'


'Don't thank me. This isn't a favor. As soon as I think you're no longer a risk to me, I'm cutting you loose. But in the meantime, Holly, pay attention. Take this advice. Do not force me to treat you as an enemy.'


15


The Yucatan peninsula.


A pall of smoke clung to the massive clearing. As construction proceeded, the crackle of gunshots punctuated the roar of bulldozers, cranes, and other heavy machinery. So did the crackle of flames, the source of the smoke that filled the area. Trees were being burned back, the clearing widened, anything to reduce the cover from which natives - descendants of the original Maya - persisted in their attacks on the construction crew and the equipment. The scattered stones of the leveled ruins of once-magnificent, towering pyramids and temples still lay among the towers that had replaced them, these made of steel. Occasionally the earth tremored, but the workers and guards no longer paid attention. As with the snakes, the smoke, and the gunshots, those who labored here had become used to anything. The job mattered. Completing it. Being paid. Escaping.


Alistair Drummond did that to a person, Jenna thought as she obeyed his orders, completing the archaeological survey map that would show that the ruins were not as impressive as photographs from space had led scholars to expect. A few minor structures. Numerous scattered stones, the result of earthquakes. Pathetic remnants of a formerly great culture. With one exception. The Mayan ball court. For reasons unexplained - perhaps because one intact structure might lend credence to his story - Drummond had insisted that the ball court, a distance from the area of demolition and construction, be spared. There, on its grassy, rectangular surface flanked by stone terraces upon which royal spectators had nodded approval, teams of men wearing leather armor had played a game in which they attempted to throw a punishing globe the size and weight of a medicine ball through a vertical hoop on either side of the court. The stakes of the game had been ultimate. Life or death. Perhaps that was why Drummond had spared it - because the ball court represented his cruelty, his pursuit of a goal at any cost.


He and Raymond had arrived yesterday afternoon, brazenly, in Drummond Enterprises' large, blue helicopter, as if he had nothing to hide as he took charge of the final stages of the operation. 'You've done well,' he'd told Jenna. 'You'll get an extra bonus.'


Jenna had muttered acquiescence, mentally screaming, All I want is to get out of here with my sanity. Her co-worker, her friend, her potential lover, the project's foreman, McIntyre, had died yesterday, from snakebite, a half hour before Drummond's helicopter had arrived. Jenna had prayed for the helicopter to arrive sooner so that Mac could be flown to a hospital, but the moment she had seen Drummond's determined, wizened face as the old man strode toward her through the smoke, she had realized that Drummond would never have agreed to waste the resources of the helicopter to take a dying man from the camp. 'He'll be dead before he gets to the hospital. We don't have time. Make him as comfortable as possible,' Drummond would have said. As it was, what he did say was, 'Bury him where the natives can't get to him. No, I've changed my mind. Burn him. Burn them all.'


'All' were the natives who'd been exterminated in their attempts to stop the desecration of their sacred land. Jenna had been certain she was going insane when she realized that a massacre had taken place. She'd known of tribes that were exterminated in South America, in the depths of the Amazon rain forest. But it had never occurred to her that portions of Mexico were equally remote and that communication with the outside could be so minimal that no one 'in the world' would have any idea of what was happening here. By the time word leaked out, there'd be no evidence of the atrocity. And who was going to talk? The workers? By acquiescing to the slaughter, by accepting obscenely huge bonuses, they were implicated. Only a fool would break the silence.


Now, standing in the camp's log-walled office, remembering how Mac had writhed feverishly on a cot in the corner not twenty-four hours ago, she listened numbly to final commands from Drummond about the charts she had prepared.


'Above all' - Drummond's aged voice was filled with phlegm -'the extent of the true discovery must be made to dwarf the archaeological ones. There'll be photographs, of course. But your charts will be given primary attention.'


At that moment, the door opened, and Raymond came in, wearing jungle clothing, holding a rifle, his face sooted from smoke, his shirt crimson with blood. 'If there are more, I can't find them.'


'But a different kind of enemy might be coming here. I think he's hunting us,' Drummond said, dismissing Jenna, who left the hut.


Raymond straightened, challenged. 'Who?'


