The Firefly

1

The pretty young secretary was staring at him openmouthed, so Swamp Morgan said it again. "Special Agents Morgan and White, United States Secret Service, to see Mr. Thompson."

"Um," she began, then stopped, apparently still at a loss for words. Swamp's face often had that effect.

"He is in, right?" Swamp asked, peering over her shoulder at the door of the corner office. A man could be heard inside talking on the phone. The polished brass sign on the door read c. freer Thompson, deputy assistant secretary of labor, procurement policy. He rubbed his hands together and eyed the door as if anticipating smashing the thing in. He stopped when he saw the secretary getting truly alarmed.

"Yes, sir, he is," she said, "But he's on a teleconference call just now. I — uh—."

"Why don't you just pass him a note that we're here. That should do it. Okay? Special Agents Morgan and White, United States Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security."

"And do you have an appointment, sir?" she asked, speaking to Gary White this time, trying to reassert her position as gatekeeper to a deputy assistant secretary while pretending that Swamp was a disagreeable figment of her imagination.

"Will a federal warrant do it for you?" Swamp asked quietly, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

She blinked, then reached for a telephone message pad to write down their names. She got up, went to the big oak door, knocked once, looked back at them, and went in, shutting it behind her.

"Warrant?" White murmured. He was a new agent, mostly along for the ride this morning, to see how the legendary Swamp Morgan did a closing. He'd been assigned to another agent in the Special Investigations Unit, the man who had actually worked up the Thompson case, but that agent had come down with kidney stones, so the case and probationer White had been handed over to Morgan for the closure interview.

"Didn't actually say I had one, did I?" Swamp murmured back. "Besides, that's the whole point of the closure interview. The idea is to excise the bad guy before we have to paper him."

The secretary had not returned. "What's she doing in there?" White asked.

"Probably nothing she hasn't done before," Swamp said with a crooked grin.

She reappeared and motioned them to go in. Morgan tipped his head for the younger agent to precede him. Gary White was an average-size man with a boyish face, which belied his six-year former experience as a civilian police detective. Swamp Morgan wanted to watch his quarry's reaction to his own face, especially when he saw White first. Swamp thought Gary looked to be about nineteen, so there was indeed some visible shock when C. Freer got a look at the adult member of the team. Swamp Morgan was tall, wide, and definitely not handsome.

Swamp's real name was Terry Lee Morgan. Born and raised in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Terry Lee had grown quickly into one of the biggest, and homeliest, kids in town. He got his size from his father, Henry Lee Morgan, who'd started life in the coal fields before moving to Harpers Ferry to escape subterranean slavery and the black lung that came with it. From the time he was ten, Terry Lee had had an oversized head, an unruly mop of black hair, and a face that faintly resembled that of a Neanderthal, complete with shelving brow, a huge jaw, large ears, and fierce dark brown eyes. From his mother, Terry Lee had inherited a gentle disposition, a sense of humor, and startling intelligence. It hadn't taken him long to discover that people made certain assumptions once they saw his face, and he'd been surprising people ever since, an attribute that was most useful in law enforcement. Rather than being sensitive or depressed about his appearance, Terry Lee had been having fun with his Neanderthal visage since he'd hit high school. He'd been a defensive guard both in high school and, later on, at Notre Dame, where he had often unnerved opposing quarterbacks by remaining outside the huddle, taking off his helmet, and then executing the threat display of a silverback gorilla, loping, jumping back and forth, all the while batting his own helmet back and forth rapidly between massive paws and staring pointedly at the quarterbacks' heads. This kind of behavior had tended to unsettle the front-line meat and thereby created frequent sacking opportunities.

He didn't acquire the nickname "Swamp" until he'd finished Notre Dame with a degree in financial management and then applied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a job as a special agent. During training at the FBI school down at Quantico, one of the training scenarios involved new agents setting up a sting operation by posing as a fence crew for stolen goods. The instructors posed as crooks. One of the instructors, a gorgeous redhead, took offense at the way Terry Lee was ogling her booty. She announced to the assembled crew that she would appreciate it if "Swamp Thing" over there would keep his eyes to himself. The entire cast of characters fell down on the floor laughing, including Terry Lee, who knew exactly what she was talking about. It had been "Swamp" Morgan ever since, but always with a smile, because no one wanted to offend a guy who was six three, weighed 245, and was reportedly a whole lot smarter than he looked. The name had carried over when he joined the Secret Service some years later.

The quarry today was C. Freer Thompson, Esquire, a plump double-chinned white man in his late fifties. His suit jacket was slung carelessly over the back of his executive chair, and he stood up behind an enormous mahogany desk as the agents came in. The executive office was spacious and well appointed, with floor-to-ceiling windows on the outside walls. There were two large upholstered chairs planted directly in front of the desk. Thompson's face was slightly flushed, and he was holding some papers in his hands, as if to emphasize the point that he was a busy man. The secretary remained standing in the open doorway, so Swamp pointedly asked her to shut the door behind her. Thompson started to say something but ended up clearing his throat instead. Swamp walked over to the desk, leaned across, and offered his hand. Thompson gave him a weak, somewhat moist handshake. Swamp sat down in one of the chairs. White, as previously instructed, remained standing.

"Mr. Thompson," Swamp began, "I'm Special Agent Lee Morgan, United States Secret Service. This is Special Agent Gary White. We're here to discuss your imminent resignation from government service."

Thompson blinked and then lowered himself slowly into his chair, as if not sure it would still hold him. "Resignation?" he asked. "What are you talking about?" There was a hint of defiance in his voice, but he was clearly alarmed. Swamp could see the beginnings of white knuckles.

"Why don't we keep this simple, Mr. Thompson," Swamp said pleasantly. "I propose to talk, and I want you to listen carefully. I don't want you to say anything until I'm finished, and then I want to hear you say only one thing, and that is 'Okay, I'll resign.' Are we clear on that?"

"This is preposterous. Who are you? How dare you—"

Swamp interrupted. "Mr. Thompson?" He stared hard at the blustering bureaucrat, not blinking, moving his jaw as if disposing of one last bit of mastodon bone from breakfast, and widening his eyes to accentuate the glare. He noticed with satisfaction the sheen of perspiration appear on the fat man's face. "It really is in your best interest to hear everything I have to say, Mr. Thompson. All of it, okay? Because as best I can tell from reading federal sentencing guidelines, you're looking at right around thirty years. For someone your age, that means you'll die in prison, doesn't it? So, pay close attention and, above all, don't talk. Got it, Mr. Thompson?"

Thompson looked from Swamp to White and then back at Swamp.

"Good man," Swamp said before Thompson could open his mouth again. He then opened his briefcase and removed a fat file folder. He began thumbing through pages of material until he found his summary sheet. "The charges we have before a federal grand jury right now include multiple counts of embezzlement, contract fraud, tampering with a federal procurement-source selection board, tax evasion, racketeering, and money laundering. And that's the preliminary list." He looked over at Thompson. "We keep the prelim list short to expedite the grand jury process. There can and probably will be further charges. We like to layer things in these kinds of cases, in the event we get a picky judge. Clear so far?"

Thompson's face was pale now, and all he could manage was a tiny nod. Swamp saw sweat stains spreading under Thompson's armpits. Good, he thought. Attention achieved.

"All right," Swamp continued pleasantly. "Here's what we know." He then proceeded to describe in glowing detail how the deputy assistant secretary had been fixing Labor Department systems-analysis consulting-service contracts in order to steer a few million dollars a year to a so-called Section 8A small and minority-owned business owned secretly by Thompson's two sisters. How he'd been siphoning off two-thirds of the ensuing profits and depositing them in an offshore account, free of taxes. How he had manipulated the procurement-source selection process to cut out equally or better-qualified competing small businesses. How his special lady friend, who was not his wife, had been caught up in a Georgetown club drug sting and was ready to offer up some relevant quid on C. Freer in order to get the quo she needed to save her own admittedly delectable posterior. He casually recited a few names, dates, places, Freer's offshore bank, and Freer's mistress's apartment address just to focus things.

"Now, you asked earlier who I am," he concluded, putting the file folder back into his briefcase. "Admittedly, that's a bit complicated. I'm a recalled U.S. Secret Service agent, on secondment to the Special Investigations Unit in the Treasury Department."

Thompson frowned, apparently perplexed.

"Recalled," Swamp continued, "because I'm a retired U.S. Secret Service agent. That's right, retired. Twenty-six years, can you believe it? Careful how you answer that. Anyway, before I retired, I was a Senior Executive Service official, just like you, Mr. Thompson. SES. Well, maybe not just like you. For instance, I didn't commit federal crimes."

"I don't understand," Thompson croaked, looking to White as if the younger agent might enlighten him. Swamp saw White stare back at him, trying for a hard look but not quite managing it. Not with that baby face.

"Look at me, Mr. Thompson," Swamp said. "Here's how it works. The bad news is, we've caught you with your claws in the cookie jar. And the good news is, since we're both old hands here, well, you must know why I'm here, right?"

Thompson frowned again for a moment and then got it. "A deal?"

Swamp smiled broadly. "See how well our little system works, Mr. Thompson?" he said. He patted the back of the fat file folder in his briefcase. "Remember that I said the evidence I just summarized was preliminary? The sad truth is, I really don't want to work hard anymore, especially since I've already made it to retirement, so what we have here" — he patted the file again—"is just for openers. We can, of course, get more, lots more. We talk to people; they talk to other people. Hell, you know how it's done, right?"

Swamp saw Thompson wince and then look down at his hand. He'd managed to cut himself on the edge of one of the papers he had been compressing. When Thompson reached into a drawer for a Kleenex, White, God love him, slipped his hand inside his coat. Thompson totally missed it, which probably avoided a humiliating intestinal dysfunction on Thompson's part.

Swamp kept it going. He was close. He was sure of it.

"You see, Mr. Thompson, it's Treasury's position, and the Justice Department concurs, of course, that senior rotten apples like you give the whole government a bad name. And while we can and will happily prosecute your ass and lock you away in a federal penitentiary for years and years, sometimes, and especially when there's been no bodily injury, no violence against persons, it can be in the government's best interest to simply make you go 'away,' You getting this, Mr. Thompson? I can speak more slowly, use more one-syllable words, if you want me to."

Thompson looked back up, swallowed, and nodded again, all the while wrapping the Kleenex around and around the paper cut on his finger.

"Good. So here are the elements of the deal: You're going to have to make financial restitution. That means give it all back, okay? Your sisters are going to have to make financial restitution, and it'll be your job to explain that to them. I'm sure you'll want to do that, because it looks to us like they weren't really part of this. Were they?… No, we didn't think so. And, of course, you and the IRS are going to have some quality time together. You know how those guys are. And finally, you're going to resign. As of… well, let's see." Swamp glanced at his watch. "Today's the ninth of January. Happy New Year, by the way. I think you're going to resign by close of business today, effective, let's say, on the fifteenth of this month. For personal reasons, of course. And your resignation is absolutely going to be accepted. Did I mention that I've already had a word with the Secretary of Labor?… No? Well, I have. She's waiting for your paperwork as we speak."

He stopped to let Thompson absorb all this, or even to say something, but the man was just staring down at his desk now. Swamp couldn't tell if he was thinking or if he was just in shock. Some of them went pretty much catatonic at this juncture. He looked over at White, who nodded and then unbuttoned his suit jacket and extracted a shiny pair of steel handcuffs. They positively glistened in his hands.

"Or," Swamp said pointedly. White was holding the cuffs in both hands, rubbing one against the other to make a small scraping noise. Thompson looked at the cuffs, then back at Swamp.

"Okay," he whispered. "I'll resign."

"There you go, Mr. Thompson. That wasn't hard, was it? Now, we're almost there, so let's just nail it all down." He reached into his briefcase and withdrew a much thinner file folder. "Here's your resignation letter. Already typed out. On Labor Department stationery, today's date, and everything. I want you sign it and then date it under your signature." He handed it over.

"Now?"

"Right now. That way, there won't be any of those pesky second thoughts. Because we well and truly have you, Mr. Thompson. And although your sisters think that this whole sweet deal was within your legal prerogative, we can have them, too. That piece of paper is the carrot, Mr. Thompson. You watch the nightly news, don't you? So you know what the stick looks like. So sign it. And, yes, right now. Madame Secretary is waiting."

Thompson looked at the folder, then opened it as if expecting a snake to pop out. The resignation letter was a grand total of two lines. As promised, it was on official Labor Department stationery, and all the appropriate titles were in place. "Shouldn't I talk to my lawyer or something?" Thompson asked.

Swamp leaned back in his chair, as if disappointed. "You can certainly do that," he replied. "You can talk to lots of lawyers if you want to. But if you don't sign that right now, I'm going to take it back. Then we're all going to change mode here."

Gary White rubbed the cuffs some more. "But," Thompson protested. "I mean, this is duress."

"Of course it is, Mr. Thompson," Swamp said, smiling. "Absolutely. It's the epitome of duress. That's the whole point of my being here. Although I have to say, if you think this is duress, wait till you go into the system. Now that's duress." White was nodding helpfully.

"The system?"

