The Covenant Of The Flame

ONE

La Guardia Airport.

The grim-faced man in the taxi's back seat leaned forward rigidly, straining to keep the taxi ten cars ahead of him in sight. He was thirty-eight, of medium height and weight, with brown hair and unremarkable features, so average that no one ever remembered him. He wore a conservative, moderately priced, nondescript suit, a cotton-polyester-blend white shirt, a subdued striped tie. His briefcase looked no different from thousands of others.

'Which airline?' the taxi driver asked.

The passenger hesitated, watching the taxi he was following.

'Hey, friend, I said, which airline?'

'Just a moment. I'm checking my tickets.'

'Don't you think you should have done that a little sooner?'

Ahead, the taxi the passenger studied turned right off the busy ramp, rounded a curve, and sped past a crowded parking lot. A sign said, TRUMP SHUTTLE, DELTA, NORTHWESTERN, PAN AM SHUTTLE.

'Turn right,' the passenger said.

'You waited long enough to tell me. Which airline?' the driver repeated.

'I'm still checking my tickets.'

'Hey, if you miss your flight, pal, don't blame me.'

The passenger squinted forward, noticing that the taxi he followed steered around the parking lot, passed the signs for Pam Am, Delta, and Northwestern, and approached a large new building on which a huge red sign announced TRUMP SHUTTLE.

'Up here will do,' the passenger said.

'Well, finally.'

When the driver stopped behind a limousine in front of the terminal, the passenger had already checked the taxi's meter. He added the cost of the bridge toll and a twenty percent tip, shoved several bills toward the driver, grabbed his briefcase, and hurried out his door.

'Hey, buddy, you want a receipt?'

But the passenger was gone. As he walked toward a set of automatically opening doors in the Shuttle complex, he glanced unobtrusively to his left, seeing the woman he was following get out of her taxi, pay the driver, and carry her underseat suitcase toward another set of doors.

They entered the terminal simultaneously, moving parallel to each other, separated by a throng of arriving travelers. The brown-haired, nondescript man paused next to a group of similarly ordinary-looking businessmen and pretended to inspect his ticket while he watched the woman hurry toward a line at a counter.

The line moved quickly – Trump guaranteed promptness. Nonetheless the woman looked impatient. When she got her turn, she urgently presented a credit card, signed a voucher, grabbed a folder that presumably contained a ticket, and rushed past the counter toward where the attractive female clerk pointed.

Excellent, the chameleon thought. He veered through the crowd, following his quarry. She'd already passed through the security station by the time he arrived there. Strictly speaking, no one without a ticket was allowed beyond this point. No problem, though. The chameleon always carried a bogus ticket with him, and in his considerable experience, few security personnel actually bothered to check that ticket.

He set his briefcase on the conveyor belt that led into the X-ray machine. A uniformed attendant nodded for him to proceed through the metal detector. The chameleon, by habit, carried no metal, not even coins or a belt buckle when he was working. His watch was made of plastic. The metal detector remained silent as he stepped through and picked up his briefcase on the other side of the X-ray machine. The briefcase, of course, contained nothing that would arouse suspicion. Only innocent boring documents. Certainly no weapons. His expertise was surveillance, after all. The chameleon had no need of weapons, although on a very few occasions, emergencies had forced him to defend himself, his average height and weight deceptive, his martial-arts skills impressive.

He increased his speed, climbing a moving escalator, just another of many harried businessmen in a rush to get on a plane.

Ahead, on the spacious upper level, his quarry walked faster. Again, no problem. The chameleon didn't want to catch up to her but only keep her in sight. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes to six. Peering ahead, he saw his quarry present her boarding pass to an attendant and disappear quickly through an open door toward the tunnel to her plane.

The chameleon waited until the door to the tunnel was closed, then proceeded toward a window, and watched the plane pull away from the boarding platform. But he still wasn't satisfied. Experience had taught him that he had to wait until the plane left the ground.

Five minutes later, the chameleon had to give Trump credit. As advertised, the shuttle left on time. Turning, he walked toward a counter near the passenger door. On a board behind the counter, he noted the plane's destination.

'Excuse me,' he asked the attendant. 'What time will that flight arrive?' Hearing the answer, he smiled. Thank you.'

He had only one more thing to do. At a bank of phones, he used a credit card to contact a long-distance number. 'Peter, it's Robert.'

Both names were fake, on the slim chance that this phone would be monitored or that someone on a neighboring phone would overhear. Never take chances.

'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but our friend had trouble making connections. I know how much you want to meet her. She's on a Trump shuttle to Washington National Airport. She'll arrive at seven-oh-seven. Can you…? That's what I thought. Peter, you're a pal. I know she'll be glad to see you.'

His work done, the chameleon hung up the phone. Clutching his briefcase, he retraced his steps through the concourse. But on second thought, his work was not yet done. Not at all. It never ended. Never.

Not that he objected. His duty was too important. It occupied… indeed it possessed… his mind and his soul.

First, as soon as he returned to Manhattan, he would quickly arrange to have a tap put on the woman's phone. That hadn't seemed necessary until today, until her visit to the apartment on East Eighty-Second Street made it obvious that the woman continued to be obsessed with the death of her friend. If her phone had been tapped earlier, yesterday while she'd been at the morgue, for example, the chameleon might have learned that she'd made arrangements to fly to Washington, and his task of following her would have been less complicated. That oversight in his surveillance of her would now be corrected. Her trip to Washington might have nothing to do with the death of the man called Joseph Martin, but the chameleon couldn't depend on 'might have'. He needed to know everything that she knew.

Next, he would check with the members of his team to learn if they'd been successful in tracking down the man who'd tried to intercept the pictures that the woman had left to be developed at the photo shop near her apartment building. The chameleon had been one of three people who'd entered the store while the man was arguing with the clerk. As a consequence, the chameleon had gotten a good look at the man when he stormed from the shop, enough to give a thorough description to the members of his team. In particular, what had interested the chameleon – intensely so – were the man's gray eyes.

Finally, while the chameleon waited for his contacts in Washington to warn him when the woman would be returning to Manhattan, he would occupy his time by following someone else. The detective, Lieutenant Craig, was showing unusual interest in this matter. After all, the investigation now should belong to Homicide, not Missing Persons. Perhaps the lieutenant's real interest was in the woman. The chameleon didn't know. Yet. But he would know. Soon. Everything about the detective. Because anyone as persistent as Lieutenant Craig had become might learn things that were very, very useful.

TWO

On the Trump Shuttle 727 to Washington, Tess did her best to ignore the drone of the engines and concentrate on her priorities. She always felt discomfort after take-offs and now rubbed her forehead while she opened and closed her mouth, trying to relieve the aching pressure in her sinuses and behind her ears. Nonetheless the photographs in her purse insisted. She wanted to seem casual, however. Not attract attention. Be cool. She was still disturbed that someone had tried to steal the pictures. Only after glancing at the passenger next to her did she decide to open her purse. The passenger was reading USA Today, the front-page sidebar of which said that a third of all species of North American fish were in danger of extermination. The next paragraph indicated that for every tree that was planted, four others were killed by acid rain, dried streams, or commercial development.

Angered by the article, her frustration intensifying, she opened her purse, removed the package of photographs, and studied them. The closeups of the titles on Joseph's bookcase immediately attracted her attention.

With equal immediacy, she noticed that the seatbelt sign was off and stood to walk up the aisle toward a row of phones mounted on the bulkhead at the front of the cabin. Using her credit card, she put a call through to New York and her favorite book store, the Strand, on lower Broadway.

'Lester? How's it going? Me? How'd you guess? Is my voice that distinctive? Well, yeah, a little fuzzy. I'm on a plane to Washington. No, just family business. Listen, can you do me a favor? I assume my credit's still good. It better be good. I drop a fortune in your store every month. So pay attention, okay? I've got a list. Are you ready?'

'Always, sweetheart. Anytime you want to…'

'Lester, will you give me a break?'

'Just trying to be friendly, my dear. Let's hear the titles.'

'The Consolation of Philosophy, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, The Millennium, Eleanor of Aquitane, The Art of Courtly Love, something in Spanish called The Circle of the Neck of the Dove.'

'Never heard of that one, dear.'

'Well, I've got plenty more.' Tess recited them.

'No authors, sweetheart?'

'From what I'm looking at, I can barely read the titles, let alone…'

'You sound in stress.'

'Stress? You don't know the half of it. Just get me those books as soon as possible.'

'Got it, sweetheart. I'll check our stacks. As you're well aware, we've got just about everything.'

'Send them to…' Tess almost said her loft in SoHo, but all at once, suspicious, remembering the incident at the photo shop, she told him the address for Earth Mother Magazine up from the Strand 's location on Broadway.

Stomach cramping, she replaced the phone and returned to her seat, ignoring the curious glance of the passenger who set down his USA Today.

Tess closed her eyes -

– in truth, squeezed them tightly, painfully shut when she anticipated -

– dreaded -

– her arrival at Washington National Airport and her eventual meeting with her mother.

Not just her mother. Her dead father's nemesis. That son of a bitch. That murderous bastard. That fucking Brian Hamilton.

THREE

Alexandria, Virginia.

Although the sun had just begun to set, every downstairs window of the colonial mansion was brilliantly lit, every outside floodlight gleaming. As the taxi steered through a tall, open, metal gate, Tess scanned the shrubs that bordered the fence, then directed her gaze toward the spacious, upwardly sloping lawn, the numerous, elaborate flower gardens, the magnificent, towering oaks (from one of which she'd fallen and broken her arm as a child; with painful fondness, she remembered her father rushing to help her), the fountain that she'd loved to wade in (what a tomboy I was, she thought and managed a smile).

At once her smile dissolved as the taxi continued along the extensive curved driveway, approaching the mansion and a silver Rolls Corniche parked below the white stone steps that led past columns to the huge double-doored entrance.

The Corniche had government plates. A chauffeur (bodyguard?) stood alertly next to it, his hands at his sides while he squinted toward the taxi.

No doubt about it. Brian Hamilton had arrived.

Tess paid the driver and got out of the taxi, staring at the chauffeur when she passed him, giving him a good look at her. Brian had presumably told the man what she looked like. With a nod, he stepped back, ignoring her, directing his attention toward the taillights of the taxi as it continued around the semicircle of the driveway and disappeared down the quiet, tree-lined street. Yes, definitely a bodyguard, Tess thought.

She carried her suitcase up the steps and hesitated beneath the portico, finally ringing the doorbell.

Ten seconds later, a butler in livery answered.

Tess hadn't been here in so long that she didn't recognize him. 'I've come to see my mother.'

'I know, Ms Drake. My name is Jonathan.' He gave her a solemn smile. 'Welcome. You're expected. If you please, let me carry your suitcase.' He shut the door when she entered and, with echoing footsteps, escorted her across the large, lofty, marble-floored vestibule toward the drawing room on the right. On the way, Tess noticed that a new Matisse had been added to the collection of paintings along the wall.

The drawing room's sliding oak door was closed. When the butler pulled it soundlessly open, Tess tried to appear calm the moment she saw her mother rise from a French Regency sofa to the left of the fireplace.

Theresa, dear, how wonderful to see you.' Her mother had never approved of her father's calling her Tess. Trim, tall, in her sixties, her mother looked ten years younger due to numerous face lifts that nonetheless gave her aristocratic features a pinched expression.

As always in the evening, she wore a formal dress, this one made of expensive amber silk that whispered when she walked, and considerable jewelry: a diamond necklace, matching earrings, a ruby brooch, a sapphire ring on one hand, her glinting, impressive engagement and wedding rings on the other (despite her husband's death six years ago, she persisted in wearing them), an emerald bracelet on one wrist, a gold Piaget watch on the other.

'Really, truly, how wonderful.' Like so many graduates of Radcliffe in the pure old days before that women's college had crassly (God help us, what's the world coming to?) been integrated with the men at Harvard, she walked as if a board had been strapped to her back, and with husky tones reminiscent of Lauren Bacall (who hadn't gone to Radcliffe), she tended to emphasize her words. 'It's been so long. You know how I miss you. You mustn't be such a stranger.'

By then, her mother had reached Tess and with the obligatory, fashionable, almost-kiss, brushed her right and then left cheek, barely touching, against Tess's.

'Yes, mother, and it's good to see you.' Tess managed to smile.

'Jonathan will take your suitcase to your room. Come in. Sit down. You must be exhausted from your travel.'

'Mother, it's only an hour's flight from New York.'

'Oh, really? Well, yes, I suppose that's true. Then why don't I see you more?'

Tess walked toward the French Regency chair placed across from and matching the sofa. 'My work keeps me awfully busy. I barely have time to do my laundry, let alone-'

'Your laundry.' Tess's mother cocked her head back. 'You do your own…? I keep forgetting. You want to be independent .'

That's right, mother.' Tess squirmed against the scrollwork on the chair while her eyes searched the room but, disturbingly, found no sign of Brian Hamilton. 'Independent.'

'And your work? How is your little magazine doing?'

'It isn't little, mother. And I think it's doing some good.'

'Well, that's what we want.' Tess's mother fidgeted on the sofa. 'It's about the environment? Something about pollution?'

Tess nodded. 'And the problem's getting worse.'

'Well, of course, at my age, I won't live long enough to – Never mind. The important thing is that you're happy.'

'Yes, mother. 'Despite her confused emotions… about Joseph's death, about the man whose description resembled him, the man who'd attempted to steal the photographs she'd taken of Joseph's bedroom… Tess managed a genuine smile. She imitated her mother's habit of emphasis. 'I am happy.'

'Well.' Her mother smoothed her dress. 'In that case.' She straightened her necklace. 'I suppose that's all that matters.' But she didn't looked convinced.

Tess felt self-conscious as her mother assessed her sneakers, jeans, and short-sleeved cotton pullover. 'I know, mother. You wish I'd dress like…'

'A lady. At the moment, you appear to have come from an athletic event. At the very least, you could have worn a brassiere.'

'I feel more comfortable this way, mother. Especially when it's so humid.'

'Humid? Precisely. Your pullover's so damp that I can see your… I'll never forgive myself for allowing you to go to Georgetown University instead of one of the Seven Sisters.'

Tess bristled. 'It wasn't you who let me go. It was father.'

Tess's mother shook her head. 'That's an ancient topic. We've discussed it far too often. I'm sorry I raised it. Since we see each other so seldom, let's do our best to be agreeable.'

'That's all I want, mother.'

'Very well, then, it's settled. We'll be agreeable.' Tess's mother smoothed her dress again. 'I know you told me not to have dinner prepared, but I took the liberty of having Edna prepare some liver pate. You always enjoyed that, as I recall.'

'Very much,' Tess lied.

'And some tea, of course. I think we could all use some tea.'

As her mother picked up and daintily jingled a tiny silver bell, Tess peered around again. 'Speaking of all of us, I asked Brian Hamilton to meet me here.' Tess frowned. 'I think that's his Corniche in the driveway, but I don't-'

The door to the drawing room slid open. Tess swung her head sharply. A maid stepped in. She wore a uniform, complete with a bonnet, and carried a silver tray of toast and pate, placing them on a thirty-thousand-dollar antique table.

Someone else appeared, a man who wore a tuxedo and carried another silver tray upon which were tea cups and a two-hundred-year-old Japanese teapot. 'I apologize for taking so long on the phone, Melinda. I hope you don't mind. I thought I'd make myself useful and help Edna bring in the things.'

'Mind? Of course not. I'm sure Edna appreciates the courtesy, and no guest of mine can ever do anything wrong.'