'A dead man.'


Raymond furrowed his brow.


'Charles Duffy,' Drummond said. 'Do you recognize the-?'


'Yes, he was hired to watch the target's home in San Antonio. To deal with her if she arrived. He disappeared from the house three nights ago.'


'He's no longer missing,' Drummond said. 'His body washed up on a bank of the San Antonio River. He'd been shot. The authorities say he had no identification. One of the men you hired was able to get a look at the body in the morgue, however, and has no doubt that it's Duffy. But Mr Duffy is remarkable,' Drummond continued. 'While dead, he used his credit card to fly from San Antonio to Washington, D.C. He stayed at the Ritz-Carlton. For a portion of the next day, he stayed at the Dorset Hotel in Manhattan. After that, he and a companion flew to Miami where they rented a car.'


Raymond brooded. 'I don't understand the Washington connection, but the Dorset isn't far from the target's apartment in Manhattan.'


'And from the ex-husband. He was paid a visit by a man and a woman the day before yesterday. They interrupted the agreed-upon payment to him.'


'Maltin knows nothing,' Raymond said. 'All you paid him for was to stop attracting attention to the target's disappearance.'


'Nothing?' Drummond looked furious. 'Maltin knew it was I who paid him. That's what the man and woman learned from him. The woman so far hasn't been identified, although she has red hair and she claimed to work for The Washington Post, but the man's description matches that of the same man who interfered with surveillance on the home of the target's parents.'


'Buchanan?' Raymond scowled.


'Yes. Buchanan. Now think. What's the Miami connection?' Drummond snapped.


'The yacht. It's south of there. In Key West.'


'Exactly,' Drummond said. 'The captain reports that three crew members brought a woman aboard yesterday afternoon. A woman with red hair.'


'She must have been helping Buchanan. Checking ways to sneak aboard.'


Drummond nodded. 'I have to assume he knows something about the tape. And I have to assume that he'll keep coming closer. Intercept him. Kill him.'


'But where would I find him?'


'Isn't it obvious? What's the next link in the chain?'


'Delgado.'


'Yes. Mexico City. I just received word from my contacts at Miami International Airport that a man calling himself Charles Duffy bought two airline tickets to Mexico City. The helicopter will have you there by this afternoon.'


TWELVE


1


Mexico City.


The unregulated exhaust from countless smoke-belching factories and ill-maintained automobiles burning leaded fuel was trapped by a thermal inversion above the mountain-surrounded metropolis and made the air in the largest and fastest-growing city in the world virtually unbreathable. Buchanan's throat felt scratchy. He began to cough as soon as he and Holly got tourist cards and left Juarez International Airport. His eyes burned from the haze, so dense that if not for its acrid smell and biting taste it might have been thought to be mist. The air conditioner in the taxi they hired wasn't working. Nonetheless he and Holly closed their windows. Better to swelter inside the cab than to breathe the noxious atmosphere outside.


It was nine-fifteen. They'd managed to drive from Key West to Miami in time to catch an eight a.m. United flight to Mexico City. Because of a time-zone change backward, the duration of the flight had actually been two hours and fifteen minutes, and after eating a cheese-and-onion omelet supplied by the airline, Buchanan had been able to doze. For too long now, his schedule had been erratic. His exhaustion worsened. His headache continued to torture him.


So did the bitterness he felt toward Holly. Against his instincts, he had actually begun to trust her. As she'd pointed out to him, she had saved his life, and in other ways, she'd been of considerable help. But he needed to keep reminding himself that she was a reporter. In the stress of his search for Juana, he'd already indirectly revealed too much about his past. More, it made him angry to think that this woman whom he had allowed to get close to him had been sent by Alan to destroy him.


For her part, Holly remained silent, as if understanding that anything she said would be misinterpreted, as if knowing that her presence would be tolerated only if she didn't draw his attention to her.


'The National Palace,' Buchanan told the cab driver in Spanish, and the words were similar enough to English that Holly understood, although she didn't ask why they were going to a palace instead of to a hotel. Or maybe the National Palace was a hotel. She didn't know. She'd never been to Mexico City before. As it turned out, their destination was neither a hotel nor a palace but Mexico's center of government.