"Oh, c'mon, Mr. Thompson. The criminal justice system. Federal court. Your arraignment. A starring role on the nightly news for all your neighbors out there in Chevy Chase to enjoy as you do the perp walk. And we will give the media some advance notice. And then hordes of ravenously expensive lawyers. Then the IRS will pile on — remember them? Think confiscation of all your assets — your home, your cars, your bank accounts. Then more lawyers — financial guys this time. A little bit of jail time, at first anyway. Then an expensive bail bond — they'll want ten percent in cash up front, assuming you have any left. Then a long, drawn-out trial, and then real prison time, not jail anymore. Bad food, bad clothes, really bad haircut. Big horny cellmates. A whole new cultural horizon. Exciting, if perhaps initially painful, adventures in your sexual education. You listening to me, Mr. Thompson? Am I coming through here?"

Thompson had the look now: Bambi out on Interstate 95, frozen in the median, about to make a really bad decision.

"Sign the damned letter, Mr. Thompson," Swamp ordered. "Before I conclude you're being defiant." He gave Thompson the look again. "Can you imagine how poorly I handle defiance?"

Thompson swallowed, took a deep breath, picked up a pen, dropped it, retrieved it, and signed the resignation letter. He closed the folder and pushed it back across the desk toward Swamp.

"Now what?" he said. He actually sounded relieved. That's the wonder of it, Swamp thought. They almost always sound relieved. Grateful even.

"We'll take this upstairs. In the meantime, Mr. Thompson, you go home now. Do not clear your desk. Do not touch your computer. Leave all your personal effects, and that Rolodex. The Labor Department IG's people are on call to do the housecleaning." He looked at his watch. "In fact, they should be outside right now. With security."

"Can I tell—"

"Tell your wife? Sure. But don't contact your sisters just yet — we have some other people who are on their way to talk to them. You can and should talk to your accountant, and your lawyer, if you have one. And you probably should have one. You can even have your lawyer call me if you'd like. Here's my card."

Thompson exhaled noisily. "I'm ruined."

"Financially, yes, you are, Mr. Thompson," Morgan said brightly. "But look at it this way: You won't end up a convicted felon, and you're not going to be living in some hot and sweaty federal penitentiary for the rest of your life. You're getting to walk out of here with a simple resignation letter. Truth is, you've just cut a smart deal, Mr. Thompson."

Thompson shook his head slowly. "Ruined," he murmured. "Just like that."

"Not 'just like that,' Mr. Thompson. You've been doing this shit for a long time. And, hell, Treasury's been assembling this case for five months. I'm just the closer, you understand."

Thompson got up, turned around, and stared out the windows. "I might as well shoot myself."

Swamp saw White frown. Swamp had actually been about to agree with Thompson; even without a trial, it would save a mountain of paperwork. On the other hand, all the new agents were reportedly getting sensitivity training, so Swamp relented. "You can do that, I suppose," he said, speaking sincerely, as if he truly cared. "Although, you realize, guns tend to make a real mess. Do it against a wall, you can never get the brain stains out, you know?"

He saw Gary blink, and Swamp knew he had to do better. "But really," he said, "I don't feel this situation is worth suicide. Look at me, Mr. Thompson."

Thompson was looking back at him but not seeing him.

"Compromise, Mr. Thompson," Swamp continued, gathering his papers. "Compromise is the very essence of good government, don't you think? You with me on this?"

With a small start, Thompson brought himself back to the discussion at hand and focused on Swamp's face. "What?" he said.

"Are you with me on this, Mr. Thompson?" Swamp said again. "That this isn't worth suicide or anything drastic like that? That you can think of it as a kind of career change?"

"Career change?" Thompson croaked.

"There you go, Mr. Thompson. You're getting the picture now." Then he laughed at the perspiring official. "Of course you are."

"And another one bites the dust," said Larry Daniels, director of the SISU at the Treasury Department, inviting Swamp into his less than spacious office. "Nice effing work there, Swamp."

"I appreciate your calling me," he told his ex-boss. "It was fun to do a closing again."

"You always were our best closer," Daniels said. "How's life at the Circus Maximus?"

"I'm up to my neck in alphabet soup. ILO in OSI at DHS. That's intelligence liaison officer to the Washington intel community within the Office of Special Investigations of the Department of Homeland Security."

"Aargh."

"Yeah. You try bringing all the intelligence lines in this town together in one place at the State Department from the seventy-three federal law-enforcement agencies and offices based in Washington. Talk about herding goddamned cats."

"Well, you get bored over in OSI, you're welcome back here. And I mean that. Gary White do okay?"

"Nice kid. Well, of course, he's not a kid. Just looks that way."

"I know, but that baby face allows him to sneak up on people sometimes, so it works both ways. Ex-Homicide detective with the Fairfax cops across the river. Look, he's about done with his probationary year. Reason I brought it up, I've been tagged to give back a cross-deck warm body for your outfit, Homeland Security. Want to take him on?"

"Sure, if he can get the clearances. I could use the help. I'm surprised DHS is still drafting people, though. It's been what — two years now since DHS stood up?"

"Press gang is more like it," Daniels grumbled. "I've lost track of who owns what anymore. But what the gestapo wants—"

"Right, the gestapo gets. If people only knew what a joke that was."

"What do I know — I'm just a lowly Treasury cop. His federal BI's almost done, so I'll go ahead and set it up. You get to tell him what Homeland Security actually does."

"If I ever find out," Swamp said. Both men laughed.

Swamp walked back to the Old Executive Office Building after a quick lunch in an L Street deli. It was a brisk eight blocks from the Secret Service offices on this breezy, cool January day, but Swamp appreciated the fresh air. He'd been with the Office of Homeland Security almost since its inception, having offered his services immediately after the September 11 disaster. It had been a frustrating slog since then, with the new cabinet-level department trying to define its mission, scope of authority, and bureaucratic power in a town that shared such commodities grudgingly. Compared to the almost military efficiency of the Secret Service, the start-up of the DHS had been an exercise in chaos management. And as a recalled annuitant, Swamp enjoyed none of the personal power he had exercised in his last active-duty assignment, as the deputy assistant director of the Secret Service's prestigious Intelligence Division. Still, he was grateful to be back in the national security game, able to do something to combat the cancer of international Muslim terrorism.

His office, or, more properly, cubicle, was on the third floor of the OEOB, as it was known throughout Washington. Many of the original Office of Homeland Security staffers had been shoved into cramped quarters in the graceful old mansion a block away from the White House, courtesy of a resentful National Security Council staff, which had had to give up the spaces. His boss, Tad McNamara, was the director of the Special Investigations Unit within the Homeland Security secretariat. Their charter had been drafted on the fly after September 11, 2001, and Swamp wasn't the only recalled agent working there.

There was a phone message, two hours old, on Swamp's desk: "See Mr. McNamara." He called McNamara's secretary, Mary, who confirmed that the director was in and available.

Tad McNamara was a tall, hawk-faced man who had been the assistant director in charge of Intelligence Operations at the FBI when the Arabs attacked New York City. He and Swamp had worked together when Swamp was a deputy assistant director at Secret Service headquarters, and he had snapped up Swamp's offer to come back on active duty right after the attacks. Tad McNamara was a man who took most things seriously and looked the part.

"Mary said you had another project?" Swamp asked after being shown into McNamara's office.

The director was sitting behind his desk. He pointed Swamp to a chair and pulled out a case folder. "It's a firefly, I'm afraid," he said. "Came over from the Protective Research Unit, your old outfit. Came in routine, late last week. You're finished with that Labor guy, right?"

"Right. Closed him this morning. He walked the plank."

"Good. Larry Daniels said if anyone could close that guy, you could. Now this," he said, waving the file folder, "is probably going to be a lot less satisfying, but, unfortunately, we're probably going to see more of these, at least until we get through this goddamned inauguration."

"This is a good time not to be in the Secret Service," Swamp said. "It's what — eleven days from now? They start working up the security survey for an inauguration a year in advance, and right about now, everyone's hair is on fire."

McNamara nodded. "This thing is not strictly an intel matter, of course, but with your Secret Service background, you're the guy who can give me a quick evaluation."

"How'd we get it?"

"PRU is in overload. They're getting dozens of threats in every day and they simply can't handle the volume. If it even looks like a threat's a firefly, they're farming it out. Any outfit within DHS with the word Investigation in its title is getting tagged to help. Like I said, it's probably bullshit."

Swamp shrugged. "Bullshit 'R' Us," he said. "That's fine by me." And it was. A light load was the last thing he wanted these days. Busy, very busy— that's what he wanted. An endless string of twelve-hour days to make the nights' sleep come easier. "Need to keep in motion, boss," he said.

McNamara nodded sympathetically. Even though it had been almost four years since Swamp's retirement-day ceremony in the Secretary of the Treasury's office, everyone who knew him still remembered what had happened immediately afterward. It was one of the few things that could still seize him up, no matter how good a face he put on it.

"Okay," McNamara said briskly. "So, this thing. About six weeks ago, late November, I think, there was this bad fire up in northwest D.C. A plastic surgeon's private clinic. Four vics."

Swamp nodded, remembering. "Read about it. Something to do with the oxygen system."

"Right. Really hot fire. Got two docs, two nurses. All in the operating theater."

"And?"

"Some forensic problems. First, there apparently was no patient. At least that's what D.C. Arson thinks. Two docs, two nurses, why were they there in the operating room with no patient?"

"Getting set up? A training session?"

"Late at night? Plus, nurses do setup. Docs come in at the last moment, hands in the air, going, 'Scalpel, clamp, coffee.'… Anyway, that's one. And maybe there was a patient. Arson guys ended up calling in the Bureau lab people. You have to understand, ID of remains was problematic. Because of the oxygen."

"Serious toasts."

"Yeah. Carbon mounds on the floor kinda deal."

Swamp nodded. His uncle had been a professional gas welder. Oxygen was what turned an acetylene torch into a steel cutter.

"And that was the second problem: D.C. Arson feels that there would not have been enough fuel in the OR to sustain such a hot fire. You know, big oxygen-fed flare-up when it starts, everything burns pretty quick, people inhale superheated gas, flop and twitch, and then the whole thing dies down. This one didn't die down. Place looked like the inside of a blast furnace."

"An external fuel source?"

"Two of the four liquefied-gas bottles melted. Two did not. Something hinky there."

Swamp nodded thoughtfully. "So maybe a faked fire. Arson. Okay, homicide. What's this got to do with the Secret Service and protecting the president?"

"Well, D.C. Arson listed the case as open. Split decision: One guy says it was probably a deliberate fire, not an accident. Other inspector says no, insufficient evidence. Absence of a patient on the table doesn't prove shit, especially when the table's melted. So close it out."

"They got closure statistics, too, don't they?"

"Bingo. But still… This one guy's pretty adamant," he said, opening the file folder. "Let's see. Deputy Chief Inspector Carl Malone. I know these arson-investigation types. They get a sixth sense, and they're often right."

"And the connection to the president's protective detail?" Swamp prompted.

"Right. Last week, this case came up for automatic cold-case review. Malone's been taking a second look. First week in January, folks still out on leave, nobody else in the office, so time to actually think about a case. And now they have all the evidence boxes back from the Bureau labs. Malone finds something interesting in one of the boxes. Calls Secret Service at the White House. They shop it to PRU. It's a partially burned medical record."

"The missing patient?" Swamp asked, indicating the case folder. He was suddenly impatient, ready to get into something new.

"This here is PRU's initial disposition report. The evidence in question is still with D.C. Arson. But apparently, the face-lifters were audiotaping their patients during anesthesia."

"You mean taping the OR? To catch errors? Good surgeons do that."

"That's usually videotape. This was strictly audio. Inspector Malone theorizes that these guys were into taping their patients. Apparently, people sometimes say some interesting shit under anesthesia."

"For what, blackmail? Their own patients?"

"Who knows. But go start with this Malone over in D.C. Arson. He says there's evidence of a threat to the president, but he's still got it. I'm assuming he laid it out for PRU, but you go see with a fresh set of eyeballs."

Swamp got up and took the case folder from McNamara. "Who's riding this one for the Secret Service?"

"It's on the route slip there. Actually, I don't recognize the name, although you might. And remember, they're classifying it as a firefly. Your mission is to confirm their judgment. On the other hand, you think it's real, write a point paper and I'll get it right back to PRU."

"Got it," Swamp said, definitely anxious to get going. McNamara wished him good luck and then he was out of there. Gary White was waiting for him when he got back to his office.

"That was quick," Swamp said.

"I managed to hand over the final report-writing job on the Thompson case to another probationer," White said with a sheepish grin. "But only because I had hurry-up, hurry-up orders to report immediately to OSI. Like right now. Today, even. Like I didn't want to piss you off. Sir."

Swamp grinned back. "Nice move. Don't try that one on me, however."

"Never happen," White said. Swamp told him to go see Mary, Mr. McNamara's secretary, to get a cube assignment. "It'll take her at least the rest of the afternoon to pry some more space out of the NSC people. Meantime, you and I have a firefly to pursue."