The man set his tray beside the toast and pate on the table, then turned to Tess, and smiled. He was in his early sixties, but for all that, he was straight-backed, trim, solid, with thick, dark, superbly cut hair, and a rectangular, ruggedly handsome face. He photographed extremely well. In newspapers, the captions beneath the photographs usually emphasized his numerous medals from Vietnam and his legendary career as a maverick general in the Marines. His smile exaggerated the crinkles around his eyes and made him look more rugged. His voice was husky but with the smooth cadence of a TV announcer. 'How are you, Tess?' He held out his manicured, muscular hand.

Reluctantly Tess shook it. His grip was firm. 'I've been better, Brian. At the moment, I've got a problem.'

'So I gathered on the phone.' Brian turned toward the maid, then raised his eyebrows toward Tess's mother. 'But before we discuss…'

Tess's mother got the hint. That'll be fine, Edna. We can pour the tea ourselves.'

'As you like, ma'am.' Edna curtsied and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

'There,' Tess's mother said. 'Now I'm sure you wouldn't mind doing the honors, Brian.'

'Of course.' He picked up the teapot.

'No, wait,' Tess said. 'Before we… I'm really not…'

They frowned at her.

'… thirsty or hungry. I grabbed a pretzel in the airport.'

'Pretzel?' Tess's mother looked horrified.

'I'd like to get to the point,' Tess said. 'And Brian, since you're wearing your tuxedo, I assume that means you either just came from – or still plan to go to – the reception for the Soviet ambassador. I also assume that means you're anxious either to return or arrive there, so I won't keep you any longer than necessary. Believe me, I don't want to waste your time.' She tried not to sound sarcastic.

'Tess, you could never waste my time.' Brian set down the teapot, came around the table, and faced her. 'I told you on the phone, for the sake of old times… and your father… I want to do everything I can to help.'

'Exactly. My father.'

'We were friends,' Brian said.

'But that didn't stop you from sending him to Beirut.'

'Now honestly,' her mother said, 'if this conversation is going to be unpleasant, I don't intend to sit here and-'

'That's a good idea, mother. Why don't you leave? Brian and I have things to talk about.'

'No, Melinda, you stay right where you are. It's time we cleared the air,' Brian said. 'For all of us.' He sat beside Tess's mother and clasped her hand.

At once, for the first time, Tess had the suspicion that they might be having an affair. Her father's best friend? The man who'd sent that best friend to his death? Could that monster possibly be screwing his best friend's wife? The thought of the two of them in bed together made Tess so queasy that she wished she hadn't eaten the pretzel on the way from the airport.

'Okay, the three of us,' Tess said. 'That's fine with me. Just so long as I get what I want.'

'Your father was a committed diplomat,' Brian said. 'He went to that insanity in Beirut because he thought he could make a difference, help settle the violence among the Christians, the Moslems, and all their splinter groups. In his heart, he believed he could actually stop the killing.'

'You sound like you're making a speech,' Tess said.

Brian shrugged. 'An occupational hazard.'

'In fact, that bromide you just gave me, I think I read those same words in the Washington Post at the time of my father's death.'

'Possibly.' Brian looked despondent. 'Unfortunately, on occasion, because I'm asked so many questions, I'm forced to repeat myself.'

'But what you didn't tell the Post was that my father was sent to Beirut to negotiate an arms agreement with the side you wanted to win – the Christians. And you also didn't tell the Post that your security was so damned sloppy that the Moslems found out and kidnapped my father to stop him from completing the arms deal.'

'Now, Tess, that's all speculation.'

'Don't treat me like a fool. The Moslems wanted my father to confess about US interference on the side of the Christians. But my father wouldn't confess no matter what they did to him, no matter how much they tortured him. So they beat him, they starved him, and when he still wouldn't talk, they slit his throat and dumped him into a gutter. As an example to America not to interfere.'

'Tess, that's your interpretation. Weapons had nothing to do with it. He was there as a well-intentioned negotiator, pure and simple.'

'Nothing about what you bastards do is pure and simple.'

Tess's mother flinched. 'I refuse to tolerate vulgar language in-'

'No, let her finish, Melinda. For once and for all, we'll settle this,' Brian said.

'I know what you ordered my father to do. I know he disapproved of the assignment but wouldn't refuse an order from the White House,' Tess said. 'How do I know? Because I overheard his conversations on the phone. And when he brought documents from work, I not only secretly read them. I made copies before he shredded them.'

'If you did, Tess, that's a breach of national security. There are serious penalties for…'

'As serious as what happened to my father? What would you do to me? Put me in jail? Of course not. I'd talk. So unless you want another Iran-Contra-arms scandal, you'd have to kill me!'

'That's enough.' Tess's mother jerked upright. That's all I intend to hear. Your father was a great man, and I won't listen to you sully either his or Brian's reputation!'

'No, Melinda, wait.' Brian clasped her hand again, his voice disturbingly calm. 'I think Tess is almost finished. I believe she's leading up to something. And when she finally gets to the point, I suspect we'll finally settle the ghost that haunts us. Tess, excuse me, but if I can be allowed to be vulgar, cut to the chase. What in hell do you want?'

Tess inhaled and answered as calmly as she could. 'Whenever I see your name in the newspaper, I look away in fury. But I don't live in limbo. I hear things. Despite the change in administration, I gather you're still very much associated with the government.'

'That's correct.' Brian straightened.

'With the National Security Council, among other things,' Tess said.

'An unsubstantiated rumor.'

'Hey, Brian, we're talking about pay-off time! A favor in exchange for my silence! I won't forgive you for what you ordered my father to do, but I swear – God help me – if you do what I want, I'll never raise the subject again!'

The rugged-faced war hero studied her. 'That's a tempting offer.'

'Then take it.'

The diplomat's eyes became more calculating. 'So what's your problem?'

Tess's cramped muscles abruptly went limp. 'I have… That is, I had… I don't know what to call him… A friend.'

Slowly, haltingly, for the next quarter-hour, Tess explained, describing her meetings with Joseph, his failure to join her at the park, her grotesque experience at the New York City morgue, her disturbing visit to Joseph's apartment. She ended her stressful account by displaying the photographs of the puzzling objects in Joseph's bedroom.

Brian studied the photographs. 'Weird. Are you sure your friend wasn't on drugs?'

'Drugs? No way. And he didn't drink either. He didn't even use aspirin. He was fanatical about his health.'

'But he acted as if he might have been followed. And…' Brian shook his head. 'I honestly… What do you want me to do?'

'Use your influence with the FBI and the CIA. I think that Joseph might have been Spanish. I know he assumed a false identity. The FBI has his fingerprints. Make copies of them and send them to Interpol. Get in touch with… Whatever it is you do, do it. Pretend the country's been threatened, if that gives you motivation. I want to know Joseph's real identity! I want to find out who killed him! And who tried to steal these photographs! And who might be following me! And-'

'Wait,' Brian interrupted. 'You believe… You're telling me you think you've been followed!'

'I'm so confused I don't know what to think.'

'All right. Calm down. Let me… All right, those photographs. Can I borrow them and make copies?'

'Not a chance. I won't let them out of my sight.'

'In other words, you don't trust me to keep them safe.'

'I'll have copies made myself and send them to you.'

'Very well,' Brian said. 'Clear enough… I have one more question.'

'I've got nothing to hide. Ask it.'

'You met this man three times, and only three times, and yet you feel this obligated to find out who killed him. Does that mean you fell in love with him?'

Tess glared defensively. 'It's more complicated than that. He was different. Special. Let's say I cared for him. So what?'

'Just so I know your motive.'

'My motive is justice, Brian. The same motive you're supposed to have. As long as it doesn't involve selling weapons in Beirut.'

'All right.' Brian stood, military straight. 'You'll hear from me.'

'The sooner, the…'

'Speed isn't always a virtue,' Brian said. 'But thoroughness? In that, I'm an expert.'

'Then prove it,' Tess said.

'One day, I hope you won't hate me.'

'I don't know why you would care. No.' Tess shook her head. 'That's wrong. I've got a suspicion, so Brian, if I'm right… for my father… and your relationship with my mother… bust your ass.'

'Theresa,' her mother objected.

'Mother, if you don't mind, keep out of this.'

'Oh, my.' Her mother clasped her mouth.

Brian extended his hand. 'A deal, Tess?'

'If you deliver? Yes, it's a deal.' She shook his hand. It was no longer firm.

'As soon as I can.'

'Knowing you and your skills…' Tess paused.

'You should have been a diplomat.'

'Far too ugly, Brian.'

'Perhaps you're right. Excuse me, Melinda. I've got some work to do.'

'Don't forget the reception for the Soviet ambassador,' Tess said bitterly.

'I haven't. But I've decided not to go. As you put it on the phone, fuck him. But by all means, with respect.'

'Yes, by all means.'

Brian Hamilton strode toward the oak door, slid it open, and disappeared.

'Really,' Tess's mother said, 'did he have to say…?'

' “Fuck”! Mother, for heaven's sakes, he's a war hero. If you're attracted to him, you'd better get used to hearing him use foul language on occasion.'

'Good gracious, I hope not.'

'Mother, didn't father ever say "fuck"?'

'Well, yes, but I ignored it.'

'Then you've got a problem. I've changed my mind. Hand me some of that toast. Pour me a cup of tea.'

'I'll ring for Edna.'

'No, mother. You'll pour the tea. And incidentally, I hate liver pate.'

FOUR

Parked down the shadowy street from the mansion in this elite district of Alexandria, Virginia, the chameleon's surrogate – his height, weight, and features equally unremarkable, except that his hair was sandy, not brown – sipped stale coffee from a plastic cup, his empty thermos on the seat beside him, next to his Browning 9 mm semiautomatic pistol concealed beneath his oversized metal briefcase.

The briefcase was open, a cord from an audio scanner plugged into the car's cigarette-lighter receptacle to use energy from the vehicle's battery. The scanner could not detect broadcasts from two-way radios, such as those used by the police and taxi drivers, which operated on a UHF frequency in the range of four-hundred megahertz. Instead the scanner was intended to intercept conversations from cellular telephones, such as those used in cars, which broadcast on a much higher frequency, the eight-hundred megahertz band.

While it was legal to possess equipment to eavesdrop on police transmissions, it was a punishable offense to own a receiver that intercepted broadcasts from car phones. Not that the chameleon's surrogate cared. He'd broken many laws in his career. This was the least of them.

Indeed he was prepared to break many more laws, and it didn't matter to him how serious they were. After all, he had his orders, a mission to complete, and so far this mission had gone smoothly. He'd had no difficulty in following the tall, blond, attractive, athletic-looking woman from Washington National Airport to here. At the moment, with an equal lack of difficulty, another member of his team was arranging to put a tap on the mansion's telephone system. Eventually the mansion itself would be bugged. Meanwhile this limited electronic surveillance would have to do.

Periodically the man, who wore an ordinary, medium-priced, business suit and had a talent for making himself virtually invisible in a crowd, heard a dim conversation from this-or-that frequency on his scanner. After listening carefully, he decided that their topics did not concern him.

Periodically as well, he turned on his car's engine so that the scanner wouldn't drain the vehicle's battery. Although he directed his stern attention toward the mansion and in particular toward the entrance and the exit from the semicircular driveway, he repeatedly darted his eyes both ahead and upward, in the latter case toward his rearview mirror.

What troubled him were headlights. If he saw any approaching him, he'd immediately shut off the car's engine, disengage the plug from the cigarette-lighter receptacle, place the cord in the briefcase, and close the lid. After all, this exclusive area was likely to be patrolled by police cars, the officers in which might be tempted to stop to ask him why he was out here at this hour.

That was the trouble with trying to establish an automobile surveillance site in an upper-class suburban neighborhood. Few people, if any, parked on the street. This night, however, the watcher had gotten lucky. A half-block down from the mansion, someone was having a party – or what in so exclusive a district was probably called a reception – and not all the visiting cars had been able to fit in the spacious driveway. A few Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles sat out here on the street behind him, but although the watcher's dark Ford Taurus didn't blend with those expensive automobiles, the watcher doubted he'd have any problems in convincing a curious policeman that he was a hired driver who'd been forced to use this Taurus when the Cadillac he was supposed to use turned out, he would claim, to have a faulty fuel pump earlier this evening. The watcher's luck remained with him. No police cars had so far driven by.

Abruptly he straightened, seeing a silver Rolls Corniche emerge from the mansion's driveway and head in the opposite direction. After quickly removing night-vision binoculars from beneath his seat, he studied the Corniche and satisfied himself that only a chauffeur and a man in the back seat were present in the vehicle. The Corniche had a government license plate. Intriguing.

The watcher noted the plate's number on a slip of paper and would later use his contacts to determine who owned the car, but for the moment, since the woman wasn't in the Corniche, his duty was not to follow the car but instead to maintain his surveillance on the mansion.

At once he heard beeps, then buzzes that were interrupted by a voice from his audio scanner, so distinct that it had to be coming from a car phone that was near, presumably in the Corniche.

'Hello,' a man said with a formal tone. 'Mr Chatham's residence.'

'This is Brian Hamilton. I know it's late. I hate to disturb him, but is Eric home?'

'He is. However, he's about to retire for the evening.'

'Tell him who's calling, please. And tell him it's important.'

The watcher increased his concentration. Eric Chatham?

Chatham was the director of the FBI! And Brian Hamilton, evidently the passenger in the Corniche, was the former Secretary of State, currently an advisor to the President, also a member of – among other things – the National Security Council.

My, my, the watcher thought. Heavy hitters.

'By all means. Just a moment, Mr Hamilton.'

The watcher stared toward the red light on his audio scanner and the voices coming from it.

'Brian?' a sonorous voice asked, tired and puzzled. 'I was just getting into my pajamas. I've been looking forward to reading the new Stephen King, something that has nothing to do with… Never mind. What's going on? My assistant tells me this is important.'

'I apologize,' Hamilton said. 'I came across some information tonight, and I'd like to discuss it with you.'

'Now? Can't it wait until the morning? At my office? My schedule's crowded, but I can squeeze you in for fifteen minutes just before lunch.'

'I might need more than fifteen minutes,' Hamilton said. 'In private. Undistracted.' The reception became less distinct as the Corniche left the neighborhood.

'In private!' Eric Chatham sounded confused.

'Yes. This relates to a case your people were asked to work on. But in truth, it's personal. It has to do with Remington Drake, his widow, and his daughter. I need to ask a favor.'

'Remington Drake! Dear God. And this favor's important?'

'To me. Yes, very important,' Brian Hamilton said.

'A favor? Well, if you're putting it on that basis. You've certainly done enough favors for me, and Remington Drake was certainly my friend. How quickly can you be here?'

'Ten minutes.'

'I'll be waiting.'

'Thanks, Eric. I appreciate your cooperation.'

'Don't speak too soon. I haven't cooperated yet.'

'But I have every confidence that you will. Ten minutes.'

The transmission ended.

The watcher frowned, trying to interpret what he'd heard. But he'd been concentrating so hard that he'd failed to hear something else, the soft rush of rubber-soled shoes on the street, darting toward his side of the car. Because of the heat, the watcher had left his window open. After all, he couldn't keep his engine running constantly at the risk of attracting attention just so he could use the car's air conditioner.

In alarm, as the watcher – stomach burning – snapped his head toward the rushing footsteps, he gaped at a.22 pistol being shoved through the open window. Startled, he didn't have time to grab his Browning from beneath his briefcase. The.22, equipped with a silencer, made a spitting sound. The watcher groaned from the impact of the.22 bullet against his skull. The close-range wallop was forceful enough to jolt the watcher sideways. Blood spewed. He shuddered and toppled to the right across his audio scanner.

But the small bullet didn't kill him. Shocked, powerless, in excruciating pain, he retained sufficient consciousness to sense, hear, and quiver as the assassin jerked open the driver's door.