Even in the dense haze of pollution, the site was impressive. Amid congested traffic, an immense square was flanked by massive buildings, two of which were cathedrals. The National Palace itself was renowned for its arches, pillars, and patios.


After leaving the taxi, Buchanan and Holly passed through a crowd and entered the Palace's vestibule, where large, colorful murals lined the main staircase and the first-floor corridors. The murals, by Diego Rivera, conveyed the sprawling history of Mexico from the era of the Aztecs and Maya, to the invasion by the Spaniards, to the mixture of races, the numerous revolutions, and ultimately an idealized future in which Mexican peasants worked happily and coexisted gloriously with nature. Given the pollution outside, that idealized future was obviously a long way off.


Buchanan stopped only a moment to assess the murals. He'd become more intense, more driven, as if he were controlled by a terrible premonition and he didn't dare waste even a second. In a noisy, echoing corridor, he spoke to a guide and was directed toward a door down the hall. There, in a gift shop, Buchanan ignored books and artifacts on sale, scanning the walls, seeing photographs of what were obviously government officials, some in groups, others alone. He studied several of the photographs, as did Holly, although she risked a sideways glance toward him that revealed his alarmingly rigid cheek muscles and a strong, furious pulse in his neck and temple. His dark eyes seemed to blaze. He pointed at a photograph, the image catching Holly's attention as well: a tall, slender, thin-faced, hawk-nosed, Hispanic male in his early forties. The man had a mustache, wore an expensive suit, and exuded arrogance.


'Yes,' Holly said.


Buchanan turned to a young, female clerk and pointed toward the photograph. 'Este hombre. Como se llama, por favor?'


'Quien? Ah, si. Esteban Delgado. El Ministro de Asuntos Interiores.'


'Gracias,' Buchanan said. As he bought a book, he asked the clerk more questions, and five minutes later, when he and Holly left the gift shop, Buchanan had learned that the man who'd raped and murdered Maria Tomez was 'not just the Minister of the Interior. He's the second most powerful man in Mexico. Next in line to be president. According to the clerk, that's common knowledge,' Buchanan said. 'In Mexico, when the outgoing president chooses his replacement, the election is mostly a formality.'


Surprised that he'd broken his silence toward her. Holly took advantage of the opportunity, hoping that his anger toward her had softened. 'Unless somebody's got a videotape of him that's so disgusting it would totally destroy his career, not to mention put him in prison.'


'Or get him executed.' Buchanan rubbed his pained forehead. 'A man like Delgado would give anything not to have that tape made public. The question is what, though? What does Drummond want?'


'And what happened to Juana Mendez?'


Buchanan's gaze was intense. 'Yes. That's finally what this is about. Juana.'


The word stung, as did its implication: not you.


'Don't just tolerate me,' Holly said. 'Don't just keep me along because you're afraid I'll turn against you. I'm not your enemy. Please. Use me. Let me help.'


2


'My name is Ted Riley,' Buchanan said in Spanish. With Holly, he stood in a carpeted, paneled office, the door of which was labeled Ministro de Asuntos Interiores. Minister of the Interior. A bespectacled, gray-haired secretary nodded and waited.


'I'm the interpreter for Se¤orita McCoy.' Buchanan gestured toward Holly. 'As you can see from her credentials, she is a reporter for The Washington Post. She is in Mexico City for a limited time doing interviews with important government officials - to learn their opinions about how America could improve its relations with your country. If at all possible, could Se¤or Delgado spare a few moments to speak with her? It would be greatly appreciated.'


The secretary looked sympathetic, spreading her hands in a gesture of regret. 'Se¤or Delgado is not expected in the office for the rest of the week.'


Buchanan sighed in frustration. 'Perhaps he would meet us if we travel to where he is. Se¤orita McCoy's newspaper considers his opinions to be of particular importance. It is widely known that he is likely to be the next president.'


The secretary looked pleased by Buchanan's recognition that she was associated with future greatness.


Buchanan continued, 'And I am certain that Se¤or Delgado would benefit from complimentary remarks about him in the newspaper that the president of the United States reads every morning. It would be a fine opportunity for the minister to make some constructive comments that would prepare the American government for his views when he becomes president.'