White was clearly baffled, so Swamp explained the slang. "A firefly is a small insect that rises out of the nighttime grass and blinks its biolight right in your face. Everybody looks at it because it's kind of amazing that an insect can do that. Then somebody inevitably gets tired of the diversion and smacks its bioluminescent ass back down into grass."

The young agent was still perplexed. "Uh, and?"

Patience, Swamp reminded himself silently. You were a new agent once upon a time, too. "And all government agencies have lots and lots of issues on their plates. Nobody needs more work. Sometimes an issue pops up out of the bureaucratic noise level, which is sometimes called 'the grass.' It comes up looking really important, demanding immediate attention. Blink. Blink. Blink. People get excited; everybody starts to jump on it. Until some adult with supervisory experience takes a hard look at it and then smacks it back down into the grass because it really wasn't all that important. Or it wasn't true. Or it was some lord high pooh-bah's policy hobbyhorse. In other words, a firefly."

White nodded. "And 'grass'? Where did they come up with that word?"

"Old military expression. Comes from primitive radar sets, which were basically oscilloscopes. You look into an o-scope, you see what looks like a horizontal line of green grass all along the bottom axis — the signal you're analyzing sticks up above that 'grass' level. So when people say something's 'down in the grass,' they mean it's not significant."

Gary thought that one over. Swamp anticipated the next question.

"And now you're gonna ask me what an o-scope is," he said. White, relieved, brightened.

Swamp sighed. Hopeless, he thought. "It's time to go back to work now," he declared. "Go find out where the District of Columbia Police Department's Arson Unit lives. If we're lucky and they're at police headquarters, we can take the Metro."

"Yes, sir. And can I use your phone?"

Deputy Chief Inspector Carl Malone welcomed them into his office on the second floor of the D.C. Police Department's headquarters building. He was a middle-aged black man, almost as big as Swamp Morgan. The three sat clown at a conference table.

"I'm Mr. Minority on this case," Malone said, opening a large three-ring notebook with a case number stenciled on the front cover. "Our cold-case board wants to ree-tire this puppy."

"All I've seen was the Protective Research Unit's disposition report," Swamp said. "Can you review the facts of the case for us?"

"Certainly," Malone replied. He went through the two alarms, the discovery of four sets of human remains, the special nature of an oxygen-fed fire as it pertained to evidence and human victims, and then the almost archaeological investigation that followed.

"What got your attention?" Swamp asked when Malone had finished.

"Several things. First, one of the toa — um, victims, I mean, was found over by the door, an expended fire extinguisher near her hands, like she'd seen the fire and tried to get on it. Never happen in an explosive atmosphere. Goes too fast, and you can't move once the temp inside your lungs gets to twelve hundred."

Swamp grimaced at the thought. "And second?"

"Second was the fact that the fire kept going for so long. You know, people who build operating rooms are sensitive to fire danger. Plus, they use a lot of metal or hard plastic to make it easier to sanitize. So there shouldn't have been that much to burn, other than maybe ceiling tile. No carpets, no wood furniture. And yet this place looked like the inside of a blast furnace. Even melted a couple of the gas bottles."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning the oxygen supply and whatever the gas was stayed on."

"You said four victims: two docs, two nurses."

"That's the third thing. No patient. Or any instruments on the side tables. There were instruments on the floor."

"What could the building itself tell you?"

"Not that much, once you got away from the blast furnace. We were able to wet down the rest of the building and save most of it, except for what was smoke- or water-damaged. But the fire itself didn't spread much, except up — got to the roof."

"Their records?"

"We got partials. Their computers melted, but we've got several carbonized boxes of paper records. Did I mention that this was an interesting little plastic surgery practice? Because it surely was. For those records still readable, all the patient names were in numerical code. We never found the key. Both surgeons were Pakistani. One apparently the main man, the other one fresh out of medical school and then specialty training here in the States."

"Doing whom — wives of Washington VIPs?"

"No. Even though we don't have any names, all the surgery was apparently done on males. And at night. For this crew anyway."

"'This crew'?"

"Yeah, another interesting bit. During the day, there was another set of docs, Americans, who did the normal stuff — tummy tucks and boob jobs. Totally separate from the night crew. Separate admin office, separate records, separate staff. Same OR. The American docs owned the building— bank held the mortgage — and they told us they subleased to the night docs."

"And knew nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing about the night crew?"

"Like those famous little monkeys, all in a row. All legal, by the way. Separate but current building permits and licenses. The senior day doc said that the night crew's clients wanted total privacy, which is why everything was done at night. He said these guys specialized in incremental physioplasty, which means doing what you do in small operations, so the patient 'has work,' but since it's done over a prolonged period of time, no one notices."

"Could you tell anything about the work?"

"Our medical guys say it consisted of two main categories: the standard cosmetic upgrades — facial work, hair implants, lipo work — and then more complicated procedures — facial-bone reconstruction, hair replacement, composite skin grafts on fingers and toes, iris coloration, even some retinal displacements, whatever those are. There's even a hint of a partial sex-change procedure. Remember now, we got mostly fragments."

"Skin grafts on fingers? You're talking identity changes."

"What I thought, too. I'm no doc, but the Bureau lab people picked right up on that, too."

"And all the night patients names are in code?"

"Yeah." Malone got up to refill his coffee cup. The two agents joined him at the coffee machine on the corner table coffee. "Our Homicide people talked to the Bureau. The Feebs hinted that they had some information on the Paki docs, but they wouldn't share. You know how they can get."

Swamp nodded. The old feds-versus-locals problem. Washington's obsession with turf wars made it even worse than elsewhere in the country, despite the new cabinet department. "So what inspired you to send a report to the White House protective detail?" Swamp asked.

"One record," Malone said. "Lemme show you." He reached into an evidence box on the floor and withdrew a plastic evidence envelope with what looked like a steel clipboard inside. "This here's a medical-file board."

He opened the Ziploc bag and pulled out the file board. A faint odor of char seeped out of the bag. "I found this while I was getting ready for the cold-case board. It's a medical/surgical record. Evidence log said it was picked up out in the hallway, right near the OR." He flipped back the metal front cover.

"This thing was exposed to direct fire, because the front and back several pages are burned beyond legibility. The parts recovered from the crease of the file holder indicate the pages were standard post-op reports. Except for these three pages." He wedged open the clipboard and handed over three pieces of paper to Swamp. The edges were badly scorched, and the paper had that peculiar stiffness that comes when it's been wetted and then dried.

"The lab's done its thing, so they can be handled. These notes, or whatever they are, were all the way in the middle of the file. They appear to be typed transcript. Or maybe voice-recognition text. Hard to tell."

"Yeah, my boss said something about these quacks taping their patients when they were under anesthesia. Is there a name?"

"Nope. Still just the code number — two-oh-oh-three-four-one. We found other pieces of transcripts like this in some of the office records, although, like I said, we're talking just fragments here. And lots of it was gibberish, of course. This one's no different, except for one block of text, which I highlighted."

A young woman stuck her head in and told Malone that the chief of detectives wanted to see him. "You'll have to excuse me for a minute," he said, getting up. "But here's the thing: This guy, whoever he is, I think he's talking about bombing the Capitol on the night of the State of the Union address."

Swamp's head jerked up. "Whoa," he said.

"I should tell you that I'm the only one thinks this. Others disagree. It isn't exactly crystal-clear. Look for yourself. I'll be right back. Hopefully."

Gary White moved his chair so he could see. Swamp laid out the three charred pages of double-spaced typing. There were words and phrases in English and also, surprisingly, in German, although the typist had transcribed everything phonetically, misspelling many of the German words. The transcript had page breaks and dates, indicating the record had been assembled over the course of the last year. There was babbling about facecutting, strange sounds in the patient's ears, painful breasts, what had sounded to the transcriber as some undecipherable names, then single words such as rain and steel and oil. A reference to a mountain of money, Faust, and two masters. Then more German words.

"That's German?" White asked.

"Yes," Swamp said. "Stream of unconsciousness. Random words, sometimes associated, sometimes not. Like these names: Hitler, Heydrich, Himmler, Hess, Then something about 'H's.'… I see what Malone meant about it being obscure."

"What did he highlight?"

Swamp looked at the third page. The text was fractional. "Soon now… [undecipherable]… Head right off… right off!… Union Staat speech… Sieg und Götterdamerung… Leichen regnen verden… [undecipherable] Bomb… bomb… bomb… Heil [something] — Hitler?… Five H's… [unintelligible German word]… [something] five… Hitler… Himmler… Heydrich… Hess… Heismann… Soon, very soon, Ammie Schwein."

White shook his head. "I got the 'Heil Hitler' bit; can you make out the rest?"

"Yeah. I did a year and a half in Germany during my exchange tour across the river; plus, I took German in college. The word Staat translates as 'state.' That could, as Malone thinks, refer to the State of the Union address. The word Götterdamerung refers to the Twilight of the Gods. Think Valkyries going down in flames in a Wagnerian opera. A hugely dramatic finale. Leichen regnen verden means literally that it's gonna rain death or dead bodies. Ammie is pejorative German slang for Americans. Schwein means 'pig.' The 'Five H's' beats me, other than the names that follow were the stars of the Nazi firmament. All except that last one — I don't recognize Heismann. But bottom line? I think Malone could be right: Somebody's babbling under the anesthesia about a bombing during the State of the Union speech."

Malone walked back in. "You get through the German stuff?"

"I speak some German," Swamp said. "This seems fairly provocative to me. This is what you sent over to the White House?"

"Right," Malone said, sitting down. "I remembered that the Secret Service does the security survey for the State of the Union address, too."

"Almost right. Actually it's the PRU. The White House protective detail is focused exclusively on protecting the president and his family, twenty-four/seven. This would have gone right to PRU — Protective Research Unit. They handle all the threat-analysis work."

Malone shrugged. "Whatever. They sent you."

Swamp smiled as he sat back in his chair. "After a fashion," he said. "And I now understand why they're treating it as a firefly. If I'm reading it right, the target's a year away."

"How so?"

"This is an inauguration year. There won't be a State of the Union speech until next year."

"Well now," Malone said, "technically, that's true, but there will be a presidential address to a joint session of Congress next month. I know that because we're already scheduling damn near a year's worth of overtime for that and the inauguration. Securitywise, it's just about the same thing. A foreigner might not know the difference."

Swamp nodded, acknowledging Malone's point. "Still," he said, "the Secret Service is totally absorbed right now in getting ready for the inauguration. My guess is that they shrugged this one off because they have more pressing threats. But still…"

"Yeah," Malone said. "I'm gonna keep my investigation open, see if we can explain that fire better. This other shit, that's officially over to you guys. We'll share any evidence, anything we find out, of course."

"Appreciate it," Swamp said. "As I remember, the papers said that one nurse survived this disaster — by not being there."

"Right," Malone said, reaching for another file. "A Ms. Connie Wall. Had the night off. We should have an interview record. Yeah, right here. She was at home when the deal went down. Horrified. Seemed genuinely shocked at what happened. Confirmed there were oh-two and nitrous-oxide tanks in the surgery. Didn't know who was being operated on that night. This is before we knew about the codes and shit. Interview terminated due to subject's becoming medium hysterical."

"I'd guess that the nurses never did know who was being operated on," Swamp said, tapping the metal file. "This one's coded in the name box, just like the other ones you mentioned. Okay. I'd like to do two things. One, go see the scene of the fire, preferably with you as guide. And two, talk to the nurse."

"No problem with the fire scene," Malone said, looking at his daybook, "How about four-thirty today? And as for the nurse, you're on your own."

Swamp looked at Gary. "Works for me," he said.

Heismann saw the pretty banker approaching from the direction of the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station. He moved casually from the middle of the park bench to the end. The Mall was moderately populated, it being lunchtime on this cloudy January day. Three young bureaucrats in shirts and ties were gamely trying to throw a Frisbee while pretending it was warm outside. Heismann was wearing a suit and tie under his dark green loden overcoat, and a matching hat to keep his head warm in the cold January breeze. His square-rimmed oversized sunglasses covered most of his features. His beard appeared to be about three weeks old, even though it wasn't real.

He opened up a white deli lunch bag and began to root around in it. He tried not to smile when he saw the newspaper tucked under the princeling's arm. Amir — or was it Emir? — Mutaib abd Allah, managing director of the Royal Kingdom Bank, loved American and British spy movies and fancied himself thoroughly grounded in operational tradecraft. The Wall Street Journal was folded in thirds under his right arm. For identification, of course, as if Heismann wouldn't recognize him, even after eleven months. For his part, Heismann had been told to display a white bag. He mentally rolled his eyes as he remembered all this nonsense.

Mutaib sat down on the far end of Heismann's bench, nodded politely to him, and unfolded the newspaper. Staying in character, Heismann obligingly didn't look at him again. He spied the Coke in the bag. Shaken, not stirred, as he remembered. Best be careful opening it, then.

"The fire appears to have been rather a success," Mutaib said quietly from behind his newspaper. He was about the same size as Heismann, with light olive skin, a delicately hooked hose, dark eyes, and a sculpted black goatee. He affected a passable Oxbridge accent when he spoke English, even though he'd finished his English schooling at the public school stage. He looked exactly like what he was: a casually cosmopolitan Saudi Arabian businessman assigned here in Washington to the Royal Kingdom Bank. Heismann was convinced the Arab was also a flaming homosexual.

