The Furies

WELLS FARGO: FBI BUILDING, LOS ANGELES, TUESDAY MORNING

It's standing room only in the war room, about two dozen agents sharing space with surveillance equipment, computer terminals, and two coffee machines. Several FBI agents are clustered around a table, picking and choosing surveillance equipment as if they are at a bazaar. Guns are laid out on another table. Spada always gets a sly kick out of seeing female agents producing them from holsters strapped to their thighs. The new girl, a sweet, slender thing he knows only as Joanna, catches him peeping and gives him a wicked smile, which he returns shyly.

Caddon calls them to order. The London letter, blown up, is stuck on a bulletin board, critical phrases circled by a red marker pen. Sep 1 is the day — four days away and double-circled — puts a damper on the chat. Or maybe it's the Pop. 7.5 million that somebody has scribbled next to the note. Or it might be Caddon's scribble on a whiteboard:

Caddon sits at the back of the room, arms clasped behind his neck, while Tony Spada does the briefing, using a PowerPoint presentation he knocked up in the early hours.

Spada's PowerPoint shows the crashed flying saucer and its launch site near Superstition Mountain in the Arizona boondocks, where it had been dragged up from some old, disused mine shaft. It shows them pictures of the four dead men at the site — two of them, probably Mexican illegals, shot trying to run, the other two blowtorched under the exhaust flames of the flying saucer. The PowerPoint incorporates a clip of the movie of the blowtorched men outside Katie's Diner taken about fifteen hours earlier, alive and unblowtorched, in conversation with Alecos Demos, big Hollywood musician.

I've heard of this Demos, someone says. He's a pal of the governor. Does great movie scores. Does charity work for Third World children.

Caddon, from the back of the room, says he doesn't care if Demos is the Archangel Gabriel, he wants to know what this big Hollywood musician was doing talking to two guys who got themselves killed a few hours later launching a bioweapon. Demos said it was a chance meeting, and Demos was lying.

Spada's PowerPoint shows another clip of movie, the one taken with the lens between Ambra's breasts. There's a brief close-up of Petrov's disfigured face, and chaotic snatches of party, ground, and garden center shrubs, everything fading as she leaves the party lights and moves into the dark. Spada tells them that Demos was at this movie premiere party, and the English girl saw him in intense conversation with an old Russian émigré called Vladimir Petrov and two others unidentified, a German female and a Japanese man. Petrov seems to be the kingpin of this unholy congress and they're awaiting the arrival of a North Korean woman to trigger events.

Caddon again: Petrov's a biochemist. He's rich as hell. He owns a Caribbean island with a biochemical works that nobody can get to. Nobody knows what he does there except maybe the US government, which doesn't encourage inquiries, not even from us, and I'm beginning to think even they don't know everything. So this big Hollywood musician is seen talking to these two guys just before they launch a bio-weapon, and then he's seen talking to this rich biochemist just after they launched it, and if that's a coincidence I'll retire to a cave, become a hermit, and worship Zeus.

Spada finally shows an apple core in close-up, tells them it was found not far from the scorched ground at the mine shaft. They have DNA from the apple core and the guys downstairs match it with this Virgin Rabbit lunatic in Phoenix who makes anthrax spores by the teaspoon. It would take him a hundred years to make enough to fill the flying saucer. It makes no sense. But he was there just the same.

Once everyone has the picture, tasks are assigned and there is a rapid exodus. Spada and Caddon head for the L'Ermitage, where the musician has stayed over after the premiere. He is in room 317.

Except he isn't, having checked out by the time they arrive in a fifty-miles-to-the-gallon Toyota Prius that Spada has selected from the car pool. "He's heading along Burton Way," Caddon hears over the car's intercom. "In his canary."

"His Porsche Boxster," Spada corrects him disapprovingly.

The intercom says, "He's turning onto Wilshire. He's shifting."

"Put the pedal to the metal, Tony."