The secretary debated, assessed Holly, and nodded. 'One moment, please.'


She entered another office, shut the door, and left Buchanan and Holly to glance at each other. Numerous footsteps clattered past in the hallway. In rows of offices, voices murmured.


The secretary returned. 'Se¤or Delgado is at his home in Cuernavaca, an hour's drive south of here. I will give you directions. He invites you to be his guests for lunch.'


3


'Can I ask you something?'


Holly waited for a reply, but Buchanan ignored her, staring straight ahead as he drove their rented car south along the Insurgentes freeway.


'Sure, what did I expect?' Holly said. 'You haven't been communicative since. Never mind. We'll skip that topic. What I want to ask is, how do you do it?'


Again, Buchanan didn't reply.


'At Delgado's office,' Holly said. 'That secretary could just as easily have told us to get lost. Somehow you manipulated her into phoning Delgado. I've been trying to figure out how. It wasn't what you said exactly. It.'


'I get in someone else's mind.'


Holly frowned at him. 'And the CIA taught you how to do this?'


Buchanan's voice hardened. 'Now you're being a reporter again.'


'Will you stop being so defensive? How many times do I have to tell you? I'm on your side. I'm not out to destroy you. I.'


'Let's just say I had training along the line.' Buchanan clutched the steering wheel and continued to stare at the busy highway. 'Being a deep-cover operative isn't just having false documents and a believable cover story. To assume an identity, I have to transmit the absolute conviction that I am who I claim to be. That means believing it absolutely myself. When I spoke to that secretary, I was Ted Riley, and something in me went out to her. Went into her mind. Stroked her into believing in me. Remember we talked about elicitation? It isn't merely asking subtle questions. It's enveloping someone in an attitude and emotionally drawing them toward you.'


'It sounds like hypnotism.'


'That's how I made my mistake with you.' Buchanan's tone changed, becoming bitter.


Holly tensed.


'I stopped concentrating on controlling you,' Buchanan said.


'I still don't understand.'


'I stopped acting,' Buchanan said. 'For a while with you, I had an unusual experience. I stopped impersonating. Without realizing it, I became somebody I'd forgotten about. Myself. I related to you as. me.' He sounded more bitter.


'Maybe that's why I became attracted to you,' Holly said.


Buchanan scoffed. 'I've been plenty of people better than myself. In fact, I'm the only identity I don't like.'


'So now you're avoiding yourself by being. who did you say you once were? Peter Lang?. searching for Juana?'


'No,' Buchanan said. 'Since I met you, Peter Lang has become less and less important. Juana matters to me because. In Key West, I told you I couldn't decide anything about my future until I settled my past.' He finally looked at her. 'I'm not a fool. I know I can't go back six years and God knows how many identities and start up where I left off with her. It's like. For a very long time I've been pretending, acting, switching from role to role, and I've known people I couldn't allow myself to care about in those roles. A lot of those people needed help that I couldn't go back and give them. A lot of those people died, but I couldn't go back and mourn for them. Most of my life's been a series of boxes unrelated to each other. I've got to connect them. I want to become.'


Holly waited.


'A human being,' Buchanan said. 'That's why I'm pissed at you. Because I let my guard down, and you betrayed me.'


'No,' Holly said, touching his right hand on the steering wheel. 'Not anymore. I swear to God - I'm not a threat.'


4


After the noise and pollution of Mexico City, Cuernavaca's peace and clean air were especially welcome. The sky was clear, the sun bright, making the valley resplendent. In an exclusive subdivision, Buchanan followed the directions he'd been given and found the street he wanted, coming to a high, stone wall within which a large, iron gate provided a glimpse of gardens, shade trees, and a Spanish-style mansion. A roof of red tile glinted in the sun.


Buchanan kept driving.


'But isn't that where we're supposed to go?' Holly asked.


'Yes.'


'Then why.?'


'I haven't decided about a couple of things.'


'Such as?'


'Maybe it's time to cut you loose.'


Holly looked startled.


'Anything might happen. I don't want you involved,' Buchanan said.


'I am involved.'


'Don't you think you're going to extremes to get a story?'