"Oxygen," Heismann muttered, pretending to watch the antics of the Frisbee threesome. Mutaib was technically his field controller, so Heismann, who hated homosexuals, carefully erased all vestiges of contempt from his voice. He took a bite out of his machine-stamped sandwich, made a face, and returned the miserable thing to its wrappings. He then cracked open the Coke. He despised American fast food, and the pasty sandwich confirmed his worst expectations. The Coke, at least, was drinkable.

"Well then. Any loose ends?" Mutaib asked.

That question was much too casual, Heismann thought. The Washington Post had carried a detailed story of the fire at the cosmetic surgery clinic weeks ago, but the story had died out. So why the questions now? There had been a list of the victims, plus the fact that one nurse, Ms. Connie Wall, had not come in for work that night. Fortuitously, for both her and the plan, as it turned out. "The nurse, of course," he said.

"Ah, yes, the nurse," Mutaib replied, turning a page and then grappling with the paper as a gust of wind tried to steal it. Heismann shivered. Why couldn't we have done this over the phone? he wondered. But then he remembered where he was, in Washington, where one never knew who or what was listening to your phone conversations. The city was the headquarters of the FBI, CIA, ATF, DEA, the Secret Service, DIA, NSA, and a host of lesser federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, so anyone in the game had to assume that the entire municipal phone system was bugged and cross-bugged. Heismann did not own or ever use a cell phone. He pushed the remains of his sandwich deeper into the white bag and opened a small bag of chips.

"Does she need, um, attending to, then?" Mutaib asked.

"Not immediately," Heismann replied. They stopped talking as three pretty young women came strolling by, conducting a surprisingly frank anatomical commentary on the Frisbee players.

"But ultimately, yes, hmm?"

Yes, dear, Heismann thought. Ultimately, all the loose ends had to be tied off. Including Emir Mutaib. "You forget," he replied, "that we can use her for stage two of the bait. Plus, if I terminate her now, the authorities will have separate deaths connected to the same incident. As things stand, it was a fire, with one lucky survivor. If she dies now, any investigator with half a brain would notice."

"Quite so," Mutaib said approvingly. Heismann thought that the Arab was also watching the three Frisbee players. Disgusting. "Will you require tracking assistance on her?"

Heismann sighed. "It is nothing. I have been into her house. She lives alone up near Rock Creek Park. It will be no problem. Do we know if the Ammies took the bait?"

"Bit too soon, I should think. One assumes the first indication will come from our contacts at Interpol. A sudden American interest in one Jäger Heismann. Then we'll know. Not before."

Heismann had told his Arab controller at the very beginning that he intended to wipe out the clinic when they had fulfilled their side of the contract. The Arabs hadn't seemed to care one way or the other. The Americans, however, might take a different view if they saw through the "accidental" nature of the fire. If they were competent, they would. "And you have no one inside the city police department?" he asked.

Mutaib made a dismissive gesture with his left hand. "The Washington Police Department? Whatever for? They are fools."

Heismann grunted. For the arson investigation, idiot. On the other hand, the real threat to his mission here would come from the federal police, not the city police. Especially this city's police.

"The bank will know at once," Mutaib said. "In the meantime, we have acquired the house."

Heismann sat up straighter and glanced around. This was important. "Ah, yes? Within range?"

"Absolutely. Well within range. A duplex row house behind Capitol Hill on Sixth Street, southeast, just above South Carolina Avenue. Right on the edge of the so-called gentrification area."

"Southeast?"

"Yes. Think of the Capitol being in the center of a gun sight's crosshairs."

"Yes, precisely," Heismann said, nodding.

Mutaib suppressed a smile. "No, I mean for orientation purposes. The Capitol is the city center. The crosshairs divide the city into four quadrants, northwest, northeast, southeast, southwest. All addresses in this city are given with their quadrant."

"Ach, I understand. And duplex? This means two houses together, ya?"

"Precisely, old boy. And mind that German idiom, if you please. Duplex: two narrow two-story houses under one common roof, with a common middle wall between them. Brick construction in this case. There is an alley, where each unit has a garage."

"So, there is a neighbor?"

"One occupant next door, a middle-aged white woman, who works in the Library of Congress. Solitary sort, according to the estate agent."

"We will proceed with the cover story? That I am an artist?"

"A sculptor, to be precise. That way, there can be lorries bringing large, heavy objects from time to time. We'll actually have some marble blocks delivered."

"And the roof? Soft? Not slate, yes?"

Mutaib shot him a sideways glance. "Much better. Yes, it's asphalt shingle, replaced two years ago. Plus, here's the best part: There's a skylight."

"Truly?"

"Yes. It was a major selling point, as you might imagine. The orientation is perfect. No large trees in the way."

"I will need to compute coordinates. Perhaps there is a survey map?"

"We have an appraisal company working on that right now. The bank is pretending to be interested in buying the duplex, so I asked them for a survey report, with coordinates in three different forms. I told them we needed precise locating data for a diplomatic satellite channel."

Heismann winced. "That could come back to bite," he said, scanning for unmarked vans among the cars parked along the cross street.

Mutaib shrugged. "I know, but we're not too worried. You'll burn it on your way out, correct?"

"It will burn," Heismann said. And so will you, princess, he thought. He looked forward to that part. All he had to do was figure out how.

"Very well, then," Mutaib said. "And the estate agents accepted the legend."

Heismann resisted the urge to laugh out loud. The legend. Really. "I am artist on commission to the bank for six months, yes?"

"For statuary art at the bank, that's correct. Which allows us to pay the bills, do the lease, and deflect with a whiff of diplomatic immunity any nosy questions from the authorities. We've even cobbled up a brochure on you, Erich Hodler, famous European sculptor, complete with photos of your 'work.' That's the name you wanted, correct?"

"Hodler is correct. Interpol should not have that one. Do you expect questions about me, the sculptor?"

"Not really. Besides, we paid full rate, in advance. When one pays what they ask, estate agents tend to move right along. They were politely interested, but nothing more. They did wonder about your not wanting a phone."

"If there is no telephone, there can be no wiretap," Heismann said. "Telephones are homing devices these days."

They both glanced over as a small motorcade growled its way up the Mall on the Constitution Avenue side, two Suburbans bracketing a pair of big black limos, three District police cars, the one in front with an impatient siren going, the other two at the back. As a new conscript in the East German army, Heismann had been a tank gunner. If they were serious, the dignitary would be in the lead Suburban, Heismann calculated as he mentally framed up that vehicle in some lovely Zeiss optics. Or maybe even in one of those seedy-looking police squad cars.

"Occupy it when, exactly?" he asked.

"This Thursday — that would be the twelfth. I've written the address down on this newspaper."

"The house is furnished?"

"The house is furnished, of course, but we've asked them to take all the furniture out of the master bedroom on the second floor — you know, for your 'studio.' They wanted to store it in the garage, but I insisted they take it away. You may need that garage. We will also get you a street parking permit for your van."

"It is close to a Metro station?"

"Yes indeed. One of our criteria, as you will remember. Eastern Market station."

Heismann nodded. The Arabs had surprised him with their thoroughness. They'd done exactly what he'd asked them to. "Very good," he said. "Then all I need is the weapon."

The Saudi didn't reply for a moment, and he buried his head in the newspaper, as if he'd found something truly interesting. Heismann wondered if he'd said something wrong.

"May we assume," Mutaib said finally, "that the fire at the clinic means you are finished with all your, um, medical procedures?"

And what is this? Heismann wondered. "That is correct."

"I wasn't sure I'd recognize you after all this time. That beard, for instance."

"But the coat and hat, yes? Loden is distinctive. And also the white bag."

"Yes, but, um, I can't see your face. And your voice. You sound… different."

"That is no accident," Heismann said. "From here forward, you do not want to see my face."

"They changed your nose; I can see that. Looks a bit like mine, actually. Your hair — they changed your hair?"

"They changed everything they could," Heismann said patiently. "That was the whole idea, remember?"

"Oh, quite," Mutaib said. "I completely understand."

No, you don't, Heismann thought. "It has been confirmed, then?" he asked. "You still wish me to execute this thing?"

"Absolutely," Mutaib said from behind his newspaper. "The weapon is enroute. And given the results of this recent election, my, um, associates feel we have no choice. The Democrats have won the entire election. They have always been the war party. No matter how much they spin it otherwise."

Heismann had not followed the American election, other than to know that the Republican incumbent and his party in Congress had gone down to a surprising defeat and that the opposition party, the so-called Democrats, were now going to rule both on Capitol Hill and in the White House. He read the Washington papers diligently to keep up his English proficiency, and they seemed to make much of this "new" situation. In Europe, of course, the legislature and the executive branches were always controlled by the same party. Otherwise, how could anyone govern? One more example of America's idiotic politics. "It will be quite something," he predicted.

"Won't it just," Mutaib replied. "But we must strike first. Otherwise, we believe the Kingdom will simply disappear."

"And this bait business — I still wonder if that was wise."

"Deception is always necessary on something of this scale," Mutaib replied. "Especially these days. But do you really need to use the nurse?"

"No one was supposed to survive the fire. But since she has, once they find the file, they will question her. The file will establish the false time line. She may or may not be able to point them to the right name. If necessary, I will nudge her in the right direction. Then I will remove her."

Mutaib thought about that for a moment. "My, um, associates are concerned that she remains alive. We have discussed taking care of her ourselves, with our own assets here in the city."

"You doubt my abilities?"

"No, no, it's not that," Mutaib said, shifting his seat on the bench. "We agree that, if and when the bait surfaces, they will go to her, because she is the only one left. We don't know how much she knows about the clinic. Or if she can connect the clinic to the bank."

Heismann shrugged. "Then let me take care of it. If my doing that becomes a problem or interferes with the mission, she is yours."

"Very well. And if we do not see movement in Interpol channels, then we'll think of something else. A freight company will leave a message in the mailbox about delivery arrangements. For some Carrara marble blocks. One of the drivers on that delivery will leave behind instructions regarding the weapon container and its delivery."

Heismann nodded. "Excellent," he said. The deception plan had been their idea. He had never thought it necessary, but Mutaib had just made it his problem. Before he could say anything else, a man in a business suit and lightweight raincoat walked up, sat down on the bench across the way, and opened a newspaper.

Mutaib gave Heismann a theatrically significant glance from behind his own paper, folded it up, looked at his watch, dropped the paper on the bench, got up, and walked away. Heismann pulled the folded newspaper over and scanned the front section while finishing his potato chips. The address was not immediately visible, so he would have to take it with him, but for the moment, he decided just to sit there. The international pages spoke of the growing tensions between the Kingdom and the United States over oil: It described how the new Shiite clerical regime in Iraq, in alliance with the Shiite regime in Iran, had strong-armed the Kingdom into matching their own production cutbacks. How the Americans' unilateral decision to withdraw all its military forces from the Kingdom and Iraq had unleashed a huge upsurge in anti-American sentiment in the Gulf, to the point where the Iraqi mullahs had thrown all American reconstruction companies out of the country and replaced them with French and German contractors. The ruling faction, increasingly uneasy about the growing Shiite axis to the north and east, was preparing to open the oil spigots, but there was growing resistance within the Kingdom from some of the more powerful royal factions. Rumors of a royal Saudi coup were circulating in the bazaars. Gasoline, diesel, and home-heating oil at close to five dollars a gallon here in America had apparently had much to do with the outcome of the recent election. And equally much to do with why he was here.

These deluded Arabs, he thought. In his opinion, the Kingdom would most certainly disappear after this thing happened. Imagine. Playing medieval power games with the world's sole surviving superpower. Just like the ancient Jews, who, by intentionally provoking Rome back in the first century with their fervid dreams of religious and ethnic purity, had been flattened into the dust of history for their efforts. He had read that some prominent politicians in the newly victorious Democratic party wanted to do the very same thing to the Kingdom, given all that had happened since their so-called 9/11. No wonder the Arabs were worried. But what did they think was going to happen once they executed this incident? Once he executed this incident. Because there were absolutely going to be Saudi fingerprints all over it — he was going to make damned sure of that. It would be the only way he could buy time to effect his own disappearance. The Ammies would be far more interested in the bomber's masters than in the bomber himself.

The man across the walkway seemed to pay no attention to anything going on around him as he read his paper. Coincidence? Heismann wondered. He leaned back on the bench, tilted his face up to where the weak January sun should have been lurking, and rubbed his face, in the process pushing the big sunglasses higher up on his nose so he could just peek out through the two tiny clear spots in the lower lenses. He pretended to be napping but kept his eyes slitted open. The bridge of his now almost Semitic nose still twinged occasionally from the surgery. His Nazi grandfather would have gleefully broken that nose if he could have seen it. Grandpapa had also known a thing or two about fire.