The assassin grabbed the watcher's body, twisted it, and shoved it, crammed it, onto the floor below the passenger seat. At once the assassin shut the door, started the car, and drove at a steady, unobtrusive speed from the shadowy neighborhood.

Slumped on the floor, the watcher blinked, unable to see, feeling his life drain from him as his blood soaked the carpet. His skull felt as if a nail had been driven through it. If the assassin had used a more powerful weapon, the watcher would have been killed instantly, he dimly realized. But a large- caliber pistol, even with a silencer, would have made a discernible noise, not much, more like a cough than the.22's spit, all the same perhaps just loud enough that someone leaving the party down the street might have heard and become suspicious. A silencer-equipped.22, though, especially if the ammunition had a specially calculated, reduced, so-called 'subsonic' amount of powder – was almost as quiet as a handgun could be.

In a sickening daze, the watcher felt the car turn a corner. As his blood pooled in front of his face, threatening to drown him, he was murkily amazed that he wasn't dead. Through his terrible pain, a weak thought struggled to assure him that he might have a chance of surviving.

Survive?

Hey, who are you kidding?

Give me a break.

With a head wound?

No way.

But he knows I'm still alive. He can hear me wheezing. Why didn't he shoot a second time and finish me?

An amateur?

No.

God in heaven, no, the watcher's fading mind concluded.

Thoughts spinning, the stench of his cascading blood making him gag, he blearily decided, I'm wrong! Not an amateur. When the watcher had pivoted toward the rushing footsteps, he'd noticed that the pistol had an unusual shape, a baffle attached to the top where the slide would normally jerk back and eject the empty cartridge, then snap forward to position a fresh round into the firing chamber.

But the baffle prevented the slide from moving back and forth and allowing sound to escape from the weapon. The baffle was a reinforcement of the silencer! Thus the.22 could be fired only once! That was why the assassin hadn't pulled the trigger again and made sure I was dead!

No! Not an amateur! A professional! Very professional! A well-trained, experienced killer!

The assassin was good enough to need only one shot. He's aware I don't have a chance. He knows it's only a matter of time until…

The watcher, even more weak and light-headed, began to pray in agony, with fervent desperation. It was all he could do now. He had to protect his soul. His only consolation was that he couldn't be interrogated. Nonetheless, he regretted that he wouldn't be able to prevent the assassin from searching him and taking the ring that he kept hidden in his suitcoat.

Abruptly he felt the car stop. He heard the assassin get out and heard another car stop beside the Taurus.

So they're going to leave me here – wherever this is – to die?

Hope made his weakening pulse regain some strength. Maybe I can muster the energy to crawl from the Taurus. Maybe I can find someone to help me, to drive me to a hospital.

But his hope was cruelly destroyed, for the next dim sound he heard wasn't the assassin getting into the other car. Instead he heard liquid being spattered into the Taurus. He felt it soak his clothes and retched from the sharp stench of gasoline.

No!

The last thing he heard was a match being struck and the whoosh as the gasoline ignited. Flames filled the Taurus and swooped across his body. No! Dear God! In absolute torment, he prayed more fervently. Our Father Who art in heaven…! Amazingly his will was powerful enough that he got as far as deliver us from evil before the excruciating blaze consumed him.

FIVE

In the mansion's vestibule, as Tess walked toward the huge wide staircase, her mother said, 'Despite the evening's regrettable unpleasantness, I really am glad that you came to visit. I hope a good night's sleep will put you in a better mood.'

Thanks, mother. And it's good to see you.' Tess drooped her shoulders. 'But somehow I doubt I'll sleep much. I've got too much to think about.'

'Well, perhaps if you had something to read. That always puts me to sleep. Oh, my.' Tess's mother halted abruptly on the staircase.

'What's the matter?'

'I completely forgot. You asked me to phone the director at the Library of Congress. He found that book you wanted and sent it here by messenger.' Tess's mother retreated down the stairs. 'It's in the drawing room. But he says you made a mistake about the title.'

'The Circle - or else The Ring – of the Neck of the Dove?'

'Apparently that's a literal translation from Spanish. But in English, the prepositions disappear and…' Tess's mother hurried into the drawing room and came back, removing a tattered book from a package. 'The Dove's Neck Ring. Yes, that's what it's called.'

The book smelled old. Tess quickly opened it, her spirits rising when she saw that it was in English. 'Thank you.' She hugged her mother, who blinked at so forceful a show of affection. 'I appreciate it. Honestly. Thank you.'

Her mother looked confused. 'I've never seen anyone get so excited about a book before. When I paged through it, waiting for you to arrive, it certainly didn't appear very interesting.'

'On the contrary, mother, I expect to be fascinated.' Heart pounding, Tess wanted to rush upstairs to her room so she could start reading, but she forced herself to climb the steps slowly, matching her mother's pace. In a long upper corridor lined with paintings by French Impressionists, they paused outside Tess's door.

'Good night, mother.' Tess kissed her cheek. Again her mother looked surprised. 'I apologize for making a scene, but you can't 'imagine what I've been through the past few days. You have my word. I'll try my best not to upset you anymore.'

'Dear.' With a choked voice, her mother hesitated. 'You don't have to apologize. Good heavens, you're all I have. I'll never stop loving you. Make as many scenes as you want. You'll always be welcome here. And I promise, I'll do everything I can to help solve your problems.'

Tess felt pressure in her tear ducts.

At once her mother did an amazing thing. She kissed Tess in return, no casual brush of a cheek against cheek, but an actual kiss, her lips placed firmly yet tenderly on Tess's brow. 'Remember what I used to tell you when I tucked you in bed when you were a child? Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite.'

Tess brushed a tear from her eye. 'I remember. I…"

'What, dear?'

'I don't say this often enough. I love you, mother.'

'I know. I've never doubted it. Stay in bed as long as you want. Phone the kitchen in the morning, and tell Edna what you want for breakfast. Then please phone me. I'd like to join you.'

Tess sniffled, wiping her cheeks. 'I look forward to it.'

'I wish you wouldn't cry.'

'Of course. I remember. Emotion always made you uncomfortable.'

'It's not so much feeling emotion but showing it,' her mother said. 'Very early, a diplomat's wife learns the difference.'

'Well, mother, I'm afraid I'm not a diplomat's wife. I'm merely his daughter.'

'The daughter of Remington Drake? Not merely. Not at all. Between your father and me, you're made from strength. Obey your heritage. Be strong.'

'I will, mother. I promise.'

'I repeat, I love you. And by the way, there aren't any monsters under your bed. I guarantee it.'

Tess watched her mother proceed down the corridor, a tired elderly woman whose footsteps faltered slightly but who nonetheless maintained her posture, trying to walk with dignity. Only when her mother stepped into her bedroom did Tess, heart aching, go into her own.

SIX

The room had been Tess's bedroom for as long as she'd been alive. Turning on the overhead light, shutting the door behind her, she studied the canopied bed, the covers of which a servant had folded down. The servant, presumably the butler, had also unpacked her suitcase, placing her shorts and T-shirt on a lace-rimmed pillow.

With bittersweet emotion, Tess scanned the room, her complex layers of memory making her see it as if transparent photographs had been placed in front of one another, all the different stages of her youth: her childhood bed, her doll house (which her father had made), her stuffed play animals, then the larger bed and her baseball glove on the bureau, her bat and ball beside it, the posters of baseball and football stars that had given way to posters of rock stars and her stack of records beside her stereo, the books she'd studied in college (she'd refused to live in a dorm at Georgetown University, prefering to stay at home so she could be near her father).

All gone now. All lost and gone.

With a shudder of regret, she subdued her nostalgia, peered down at the book in her hand, and forced herself to pay attention to why she'd come here.

The Dove's Neck Ring. The title page indicated that the book by Ibn Hazm had been translated from Spanish by A. R. Nykl in 1931. Leafing through the introduction as she walked toward the bed, she learned that Ibn Hazm had been an Arab who'd emigrated from northern Africa to southern Spain in the early eleventh century and had written this book, a treatise on platonic love, in 1022.

Plato.

Tess suddenly remembered The Collected Dialogues of Plato that she'd seen on the bookcase in Joseph's bedroom. And she painfully remembered something else: Joseph's insistence that his relationship with her could never be physical, only platonic. That way is better,' he'd said. 'Because it's eternal.'

Dejected, she turned on the bedside lamp, reached for the switch that extinguished the overhead light, and slumped on the bed, propping pillows behind her, continuing to scan the book.

She could understand why her mother had found it boring. The book was an elaborate essay, not a narrative, and its stilted English translation tried to recreate the feel of medieval Spanish. It was crammed with homilies and abstractions.

According to the introduction, The Dove's Neck Ring had been extremely popular in its day, often copied by hand; the printing press had not yet been invented. Eventually the book had made its way upward through Spain to southern France, where in the mid-twelfth century it had been one of the texts that formed the basis for an idealized view of the relationship between men and women, known as courtly love.

The expression caught Tess's attention. She suddenly remembered another book that she'd seen in Joseph's bedroom: The Art of Courtly Love . But why had Joseph been fascinated by that subject?

Reading with greater curiosity, Tess learned that the notion of courtly love had appealed to and been sponsored by the then Queen of France, Eleanor of Aquitaine (the title of another book in Joseph's bedroom!), and later by Eleanor's daughter, Marie de France, both of whom had gathered poets and minstrels around them, directing them to compose verses and songs that celebrated a ritualized, highly polite and refined set of rules that dictated how men and women should behave toward one another.

Tess scrunched her forehead in confusion. She didn't know how these puzzling details fit together, but Joseph had obviously acted toward her in keeping with the strictest of the codes of courtly love.

While one branch of this ancient tradition treated courtly love as a type of foreplay, a prelude to sex, the other branch of the tradition had maintained that sex was an impure, imperfect form of love. According to the author of The Dove's Neck Ring, true love wasn't based on physical attraction but rather on an attraction between kindred spirits, compatible souls. These souls had once existed in harmony, during a pre-life that reminded Tess of heaven. When born into the physical world, the souls had been separated and thereafter felt incomplete, compelled to keep looking for one another, never to be satisfied until they met. Just as their original relationship had been pure, in the sense of non-physical, non-sexual, so their relationship in this world should be the same, uncontaminated by the vulgarities of the flesh. This idea of a heaven-like pre-life evidently came from Plato's dialogues (Tess again remembered the book by Plato in Joseph's bedroom), and the notion of non-sexual, highly spiritual affection between men and women was thus known as platonic love.

Tess scrunched her forehead harder, a deep corner of her sub-consciousness straining to understand. For certain, she'd felt an instant identification with Joseph the moment he'd entered the elevator when she'd first met him last Wednesday.

Had it been only a week ago?

But her reaction to Joseph had not been merely an identification.

Much more! An attraction. Powerful. What romantics liked to describe as love at first sight, but what the long-dead author of The Dove's Neck Ring would have called love at second sight.

All theory. Speculation. Surely it didn't explain Tess's overwhelming determination.

Courtly love? Plato? Why in God's name had Joseph been so obsessed with these ideas?

Her chest ached. On impulse, she glanced at her watch, surprised to discover that it was almost two a.m.

Although she'd told her mother that she was so disturbed she doubted she'd be able to sleep, she abruptly felt exhausted and decided to get out of her clothes, change into her shorts and T-shirt, and try to sleep.

But as she stood and removed her cotton pullover, she noticed the phone on the bedside table.

The mansion's air conditioning made her breasts cold, nipples rising.

Still, she hesitated, staring at the phone. I ought to call my loft and check if I've got any messages on my answering machine, she told herself.

No. It can wait till morning.

Sure.

But so much has…

I ought to make sure that nothing else has happened.

So she tapped buttons on the phone, listened to the static on the long-distance line, heard a buzz, then another buzz, and finally her voice on the answering machine. 'This is Tess. I can't answer the phone right now. Please leave a message at the tone.'

Immediately she tapped two more numbers, 24, her birthdate, the security code that she'd programmed into her answering machine and would prevent anyone else from calling her home, pressing two numbers at random, and gaining access to her messages.

A man's gravelly voice was instantly recognizable. 'Tess, it's Lieutenant Craig. The time is' – garbled voices in the background - 'quarter-after-five. Call me at the office as soon as you can.'

A beep signalled the end of the message.

Curious – shivering because of it – Tess waited to hear if she had any other messages.

'It's Lieutenant Craig again. Half-past six. Call me at once.'

Another beep.

The urgency in the lieutenant's voice made Tess even more anxious to hang up and phone him, but she resisted the impulse, still needing to know if she had other messages.

'It's Lieutenant Craig. It's almost eleven. Where the hell are you? Call me.'

This time, there were three beeps, the signal that all the messages had been replayed. Tess broke the connection, removed her wallet from her purse, found the card that Craig had given her, and decided that even though his first message had told her to call him at the office, he wouldn't be there now at two in the morning.

Quickly tapping numbers, she called his home.

Again she heard long-distance static, then a buzz, another buzz, and another.

By the fifth buzz, she began to suspect that Craig was at the office. By the sixth, she became certain and lowered her hand toward the disconnect lever so she could try his office. When her hand was an inch from the lever, a crusty voice said, 'Hello?' and coughed.

She pressed the phone hard against her ear. 'It's Tess. I'm sorry if I woke you, but your messages-'

'Where have you been! My God, you had me worried.'

'I'm in Alexandria, Virginia.' In the background, Tess heard soaring music, an orchestra, a chorus, a soprano hitting impossibly high notes.

' Alexandria? What are you doing there?' The soprano's voice swooped, then rose again.

'My mother lives here. I caught the six o'clock shuttle.'

'But you haven't answered my question. What are you-?'

'Trying to explain what we saw in Joseph's apartment. My mother has contacts with the Library of Congress and…' Tess hesitated, not wanting to tell the lieutenant about her mother's powerful connections with the government because of her father. 'Is that opera I hear in the background?'

'Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Just a second. I'll turn it off.'

A moment later, the music stopped.

'I didn't know you liked opera,' Tess said. 'Somehow you don't seem the type to-'

'Listen to me,' Craig said. 'Don't ever leave town like that again! Not without telling me! You have to let me know where I can reach you. When I kept calling and you didn't answer your phone, I got worried that something had happened to you.'

'Well, in a way, something almost did.'

'What?'

Those pictures I took at Joseph's apartment. I left them at a one-hour photo shop while I packed. When I went back to the shop, the clerk told me that a man who claimed I'd sent him tried to get the photographs.'

'Jesus.'

The only way the man could have known about those pictures is if he'd followed us when we left Joseph's apartment and he saw me go into the photo shop,' Tess said with urgency.

That sure as hell sounds logical to me. Jesus,' the lieutenant said again and coughed. That's what I mean. You can't stay out of touch. You've got to let me know where you are and what you're doing. This might be dangerous for you.'

'There's more. I don't understand it, but when the clerk described the man, it sounded like Joseph. The man even had gray eyes. Could I have been wrong at the morgue? Could Joseph be alive! Could-?'

'No, Tess, you weren't wrong. That much I can guarantee. Whoever the man was, he very definitely wasn't Joseph.'

'But how can you be sure? How do you explain the gray eyes?'

'Coincidence maybe,' Craig said. 'I don't know, but-'

'You yourself said that the scar on the corpse's wrist wasn't enough for an absolute identification. Maybe that scar's a coincidence, too. Since the FBI hasn't been able to match the corpse's fingerprints with anyone in their files, maybe-'. 'No, Tess, we do have a match. That's one of the things I tried to call you about.'

'From the FBI?' Tess asked quickly. They know Joseph's real identity?'

'Not from the FBI. From our own lab. They dusted Joseph's apartment and matched the prints they found there with those from the unburned left hand on the corpse in the morgue. Tess, the fingerprints match. Point by point, they match and they also match fingerprints on Joseph's desk at Truth Video. Your identification's been verified. Joseph died in Carl Schurz Park.'