'The only extreme I care about is what I have to do to prove myself to you. Delgado's expecting a female reporter. Without me, you won't get in. Hey, you established a cover. You claim you're my interpreter. Be consistent.'


'Be consistent?' Buchanan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. 'Yeah. For a change.'


He turned the car around.


An armed guard stood behind the bars of the gate.


Buchanan got out of the car, approached the man, showed Holly's press card, and explained in Spanish that he and Se¤orita McCoy were expected. With a scowl, the guard stepped into a wooden booth to the right of the gate and spoke into a telephone. Meanwhile, another armed guard watched Buchanan intently. The first guard returned, his expression as surly as before. Buchanan's muscles compacted. He wondered if something had gone wrong. But the guard unlocked the gate, opened it, and motioned for Buchanan to get back in his car.


Buchanan drove along a shady, curved driveway, past trees, gardens, and fountains, toward the three-story mansion. Simultaneously he glanced in his rearview mirror, noting that the guard relocked the gate. He noted as well that other armed guards patrolled the interior of the wall.


'I feel a lot more nervous than when I went on Drummond's yacht,' Holly said. 'Don't you ever feel-?'


'Each time.'


'Then why on earth do you keep doing it?'


'I don't have a choice.'


'In this case, maybe. But other times.'


'No choice,' Buchanan repeated. 'When you're in the military, you follow orders.'


'Not now, you're not. Besides, you didn't have to join the military.'


'Wrong,' Buchanan said, thinking of the need he'd felt to punish himself for killing his brother. He urgently crushed the thought, disturbed that he'd allowed himself to be distracted. Juana. He had to pay attention. Instead of Tommy, he had to keep thinking of Juana.


'In fact, I don't think I've ever felt this nervous,' Holly said.


'Stage fright. Try to relax. This is just a walk-through,' Buchanan said. 'I need to check Delgado's security. Your performance shouldn't be difficult. Just conduct an interview. You're perfectly safe. Which is a hell of a lot more than Delgado will be when I figure out how to get to him.'


Concealing his intensity, Buchanan parked in front of the mansion. When he got out of the car, he noticed other guards, not to mention groundskeepers who seemed more interested in visitors than in their duties. There were closed-circuit television cameras, wires in the panes of the windows, metal boxes among the shrubbery - intrusion detectors.


I might have to find another place, Buchanan thought.


Subduing his emotions, he introduced Holly and himself to a servant, who came out to greet them and escort them into a cool, shadowy, echoing, marble vestibule. They passed a wide, curved staircase and proceeded along a hallway to a mahogany-paneled study that smelled of wax and polish. Furnished in leather, it was filled with hunting trophies as well as numerous rifles and shotguns in glinting, glass cabinets.


Although Buchanan had never met him, Delgado was instantly recognizable as he stood from behind his desk, more hawk-nosed and more arrogant-looking than he appeared on the videotape and in photographs. But he also seemed pale and thinner, his cheeks gaunt as if he might be ill.


'Welcome,' he said.


Buchanan vividly remembered the images that showed Delgado raping and murdering Maria Tomez. As soon as he had the information he needed, Buchanan planned to kill him.


Delgado came closer, his English impressive, although his syntax was somewhat stilted. 'It is always a pleasure to speak with members of the American press, especially when they work for so distinguished a periodical as The Washington Post. Se¤orita.? Forgive me. I have forgotten the name that my secretary.'


'Holly McCoy. And this is my interpreter, Ted Riley.'


Delgado shook hands with them. 'Good.' He ignored Buchanan and kept his attention on Holly, obviously intrigued by her beauty. 'Since I speak English, we will not need your interpreter.'


'I'm also the photographer,' Buchanan said.


Delgado gestured dismissively. 'There will be an opportunity for photographs later. Se¤orita McCoy, may I offer you a drink before lunch? Perhaps wine?'


'Thank you, but it's a little too early for.'


'Sure,' Buchanan said. 'Wine would be nice.' There hadn't been time to teach Holly not to turn down an offer to drink with a target. Refusing alcohol stifled the target's urge to be companionable. It made the target suspect that you had a reason not to want to relax your inhibitions.

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