He watched the man opposite and also scanned for signs of anyone following Mutaib as he strolled back across the wide expanse of dormant grass out on the Mall. Since no one seemed to be following Mutaib, he concentrated on the other man, whom he could not really see, hidden as he was behind the spread newspaper in his hands. In his perfectly still hands, he realized. When had the man last turned the page?

He focused harder on the man's hands. Black leather gloves. With his new, surgically altered eyes, Heismann's vision was now nearly perfect. Still the man didn't turn the page. Another foreigner trying to improve his American idiom by plowing through the Washington Post's sometimes turgid prose? He stared hard at the man's gloved hands.

The wind gusted again, and the man's paper trembled. Something. There— the right hand. Yes. Yes. Yes! Right there. He felt his heart quicken. He could just make out a tiny black wire coming out of the glove on the man's right hand. The wire disappeared up inside the man's shirt cuff.

He wanted to shout. His tactical instincts were alive and well. This man was trying to photograph him. Through a tiny hole in the stupid newspaper, no doubt. Holding the paper very steady, despite the wind. Waiting for— what? Waiting for Heismann to take off the sunglasses and expose his face, of course. He closed his eyes and tried not to grin. Then he wondered how long the man could hold his arms out like that. That could get difficult after just a few minutes. He remembered watching the Soviet honor guard soldiers at the Battle of Berlin monument in East Berlin, when they would put their World War II rifles at right-shoulder arms and then, using only their wrist, bring the heavy piece up to a perfectly vertical position in their extended hand and hold it like that for twenty minutes. He'd tried it once, and his arm had collapsed after only sixty seconds. We shall see, he thought.

And the next question was, Who would want to take his picture? Some Ammie secret government agent? Except, as he remembered his own tradecraft, the Ammies preferred telephoto work.

No. Not the Americans. This was Mutaib's man. Some fat-joweled princes back in Saudi telling their point man, Emir Mutaib: you haven't seen this man for almost a year. He's had extensive cosmetic surgery. We need to know what he looks like now. You know, for afterward. Obtain a photograph. Meet him somewhere public. Put him at ease, and have someone get his photograph.

He could just hear Secret Agent Mutaib Bond speaking in code in that superior tone of his: We will be meeting on the Mall. Hidden in plain sight. He will be on the same bench with me. I will have a newspaper. He will have a white lunch bag. There will be secret signs. We need the new face. And the lackey replying, Right away, Your Highness.

And why would they need his picture? So when this thing was kaput, they could find him and kill him, of course. The management of loose ends.

The wind gusted again, and Heismann shivered despite the heavy loden coat. But he kept his head back and watched the other man hold steadfastly to his newspaper. He couldn't see the wire anymore. Had he imagined it? No, he had not. The wind died away, but the edges of the man's newspaper kept trembling. Ah. Any minute now.

Finally, the would-be photographer gave up, lowered the paper, and turned the page. Heismann stood up at once, yawned, picked up the newspaper, and walked away before the man could position the hidden lens again. He didn't bother to look at the man. Just another amateur. Fools.

But he had learned something important today. He had planned all along to do his own loose-end management by removing his delicate Arab controller, the one man who could tie him directly to what was coming. He'd been paid half the money in advance, as agreed, but he never expected to see the promised other half. He'd wanted only two things from them all along: the front money and the change in physical identity, something that would release him from his Stasi past forever.

Heismann had been surprised when he'd been approached by the Saudi moneyman two years ago in Hamburg. They had a big job for him to do, in the United States this time. They trusted him absolutely because he had killed for them and he was not an ideologue — he worked strictly for money. Plus, he had excellent English, American English, actually, and for that and the fact that he was not a major player in the world of professional terrorists, they were willing to pay a fortune. Heismann had no illusions, then or now, about his status as some kind of international terrorist operative. He was what he was — a journeyman criminal with a gift for languages and for physical violence. But he was getting older and tired of all this skulking around and working for the despised Arabs. And the Western nations' counterintelligence organizations were getting better at finding the players in the terrorist networks. Many of the major players were gone. People were disappearing and not coming back. Germans, too. Pretty soon, they'd concentrate on the midlevel operatives. So he'd named his terms: the money, plus a total change in physical identity. And total would mean total. That had been fine with them — they'd had two years to set the thing up. As was their custom, they'd allowed plenty of time.

Now he had half the money, the entire identity change, and the thing was running. Good enough in all respects. Since there had to be loose strings at each end of every rope, Heismann understood that he was Mutaib's loose end. So the photographer was really no surprise. He loved it when his opponents showed their hands this way. It made everything so much simpler.

He adjusted the big sunglasses as he walked across the nation's front lawn. He could almost feel the camera lens, hear the electric film winder grinding away as the man got some wonderful shots — of the back of his lovely green loden overcoat. And new ears. Well, yes, that would be something to report. Herr Heismann had new ears.

He laughed out loud.

Fools.

Swamp enjoyed the brisk walk up Connecticut Avenue from the Metro station. The afternoon traffic was already building toward rush hour, and he always felt better when he could walk faster than the cars could move. Gary White was keeping up with him, although Swamp detected an occasional puff when the young agent thought Swamp wasn't looking. He wondered if Gary was a smoker. Most Homicide cops he knew were.

"Only way to get around this benighted city's traffic," Swamp offered as they crossed Wyoming Avenue and passed the embassies of Malta and Senegal. "By the time we get there, all those cars out there will have moved two whole blocks."

White muttered something in return, but his words were whipped away by the January wind. Kid ought to learn to wear a hat, Swamp thought, securing his own Borsalino on his head. The fancy hat was an extravagance, but he loved the contrast it made with his face. And besides, it wasn't as if he had anything else to spend his money on these days.

The clinic itself was on the south side of Kalorama Road, visible from a block away because of the yellow crime-scene tape fluttering in the wind. Malone had driven over in a fire department sedan and was parked partially up on the sidewalk, inside the tape. He got out when he saw Swamp and Gary approaching.

The facade of the two-story clinic was brown brick, blackened around the window frames. The windows had been broken out. The front door was propped in place but no longer on its hinges. Heavy smoke stains created a black halo around the upper reaches of the doorway. Malone met them on the steps.

"Sure you want to do this?" he asked.

Swamp blinked but nodded yes; he thought it was important to see the fire scene. "Nothing beats personal reconnaissance," he said. Malone gave him an "if you say so" look.

Malone then slid the heavy door to one side and they stepped into a darkened hallway. The floor was littered with debris and there was a strong stink of burned building, overlaid with just a whiff of cooked but now spoiling meat. Swamp suppressed a gag reflex when he smelled that, and White suddenly didn't look well.

"Sorry about that," Malone said. "That's why I asked. That smell tends to linger. I've got some Vicks in the car, you want some."

White nodded emphatically, holding a handkerchief to his face. Malone told him it was in the glove compartment, and White disappeared out front. Swamp examined the layout. Front door leading into a small reception area. Office area behind a counter to the right, doorway back to the clinic proper on the left. Walls, fixtures, furniture, countertop — all blackened. Carpet squishy with firefighting water. More interesting smells. Stairway going up to the next floor on the far right.

"Mixture of heat, smoke, and water damage out here," Malone said, shining a large flashlight around the reception area. "Office experienced severe heating. File cabinets jammed shut. Papers charred inside. Computer cases, hard drives — all melted."

White came back in and passed Swamp a small wad of the Vicks VapoRub, which he smeared beneath each nostril, blinking back tears at the strong camphor smell. Malone took them to the hallway door, which was off its hinges and propped up against the wall. "Back here, we have two examining rooms, two doctor's offices, what we think was a preop/postop staging and recovery room, the OR itself, a pharmaceutical closet, a full bathroom, and two utility closets back there."

"The fire began in the OR?" Swamp asked. Despite the Vicks, the battlefield corpse stench was still very much in evidence.

"Right. That's back this way. Watch your step — the ceiling came down all along here. Don't touch any wires. The power's off, but you never know about wires."

The area near the operating room was totally devastated, right down to the walls having been burned away. The fire department had erected temporary shoring timbers to ensure the roof didn't cave in all around, but the drooping ceiling gave a claustrophobic feel to the scene. A lone metal door frame stood detached from its surround.

"What's upstairs?" Swamp asked.

"Mirror image of what's down here, except for the OR. The daytime practice. Structurally intact, but trashed by heat, water, and smoke, of course. There's a completely separate entrance to the day clinic, around to the side, in the alley. That stairway over there connects. No fire doors, so that's why the day clinic took so much damage."

Swamp looked up at the large hole in the ceiling over what had been the operating room. Blackened fixtures, wiring, and piping drooped down into the hole from above. They could hear water dripping somewhere. They wandered around for a few minutes, then came back to stand next to the OR's empty door frame. In the middle of the room, the steel operating table, which had drooped down at both ends, was visible.

"What's down that hallway?"

"Couple of storage closets — cleaning gear, paper supplies. All pretty much black. No evidence of interest."

"How in the hell do you reconstruct from a mess like this?" Swamp asked.

"We do it all the time, Special Agent," Malone said. "I tell the new guys it's like archaeology — the evidence gets laid down in layers as the building comes down. You just reverse the process."

"Sounds simple, but I'll bet it isn't. Where were the bodies?"

"Right there," Malone said, pointing into the center of the wreckage that had been the operating theater. "Three by the table, plus one just inside this door frame. Lots more debris here when we first started looking, of course. About four feet deep, plus about a foot of water underneath. There's a basement, but it was empty — dirt floors, stone walls, remains of a coal furnace. No stairs down there that we could find. Partially flooded now."

"And no patient," Swamp said, shifting his feet to avoid something sticky under his shoes. He wondered if this smell was getting into his clothes, and he certainly didn't want to consider what might be sticking to his shoes.

"Well, that's the assumption we made. Ms. Wall said there would have been two women nurses, and two men, the docs, in here. She says if they were all in here, then there should have been a patient."

"Unless they all ran in to fight the fire — say after an operation," White offered. "I mean, it was close to midnight, according to the report. The patient's gone home. Nurses are cleaning up, fire starts, the docs come running, and then the oh-two mix gets right, lets go, gets them all."

Malone nodded thoughtfully. "That's certainly possible. We mapped, recovered, and inspected all the electrical plugs. Found one with a definite arc notch. According to Ms. Wall, that plug's map location would have put it near a big green curtain. But too much damage and heat here to determine point of origin. And some of the plugs were destroyed."

"Wouldn't an OR curtain like that be fireproof?"

"By code, supposed to fire-resistant," Malone said. "Only thing in this world that's fireproof is the damned ocean."

"Sprinklers?" Swamp asked.

"Turned off at the master valve."

"Why? I wonder," Swamp said.

"We find that more often than you'd think," Malone said. "Somebody does an inspection of the sprinkler system, then does maintenance on the heads or the valves, forgets to reactivate the system. There was a flame sensor tied to the office security system — that's what brought the department."

"And the bodies?"

Malone pointed down to the jumble of blackened wreckage, water, and melted globs of plastic littering what had been the OR floor. "Looked just like that stuff. We knew they were in here. Used steel-rod probes to find them underneath all this shit. Like getting a skewer through a hot dog on the grill. You feel for it, punch through; then your nose will tell you what you've found."

"I'm outta here," White said, his face an unpleasant gray in the light of Malone's flashlight.

Malone nodded, as if he had been expecting this. He led them back into the office reception area. White kept going right out of the building. Swamp smiled at Malone and then followed White, secretly relieved that the younger agent had been the first to break. He never thought he'd welcome the cutting January wind, but now he held his coat open to air out his clothes. Malone came next, pulling the front door closed, as much as he could.

"That was perfectly awful," Swamp told him. White was standing down on the sidewalk, puffing hard on a cigarette. Swamp had never smoked, but he wanted one now.

"You should've seen it right after the fire," Malone said. "That scene's actually been cleaned up — a lot. But you can see how bad that fire was."

"On a scale of one to ten, with ten being perfect, how good a reconstruction will you be able to do in there?"

"Three. Maybe."

"So proving that it was a deliberate fire?"

Malone shook his head. "We can speculate all day, but there's not much direct evidence of arson. No accelerants, other than the oh-two. First responders reported hearing the oxygen, or, technically, a gas roar, when they arrived. They used solid-stream, high-velocity fog, even tried foam, but none of that impresses a fire with its own fuel and unlimited oxidizer."

Swamp considered that for a moment. "Your report said two oxygen bottles melted?" he asked.

"Probably they were nitrous-oxide bottles. But yes, they melted, which I thought was a little weird. But we'd have to run tests to see what the specs were on those gas bottles."

"And nitrous-oxide is flammable? Or could the two that melted have been filled with something else? Like, I don't know, ether?"

"We asked Ms. Wall that. She said nobody uses ether for anesthetic anymore. They were using a mixture of NO and oh-two. They were going to convert to Sevoflurane or something like that. She said they didn't sweat an OR fire from those gases, but that sometimes, under the right conditions, NO and oh-two can ignite in a patient's throat, if you can feature that shit."

"Yow. Anybody pull the string on the day docs? The owners?"

"I don't believe so, Special Agent. And at least for right now, this wasn't arson. Something went wrong in the operating room, and the sprinklers were shut off. Suspicious, maybe, but we've seen this scenario before. D.C. General had one, five, six years ago. Never did find out what set it off, but the presence of liquid-oxygen tanks did a number there, too."