Tess's knees abruptly weakened. She sank toward the bed and shivered so much that she wrapped a sheet around her. Since the incident in the photo shop, her fear that someone might be following her had been tempered by the hope that whoever it was would be Joseph, that Joseph might somehow still be alive.

But now she suffered a renewed aching surge of grief, her stomach sinking, her chest hollow, her mind off-balance.

'Tess?'

She tried to answer.

'Tess?' Craig emphasized her name, sounding worried.

'I'm here. I'm… Yes, I'm all right.'

'For a moment, I thought… Look, I'm sorry. I guess I could have been more delicate.'

'I felt… Never mind. I'll be okay,' Tess said.

'You're sure?'

'All that matters now is getting even, finding out who killed Joseph and why.' Tess shook her head, bitter. 'You said the matching fingerprints were one of the reasons you tried to call. What else-?'

'It's about the photographs.' Craig paused.

'And?' Tess frowned. 'You're going to make me ask? What about them?'

'It's a good thing you took them, and a damned good thing the clerk didn't give them to the guy who claimed you'd sent him.'

'What's wrong?'

'Someone broke into Joseph's apartment. They torched his bedroom.'

Tess jerked upright, the sheet falling off her shoulders. 'Torched it?'

'Almost burned the whole top floor before the fire department put it out. It's a miracle no one was hurt.'

'Christ, when did this happen?'

'Four o'clock.'

'About the same time the guy was trying to steal my pictures.'

'Which are the only record of what we found in Joseph's apartment,' Craig said.

'But I thought you said Homicide got there before we did and took photographs.'

'I was wrong,' Craig said. 'What they sent was a fingerprint team. When they saw the bedroom, they decided they wanted pictures. The photographer was scheduled to show up in the afternoon.'

'But he didn't?'

'Not in time. After all, the apartment wasn't a crime scene. There didn't seem any urgency.'

'Oh, shit.'

'Just make sure those photographs are safe. Hide them. Have copies made from the negatives,' Craig said.

'First thing tomorrow morning.'

'Several copies. Keep another set. Are you coming back to Manhattan tomorrow?'

'I don't know yet,' Tess said. 'I still have things to check.'

Then send the other copies to me. Federal Express.' Craig gave his office address at One Police Plaza. 'There's one other problem.'

'I'm not sure I want to hear it.'

'After the Fire Department put out the blaze, when they thought it was safe, they let me search the torched apartment. That building has concrete floors. There wasn't any risk of my falling through or of anything else having fallen through.'

'I don't know what you're getting at,' Tess said nervously.

'I had to use a pole to move sections of the toppled ceiling and walls. But I knew where to look, so it didn't take me long to clear the spot I wanted.'

'What spot? What are you-?'

'Where the bookcase was,' Craig said. 'Where the statue stood on the bookcase. The books were destroyed, as you'd expect. So was the bookcase. Just ashes. But the statue was made of marble, and marble doesn't burn. It might crack from heat, but… I kept looking. The statue couldn't have fallen through the concrete floor, and when it toppled from the bookcase, it couldn't have rolled very far. It's gone, Tess. The statue's gone! Whoever torched the apartment must have taken it when they left. I don't know what the hell's happening, but I want you to promise me. Swear it. Be careful!'

SEVEN

East of Maine. The North Atlantic.

The United States Coast Guard cutter Sea Wolf, out of Portland, continued its speedy mission through a moderately choppy sea.

Clouds obscured the moon and stars, intensifying the night, although even in daylight the Sea Wolfs destination was still too far away to have allowed for a visual identification. On the cutter's bridge, Captain Peter O'Malley could see his objective as a blip on the radar, however, and its implications made him frown.

'Distance: fourteen thousand yards,' a crewman said. 'Looks like air reconnaissance was right, Captain. Its course is erratic. Minimal speed.'

O'Malley nodded. Six hours earlier, a group of Air Force F-15 fighter pilots practising night maneuvers in a military corridor off the New England coast had noticed the blip on their radar screens. Its unusual behavior had prompted the flight group's leader to radio his commander at Loring Air Force Base near Limestone, Maine, and request permission to contact the vessel. Permission was granted, but all attempts to communicate with the vessel had failed.

'Identify yourself.'

No response.

'Do you need assistance?'

No response.

After repeated efforts, the group's leader had requested further permission to change course and descend for a visual inspection. Again, permission was granted. After all, the vessel's radio silence combined with its puzzling, slow, random course and its proximity to United States waters justified concern. At a cautious distance, using intense-magnification night-vision apparatus, the flight group's leader determined that the vessel was a massive fishing trawler. English lettering on the stern indicated that the trawler's name was the Bronze Bell, its home port Pusan, South Korea. The English lettering wasn't unusual – many Oriental commercial ships used English identification symbols when operating in Western waters.

What was unusual, indeed disturbing, however, was that in addition to its erratic sluggish approach toward US waters, the trawler displayed no lights, not even the mandatory signal lights that maritime law required during night voyages to prevent converging vessels from failing to see each other and colliding.

The troubled commander at Loring Air Force Base insisted on confirmation. The equally troubled flight group leader repeated that the trawler was totally – 'I mean, absolutely'-dark. The situation became delicate, the potential for an international incident disturbing. A misjudgment could destroy careers.

If the approaching foreign vessel had been military in nature, the United States military would have gone on alert. But since the vessel was civilian, it required a less severe response. The Air Force immediately contacted the Coast Guard, and since O'Malley's cutter was the nearest government vessel in the area, the Sea Wolf was at once dispatched to investigate.

Now, five hours after having received his orders, O'Malley – a red-haired, twenty-year veteran with a home in Portland and a wife and daughter whom he loved very much – continued to frown at the blip on the radar screen.

'That's it, Captain,' a crewman said. 'She just crossed the two-hundred mile boundary. She's in our waters.'

'And drifting.' O'Malley sounded as if his best friend had died.

'That's what it looks like, Captain.'

'And still no response to our radio messages.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley sighed. 'Battle stations.'

The crewman pressed the alarm. 'Aye, aye, Captain.' Through the cutter's hull, the alarm sounded muffled but effectively shrill. Below, it would be excruciating, the rest of the crew snapping into action. 'You think there'll be trouble?'

'That's the problem, isn't it?' O'Malley said.

'Excuse me, Captain?'

'What should I think? Trouble? For sure. Obviously something's wrong. The question is whose trouble – ours or that trawler's? I guarantee this. My dear departed mother, God rest her soul, didn't raise her son to be a dummy.'

'I second that opinion, Captain.'

'Thank you, Lieutenant.' O'Malley allowed himself to grin despite his nervous preoccupation. 'And I promise you, I'll do everything in my power to insure that every mother's son in my command lives to see his family again.'

'We already know that, Captain.'

'I appreciate your confidence, but it won't get you a better rating on your duty report.'

The lieutenant chuckled.

'I want a boarding party,' O'Malley said.

'Yes, Captain.'

'Armed.'

'Yes, Captain.'

'Get the Zodiac ready.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

O'Malley continued to frown toward the radar. Thirty minutes later, the Sea Wolf's night-vision screen revealed the enormous South Korean trawler wallowing in waves a thousand yards ahead, its bulky outline made eerily green by the monitor.

The lieutenant straightened, cocking his head. The Air Force wasn't exaggerating, sir. I've never seen a darker ship.'

'I want every gun manned,' O'Malley said.

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

'Still no response to our radio messages?'

'Afraid not, sir.'

'Pull portside and hail them on the bullhorn.'

O'Malley nervously waited as a communications officer crouched protectively beside a housing on the deck and blurted questions through the bullhorn.

'Ahoy, Bronze Bell!'

'Ahoy! Please, respond!

'You have entered United States waters!'

'Please, respond!

'Ahoy, do you need assistance?'

'Fuck it,' O'Malley said. 'Get a team in the Zodiac. Make sure they're fully armed, Berettas, M-sixteens, and for God's sake, make sure they're fully protected from our deck when they cross to the trawler. The fifty-caliber machineguns. The forty-millimeter cannons. The works.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

The Zodiac, a rubber outboard-motor-powered raft, sped toward the Bronze Bell, its seven-member team holding M-16s at the ready. In the dark, as they reached the trawler and threw grappling hooks connected to rope ladders over the trawler's side, O'Malley said a quiet prayer for their safety and mentally made the Sign of the Cross.

The team shouldered their rifles, unholstered their pistols, jacked a round into each firing chamber, and clambered briskly up the rope ladders, disappearing over the side.

O'Malley held his breath, regretting that his duty required him to remain aboard while these other men – good men, brave men -potentially risked their lives.

Something was very wrong.

'Captain?' The two-way radio beside O'Malley crackled.

Picking it up, O'Malley answered, 'Reception is clear. Report.'

'Sir, the deck is deserted.'

'Understood. Remain on battle alert. Establish sentries,' O'Malley said. 'With caution, check the lower decks.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley waited the longest five minutes in his life.

'Captain, there's still no sign of anyone.'

'Keep checking.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley waited another tense five minutes.

Flashlights wavered on the trawler's deck. Lights came on. The two-way radio crackled. 'Captain, we can't find anyone. The trawler appears to be completely deserted.'

O'Malley knew the answer to his next question. The team would surely have reported the information. But he had to ask it anyhow. 'Did you find any corpses?'

'No one alive or dead, Captain. Unless they're hiding somewhere, the vessel's been abandoned. It's kind of spooky in a way, sir.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, Captain, the television's on in the crew's recreation area. There's a radio playing in their quarters. There's food on plates in the galley. Whatever it is happened, it must have been fast.'

O'Malley frowned. 'What about damage to the trawler? Any evidence of a fire, any reason they might have abandoned ship?'

'No, sir. No damage at all. And anyway, the lifeboats are still aboard.'

Then what the hell happened? Where in God's name did they go? How? O'Malley nervously wondered but didn't allow his apprehension to affect the sound of his voice. 'Understood,' he said with authoritative calmness. The trawler's engines?'

'Shut down, but we got them started again. No problem, Captain.'

'Fuel?'

'The tanks are half full.'

'What about the shortwave radio?'

'We found it turned off, but it's in working order, sir. If they wanted to, if there was trouble, they could have sent a Mayday alert.'

'No one's reported hearing any. Keep checking.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

O'Malley set down the walkie-talkie. Pensive, he stared through the darkness toward the lights on the massive trawler. On occasion, he'd heard stories about vessels found abandoned at sea. The explanations were usually obvious: a rustbucket that an owner had scuttled in order to collect insurance but that had failed to sink as the owner intended, or a yacht that pirates had looted after killing the passengers (raping them as well, if there were females) and throwing the corpses overboard, or a fishing boat that drug smugglers had abandoned because they feared that the Drug Enforcement Agency suspected their cargo and was about to try to capture them.

In previous centuries, O'Malley was aware, a crew would sometimes (though rarely) mutiny, execute their captain, toss him to the sharks, and use lifeboats to escape to a nearby coastline. Again from previous centuries, he knew about ships upon which a plague had broken out, one-by-one the corpses of victims hurled overboard until the last man alive, suffering from the hideous disease, had managed to complete a diary about the ordeal and then jumped into the ocean, preferring a quick, relatively painless death by drowning instead of a prolonged, agonizing one.

Then too, O'Malley had heard legends about crewless ghost ships, The Flying Dutchman, for example, although in that case the captain was reputed to be still aboard, doomed to drift for all eternity because of a gamble that he'd lost with the Devil.

The most famous abandoned ship was the Marie Celeste, a brigantine transporting commercial alcohol from New York to Italy, found crewless between the Azores and Portugal in 1872. But O'Malley had never understood why that ship acquired its mysterious reputation. After all, its sails had been damaged, its cabins soaked with water, its lifeboats missing. Obviously a severe storm had frightened the crew into thinking that the Marie Celeste was about to sink. They'd foolishly used the lifeboats to try to escape and been swallowed by the storm-churned sea.

All easily explainable.

But despite O'Malley's familiarity with these accounts, he'd never in all his lengthy varied experience in the Coast Guard actually ever come across an abandoned vessel. Certainly, he'd seen barges torn apart on reefs because of a storm, but they didn't fit in this category. A ship in calm open water, drifting without a crew for no apparent reason? O'Malley shook his head. He wasn't superstitious or fanciful. Although he felt a chill, he didn't believe in lost gambles with the Devil or visitors from outer space abducting humans or time warps or the Bermuda Triangle or any other of the ridiculous theories that the supermarket tabloids promoted. Something was terribly wrong here, yes, but its explanation would be logical, and by God, he intended to find out what that explanation was.

He turned to a crewman. 'Contact headquarters in Portland. Tell them what we've got here. Ask them to send another cutter. Also ask for assistance from the local police, maybe the DEA and the FBI. Who knows how many other agencies will be involved by the time we sort this out? Also… I'm sure headquarters will think of this… they'd better notify the Bronze Bell 's owner.'

'Right away, Captain.'

O'Malley brooded again toward the massive trawler. There were so many details to anticipate. He couldn't leave the Bronze Bell with his men on board her, but as soon as the other Coast Guard cutter arrived, either it or the Sea Wolf would begin a search for sailors in the water. At dawn, air reconnaissance would join in the search. Meanwhile the Bronze Bell would be escorted to Portland, where various investigators would be waiting.

The two-way radio crackled. 'Still nothing, Captain. I mean we've looked everywhere, including the cargo hold. I'll tell you this. They sure had good luck fishing. The hold's almost full.'

A thought abruptly occurred to O'Malley. 'Almost full? What were they using to fish?'

'This big a catch, they had to use nets, sir.'

'Yes, but what kind of nets?' O'Malley asked.

'Oh, shit, sir, I think I see what you mean. Just a minute.'

O'Malley waited. The minute stretched on and on.

'Damn it, you were right, sir. The bastards were using drift nets.'

Furious, O'Malley pressed his hands on a console with such force that his knuckles whitened. Drift nets? Sure. The Bronze Bell was owned by South Koreans. They, the Taiwanese, and the Japanese were notorious for sending trawlers into the North Atlantic 's international waters, casting out drift nets made of nylon mesh that spread for dozens of miles behind each trawler. It had recently been estimated that as many as thirty thousand miles of these nets were in use in the North Atlantic, scooping up every living thing, in effect strip-mining the ocean. The nets were intended to be an efficient means of trapping enormous (unconscionable!) amounts of tuna and squid. The effect was to depopulate these species. Worse, the nets also caught dolphins, porpoises, turtles, and whales, creatures that needed to surface periodically in order to breathe but that couldn't when caught in the nets. Eventually, cruelly, they drowned, their carcasses discarded as commercially useless when the nets were reeled in. Thus those species, too, were depopulated.

The bastards! O'Malley thought. The murderous bastards!

He strained to keep rage from his voice as he spoke to the walkie-talkie. 'Is the net still in the water?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then turn on the winches. Haul the damned thing in. We'll be taking the Bronze Bell to Portland. The weight of the drift net will hold her back.'

'I'll give the order, sir.'

O'Malley seethed, glowering at the trawler. Shit! Shit! Those fucking drift nets. Those irresponsible-!

A voice blurted from the walkie-talkie, 'Oh, my God, Captain! Jesus! Oh, my-!' The man on the other end sounded as if he might vomit.

'What's the matter? What's wrong?'

'The drift net! We're hauling it in! You can't believe how much fish it-! Christ! And the dolphins! The porpoises! I've never seen so many! Dead! They're all dead! Tangled in the net! A fucking nightmare! The crew!'

'What? Say again! The-?'

'Crew! Twenty! Thirty! We're still counting! Oh, God in heaven! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! We've found the crew! They were tied to the net! They drowned the same way the dolphins and-!'

The next sound from the walkie-talkie was unmistakable: anguished, guttural gagging, the Coast Guard officer throwing up.

EIGHT

Brooklyn.

The sign on the stake outside St Thomas More grade school said CLOSED, NO TRESPASSING, PROPERTY OF F AND S REALTY. Stapled to the sign was a piece of paper, which in legal-looking fine print explained that this area had been rezoned for multiple-family dwellings. Another sign – this one on the school's front door – said, SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION, FUTURE SITE OF GRAND VIEW CONDOMINIUMS.

The school, a three-story drab brick structure, had been built in 1910. Its wiring, plumbing, and heating systems were so in need of expensive repairs that the local diocese, at the limit of its financial resources, had been forced to sell it and arrange for Catholic students in the neighborhood to attend the newer but already crowded St Andrew's school two miles away. Parents who in their youth had gone to St Thomas More and had sent their children there mourned its passing, but as the bishop had indicated in his letter – read by the local pastor to his parishioners during Sunday mass – the Church faced a looming monetary crisis. Regrettable sacrifices had to be made, not only here but in almost every diocese across the nation. Prayers and donations were required.

At eight, the smog was already thick, the air sultry, as three cars turned into the teachers' abandoned parking lot beside the school. The cars were dark, four-door, American sedans, each with F AND S REALTY stencilled in yellow on their sides. Two men got out of each car, greeting the others with a nod. In their late thirties to early forties, they wore subdued, light-weight, polyester suits. Five held clipboards, the sixth an oversized metal briefcase. They considered the once vital school and the plywood that now covered its windows.

'A pity,' one man said.

'Well,' another man said, 'nothing lasts forever.'

'Nothing?'

'At least, on earth.'

'True,' the third man said.

'And you know what the bottom line is,' the fourth man said.

The fifth man nodded. 'The collection plate.'

'Did you bring the key?' the sixth man asked.

The first man patted his suitcoat pocket.

They approached the school's front door, waited while the first man unlocked it, and stepped through its creaky entrance, letting their eyes adjust to the shadows, smelling dust and mold.

The first man shut the door and locked it, the shadows thickening. His voice echoed, emphasizing the building's desolation. 'I suppose any room will do.'

'It's better on the second floor,' the man with the briefcase said. 'Less chance of our being overheard in case someone stands outside near a window. I noticed gaps in some of the plywood.'

'Agreed,' the second man said.

'All the same, we'd better check this floor.'

'You're right,' the first man said. 'Of course.'

Now the echo came from their footsteps as they crossed the hallway. While four of the men inspected each classroom, the boys' and girls' rest rooms, a storage room, and the various closets, the fifth man made sure that the back door was locked, and the sixth man checked the basement. Only then did they proceed up the creaky stairs.

Throughout, the first man had the eerie sense that they were intruding, that the spiritual residue of more than eighty years of eager, laughing children had been absorbed by the building, that there were… for lack of a better word… ghosts here, and that all they wanted was to be left alone to play here one last time, their final summer. Sentimental, he admitted, but in a profession that so often required him to be cynical, he decided that for a few harmless seconds at least, he could indulge himself.

The man was of medium height and weight, with brown hair, hazel eyes that tended to assume the color of the clothes he wore, and unremarkable features, so average that no one ever remembered him. Over many years, he'd trained himself to be a chameleon, and yesterday afternoon, he'd followed Tess to LaGuardia Airport.

When he reached the second floor, he squinted higher toward the continuing stairs, then right and left, noticing open-doored classrooms and two drinking fountains that seemed unnaturally low until he recalled that they weren't designed for adults. Shrugging, deferring to the man with the oversized briefcase, he said, 'Which room do you like?'

'The one on the left above the parking lot.'

'As you wish.'

'But not until…' The man with the briefcase pointed upward toward the final floor.

'Do you really think it's necessary? The dust on the stairs hasn't been disturbed.'

'I was trained to be thorough. Your expertise is surveillance, but mine is…'

The first man nodded. 'And you do it superbly.'

'I accept the compliment.' The man's eyes glinted.

'I'll check the upper floor while the others inspect the rooms on this floor. In the meantime, since we're under pressure, can you…?'

'Yes, I'll set up my equipment.'

Five minutes later, after having inspected the musty upper floor where he found no one, the first man descended to the middle floor and the room on the left above the parking lot. He and his associates had been very careful in selecting this meeting place. It was highly unlikely that their enemy had managed to trace them here. Mostly – he suspected – the man with the briefcase was concerned that despite the abandoned school's locked doors and barricaded windows, a drug addict or else one of the city's innumerable homeless might have discovered a way to gain access and find sanctuary here. Even a drug addict might make sense of their conversation and become an informant.

At the same time, the chameleon reminded himself that the enemy, over many years, had demonstrated remarkable cleverness, extreme survival characteristics, ruthless determination, including the ability to counterattack. No matter how carefully this abandoned school had been chosen, the fact was that the rendezvous site had been used four times already. A pattern had been established, and whenever a pattern occurred, that pattern could be discovered. The man with the briefcase was right. There was no harm in being cautious.

The chameleon noticed two things when he entered the classroom. First, the sixth man, the electronic-security specialist, had opened his oversized briefcase, plugged a monitor into a battery, and was using a metal wand to scan the blackboard, the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and the furniture. Second, the other men – normally so serious and dignified – were seated in cramped positions in miniature table-topped chairs designed for ten-year-olds. The absurd situation reminded the chameleon of scenes from Gulliver's Travels and Alice in Wonderland.

'It's clean,' the sixth man said, replacing his equipment in the briefcase, shutting it, and locking it.

'Then we'll begin.' Although the chameleon had been deferential until now, he assumed the place of authority, sitting at the teacher's desk.

As one, each member of the group reached into his suitcoat pocket, removed a ring, and placed it on the middle finger of his left hand. Each ring was identical, handsome, distinctive, a twenty-four karat band on top of which a large gleaming ruby was embossed with the golden insignia of an intersecting cross and sword.

'May the Lord be with you,' the chameleon said.

'And with your spirit,' the five men replied.

'Deo gratias,' all six of them said together, completing the ritual.

The chameleon scanned his fellow hunters. 'To begin, I must make a confession.'

The group narrowed their eyes, straightening as best they could in the confinement of their diminutive chairs.

'You.' The chameleon nodded toward the sixth man, the electronic-security specialist, who unlike the others was somewhat overweight. 'Earlier we exchanged compliments about our respective skills. But I'm forced to admit that I've made a mistake in terms of my skills, or at least my team has made a mistake, and I always take responsibility for the men I've trained.'

'What sort of mistake?' The second man tilted his glasses, frowning over them.

'One of the enemy tried to intercept photographs that the woman took in our target's apartment.'

The fourth man hunched his broad shoulders. 'Perhaps the attempt was an unrelated matter. We've been distracted by false alarms before. How can you be positive that this person is one of the enemy?'

'He has gray eyes,' the chameleon said.

'Ah.' The third man pursed his thin lips. 'In that case…'

'Indeed.' The fifth man's gaunt cheeks throbbed.

'I entered the photo shop and pretended to be a customer. I stood as close to him as I am now to you,' the chameleon said. 'I couldn't fail to recognize the characteristics. He might as well have been the target's brother.'

'Perhaps he was,' the broad-shouldered fourth man said. 'I still don't understand. What was your mistake?'

'My responsibility was to follow the woman. My team's responsibility was to pursue and capture the man.' The chameleon shook his head in distress. They failed.'

'What?' The sixth man, the electronic-security specialist, glared. 'They saw him leave the shop and…!'

'He was brilliant. From reports I was given, he seemed to sense immediately that he was being stalked. He ran. My team gave chase. He darted down alleys. He rushed across streets, veering through traffic. Still he was chased. He entered a restaurant.'

'And?'

The chameleon raised his hands. 'He vanished.'

'How?'

'If my team had been able to determine that, they certainly would have continued to chase him. I repeat, I accept responsibility for their failure.'

'But that does no good,' the sixth man continued. 'Accept as much blame as you want. The ultimate fact is, the enemy was within your team's grasp, but they didn't succeed.'

'Yes.' The chameleon lowered his head. 'That's the ultimate fact.'

'He must have had an escape route planned.' The third man pursed his lips again.

'No doubt,' the solidly built fourth man said. They're like ferrets. They can dodge and squirm and find holes where you'd never expect. How else could they have eluded us for so long?'

'That's not the point,' the overweight sixth man objected. Their survival skills are well known. But we're supposed to be better.'

'And we are.' The second man adjusted his glasses. 'Because virtue is on our side. But sometimes it appears that providence tests our determination.'

'I don't accept rationalizations. If what you're telling me is that the Lord helps those who help themselves, then we're obviously not trying hard enough!' The sixth man glowered toward the chameleon. 'Or in this case, you and your team aren't trying hard enough. Certainly I've done my part. I installed a tap on the woman's phone and on the policeman's phone within an hour of your instructions. I also arranged for our people in Washington to be able to monitor calls made from car phones. Every important government executive has one these days, although I don't understand why they use them, given the security risk.'

'What more do you want me to say? I can't change the past. However, I can resolve to do better in the future.'

'But this isn't the first time you've made mistakes!' the sixth man added. 'When you managed to find our target, you should have arranged immediately for his abduction and interrogation!'

'I disagree.' The chameleon gestured. 'Since the target didn't realize he'd been discovered, I thought it prudent to continue watching him in case he might lead us to other targets or…'

'But why would he have done such a foolish thing? The man was a fugitive from his group. They wanted him as much as we did.'

'Exactly,' the chameleon said. 'We waited in case his group caught up to him. As a consequence, we'd have had other vermin to capture, question, and eliminate.'

'Regardless, the tactic failed,' the sixth man complained. 'His group did discover where he was, and instead of being captured, they succeeded in eliminating him.'

'It was raining that night. The weather interfered with-'

The sixth man scoffed, 'The weather. How did the target's fellow vermin catch up to him?'

The chameleon scowled. 'Probably using the same method we did. The target was skilled in hiding. He constructed a new identity for himself. He never stayed longer than six months in any city. He arranged for elaborate smoke screens to conceal where he lived. In theory, he was undetectable. But human nature is imperfect. There were certain things about the man that he couldn't or wouldn't change. Specifically his fascination with video documentaries. That's how we found him the first time in Los Angeles, by checking the video companies. Of course, he'd moved on before we found his employer. But then we picked up his trail once more, the same way, in Chicago. Yet again he'd moved on. But finally, after using all the resources at our disposal, we located him at Truth Video in Manhattan. And if we could find him that way, I take for granted that the vermin he was running from could.'

'Still, that raises another question,' the muscular fourth man said. 'After they executed the target, appropriately by fire, the same method we would have used, why did they also set fire to his apartment, and why did they wait several days before they did it?'

'My surveillance team tells me that the target's hunters never entered his apartment the night they killed him,' the chameleon said. 'From Friday evening onward, he acted with greater caution, as if he suspected he'd been located. He broke an appointment with the woman, Tess Drake, on Saturday morning. He remained in his apartment all that day. Saturday night, he apparently decided to flee under cover of the storm. My team had concluded that his behavior was too erratic. They planned to grab him while they could, in the middle of the night as he slept. But that plan was interrupted when other targets arrived, with the same intention as our group. Events occurred quickly. The hunters discovered their quarry when he rushed down the stairs. As we know, the man was in superb physical condition.'

'Well, aren't they all?' the second man asked rhetorically.

'But he was also skilled in hand-to-hand combat,' the chameleon said. 'He fought with his hunters, eluded them, raced from the building, but during the fight, he'd injured his leg and-'

'Yes, yes,' the electronics expert said impatiently. 'They trapped him and burned him alive before your team could formulate a new plan and, if not capture and interrogate, at least exterminate them all. Another nest would have been wiped out.'

'You weren't there. Don't make judgments,' the chameleon said. 'My team was composed of three men, sufficient for their original mission. But the target and his hunters amounted to six. The only equalizer would have been pistols. But in so heavily guarded an area as the mayor's house near Carl Schurz Park, if there'd been shooting, the police would immediately have been put on alert and blockaded the district. My team could not take the risk of being captured and questioned by the authorities.'

'What risk?' the sixth man growled. 'Your men knew the rule. If they were captured, before they could be interrogated, they had an obligation to kill themselves.' He tapped his ruby ring and the poison capsule hidden beneath the stone on his and every other ring.

'I wonder,' the chameleon said. 'In my team's place, would you have been eager to take a chance that you knew would fail, with the certainty that you'd have to kill yourself?'

'You bet your soul, I would.'

'No, not my soul. Yours,' the chameleon said. 'I doubt you'd have risked being captured. You're a technician, not a combat operative, and your pride makes you want to live too much.'

'Maybe you don't hate the vermin as much as I do,' the sixth man said.

'I doubt that as well.'

'You're evading the issue. The fire in the apartment. What about it?'

'My assumption is that the other targets had made such a commotion in the apartment building that they didn't dare go back right away for fear of being found by the police. Also it may be that the targets concluded that the man who called himself Joseph Martin had been so scrupulous about hiding his true nature that he wouldn't leave anything incriminating in his apartment. That's all speculation, but this is not. We know that they decided to watch the woman he'd befriended, in case she behaved in a way that suggested she knew his secret. We, of course, watched the woman because she was the only connection we had with the target. She went to the morgue and managed to identify his body. The next day, the detective from Missing Persons took her to the target's apartment. Immediately afterward, she left a roll of film at a one-hour developing service. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that she must have found something of such interest in the target's apartment that she took photographs there and wanted them developed at once. When one of the target's executioners failed to get the photos, he and the others decided that the apartment now had sufficient priority for them to risk going back. Whatever they found, they needed to destroy it. And fire, of course, not only purifies. It conceals theft.'

'But what did they find?' the third man asked.

'My guess?' The chameleon hesitated. 'An altar.'

The fourth man gasped.

'Probably one of their statues. That, above all, they would have to retrieve. Regardless if someone had seen it and taken photographs of it, the revelation wouldn't matter as much as the object itself. The statue would be too sacred to them for it to be allowed to fall into unclean hands.'

The group squinted in disgust.

'God damn them,' the second man said.

'He has,' the sixth man said. 'But now, after having come so close, we've lost them.'

'Not necessarily,' the chameleon said.

'Oh?' The fifth man raised his head.

'You've got a new lead?' the fourth man asked.

'They appear to have become fixated on the woman,' the chameleon said. 'Recent events suggest that they believe she knows too much, especially given the photographs she took and then, of course, her sudden trip to Alexandria, Virginia. As we know from our background check, her father was powerful in the government and had many even more powerful associates with whom her mother remains in contact. It would appear that the woman, Tess Drake, is determined to find out why her friend died. It would also appear that our targets are equally determined to stop her and conceal all evidence of their existence.'

'Wait. A moment ago, you said "recent events".' The sixth man straightened.' What recent events?

'Well,' the chameleon said. 'Yes.' He hesitated. They're the reason I requested this meeting.' His eyes and voice became somber. 'Last night…'

He described what had happened to his counterpart.

'They burned him?' The sixth man turned pale.

'Yes.' The chameleon tasted bile as he stood from the dusty teacher's desk. 'Our watcher had two men working with him. Both were on foot, one hiding behind the mansion in case the woman went out the back, the other farther along the street, among bushes. The latter man saw a silver Corniche leave the mansion. When the car drove by, he managed to get its license number, eventually using his contacts to find out who owned the car. That's how we know that Brian Hamilton was at the mansion. The latter man also saw the assassin rush toward the watcher's car and shoot him. The next thing, the assassin drove the Taurus away. The watcher's backup man hotwired a Cadillac on the street and pursued. He found the Taurus burning in a shopping mall's otherwise empty parking lot. When he realized that there wasn't any way he could help, he left the scene before the police arrived.'