There was considerably more traffic out on Kalorama Road now, and the late-afternoon sky was darkening fast. Most cars already had their lights on, but like most Washington evening traffic, they were getting nowhere fast.

"I would have thought that the oxygen bottles themselves would not be in the operating room. That there would be a supply line of some kind, with a safety valve that would cut off the oh-two if there was a leak or a sudden huge demand, like in a fire."

"That's how they do it in the big hospital operating rooms. But this was a private clinic. Maybe money was tight, or the docs were cheap."

"Was this place inspected?"

"We have just two guys who are qualified to inspect medical facilities for the whole city. You may have heard about our budget problems."

"Yes indeed. Plus, hospitals don't vote."

Malone gave an elaborate shrug. "We do what we can. Unlike firefighting, fire prevention isn't sexy."

"I really appreciate the tour," Swamp said. "And I really never want to do that again. My hat's off to you and your people. That must have been some tough sledding in there."

Malone accepted the compliment. "Fire is an impressive enemy," he said.

"We'll be in touch. Probably with more questions. And if you come up with something interesting, please call me." He gave Malone his card. The inspector asked if he could give them a ride, but Swamp thanked him and said they were using the Metro. "This time of day, we'll get back to our office before you get to yours, I suspect."

Heismann climbed through the damp winter underbrush, following a narrow but recognizable game trail. It was 2:30 p.m., and the January sun, while losing its battle with the bank of clouds over the western part of the city, was shooting yellow rays of light, which made it hard to see. He'd parked his car down in Rock Creek Park in one of the scenic-view lots and was now approaching the nurse's house on Quebec Street, which sat up on a bluff overlooking the park. He could just see the top of the house, a white Victorian surrounded by old oaks, their bare black limbs seeming to wrap the house in a votive web. Someone had planted a line of spiky cedars all along the bluff, and they'd propagated down the slope over the years. A dog was barking somewhere in the neighborhood, but he didn't think it had sensed him.

He paused when he got to the top of the bluff. He had spotted the evergreen slope on a previous reconnaissance. Now he was dressed accordingly in his loden hat and coat, with dark wool trousers and insulated boots. He turned around to survey the ground below and behind him to make sure there weren't any joggers down in the park watching him. His oversized sunglasses were polarized, or he wouldn't have been able to see much of anything in the yellow glare.

Two bicyclists were visible across a small ravine, whizzing down Tilden Road into the park. He planted his walking stick into the needle-covered ground, tipped his hat forward to hide his face, and watched and listened for five minutes. Standing still among the man-high cedars, dressed in dark green, he knew he'd be invisible until he moved. The sunglasses were the only reflective thing about him.

Connie Wall's antique car was parked up by the garage, but he thought she used the Metro system to get around town, based on the fact that he had seen her walking up the block one morning, the last time he'd come up here. He'd been into her house once before, and he knew from the calendar on the dining room table that she should be out at a job interview at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this afternoon. The Medical Center Metro stop served NIH, so that would be the easy way to do it.

He looked at his watch. Two-forty-five. Time to go.

He pushed on up through the last ten feet of cedar trees and stepped over a dilapidated waist-high split-rail fence at the top. A driveway led from the street on his right back to a single-car garage on his left, positioned partially behind the house. A large blue spruce tree at the edge of the driveway would block the view of anyone out on or across the street, but he didn't dally. He walked across the driveway, bearing left, aiming to get behind the house, and then went directly up a rear sidewalk and onto the steps leading to a screened back porch. The outer screen door was unlocked, so he let himself onto the porch. He went directly to the back door, which had a large window in the top half. He could see a pantry inside, and beyond that was the kitchen. There was a doorbell, which he pressed. The bell was in the kitchen and seemed to work just fine. He had no idea of what he'd do if she appeared at the door, but there was always the Walther in his coat pocket. He'd looked around for alarm-system decals or wires the last time but had seen nothing, and there'd been no signs out front, either. He propped his walking stick against the back wall, fished out the spare key he'd taken the last time, and, after wiping his boots on the mat, let himself in.

He went immediately through the kitchen, then down a central hallway to the front, where he looked out a side-panel window for little old ladies lurking on neighborhood watch. Those and dogs were the most dangerous threats to a burglar, and fortunately, Connie Wall did not have a dog. A cat, perhaps, but no damned dog. All was quiet out front. He checked his watch again and gave himself a five-minute stay time. Whenever he broke into a house or office, he always assumed that someone had seen him and called the police. The typical response time for a prowler call in Washington was fifteen minutes, so that was a satisfactory margin. Not likely in this sleepy little neighborhood, but still… Rules were rules.

Keeping his expensive leather gloves on, he went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. He found an opened half-gallon plastic container of skim milk. Perfect. He took it out, setting it on the kitchen table. He removed a steel cigar-shaped tube from his left-hand coat pocket, unscrewed the top, and pulled out the syringe. Then he unscrewed the milk container's cap and pressed the contents of the syringe into the milk. He sniffed the spout, but there was no discernible odor. He closed it back up, shook it gently to mix the contents, returned it to the refrigerator, and shut the door. Then he went over to the wall telephone; where he removed the receiver and then the cover and backed off one of the line wires. He then replaced the cover.

He went back to the front door and again scanned the front yard and street. Still nothing. He then went quickly up the stairs to her bedroom, which was just beyond the top of the landing. Up here, the house smelled faintly of old age, lavender, and mildew. She might be a surgical-team nurse, he thought, but she's no housekeeper. He pushed open her bedroom door and wrinkled his nose at the mess of clothes strewn about — dirty laundry piled in a hamper, clean laundry stacked in a chair. The bed was unmade. He went to the low bureau, whose top was covered with makeup bottles and jars. He found her lingerie drawer and began to paw through it. He found the items he needed, panties and a half-slip, closed that drawer, and then took an unopened pair of dark panty hose from the left-hand bottom drawer. He stuffed the underwear into his coat pocket and closed the drawers. The bottom one jammed an inch from fully closing, so he had to kick it shut. He made a quick survey of her clothes closet, but didn't see anything of use there.

He made a cursory check of the rug to see that he hadn't left footprints or dirt from his boots, found one piece of mud, and pocketed it. From the looks of the bedroom, he doubted this woman would ever notice a little dirt. He went back downstairs, checked out the front windows again, then let himself out the back door, making sure it locked behind him, and retrieved his stick. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the wooded slope down in the park and walked casually down the creekside path toward his car. Two joggers puffed by him, an older man with a much younger companion. For some reason, perhaps the way they were sticking close to each other, they looked like a couple to him. More queers, he thought. This fat country was full of degenerates. He'd resisted the urge to trip them both with his walking stick as they passed him.

He got into his car, a three-year-old minivan, and backed out of the lot. As he drove back up Tilden, he looked across the ravine toward the ugly white house at the end of the block on the other side for signs of blue police lights, but all was still quiet.

So, all the nosy old ladies had been taking their naps this time. Very good. He felt for the nylon underwear in his coat pocket. This was so much less embarrassing than going into some department store and buying it. He knew exactly what the clerks would think, and then he would feel obliged to do something about that. Plus, she wasn't going to need underwear once she had a nice glass of milk.

The light was red at the intersection of Tilden and Connecticut Avenue. He'd laced the milk container with ten cc's of a boiled concentrate solution of ant poison and water. The boiling had evaporated the foul smell the manufacturer put in to keep humans and animals from ingesting it. The poison would hit Connie Wall in minutes, rendering her helpless as she cramped into a retching, effluvial ball on the kitchen floor before she quite knew what had happened. Then she would stiffen into a paralytic stupor. Ant poison was a cholinesterase inhibitor, otherwise known as a nerve agent. The diluted paste he'd injected would float to the top of the milk, so she'd get the full dose. No smell, no taste. And if she did manage to crawl to the kitchen phone, well, it wasn't going to work.

Essentially, she was going to kill herself. Living alone like that, and with no coworkers or bosses to wonder where she was, it might even be days before anyone found her. By then, the milk would have spoiled entirely, and since the products of its decomposition would create acids that would in turn destroy the nerve agent in the ant poison, there would be no problem with loose ends. Messy, given what havoc a cholinesterase inhibitor wreaks on the central nervous system, but, at those concentrations, extremely effective.

He had told Mutaib that she would be useful to the deception plan, but after the princeling started talking about taking care of her with his own assets, Heismann had become suspicious. As Mutaib had observed, they could not be certain what she knew. Well, Heismann thought, that works both ways, does it not, Your Slipperiness? Better for me that she just goes away. Out of the equation altogether. That would leave him with one loose end instead of two. The light changed, and off he went, nodding to himself in satisfaction.

Connie Wall kept a polite expression plastered on her face while she controlled the urge to slap senseless this middle-aged Lothario wanna-be posing as an HR administrator. He'd spent the entire time he was supposedly interviewing her trying to get a better look up her skirt. The interview chair had been carefully positioned right in front of the desk, with him sitting to one side of the desk for a better viewing angle.

"And you live in the District itself, Ms. Wall?" he was asking. He was in his fifties, pasty-faced, with a potbelly and half a dozen gray hairs plastered back to front along the sides of his forehead to cover his bald spot. Birth-control glasses. Trousers too short, black nylon socks too short, revealing really yummy oyster white shins. As a bonus, there was even a red spot of what looked like catsup on his straining white shirt. At least six pens in his shirt pocket, and one of them was leaking. Mr. Perfect.

"Yes, I do," she said. "Close to the Metro, too. No commuting hassles."

"How nice for you," he murmured, looking over the top of the file folder. She turned almost sideways in the chair, trying to make it as obvious as she could that she was absolutely not flattered by his lecherous interest.

"It was my parents' house," she said. "Long before there was a Metro. Is there shift work involved in this position?"

"Normally not," he said, putting down the folder and straightening in his chair, apparently giving up on his periscope act for the moment. "You stated here that your last employer could not provide a reference because he was deceased. Do you have any performance evaluations from before that you can show us?"

She fished around in her briefcase, trying not to bend over too far. This guy might get really excited if he could see down her blouse as well as up her skirt. She pulled out a folder. "Right here," she said. "Those are copies, of course. The originals were lost in the fire."

"Fire?"

She explained what had happened at the surgery, and he said yes, he remembered that.

"Why at night?" he asked. "The paper seemed to indicate there were two sets of doctors using that clinic, one days, one nights."

"Our patients were all men," she said. "Important people, I think. My guess was that they did these procedures in the evenings for confidentiality purposes. The clientele during the daytime were mostly women. I occasionally worked for those doctors, too. Copies of their evaluations are also in that file, and they can give me references."

"Right, good. Well, look, you're technically qualified for the position. Maybe even overqualified. I'm going to forward your medical credentials to the department head. If Dr. Calvin wishes to proceed, I'll call you back for a second interview. That would be a technical discussion, you understand, with Calvin's people. And if he wishes to proceed with the hire, there will be a personal-background check. National agency screen. No problems there, I assume?"

"You assume correctly," she said. "Three traffic tickets in the past three years, but I drive a '68 Shelby GT." She shrugged. "Cops see one of those, they just assume you're speeding, you know?"

"I drive a ten-year-old diesel sedan," he said, pursing his lips, undoubtedly waiting to see if she would guess he had a Mercedes. "So, no, I wouldn't know. But I think this might work out just fine, Ms. Wall, subject to our internal checks, of course. I'll get your package over to Dr. Calvin this afternoon. When could you start?"

"Whenever you want," she said, gathering her things. "I prefer not to work weekends, as I like to go out of town on weekends. But otherwise…"

"That's fine," he said. "NIH is a government operation. We prefer not to work weekends, either. The due-diligence process takes about two weeks. Thank you for coming in."

What a complete el creepo, she thought five minutes later as she descended the vertiginous escalator at the Medical Center Metro station. Hopefully, the surgeons will be humans, even if their Human Resources manager is a pencil-necked geek. The NIH deal did sound like a good chance for her to go back to work. She wasn't worried about the so-called technical interview. She had almost twenty years of work experience in operating rooms, and she also knew exactly how desperate most hospitals were for people with that much experience. Not that she was all that desperate herself — she could probably stop working now and live on the income from her investments, but she knew she'd go right out of her gourd just sitting around the house on Quebec Street.

She waited impatiently on the platform. The trains grew sparser when it wasn't rush hour, and the absence of anyone else waiting told her she'd just missed one. It had been six weeks since the fire. Everyone dying like that had freaked her out, and then the D.C. Arson cops with all their questions had actually made her feel guilty to have survived. She'd bailed out, finally, driving to the Valentine Hills ski resort, in West Virginia over the holidays just to get out of town.