'But if our man was already shot, why did they…?' The second man's voice cracked.

'Set fire to him?' The chameleon grimaced. 'No doubt, to make an example. To demoralize us.'

'In that case, they failed,' the third man said with fury. They'll pay. I'll put them in hell.'

'We all will,' the sixth man said.

'And make them pay for other things as well,' the chameleon said, his mouth tasting sour.

'You mean there's more?' The fourth man jerked upright, inadvertently banging his knees against the top of the small desk.

'Unfortunately. Last night, at the same time our operative was shot while he watched the mansion…"

NINE

Brian Hamilton set down the cellular telephone in the shadowy back seat of his silver Corniche, frowned, and leaned forward toward his bodyguard-driver. 'Steve, you heard?'

The husky, former Marine, an expert in reconnaissance, nodded firmly. 'That was Eric Chatham. You want me to drive to his home.'

'Exactly. Get me to West Falls Church as soon as possible.'

'I'm already headed toward the freeway.'

With that taken care of, Brian Hamilton slumped back and brooded. The story that Tess had told him… and the photographs she'd shown him… troubled him greatly. Whoever the man called Joseph Martin had really been, there was something he'd been hiding.

Or running from. Hamilton was sure of that. Yes. Whatever that something might be, it was as terrible as the blood-stained whip in Joseph Martin's closet and the grotesque sculpture that Tess had photographed.

Back at the mansion, Hamilton had described that photograph as weird, but the adjective understated his severe revulsion. The bas-relief statue filled him with disgust.

He bit his lip, with a deepening apprehension that Tess had become involved in something so twisted and dangerous that it might get her killed. Hadn't she said that she feared she was being followed?

Hamilton's jaw muscles hardened. Whatever was going on, he intended to use all his power, all his influence, every I.O.U. at his disposal to find out what threatened Tess and to make sure it was stopped.

After all, he owed her. For several reasons. Not the least of which was that he'd been her father's friend but had followed orders from his superiors and reluctantly sent Remington Drake to Beirut to negotiate a secret arms deal with the Christians against the Moslems. As a consequence, he'd been responsible for her father's abduction by the Moslems, Drake's torture, and eventual brutal death. It wasn't any wonder that Tess hated him. By all means, she had good reason. But if helping her and possibly saving her life would erase that hate, Brian Hamilton had all the motivation he needed, especially since her mother and he had come to an arrangement. After all, he couldn't very well have a stepdaughter who loathed him.

Continuing to brood, he noticed that his bodyguard had reached the freeway and was speeding toward Falls Church, Virginia, ten miles away. In a very few minutes, Brian Hamilton would be able to describe his problem to the director of the FBI and demand that Eric Chatham use the full resources of the Bureau to find out who Joseph Martin had been and who had killed him. As much as Hamilton owed Tess, Eric Chatham owed him, and now, by God, it was payback time.

'Sir, we might have a problem,' the bodyguard-driver said.

'What problem?' Hamilton straightened.

'It's possible we're being followed.'

His stomach suddenly cramping, Hamilton pivoted to stare through the car's back window. 'The minivan behind us?'

'Yes, sir. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence. But it's been tailing us since before we left Alexandria.'

'Lose it.'

'That's what I'm trying to do, sir.'

The Corniche sped up.

But so did the minivan.

'Persistent,' the driver said.

'I told you to lose it.'

'Where, sir? We're on a freeway, if you don't mind me pointing out the obvious. I'm doing ninety. And I don't see an exit ramp.'

'Wait a minute! It's changing lanes! It looks like it wants to pass us!' Hamilton said.

'Yes, sir. It could be… possibly… maybe I'm wrong.'

The minivan, having veered into the passing lane, increased speed and came abreast of the Corniche. But as Hamilton watched, he felt his heart lurch. On the minivan's passenger side, someone was rolling down a window.

'Look out!' Hamilton's driver blurted.

Too late.

From the open window, someone threw a bottle. The bottle had a rag stuffed into its mouth.

The rag was on fire.

'Jesus!'

The bodyguard swerved toward the freeway's gravel shoulder, frantically reducing speed, but the bottle – which must have been constructed from specially designed, brittle glass – shattered on impact against the Corniche's windshield and spewed blazing gasoline over the car.

Blinded by flames -

– on the hood! -

– and oh, Christ, on the windshield! -

– the driver tried desperately to control his steering. In the backseat, Hamilton gaped to the left, horrified to see the van streak sharply toward the Corniche. He felt the van slam brutally against the Corniche's side, slam it again, and again, and propel the Corniche off the freeway's shoulder.

Hamilton's stomach dropped. The Corniche, now completely engulfed with flames, crashed through a guardrail, soared through the air, and collided with…

Hamilton screamed. He never knew what the car hit. The sudden shocking force of the crash slammed him forward, catapulting him up, over, and beyond the front seat, walloping his skull against the dashboard.

But what the passengers in the minivan saw with calculated satisfaction was that the Corniche had impacted against a massive steel electrical tower. The collision burst the Corniche's fuel tank. A huge exploding fireball disintegrated the car and spewed pieces of flesh, bone, and metal for fifty yards in every direction, the flames gushing upward for a hundred feet. As the minivan sped onward, disappearing among traffic, its rear window reflected the spectacular pyre in the darkness beside the freeway.

TEN

The chameleon removed the folded front section of the New York Times from beneath a notepad on his clipboard. He held it up so the group could see the headline – FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE DIES IN FIERY FREEWAY DISASTER – then handed the newspaper to the second man. 'When you're finished, pass it around.'

'I've already read it. I didn't know the connection, but the moment you mentioned Brian Hamilton, I realized what you were getting at.'

'Well,' the third man said, 'I didn't have a chance to read the paper this morning. Let me see.'

One-by-one, the somber-faced men read the article.

'Fire,' the sixth man said with disgust. 'They're so in love with fire.' Lips curled, he set down the paper and studied the chameleon. 'You seem to have so many answers. What about this one. Why did they kill him?'

'I don't have answers exactly. What I do have are calculated assumptions,' the chameleon said. Tess Drake makes a sudden trip to see her mother. When she gets to the mansion in Alexandria, is it a coincidence that the former Secretary of State and current main adviser to the President just happens to be waiting there when she arrives? Not likely. I have to conclude that so important a man was summoned by the woman, that Hamilton – a friend of her dead father – was the person she primarily wanted to see and not her mother, that Tess Drake was using her late father's influence to enlist powerful help in discovering who Joseph Martin was and why he was killed.'

The third man shrugged. 'Assumptions, as you admit. However, I grant that they're logical.'

'And I also have to conclude that the enemy followed Tess Drake to the mansion just as our own people did,' the chameleon continued. 'When the enemy identified Hamilton's Corniche in the driveway and realized what the woman was doing, they must have decided that Hamilton's death was essential to keeping their secret. It's my belief that they wanted to prevent him from telling others what he'd learned and using his connections with the government to enlarge the scope of the investigation.'

The fifth man traced his finger along pencil engravings on the desktop of his miniature chair. 'Possibly.'

'You don't sound convinced.'

'Well, your assumptions make sense to a point, but… What I have trouble with is… If the enemy went to the trouble and took the risk of assassinating Hamilton, they still wouldn't have solved their problem, at least not completely. Their secret would not yet be fully protected. To accomplish that, they'd have to be totally, absolutely thorough, and the most important person to eliminate would be…'

The chameleon nodded. 'Precisely.'

'You're telling me…?'

'Yes.'

'Dear God!' the sixth man said.

'My thought, as well… Dear God… Last night… shortly after two…"

ELEVEN

Standing rigidly in her bedroom in the mansion in Alexandria, Tess cramped her fingers around the telephone as she listened to Craig's gravelly, urgent voice.

'I want you to promise me,' Craig said. 'Swear it. Be careful!'

'I guarantee,' Tess emphasized. 'I won't take any chances.'

'Keep your word. And promise me this as well. Swear you'll phone me tomorrow as soon as you get copies made of the photographs. Then Fed-Ex them to me as fast as possible.'

'I will. I promise,' Tess said.

'Look, I don't want to sound like a jealous lover, but I'll feel a whole lot better when you get back here.'

'Honestly,' Tess said, 'I'll be okay. Just because someone torched Joseph's apartment, it's a big leap to thinking I'm in danger.'

'Oh, yeah?' Craig raised his voice. 'Then what about the guy in the photo shop?'

Tess didn't answer. She reluctantly admitted to herself that she'd been feeling more and more uneasy.

'Okay, what's your mother's address and phone number?' Craig asked and coughed. 'I think it's a good idea… I want to be able to reach you if anything else happens that you should know about.'

Tess gave him that information.

'Good,' Craig said. 'I repeat, I wish you'd get back here.'

'Look, even if I were in Manhattan, what could you do, assuming you're right and I'm in danger? You can't stay with me all the time .'

'You never know. It might come to that.'

'Hey, don't exaggerate.' Tess quivered. 'You're scaring me.'

'Good. At last. I'm finally getting my point across.' The lieutenant's voice dropped, the long-distance static crackling. 'And anyway…' He sounded nervous. 'Would it really be so bad if I was with you all the time?'

'What?' Tess frowned. 'I'm not sure what you mean.'

'I told you yesterday on the way to Joseph's apartment. This started out as police business. Now it belongs to Homicide, not Missing Persons. But I still want to stay involved. Because of you.'

Tess frowned harder.

'No response?' Craig asked.

'I'm trying to sort this out. Are you saying what I think you're saying?'

'As far as I'm concerned, this isn't business anymore. I want to get to know you.'

'But…'

'Whatever it is, say it, Tess.'

'You're ten years older than me.'

'So what? You've got a prejudice? You don't like mature men, dependable men, guys like me who've been there and back and around some and don't have any illusions or expectations and don't make problems?'

'It's not exactly that. I mean…' Tess squirmed. 'It's just… Well, I never thought about…'

'Well, do me a favor and give it some thought. I don't want to be pushy. I know a lot's been happening, not the least of which is you've lost your friend, and I'm sorry for that, and I repeat, I don't want to make problems for you. I'm patient. But hey, I bathe every day.'

Tess couldn't help it. She laughed.

'Good,' Craig said. 'I like that. I like to hear you laugh. So think about it, would you? Or at any rate, keep it in the back of your mind? No big deal. No pressure. But maybe… damn it, I'm so… maybe, when this is over, we can talk about it.'

'Sure.' Tess swallowed. 'If… When… I promise, when this is over, we'll talk about it.'

'That's all I'm asking. You don't sound enthusiastic, but that's okay – I appreciate your patience. This next part, however, is business. I don't care how busy you are – just make sure you call me tomorrow when you send me the copies of those photographs.'

'Word of honor,' Tess said. 'Good night.'

'Good night,' Craig responded. 'And by the way, I don't gamble. I seldom drink. And I'm kind to animals, children, the poor, the infirm, not to mention the aged. Think about it.' The lieutenant broke the connection.

Tess listened to the emptiness of the long-distance static, breathed out in confusion, trembled, and' set the phone on its receptacle.

For several moments, she didn't move.

Oh, Christ!

She hadn't counted on this. She'd been vaguely aware of the lieutenant's attraction to her, but she'd ignored it. There'd been too many other things to concern her.

But now that the subject was in the open, Tess didn't know how to respond. Craig was pleasant enough, and indeed he was good looking in a rugged sort of way. For sure, he'd taken pains to be kind and helpful. And she'd definitely appreciated his company in trying circumstances.

But did she feel attracted to him? Physically? Sexually? Certainly it didn't match the powerful, overwhelming identification she'd experienced with Joseph the first time she'd met him.

Tess recalled the theory in The Dove's Neck Ring that love at first sight was actually love at second sight.

Because the souls of the lovers had known each other in a previous existence and now recognized each other in this reborn earthly form.

Damn it, Tess thought, what am I going to do? I don't want to embarrass or insult the lieutenant. But after all, Craig is older than me. At the same time…

… Tess paced…

… I do feel something for him.

And maybe being comfortable with a man is better than suffering a sickening blaze of passion.

She remembered that The Dove's Neck Ring had referred to physical – as opposed to spiritual – passion as an infirmity, a type of illness.

What am I going to do?

Tess felt guilty. She'd been distant and perhaps even rude to Craig when he'd raised the subject of his attraction to her at the end of their conversation.

Her guiltiness troubled her. I can't let the subject hang in the air, she thought. Too many other things to worry about. I have to get this settled.

She picked up the phone.

To call the lieutenant.

To explain to him what she'd just been thinking.

To be totally honest and with kindness confess her uncertainty.

But when she held the phone to her ear, she frowned.

There wasn't a dial tone.

Impatient, she jabbed down the disconnect button, raised it, and listened again.

Still no dial tone.

More impatient, she tapped the disconnect button several times.

Nothing.

The line was dead.

But the line had been working a minute ago. Why would-?

Tess trembled, a chill surging through her. Earlier, she'd felt a chill as well, caused by the mansion's air-conditioning system.

Now the whisper of air from the vent contributed to her chill, but not because the air was cool. Nostrils widening, she stepped toward the vent low on the wall hidden by a chair beside her bureau.

Pulse rushing, she stooped, moved the chair away, and sniffed the stream of air.

A vague acrid smell made her shiver.

Smoke? Is that-?

Her throat felt stung.

It can't be smoke!

But the smell intensified, and with the next deep breath that flared her nostrils, she coughed.

Panic squeezed her chest. As she gasped, she straightened in terror, seeing a thin wisp of gray drift out of the vent.

Fire!

For a moment, her body refused to move.

Abruptly a spring seemed to snap within her, and she charged toward the bedside phone to dial 911. Instantly, her stomach dropping deeper, faster, she remembered that the phone had been dead the last time she'd tried it. Frantic, she tried it again. Still no dial tone! Jesus. She grabbed the cotton pullover that she'd taken off earlier and desperately put it back on. Then she clutched The Dove's Neck Ring along with the photographs and crammed them into her purse.

With a final look toward the air-conditioning vent from which an increasing wisp of gray drifted out and made her cough harder, she darted toward the bedroom door, yanked it open, and lunged out.

TWELVE

The hallway was dark. Someone, presumably the butler, had turned off the lights after Tess and her mother had gone to their rooms. Even the staircase to her left and the vestibule below it were shrouded in darkness. Only the glow from the lamp on her bedside table allowed her to see. She rushed to the right along the murky hallway and reached the door to her mother's room.

Urgent, she shoved it open and groped to flick at the lightswitch. The overhead chandelier blazed. She stared. Her mother, who lay in a canopied bed similar to Tess's, wore eyeshades, even though the draperies were closed. As a consequence, she didn't respond to the sudden gleaming light.

Tess coughed even harder. This room, too, was hazy from smoke wafting out of the air-conditioning vent. 'Mother!' She hurried toward the bed. Her mother was snoring. 'Mother!' Tess shook her.

'Uh…' Her mother turned onto her side.

Tess shook her repeatedly. 'Mother! Wake up!'

'Uh…' Her mother stopped snoring. 'I… What…?' Lethargic, she pawed at her eyeshades and clumsily raised them to her forehead, squinting through sleep-puffed eyes. Tess? Why are you…? What's the…?'

'You have to get out of bed! Hurry!'

'What's that…?' Her mother coughed.'… haze! It smells like…'

'Smoke! The house is on fire! Hurry, mother! You have to get out of bed!'

Shock jolted her mother fully awake. 'Fire? She fumbled at the sheets and squirmed to raise herself. 'Quickly! Call the Fire Department!'

'I can't!'

'What?'

'I tried! The phone isn't working!' Tess said.

'It's got to be working.' Her mother reached for the bedside phone.

'No! I'm telling you, mother! The phone isn't…! Damn it, come on! We have to leave!'

Her mother strained to overcome her grogginess and raise herself. She wore a frilly, rose-colored nightdress. It had bunched around her knees, but as she lurched to her feet, its hem dropped toward her ankles. She pivoted in confusion, mustered strength, and shuffled toward a closet. 'Help me get dressed.'

There isn't time!' Tess grabbed her arm. 'We have to get out of here!' The room was thick with haze now. Both women coughed. 'For God's sake, mother, let's go!'

With a hand on her mother's back, Tess urged her toward the bedroom's open door.

But only when they reached the shadowy hallway did Tess stiffen with complete understanding. Dread flooded through her.

Jesus, she thought.

First the phone stops working?

Then the mansion's on fire?

It isn't a coincidence! It's not accidental!

They did this!

They think I know too much! They want to kill me!

Craig's right! Why didn't I listen?

It was her mother's turn to insist on moving forward. 'Hurry!' She shoved at Tess. 'What's the matter! Why did you stop?'

Dear God, Tess thought, what if they're in the building?

Smoke detectors wailed. In the bedrooms. In the corridor. In the vestibule, the kitchen, and other locations downstairs. Their combined unnerving shriek made Tess want to clamp her hands across her ears.

But her panicked mind alerted her. No! They wouldn't just start a fire and run! They'd want to make sure I…!

What if they're in the house?

They'll try to stop us from getting out! They'll want our deaths to seem like an accident!

But if they have to, if we try to escape…!

They'll kill us before the fire does!

Tess, why are you stopping?' Her mother frowned, at the same time pressing the sleeve of her nightdress against her mouth, breathing stridently through it. 'What's wrong! The smoke's worse! We'll suffocate if we don't-!'

'Mother?' As Tess's premonition worsened, a fierce startling thought controlled her. 'Whatever happened to father's handgun? Do you still have it?'

'I don't understand. Why would you-?'

Tess whirled toward her mother. 'Just pay attention. After father died, did you keep it? Do you still have his handgun?'

Her mother coughed. 'Why does it matter? We have to-'

'The handgun, mother! What did you do with it?"

'Nothing. I left it where he always put it, the same as I left his other things.' Even after six years, renewed grief strained her mother's already fear-strained features. 'You know I couldn't bring myself to part with anything he owned.'

Smoke swirled behind them. To the left, in the vestibule below the staircase, the darkness was interrupted by a flicker as if from a hesitant strobelight.

The fire!

Tess cringed. She gripped her mother's shoulders. 'In the other bedroom?'

'Yes. That room's exactly the way it was the day your father said good-bye to me and went to Beirut.'

Tess fervently kissed her mother's cheek. 'God bless you! Hurry! Follow me!'

'But we need to…! I still don't understand!'

'I don't have time to explain! All you need to understand is I love you, mother! And I'm trying to save your life!'

'Well!' Her mother strained to breathe. 'That's good enough for me.'

With a terrified glance toward the flickering flames in the vestibule, Tess jerked her mother's hand and urged her toward the right along the hallway. 'Just pray, and do everything I tell you.'

She reached a farther door to her right and banged it open. In the darkness, she fumbled along the inside wall to find the lights witch.

'Before you… There's something I'd better tell you,' her mother said.

'Not now!'

But as Tess flicked the switch and the overhead light gleamed, Tess knew what her mother had wanted to explain. She blinked in astonishment.

This bedroom was the one that her father had used when he came home late at night after emergency meetings at the State Department, so he wouldn't disturb Tess's mother when he undressed to go to sleep.

But now the bedroom resembled the dilapidated interior of Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations. Six years of dust covered everything, the carpet, the bed, the end tables, the lamps, the phone, the bureau. Cobwebs clung to the corners and dangled from the ceiling, making Tess flinch as if she were about to enter a nest of spiders. The rapid movement of the door she'd shoved open had caused dust to swirl, the cobwebs to sway, creating a haze that was emphasized by the smoke spewing out of the air-conditioning vent.

'Mother!'

'I tried to tell you.'

Horrified, Tess rushed ahead, each frantic footstep raising dust.

She swung her arms, clearing the cobwebs, repelled by their stickiness.

'I left everything the way it was.' Her mother struggled after her, coughing. 'The day I learned that your father was dead, I took one final look at this room, closed the door, and never came in here again. I told the servants to keep that door closed.'

With increasing revulsion, Tess noticed that even her father's slippers, layered with dust, remained beside the bed. She was too distraught to ask her mother what on earth had made her turn this room not into a shrine but a crypt. But the smoke was denser. All she had time to care about was…

She yanked open the top drawer of a table next to the bed, fearing that her father might have taken his pistol with him when he went to Beirut. But exhaling sharply, she saw that the handgun was where he always kept it.

Her father had been an operative in Marine Intelligence when he served in Vietnam. That was where he'd met Brian Hamilton, a Marine general supervising 'Eye' Corps. After the war, her father had joined the State Department, belonging to its little-known Intelligence division. Later, after Brian Hamilton had retired from the military, he too had joined the State Department, in the diplomatic division, eventually convincing Tess's father to switch from Intelligence to diplomacy. But Tess's father had retained his nervous habits from Vietnam. Although he seldom went armed when on an assignment in a potentially dangerous foreign country, he'd made sure to keep a handgun in the house where he could easily get to it in case someone broke in at night.

The weapon was made in Switzerland, a SIG-Sauer 9mm semiautomatic pistol. A compact short-barreled handgun, it held an unusually large number of rounds in the magazine, sixteen, and unlike most other pistols, it had a double action, which meant that it didn't need to be cocked to be fired. All you needed to do was pull the trigger.

Tess knew all this because when she was twelve, she'd happened to see her father cleaning the gun and had shown such curiosity that her father had decided she'd better be taught about it so she'd respect it and, more important, stay away from it. After all, she'd been a tomboy. She hadn't been repelled by guns the way many girls her age might have been, and she took to target shooting as easily as she'd developed expertise in basketball, track- and-field, and gymnastics.

Frequently, when her father went to a range to practise his marksmanship, he'd invited her to come along. He'd taught her how to take the weapon apart, clean it, and reassemble it. He'd instructed her in the proper way to aim – both hands on the pistol, both eyes open, both front and rear sights lined up. But the main trick, he'd said, was to focus your vision not on the sights but rather on the target. The sights would seem blurred as a consequence, but that was okay, you got used to it. After all, the target was your objective, and you had to see it clearly. Any time the sights were in focus but the target was blurred, you were aiming wrong.

After an equally thorough explanation of how to load the magazine, insert it securely into the handle, and pull back the slide on top of the pistol so that a round was injected into the firing chamber, her father had finally allowed Tess to fire the weapon.

Don't yank on the trigger. Squeeze it.

She'd felt slightly apprehensive about the recoil, but to her delight, from the first, she'd discovered that the jerk when the gun went off had not been nearly as bad as she'd feared. Indeed she'd enjoyed the recoil, the release of power, and the noise of the gun going off had been muffled by the ear protectors that her father insisted she wear.

Toward the end of her teenage years, she'd been able to place all sixteen rounds in a circle the size of a basketball at a distance of thirty yards, but then, as she'd started college, she'd lost all interest in shooting with the same abruptness that she'd initially been fascinated by it. Perhaps because her father had been away from home so much.

She grabbed the pistol from the drawer and mentally thanked her father for having taught her. He might have saved her life.

She pressed a button on the side and disengaged the magazine from the handle, nodding when she saw that the magazine was loaded. After reinserting the magazine, she pulled back the pistol's slide and let it snap forward, chambering a round. The hammer stayed back. She gently squeezed the trigger and with equal gentleness lowered the hammer so the gun wouldn't go off accidentally. So far, so good.

But it worried her that the pistol hadn't been cleaned and oiled in six years. The slide had felt slightly hesitant when she pulled it back. If her worst fear was justified and she was forced to defend herself, would the gun jam when fired?

Tess didn't dare think about it. 'Come on, mother! Let's go!'

'But you still haven't told me! Why did you want the gun?'

'Insurance.'

'What do you mean?'

Tess didn't answer but rushed with her mother through the cobwebs toward the open door and the hallway.

Now the flicker of flames downstairs radiated upward and made the hallway seem lit by shimmering candles. Urging her mother, Tess raced to the left toward the top of the staircase, staring nervously downward, pistol ready. But instead of targets, what she saw was a blaze that crackled, growing to a roar in the vestibule. The bottom of the stairs was consumed by flames. Tess felt and stumbled back from the upward rush of heat. There wasn't any way that she and her mother could run through the swelling fire and cross the vestibule to reach the mansion's front door. For certain, her mother didn't have the dexterity to keep up with Tess, and equally for certain, Tess had no intention of getting ahead of her mother.

At the sight of the flames, her mother whimpered.

The back stairs!' Tess said. 'Hurry!'

She guided her mother along the smoke-filled hallway. Coughing, bent low because the air near the floor was less hazy, they came to the stairs that led down to the kitchen.

Here, too, a flicker illuminated the bottom, but at least it was a reflection off a wall. The fire itself wasn't in view.

We might have a chance, Tess thought.

She led the way, descending, telling her mother, 'Stay close!'

The smoke alarms kept wailing.

At once a figure appeared at the bottom, charging toward them.

Tess aimed the pistol.

A man blurted, 'Mrs Drake?'

'Jonathan!' Tess's mother said.

Nervous, Tess lowered the pistol.

The butler reached them. He wore pajamas. 'I was sleeping! The smoke nearly…! If the fire alarms hadn't wakened me…!' He had trouble breathing. 'I tried to come up the front staircase to warn you, but the vestibule's-!'

'We know,' Tess said. 'Can we get out through the back?'

'The fire's in the kitchen, but the servants' quarters haven't been touched.'

'Yet.'

The three of them rushed down the stairs.

'Did you see anyone else inside?' Tess demanded.

'Anyone else?'

'Edna? What about Edna?' Tess's mother sounded hoarse.

'I woke her and told her to leave before I came for you,' Jonathan said.

'You didn't see anyone else?' Tess repeated urgently.

The butler sounded confused. 'Why, no, Miss Drake. I don't understand what you mean. Who else would-?'

Tess didn't have time to explain. At the bottom, she squinted to her left toward an open door and the harsh glare of flames in the kitchen.

The heat was so intense that she had to raise an arm to shield her face.

But the heat singed that arm. If the flames reach this hallway…!

Before Tess realized what she was doing, she lunged, grabbed the side of the door, and slammed it shut. Her hand stung.

Nonetheless the pain was worth the risk she'd taken. The door provided a buffer. She clutched her mother and stumbled forward, following Jonathan along a hallway toward the servants' quarters.

Despite the closed kitchen door, this hallway, too, was filled with smoke, a hot wind making the haze swirl. But at least Tess didn't feel scorched. Although she barely saw the doors to the butler's room and the maid's, the closer she came to the exit at the mansion's rear, the more breathable the air became.

She couldn't wait. Any second now, they'd be outside in the clear, cool night.

But her second fear made Tess falter, trembling. They're probably hiding in the garden, aiming from the shrubs, ready to kill us when we try to leave.

Tess, you're shaking so much!' her mother said. 'Don't worry! We're almost free!'

Free? Tess thought. There's a good chance we're about to be shot!

They reached the back door.

It was open, smoke billowing out as cool air spewed in. Then the smoke dispersed, and as Jonathan hurried forward, Tess saw beyond him -

– twenty feet ahead! -

– in the glow of the flames from windows! -

– a woman sprawled face-down in the grass. Blood soaked the back of her nightgown.

'Edna,' Jonathan gasped.

Tess tried to stop him. 'No!'

But Jonathan pried away and raced toward his fellow servant. 'Edna!'

The last word he ever said. Halfway toward her, Jonathan straightened, seemingly jolted by a cattle prod. A lethal prod.

Dark fluid erupted from his neck. More fluid spurted from his back. Jonathan appeared to be attempting a trick, to grasp his neck, his chest, and his forehead simultaneously.

Not enough hands!

Like a clumsy acrobat, he fell.

Thrashed pathetically.

Quivered.

Lay still.

Tess's mother screamed. Either she didn't understand what had happened, or else she did understand and panic seized her, or perhaps she felt desperate to try to help her servants. For whatever reason, she fought to squeeze beyond Tess and scramble out of the mansion.

Tess clawed to stop her, but the hand that clutched her father's pistol failed to snag on her mother's nightgown. The other hand clasped at lacy frills, which snapped from the strain.

Her mother escaped her.

'No!'

Tess gaped as her mother's frail, diet-thinned body didn't heave back like a catapulted acrobat but rather pirouetted, then sank, arms fluttering, like an exhausted ballerina. With blood-spurting holes in her abdomen and chest.

Tess wailed.

In grief.

In horror.

In rage.

Bees seemed to buzz around her, walloping the doorframe, slamming against the corridor's walls. Bullets. From silenced handguns in the backyard shrubs!

The bullets overcame Tess's shock-induced paralysis. She stumbled backward, pivoted to run, and lurched to a halt at the sight of flames eating through the closed kitchen door.

What am I doing?

I can't run back inside!

I'm trapped!

Too many thoughts sped through her mind. Her mother's death. The gunmen outside. The fire.

Paralysis again controlled her.

I can't stay here!

But I can't go outside!

Think!

The fire kept licking through the kitchen door, brightening the smoke-filled hallway.

The basement! I can get to the basement! The door's in this hallway! I can hide downstairs in a corner! I can use the laundry tub to soak rags and wrap myself in-!

No! That's crazy! I wouldn't have a chance! When the smoke filled the basement, no matter how many wet rags I tried to breathe through, I'd still be suffocated!

And the heat would be unbearable!

And the overhead floor would eventually collapse! I'd be buried by flaming-!

Fear made her tremble so hard that her bladder muscles nearly failed.

But I can't just stand here!

The smoke made her bend over, retching.

At once a new thought gave her frantic hope.

It might not work!

But God help me, it's my only chance!

She held her breath and scurried forward, dodging past the fiery kitchen door. The heat struck her clothes. For a terrifying moment, she was certain that their cotton would burst into flames.

Blinded by the smoke, she reached the stairs, tripped, banged painfully forward, and clambered on her hands and knees up the steps. The heat became mercifully less, although the smoke increased, and when she had to breathe, her lungs rebelled, her chest racked with spasms. Determined, she scrambled faster, harder, and suddenly the steps ended. Pawing at nothing, propelled by her thrusting knees, she arched through the air and sprawled, slamming her chin on the upstairs floor.

Ahead, at the hallway's midpoint, even with the smoke, she had no trouble seeing the flames at the top of the vestibule's staircase. With a roar, they swelled toward the ceiling.

Hurry! The smoke made her eyes weep. It seared her throat.

She struggled to a crouch and darted forward, moaning as she neared the increasing heat, the spreading blaze. The crackling whoosh of the flames became deafening.

She whimpered, seized with terror that she might not be able to reach her destination, that the surge of blistering heat would force her back.

No choice now! She cursed, mustered her resolve, and veered to the left. Chased by a gushing arm of flame, she found her open bedroom door, lurched through it, and slammed the door shut behind her.

By comparison with the furnace of the hallway, the air in her bedroom was wonderfully cool, although thick acrid smoke continued to sting her eyes. Her exertion forced her to breathe and made her cough so deeply that she spit out phlegm.

She didn't care! She had a chance now!

Move!

The glow of the lamp on her bedside table was useless, so enveloped by haze that it was almost invisible.

That didn't matter! In this familiar bedroom, she didn't need to see in order to do what she had to. She lunged past a chair and reached French doors. When she yanked them open, she couldn't believe how delicious the outside air smelled. Flames that shattered windows to her right illuminated the gardens and shrubs below her.