Her elderly cat, Buster, was waiting for her on the kitchen doorstep when she got home. She let herself in, hung up her coat, and then gave the cat a dish of milk. She went upstairs to get out of her interview clothes and back into jeans and a sweater. When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed what looked like a long brown bug on the rug right by the bedroom door. She looked again and realized that it was a lump of dirt or mud, and she chided herself for not cleaning her shoes properly. The bedroom needed picking up and vacuuming anyway, so she left the lump of dirt, humped all the dirty laundry together to take it down to the washing machine, and went back downstairs to get the vacuum cleaner. While vacuuming, she found another small lump of wet dirt right by the bed. She frowned, wondering what she'd gotten into, and where. She engaged in a minor cleaning frenzy for the next forty-five minutes and then took the vacuum back downstairs. Then she went to the dining room table, where her computer was set up, and checked through her E-mail. There were two more requests for interviews, a dozen annoying messages from the Internet advertising world, and a cop joke forwarded from Cat Ballard, her good friend on the D.C. Homicide squad. It was now dark outside, so she went to turn on some lights in the kitchen. Which is when she found Buster.

Swamp Morgan was a list maker. He ended each day making up a short to-do list for the next day and leaving it taped to his office telephone. The first item on tomorrow's agenda was to make contact with the senior agent at PRU, the man who had reviewed the original file transcript and declared it a firefly. The second was to set up an interview with the nurse who had survived the terrible fire at the clinic. He had spent a great deal of his career in and around the world of intelligence. He knew that the firefly call might be based on information he did not or could not have. The Protective Research Unit would have a bigger picture than he did, especially now that he was a reactivated agent working outside of the Secret Service. The entire case might just die a natural death after he talked to PRU. As it should, if it was a firefly.

Gary White had already left for the day, and he would begin his day tomorrow doing new-guy transfer admin. But Swamp intended to make sure Gary went along when he went over to PRU. He liked the cut of Gary White's jib. He seemed to be levelheaded, intelligent, and able to focus on the task at hand. His experience in the Homicide Division wouldn't hurt, either, as those cops tended to view everything and everyone they encountered with immediate, unvarnished suspicion. He was glad to have the help, and more than willing to hold up his end of the new-agent bargain, namely to introduce White to the byzantine nature of federal law enforcement and to help him get ahead.

The office had quieted down now that the day was over. For Swamp, it was a familiar silence, with the noise of traffic outside on Pennsylvania Avenue competing with the hum of lowest-bidder fluorescent lighting in the office. He was hardly alone in the OEOB — the National Security Council staffers often worked until eight or nine o'clock, and longer during days of crisis. He had a one-bedroom furnished apartment over on the northern Virginia side, in a building right above a Metro station. It was a place to sleep during the week, but little more.

On the weekends, he took the train out to his hometown of Harpers Ferry and spent Saturdays and Sundays at the riverside inn his parents had run for many years. They'd maintained an owners' apartment at the back of the inn. It was on the third floor, facing the river, and he had taken this over when they'd given him the property and retired to Florida. Ben and Lila Hardee, longtime friends and next-door neighbors, had expressed an interest in running the place, so he'd let them take it on. They got to keep the income from the business, and he had a free and familiar weekend retreat for as long as he wanted it. He took the train back into town each Monday, and he did not even keep a car in town.

He pulled out the clean transcript file, the one retyped from the burned record, along with a legal pad. He went over the jumble of hallucinatory mutterings of patient number 200341. What kind of a clinic was this, identifying its patients with numbers? He made a note to touch base with the Bureau, see what they had and wouldn't share with local law on those two Paki doctors. And find out who had set up the docs in business and gotten them visas.

Then he wondered what he might reveal under anesthesia, when all inhibitions floated away in a cool stream of anesthetic. What he might say about Sherry, his former wife, and what she'd done to him on the day he retired from the Senior Executive Service. He could imagine his own stream of consciousness — or was it unconsciousness in this situation? — where he'd mumble, "Thank you, Mr. Secretary," and then ramble on about cherry blossoms, the late afternoon on the Tidal Basin across from the Jefferson Memorial, and what his wife had said that day. "Let's sit down right here, Lee, because there's something I need to tell you. Which is that I'm leaving you, Lee. Yes, for Dr. Grant, my boss and my lover for the past five years, not that you ever noticed, did you? And no, there'll be no discussion, no negotiations or pleading, not that you would ever plead, would you? No, not you, not big bad Swamp Morgan. But there it is: I'm divorcing you, marrying him, and Bob's going to take care of everything from now on. We don't even have to go to court or discuss settlements, alimony, any of that, because you know what? I want nothing from you. Bob's going to take care of everything. He's already set up a fund for the kids' college, I'll have a new home in Chevy Chase, and we'll have our new life together.

"And why do you look so shocked, Lee Morgan? We haven't been really close for years, have we? Or rather, I haven't. Because we both know you've been a lot more married to the Secret Service than to me, haven't you? All those standard Secret Service five-to-nine days at the White House. Taking care of dear old POTUS. And then even more quality time at the office when you got to be deputy dog at headquarters. Well, I guess that's all noble enough, but my life's half over, Lee, just like yours, actually. Being an SES widow wasn't good enough for me. I want a loving and close relationship with a nice man for the rest of my life, and I don't think you can manage that anymore. So, yes, I stood up with you today, your very big, very important government gold watch day, but now I'm going away. Not very far away, actually, but a million figurative miles from you.

"Here are the papers; they're very simple, short, and sweet. Sign right by those little yellow arrows, mail them back, and you're a free man, Lee. I'm leaving you the house, the cars, everything, even my old clothes. Do what you want with all of it. Trust me, you'll be the envy of the divorced white male club, I promise you. And the kids? You know, they're totally on board with this. Surprised again? Quick now, can you tell me how old each is without thinking about it, Lee? Didn't think so. Look, you can see the kids whenever you want to, although they'll be away at college most of the time. And they may or may not want to see you — you'll have to work that out with them. They're effectively beyond custody questions now, so you do your best — I won't fight you, although seeing them may be tougher than you think. Besides, you've got a bigger problem. You have to figure out what you're going to do with the next half of your life, now that I'm no longer in the picture.

"No, no, don't say a word, Lee, not a word. Because you can't change my decision or how I feel about Bobby Grant. And you. One way or another, you're single. And once you switch your brain back on, you'll know this is as good a deal as any ex-husband ever gets. So don't even think about fighting this, Lee. There's nothing to win.

"Look at me, Lee.

"Say good-bye, Lee."

And then, before getting up and walking away, she'd smiled and patted the back of his hand, as if to say, No hard feelings, right? He didn't even have to close his eyes to still see her, a forthright, intelligent, physically attractive woman, her back straight and heels clicking purposefully through the carpet of fallen cherry blossoms blowing along the sidewalk. Who'd left him sitting there so shocked, he'd almost forgotten to breathe. So filled with astonishment, mixed with the growing recognition that he should have seen this coming, his hand clutching an envelope with engraved lawyer lettering in the top left-hand corner. And this less than an hour after his retirement and award ceremony in the office of the director of the Secret Service, with everyone he knew and valued, and even the Secretary of the Treasury in attendance, standing tall and beaming at him.

She'd done a perfect Pearl Harbor on him, and, like one of the doomed battleships on that terrible day, he'd felt his entire psyche rolling over and subsiding into the lagoon without a sound, trapping the memories of some twenty-one years of marriage inside dark submerging decks.

He blinked, gasped in a breath of air, and looked around the empty office. He dimly heard voices down the hall and the shrill sound of an encrypted telephone demanding to be picked up right now. He wondered how many other middle-aged men were staying late in the office just like he was, and for the same basic reason: They had nowhere else to go on a January night in Washington. What had happened next completed the Pearl Harbor analogy: Sherry a hundred feet away. The two black guys in full urban hoodlum costume— baggy pants, knit caps, huge sneakers — suddenly flanking her, one grabbing her hair and pulling her backward, the other tussling for her purse. His own instinctive reaction, bolting off the park bench and sprinting down the side of the Tidal Basin, screaming obscenities at the hoods, seeing them look back at him while he fumbled for the badge and the gun he no longer had, the gut-wrenching realization that he was no longer a federal cop, just another outraged middle-aged white guy, as the smaller of the two thugs flashed a knife, jabbed it twice into Sherry's throat, and then took off with his buddy with a triumphant shout, her purse in his bloody hand, while Sherry stepped one step sideways and then sagged onto the concrete as a clutch of tourists stared in disbelief from the other side of the Tidal Basin. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life — no gun, no badge, no radio, no authority, no backup, no nothing — as he knelt in the small lake of bright blood, trying to hold the big vein shut with slippery fingers, knowing, knowing…

He raised an open hand and brought it forcefully down on the desk blotter with a loud smack to banish the black thoughts. He heard someone in the next office ask, "What was that?" He exhaled forcefully, then inhaled, exhaled again. Then he composed himself. He was strong and alive and there was that next half of his life, as Sherry had pointed out, still there to be lived. He'd been through the entire gamut of feelings endlessly — anger, bitterness, guilt, embarrassment and then, ultimately, resignation. He'd been amazed at the range of people's reactions, from the sympathy and quiet encouragement of his professional contemporaries to the drunk who'd told him that he was the luckiest divorced son of a bitch on the planet, because what Swamp had now was the perfect opportunity. "You ready for this, chief? You get to have seconds!" the bum had told him.

He took another deep breath, shook out his arms, and focused again on the transcript. His palm was stinging from hitting the desk. It almost felt good.

Sherry was gone. His own two kids, both in college now, not so discreetly blamed him for what had happened. "She wouldn't have been there if she hadn't had something to tell you, would she?" No answer for that one. Except maybe if she hadn't taken up with Dr. Bob, she wouldn't have been there, either. Several friends had told him after the funeral that the kids would either grow up and solve the problem on their own or they wouldn't, and that his best move was to let them work it out, and that was what he had elected to do.

But he was still here. He had an important job to do. There was a war on, and more than enough bad guys to chase. This day was drawing to a close. One day at a time. Litany complete. The text of the transcript slowly swam back into focus.

Tomorrow, he'd find out how far this firefly was going. Then on to the next one.

The elderly cat was stone-dead on the pantry threshold, curled into a grotesque ball and surrounded by copious amounts of bodily fluids. His neck was twisted sideways and his familiar old face was contorted in a rictus of agony, with every one of his teeth showing and his angry eyes wide-open.

"What the hell happened here?" Connie murmured, aghast at the sight. The cat was clearly well beyond anything a vet could do. She set about cleaning up the mess, bagging the cat in a plastic kitchen trash bag, and setting the bag outside on the porch. The cat looked as if he'd been poisoned. The milk? she wondered. Or had Buster gotten into something outside in his wanderings, some rat poison or something like that in one of her neighbors' yards?

She retrieved the milk container from the fridge and smelled it. Nothing obvious there. The sell-by date was tomorrow, but it was skim, which kept well past the sell-by date. She smelled it again. Milk. Even so, she poured it down the sink and threw the plastic container into the trash.

Poor damned cat, Connie thought as she splashed some Clorox on the floor and sponge-mopped the entire area. When she went to rinse the sponge, she found another lump of that mud. This one was just like the others, rectilinear, as if extruded by some tiny machine. She hefted the thing in her hand. This mud had come from a boot, a boot with a really aggressive tread. She owned one pair of hiking boots, but she hadn't had them on for three weeks. This mud was fresh.

Mud here and in the bedroom. Fresh mud. Has someone been in the house? she wondered.

She put the mop down and set the piece of mud on the kitchen table, where it made a small damp stain. The other pieces had already been eaten by the vacuum cleaner. She checked the back door for signs of forced entry, but everything there was normal. She heard the winter wind stir the big old trees in the backyard. The branches of some dormant wisteria scratched at the windows along the park side of the house. Suddenly, the old house felt wrong to her. She thought of Cat Ballard and decided to call him.

She went into the dining room and sat down. She tried the office and got the after-hours menu. She hung up, dialed his direct extension, and got a hit.

"Homicide, Lieutenant Ballard," he answered, sounding very official.

"It's me," she said.

"Yes, ma'am? How can I help you?"

She smiled. Very formal. The captain must be in listening range. "He's right there, huh?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I love it when you call me that," she said, "Makes me feel so… mature." She could just see the muscles in his face starting to twitch. "Actually," she continued, "I think someone's been in my house. And it wasn't a break-in, either. Can you come by on the way home?"

"You've got the wrong division, ma'am. You need to call burglary at extension four-one-two-three. They'll probably be there for another half hour or so."

"So I'll see you in forty-five, right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Thanks, Cat. Believe it or not, I'm a little scared. Thanks for doing this."

His tone softened just a bit. "You're very welcome, ma'am," he said, and hung up.

She put the phone down. She and Cat had met eight years ago at a cop promotion party. They'd dated for three years, then drifted apart, by mutual agreement. He'd met someone else, married her, and started a family, but occasionally he would call Connie just to talk. Two years ago, they'd met for lunch, ostensibly to celebrate his promotion to lieutenant, but with the help of one thing and another and more than a little nice wine, they'd ended up in her bedroom for a memorable few hours. He told her he was perfectly content with his marriage, and his wife had two little ones to keep her occupied. Unfortunately, neither of her babies had been a sixty-pounder, so there was now a lot more of Lynn than when they'd married. Which is when he remembered how much he had enjoyed time in bed with Connie Wall. She knew she should have been put off by his rather callous attitude, but actually the situation suited her. She had no intention of ever getting married, was increasingly leery of the singles scene with all its attendant health risks, and Cat more than adequately met her physical needs. It wasn't as if she expected him to leave Lynn and marry her.