But all Tess paid attention to was the giant oak tree beyond the small balcony outside her room.

That oak tree had been the reason Tess had broken her arm when she was eleven. One Saturday afternoon, after having come home from her gymnastic class, she'd been so excited by her progress on the overhead bar that she'd studied the oak tree from the balcony and wondered how easy it would be to leap toward the nearest branch, then swing toward a farther branch until she reached the trunk and climbed down, hand over hand, to the ground.

Tempted beyond her ability to resist, she'd leapt, grabbed the branch, clung by one hand while she'd stretched her other hand toward the next branch… and screamed when she felt her fingers slip…then screamed again, even more fiercely, when she'd hit the lawn, her left arm twisted under her. The arm had projected in a wrong – a horribly wrong – direction. Until that moment, she'd never known a greater agony.

Her father had burst from the house and rushed to pick her up, then raced to the garage and driven her, speeding through red lights, to the nearest hospital.

Her father.

Dead.

How much she missed him.

And now her mother was dead as well! Tess still couldn't adjust to the sight of the blood from the bullets that had struck her mother's abdomen and chest.

She couldn't believe it had happened.

Dead?

Her mother couldn't be dead.

You bastards!

As flames squeezed through the top, bottom, and sides of her bedroom door, Tess crammed the handgun into her burlap purse, tugged its top closed, and wrapped the purse's strap repeatedly around her wrist until there wasn't any slack.

The flames no longer squeezed but erupted through the sides, top, and bottom of her door.

No time!

Tess retreated into the smoke of her bedroom. Responding to her years of training, she crouched, braced one foot behind the other, and bent her knees in a sprinter's pose.

She blurted a prayer.

And propelled herself forward.

THIRTEEN

She jumped, felt her sneakers touch the balcony's ornate metal railing, and vaulted outward, hurtling through the air. In the dark, she feared that the past would reoccur, that she'd lose her grasp on the tree limb and plummet toward the lawn.

But she was twenty-eight now. Her tall lithe body reached the tree much sooner than she expected, her long arms stretching, her firm hands clutching.

The jolt of grabbing the branch swung her down, then up toward another branch. She took advantage of that motion, and as the branch she held began to droop, she hooked her legs around the farther branch and dangled, her hips bent toward the ground, balancing her weight between one branch and the other. The moment the branches stopped bobbing, she groped, hand-overhand, shifting her legs, toward where the two branches converged.

With an expert twist, she upended herself, facing downward now, and inched along the two branches, finally clutching the trunk where she huddled, supported by stout limbs, concealed by leaves.

Her heart pounded so fiercely that she feared she might become sick.

Had the gunmen seen her leap from the balcony?

Despite the flames that burst from windows near the front of the mansion, she strained to convince herself that this area remained in shadow.

The branches had bobbed. True. Yes. She couldn't pretend that they hadn't. But if the gunmen were concentrating on the doors from the mansion, they might not have thought to look toward this side of the house where there weren't any doors.

And in particular, they might not have thought to glance toward the least likely exit, a balcony on the upper floor.

Well, Tess trembled, I'll soon find out.

She yanked open her purse and tugged out her pistol. It gave her great satisfaction to think that the men who'd killed her mother might be killed by the gun her father had trained her to use. Even though it hadn't been cleaned in six years. Even though the spring in its magazine might have been weakened from so many years of having been loaded.

Tess couldn't think about that risk. All she could think about was…!

Descending the tree.

Doing her best to escape through a barrier of thick evergreen shrubs toward the darkness of a neighboring mansion.

She climbed down the tree, huddled at the base of its murky trunk, aimed toward the shadowy back of the mansion, saw no one, and bolted toward the shrubs on her right.

A bee seemed to buzz. A bullet splintered the oak.

In midstride, Tess whirled, crouched, and raised her father's pistol.

A lunging target appeared, silhouetted by flames that suddenly gushed at the back of the mansion. A target with a gun! A target who stooped and aimed toward Tess.

The lessons at the shooting range came back to her.

She squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared, its recoil jolting the barrel upward.

Ignore the recoil. Never take your eyes from the target.

She stared at the gunman and realized, heart lurching, that she'd missed!

Oh, Jesus.

She dove as the gunman fired. His weapon had a silencer. She didn't hear the spit when the gun discharged, but she definitely heard the bullet whiz over her.

Flat, both hands gripping the pistol, Tess aimed more deliberately, concentrating more fiercely, firing again. The roar made her ears ring.

With an inward scream of triumph, she saw the gunman stagger back and topple. At once her stomach cramped, from tension, from the shock of what she'd just done.

She couldn't allow herself to feel guilty about…! She had to get away.

Scrambling upward, consumed by frenzy, she raced toward the shrubs on the right. In the distance, sirens wailed. The fire department. Maybe the police. Someone in a neighboring mansion must have called them! But the sirens were too far away. They wouldn't get here soon enough to help her. Keep running!

Someone shouted from the front of the mansion.

Tess pivoted. A man with a gun darted into view.

Reflexively Tess aimed. She squeezed the trigger. Again! Then again! The first bullet struck the mansion's wall. The second hit a tree behind the gunman.

But the third knocked the gunman backward.

Tess again screamed inwardly with triumph.

Directly, the silent cheer stuck in her throat.

No!

The gunman had managed to stay on his feet. He continued to raise his weapon. Her own gun roaring, Tess fired again and slammed the man onto the lawn.

She sprinted past a flower garden, hearing bullets zing from the back of the mansion. They slashed the evergreens she ran toward and made her dive again.

Frantic, she rolled against the bottom of the shrubs, twisted, aimed at a gunman racing in her direction from the back of the house, shot three times, missed, but at least made the gunman scramble behind the cover of a gazebo.

The mansion was completely in flames now. The sirens wailed louder. Closer. As the gunman leaned from the side of the gazebo, aiming, Tess angrily shot yet again.

He spun out of sight.

But not smoothly. Tess tried to assure herself that it was possible she'd hit him, although maybe she'd merely splintered wood near his face.

She couldn't tell. It didn't matter. No time!

She crawled through a narrow gap at the bottom of the shrubs, felt branches scrape her skull, her back, her hips, and charged to her feet the moment she was through the hedge. She ran through the fire-illuminated shadows in the spacious back yard of the neighboring mansion.

Lights were on in the house. She imagined the frightened residents scrambling toward the street in case the fire spread and their own house caught fire.

Despite the roar of the blaze, she heard branches scrape behind her. Whirling, she shot three times toward where the hedge moved, heard a man groan, and urged herself onward through the deepening darkness of the extensive yard.

She veered past trees, lunged through flower gardens, tripped against the low rim of a lily pond, nearly tumbled into the water, but caught her balance, and skirted the pond, running faster.

Count how many rounds you've shot, her father had always insisted.

But in her frenzy to escape, Tess had forgotten her father's rule. How many times did I shoot?

She couldn't remember. More than ten, she was sure of that. Perhaps thirteen or… The pistol would be almost empty.

Fear chilled her despite the sweat that soaked her clothes and dripped from her face. She had to conserve her ammunition.

Chest heaving, she came to another line of evergreens. In the darkness, she couldn't help spinning to face the blazing mansion a hundred yards away. Flames licked from her bedroom. The violation made her furious. Her past, her youth, were being destroyed. Trembling, she detected no sign of anyone chasing her and sank to the ground, scurrying beneath the farther shrubs.

In the next mansion's yard, she realized, tense, that she couldn't keep running in this direction. It was too predictable. All her Pursuers had to do was hurry along the street in front of the house, get ahead of her, hide, and wait to kill her when she tried to leave the area. Her only hope was that the sirens, now very close, would force her hunters to flee.

But she couldn't count on that. She had to guarantee her protection. How?

Breathing rapidly, shaking, confused, afraid, she made an urgent choice and instead of continuing to sprint across this yard, she darted toward its rear. After passing through the darkness between a swimming pool and a tennis court, she found her way blocked by a high stone wall. She glanced around, desperate, in search of a ladder or a tree near the wall, anything that would allow her to get over the top.

Nothing.

Jesus.

She retreated toward the swimming pool. Next to a maintenance shed, she found a long metal pole. The pole had a net at one end, obviously used for skimming leaves and other debris from the surface of the water.

Hurry! She pressed the pole against the bottom of the shed, squeezing it, flexing it, twisting. The pole was strong yet pliant. Maybe.

Her temples throbbed from the force of her rapid heartbeat. No choice.

Tess crammed the pistol into her purse, which still hung securely from her wrist. With equal speed, she gripped one end of the pole, shifted the other end toward the back of the yard, lifted the pole, and raced toward the wall.

When the far end of the pole was five feet from the wall, she rammed it into the lawn and hurtled upward.

It had been years since she'd practised this event. In track-and-field, pole vaulting had never been her favorite activity. But now she had to pretend she was in the Olympics. As her body arched higher, she felt the pole begin to bend. Its metal creaked. If it snaps…!

With a stunning jolt, she slammed against the top of the wall, clawed with one hand, snagged the rim, let go of the pole, fumbled with her other hand, and dangled from the wall, squirming upward.

At the top, hands scraped and bleeding, ignoring the pain, Tess lay flat, then hung from the other side, and dropped toward blackness. She feared she'd hit a bench that might break her ankle.

Or a stake that supported a sapling and might impale her.

Instead her feet struck the soft earth of a garden, and with practised agility, she bent her knees, tucked her elbows against her sides, then rolled across pliant dirt and cushioning flowers.

In a frenzy, she sprang to her feet, studied the gloom ahead, the vague shadows of trees, the bulky dark outline of another mansion, drew the pistol from her purse, and ran.

When she'd been ten, her best friend had lived here. They'd often played in this yard, and one of their favorite games had been hide-and-seek.

Tess remembered an afternoon when she'd found so good a hiding place that her friend had finally given up looking.

Now Tess hurried toward that hiding place, hoping that the yard had not been relandscaped. When she heard the trickle of water, she increased speed.

In a corner at the back, she came to boulders that had been piled and cemented together to form a miniature, shoulder-high, imitation of a mountain from the top of which water bubbled and streamed down a series of zig-zagging crests toward a goldfish pond. A pump in an alcove behind the boulders kept the water circulating.

The alcove had a metal hatch to protect the pump from bad weather. Bushes flanked the boulders. Tess crept through the sharp-edged bushes, knelt at the back, and groped in the darkness, finding the hatch.

She squirmed into the alcove, closing the hatch behind her. In total blackness, with the pump whirring next to her, she sat with her knees bent toward her chest, her arms around her knees, her head stooped. The cramped position made her muscles ache, but at least she could rest and gain time to decide what to do.

Years ago, the reason her friend hadn't been able to find her was that they'd once investigated this alcove, and Tess's friend had been disgusted by the spider webs inside. Her friend hadn't thought to look here because her friend would never have chosen to hide here. But Tess had been a tomboy, and spider webs had meant nothing compared to winning the game.

Now, feeling spider webs against her hair as well as something tiny with many legs skittering across her right hand, making her skin tingle, Tess again ignored what would have nauseated her friend, although she needed all her discipline to repress a shudder. The main thing was that she'd reached safety. In this grownup, deadly version of hide-and-seek, no stranger could find where she'd hidden, because no stranger could possibly know about this alcove behind the boulders.

Tess winced. Her hands hurt from scratches and burns. Her back stung from when she'd crawled through the shrubs. Her legs, arms, and chin throbbed from the numerous times she'd struck objects or fallen.

But the pain in her body was nothing compared to the pain in her soul! Her mother was dead!

No! Tess couldn't believe it. She couldn't adjust to it.

She'd killed at least two men tonight, and she couldn't adjust to that either, no matter how much she'd cursed – and continued to curse – the gunmen who'd killed her mother and no matter how fiercely she'd sworn to get even.

She wanted to vomit.

No! Instead, silently, she wept, hot tears streaming down her cheeks as she trembled in the cool, damp, black confinement of the alcove.

She needed to think.

In time, when she decided the area would be safe, she needed to get away.

But more than anything, she needed to find out who was after her and why they'd turned her life into hell.

And get even. The bitter, angry thought kept coming back. Yes, someone definitely was going to pay.

She fingered her purse. As exhaustion overwhelmed her, she thought of the photographs that her purse contained, and one photograph especially, as repulsive as it was confusing. The bas-relief statue. A muscular, long-haired, handsome man straddled a bull and sliced its throat while a dog lunged at the gushing blood, a serpent sped toward a clump of wheat, and a scorpion attacked the bull's genitals.

Insanity!

FOURTEEN

In the dust-laden classroom on the second floor of the abandoned school in Brooklyn, the chameleon completed his report.

The room – shadowy because of the plywood over its windows -was silent for a moment, the chameleon's associates frowning.

'So the woman escaped?' the fourth man finally asked, unconsciously twisting the ruby ring on the middle finger of his left hand, grasping its insignia of an intersecting cross and sword.

The chameleon hesitated. 'I believe so. The member of our watcher's team who hid behind the mansion didn't see the woman leap from the balcony to the tree. But he did see her climb down the tree to the lawn. And he definitely saw her shoot two men.'

'But where did she get the weapon?' the fifth man asked.

The chameleon shrugged.

'Are you sure the enemy didn't chase the woman and catch her?' the second man asked.

'I can't be certain. The fire department and the police arrived. Their approaching sirens gave the enemy ample warning, time to pick up their dead and flee the area before the authorities arrived.'

'I hope that our own operative fled successfully,' the third man said.

The chameleon nodded. 'More, I believe there's a good chance that the woman is safe.'

'But we don't know where she is.' The sixth man scowled. 'The enemy doesn't either. If I understand your logic, you counted on using the woman as bait to attract the quarry. But your plan won't work now. We're back to where we started.'

'Not necessarily.' The chameleon squinted. 'At the moment we don't know where the woman is. But we will – and soon.'

'How?'

'You put a tap on the woman's phone.'

'As you ordered,' the electronics expert said.

'And on the policeman's phone. In her place, desperate, confused, afraid, what would you do?' the chameleon asked.

'Ah.' The sixth man leaned back. 'Of course. She'll contact the policeman.' With a smile, he added, 'So now we concentrate our surveillance on him.'

'Eventually he'll lead us to the woman,' the chameleon said. 'More important, I take for granted that the enemy will be as clever as always. After all, they've had years of practise. Does anyone doubt that their logic will be as calculated as mine, that they'll come to the same conclusion?'

The fifth man traced his finger through the dust on his miniature desk. 'They've proven their survival skills. Again and again, they've anticipated our traps.'

'But perhaps not this time,' the chameleon said. 'Wherever the policeman goes, he'll be the bait that attracts the quarry. The hunt continues. At the moment, I have a team watching Lieutenant Craig, although their primary purpose, of course, is to watch for the enemy.'

'In that case, we'd better join the hunt,' the fourth man said.

'Absolutely,' the third man said.

The others stood quickly.

The chameleon gestured. 'A moment. Before we leave, there's one other matter I need to explain.'

They waited.

'As we know, the enemy – the vermin – are increasing their repugnant activities. There's no anticipating the horrors to which they'll descend as a consequence of their hellish errors. At the same time, I grant that in the past week a great many errors – tactical -were committed on our side. Several were my fault. I've readily admitted that. But judgment day is now. Recent events prove how unstable the situation has become. I'd hoped that we could accomplish this assignment on our own. I'm no longer certain we can. Pride is not my shortcoming. I don't hesitate to ask for help if I think our mission requires it.'

'Help?' The sixth man furrowed his brow.

'I've contacted our superiors. I've explained the situation. They agree with my assessment and agree with my request. At half-past noon, a team of specialists will arrive at Kennedy Airport.'

'Specialists?' The sixth man paled.

That's right. I've sent for a team of enforcers.'