An hour later, she heard his car pull into her driveway. She watched him drive all the way to the back of the driveway and stop behind her red vintage Shelby, which was parked right in front of the detached garage. The night was beginning to fog up, creating halos around the streetlights. He came around to the back door, as usual. She met him on the porch. He was just under six feet, and the closer he got, the bigger he seemed. He was three years older than she was, had sandy-gray hair, a usually smiling Irish face, and large, powerful hands.

"Hey, there, ma'am," he said with a disarming grin. He reached for her and she came into his arms gratefully, surprising herself. He kissed her and then drew back his head. "You are upset."

"Yeah, a little," she said, drawing him into the pantry and closing the back door.

"Shit, what's that smell — Clorox?"

She nodded and dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. She told him about the cat, and finding the mud bits. He peeled off his overcoat as he listened.

"This is what they looked like," she said, pointing to the bit of mud. He picked it up carefully.

"Boot tread," he said.

"Yeah. That's what the other pieces looked like, too. I have some boots that could do that, but I haven't worn them in weeks."

"Where are they?" he asked. She pointed to the pantry area and he went out and retrieved them. He put one boot upside down on the table and tried to fit the piece of mud into the tread. "Not these boots," he said immediately. "Where are the other pieces?"

She got out the vacuum cleaner and then watched as he rousted out the bag and sliced it open, then went fishing among all the debris for the other two pieces of mud. Neither of them fit her boot tread. "This stuff is pretty fresh," he said. "I think you're right. Some mutt's been creepin' your house. Lemme go check the doors and windows. Put that mud in a plastic Baggie, and try to keep it intact."

He was back in ten minutes, shaking his head. "No signs of forced entry that I can see. You got a spare key?"

She retrieved it from the row of cup hooks mounted on the wall of the pantry. "Any more of these?" he asked. She'd considered giving him a key a long time ago but had held back.

"No," she said, then frowned. "Actually, yes. There were two, I think. Although I haven't used them for years." She went back to the pantry but couldn't find the second spare among the pile of mystery keys.

"You keep it hanging out here by the back door?"

"I think so, yes."

"People do the damnedest things," he snorted. "Lock the door, and then leave the keys in sight of the big glass window."

"So someone could have gotten in here, lifted one of the spare keys?" she said. "But nothing's been stolen or anything."

"You know that? You've looked at your jewelry? Your folks' silver service?"

She blinked. "No," she said. "So I guess I'd better go do that."

She checked the silver service, which was still in its box inside the buffet in the dining room. Then they went upstairs and she went over to her bureau. She kept her jewelry box in the lowest right-hand drawer. She hauled it out. She rarely wore jewelry, and the only nice things in the box had been her mother's. She shook her head.

"All here," she said, and put it back. "Wait," she added, still down on one knee.

"What?"

"This drawer," she said, pointing to the bottom left-hand drawer. "It's closed."

"So?"

"It won't close. It's always an inch open. And look, there's a scuff mark. Someone's kicked it closed."

"What's in there?"

"Stockings. Panty hose." She tugged at the drawer, but it wouldn't open. He reached down and pulled it open, but even he had to work at it. They knelt side by side.

"Anything missing?"

She looked into the drawer, but the stockings were in a jumble and she couldn't really tell. Then she opened the next one and pawed through it. There was a beige half-slip missing. And maybe some of her panties.

"Possibly," she said. "I'm not sure about the stockings, but I think some of my underwear is gone. And that drawer is never closed all the way. That I know."

"Was one of the mud bits right here?"

She looked over at him and nodded. "Right there."

"Close enough. Probably when he kicked the drawer. Shit."

They both got back up and she went over to the bed and sat down on the edge. "I hate this," she said softly. "Some pervert's got a key? And he's pawing through my underwear?"

Cat sat down beside her and took her hand. "I've always been interested in your underwear," he said. "Especially when you're in it. But look, this could be a neighborhood creep, you know. Some kid who's had a hard-on for you since he first found his pud. Or maybe a middle-aged peeper."

She shook her head. "This neighborhood is pretty geriatric. People here are contemporaries of my parents. Teenagers are extinct around here."

"Sounds nice. No young people at all?"

She shook her head. "The paperboy is a seventy-year-old Vietnamese guy. Goddamn it, Cat, I don't need this shit right now. What do I do?"

"First, change the locks; then call a security service. Get a system put in. Sure you're not wearing that underwear right now?"

She gave him an exasperated look and he grinned. "Worth a thought," he said. But then his face grew serious. "Lemme look outside, see what I can see. You got a flashlight?"

He was back at the door in five minutes. "Get a coat and come out here," he said. When she returned, he took her over to the side of the back steps. He went down on one knee and laid the flashlight flat on the ground, its beam pointing just over the tops of the wet grass in the direction of the park. She shivered in the cold evening mist. He motioned for her to get down so she could see along the beam of the flashlight as he swept it back and forth over the wet grass.

"See it?" he asked.

She could. The tips of the dormant grass were glistening with dew. But there was clearly a trail of tramped-down grass leading from the cedars beyond the driveway right over to the porch. He took her down to the cedars and they pushed their way into the densely packed trees, getting wet in the process. On the other side, which overlooked the darkness of Rock Creek Park, he knelt down again and fingered the dirt. Then he swept the light back and forth until he found the trail where Heismann had come up the slope. There was at least one footprint where the tread was obvious.

"Not particularly careful about it, was he?" he said, shining the light down onto the boot prints. "He parks down there somewhere, comes up in broad daylight, walks to your back door, and lets himself in. Regular Cool Hand Luke."

"And takes underwear?"

He stood up, switching off the light. "And maybe poisons your milk?" he said softly.

Back in the kitchen, he put on some of her rubber cleaning gloves and retrieved the empty milk container and slipped it into a plastic trash bag. Then he peeled off the gloves and dropped them into the bag, too. He sat down at the kitchen table and got out his notebook. "Tell me everything you did once you came home."

She went through it, prompted from time to time by questions from Cat. He was specifically interested in the time interval between feeding Buster and finding him dead.

"I should have kept that milk, I suppose," she said.

"As long as you didn't rinse the container, the lab'll find out what was in it. From what you've described, it sounds more like food poisoning of some kind. As opposed to, say, arsenic or strychnine."

They made a joint tour of the house, looking at every room, the closets, the stairs, the pantry, and even the outside garage. While he looked for any more mud or other signs of intrusion, he asked her to tell him if anything was out of position or missing. But beyond what they'd already discovered, everything seemed to be in order. They went back into the kitchen and he made some more notes. She asked if he wanted coffee. Cat looked at his watch and told her he had to get home. Connie gave him a wan smile. She suddenly envied him his home life. He took her hand across the table.

"Look, Connie. I don't know what to make of all this, but I was serious about the locks and an alarm system."

She nodded. "I will," she promised. "Tomorrow."

He hesitated, then asked her one more question. "Could this have something to do with the clinic?"

"Don't start," she protested, "We've been through all that."

He was shaking his head. "No, we haven't. You clam right up every time I bring it up."

"That is — was — a private practice. By definition, the staff does not run its mouth about who the patients are or what procedures they had done."

He sat back in his chair and looked at his watch again. "I know," he said. "But that fire gave those people all the privacy they'll ever need. And you should know that the D.C. Arson guys think that whole deal was suspicious."

She stared down at the table. She'd read the newspaper reports about the four people she had worked with for years being roasted alive. But Cat was still a cop, and there were things she couldn't share with him.

"Cat," she began, but he waved her off and got up.

"Forget it," he said. "Lemme use your phone to call Lynn. New department regs — we can't use our cell phones to make personal calls."

He picked up the wall unit and punched in a number, waited, then listened. "This thing busted?"

"Wasn't this morning," she said.

"It is now," he told her. "Your phones are dead."

She shook her head. "I called you an hour or so ago." Then she realized she'd used the dining room table phone. Cat was ahead of her. He went into the dining room, listened to the phone, and then came back to take the wall phone apart. He popped the cover off with a penknife and then asked her for the flashlight. Then he gave her a sheepish smile, fished out a pair of reading glasses, and peered down into the guts of the phone. "Aha."

"Aha what?"

"One of the wires has been cut. No, not cut. Just bent back off the terminal. This little red one here." He fiddled with the wire, then listened to the handset. "Dial tone's back." He reassembled the cover and turned to look at her. "Whoever was here put some evil shit in your milk, then disabled the one phone you might reach when you did the macarena on the kitchen floor and tried to call nine-one-one. And you're telling me this has nothing to do with those night clinic guys?"

Connie bit her lip. "I can't see how," she said in a small voice. But of course she could. Everyone involved in the night clinic was dead except her. Because she hadn't been there. Cat just looked at her, as if he was waiting for her to get it.

"I can't talk about it, Cat," she said. "The whole premise of the clinic was secrecy. Hell, the patients' names were all in code on the records."

"Who's to care, Connie? Those guys are all toast."

"Don't remind me."

Cat gathered up his coat and the trash bag. "I'll get our lab to take a look at this," he said. "Don't know how quickly, though. We find out this is poison, then I'm back, officially this time. And you may want to rethink your position on this privacy bit, Connie. Arson people declare it S.O., it'll come to us. You still have that pocket gun?"

Cat had given her a small, .45-caliber derringer-style handgun back when they were dating full-time. It was taped to the back of the drawer in her night table. She nodded.

"Start carrying it," he said. "Load it and carry it. Leave it in the car when you're going to face metal detectors, but otherwise, carry it, Connie."

"I don't have a permit. And the District—."

"Carry it, Connie. Whoever's been screwing around in here won't sweat the District's gun laws."

Jäger Heismann stopped on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Supreme Court just after 10:00 p.m. and pretended to gaze in awe at its magnificent facade. The temperature had dropped down into the high twenties, and he was wearing the loden overcoat, but with heavy black gloves and a homburg this time. He had changed his facial appearance with some extensive aging makeup, oversized tinted glasses, and a white wig. He had a thick rubber-tipped cane and had been affecting the labored steps of an old man ever since getting off at the Capitol South Metro station and walking up Capitol Hill on First Street. No fewer than four police cars had passed him along First Street, but none of the cops had given him a second glance. Even on a January night, old men took walks, and there were too many cops around the brightly lighted public monuments for night-time muggers.

Visually sweeping the empty street for more police cars, he turned around slowly and looked across First Street toward the Capitol. The manicured lawns, now dormant, and the curved approach roads were all studded with antivehicle barriers, and there were police walking patrols out on the grounds and standing next to each visible entrance. He wondered if there were sentinels stationed high up on the lofty parapets of the Capitol, armed with Stinger missiles, looking back at him through night-vision goggles. Probably, he thought, but one solitary old man shouldn't arouse much in the way of suspicion, even in terrorist-obsessed Washington. Unless he lingers too long or makes more than one pass along First Street.

He'd been taking periodic walks on Capitol Hill now for almost six months, both during the daytime and at night, often in different disguises, just to get a feel for the target area. Not that he'd be anywhere near the building on der Tag. Earlier this afternoon, he'd taken a walk by the house the bank had rented for him. He'd occupy the house in three days and then start his final planning for both the attack and his getaway. He thought that he had a fair chance of escaping the American government's security forces; Mutaib's people might be another problem, because they knew where he had to be on the day in question. But what he'd had done at the clinic over the past year could give him the crucial sixty seconds he'd need to get clear of the house.

He started back toward the Metro station, keeping to the opposite side of the street from the Capitol. It was a magnificent old pile, he had to admit, and such a perfect symbol of America. It amazed him that the professional lunatics of Al Qaeda hadn't already taken it out. He wasn't sure what his attack would do to the building itself, and he didn't care. Because his target wasn't the building. His target was the American government. Head right off!

He was somewhat surprised that the Arabs were going through with this and that it wasn't actually the usual suspects behind it. But maybe Mutaib's faction was a part of The Base. Everyone knew that their heart, mind, and all their banks lay in the Kingdom. And yet here he was, concealed in plain sight in America's capital, with an operational cover, a legal work visa, all the terms of his contract with the Arabs fulfilled as agreed, and proceeding with his time line. The loose end from the cosmetic surgery clinic had been snipped off, so now all he had to do was establish his artist cover story at the house not five blocks from here and wait for the weapon to be delivered. Then some home-remodeling work on the second floor, and the final arrangements for his swift and successful departure from the scene of the crime.

Another police car came by, slowed, and then resumed its patrol when they saw it was just him, obviously on his way home, and, more to the point, walking away from the sensitive areas around Capitol Hill. He wondered idly if those police officers would be on duty when it happened, and if they would survive. Probably not, he thought. But then, they were just policemen. Compared to everyone else he was going to obliterate that day, a pair of policemen would barely make a ripple on the casualty lists.

He smiled in the darkness and then winced. His face, among other parts of his body, hadn't quite settled in to its new look and shape. But he was confident that it would work just fine when the time came.