Spada does so. To Caddon's astonishment the car develops a sporty rasp and accelerates like a cruise missile. Caddon tries to look nonchalant while Spada demonstrates his Italian pedigree on the crowded streets. "I had them soup it up a bit," he explains over the rasp.

Then: "Glendale Boulevard, heading north. I can't keep up."

"Should we go up North Vermont?" Spada asks, doing so. The car tilts perilously, and Caddon feels his nerve beginning to crack. "I'll get them to look at the suspension," Spada volunteers.

The intercom says, "Damn. Lost him. Congestion's hell here. Sorry, guys."

They drive along the avenue, frustrated, heading northward blindly. A stiff breeze is flapping awnings and setting papers fluttering across the streets. Then the intercom voice, filled with relief. "Got him. He's heading for Griffith Park … he's just gone into Zoo Drive … turning into the Autry museum."

"Two minutes," Spada volunteers, shooting past a meandering truck at the park's entrance. He takes a vacant slot next to a gleaming white stretch limo. Caddon, a little shaky, glances at his watch. "Two minutes twenty seconds. Time you were drawing your pension, Tony."

"Fuel injection needs tweaking up."

A well-built man wearing a lumberjack jacket and dark glasses is sitting at a round table in a plaza. He waves them over.

"The guy was shifting, I nearly lost him. He's in there." The lumberjack nods toward a small theater.

Spada says, "Is there a show on or what?"

"Nope. And you can't follow a guy into an empty theater. And this is useless." Pointing to the small device in his ear.

"So what's he doing in an empty theater?"

"Maybe he's getting more edgy primitiveness, boss," Spada suggests, unwrapping chewing gum.

"Maybe. On the other hand maybe he's waiting for someone."

MEETING MIKI

The money is all right. Of course. The woman behind the counter hardly looks at the hundred-dollar Federal Reserve bill. And although Miki knew it would be all right, she can't help a feeling of relief. It's one more barrier successfully overcome.

She emerges onto the sidewalk, burger in hand, wondering if she is conspicuous in any way. In her few hours in this country she has seen people of all types of complexion, and she is beginning to realize that being from the Far East draws no particular attention. Not even in this bastard spawn of the capitalist system, McDonald's. She is less sure of her clothes, however. Around the side of the building, she is surprised to see a line of cars, and money and food exchanging hands at a kiosk. She wonders if some people in America are so used to driving that they can no longer walk. The burger is delicious. She gobbles it hungrily, licking the unfamiliar sauce from her fingers.

She saunters along the streets, both curious and overwhelmed by the high buildings, the crowds, the huge gleaming cars, the noise — Pyongyang, at night, is a city of darkness, of empty streets, where you can hear a baby cry across the river. Here is madness. And the sidewalks are dirty with litter, something unthinkable at home. America is another planet. She wonders where the wealth comes from, what huge slave mines are needed to finance these cars and houses, to stock the shops with these incredible luxuries, to banish the darkness with all this electric light.

The stroll is calculated, intended to check whether she is being followed. She walks a few blocks, sometimes retracing her steps, sometimes quickly glancing behind. Crossing the streets is an unfamiliar, terrifying experience. She attracts more than one angry hoot. After a few blocks she is satisfied that she is truly alone. Such freedom is, of course, the fatal weakness of this giant country, the one that will bring it down. At home, it is unthinkable for a tourist to be allowed to walk unsupervised.

She turns back, light-headed with tiredness. Getting lost would have been a disaster, but there are plenty of landmarks in Planet America. Sleep is now the important thing. In a few days this aggressive, arrogant, dirty, prodigal, undisciplined country will be taught a lesson it will never forget. On the way back she passes a department store, four stories tall and thronged with life and light. She has thousands of American dollars in her purse. The improved technology behind the new redesigned note is still being studied in the Pyongyang laboratories, but the older bills are still in circulation, and it is clear that the Americans are comfortable with them. She smiles, her tiredness suddenly lifts, and she turns into the store.

"Slick chick," the lumberjack says. Miki, smartly dressed in white sweater and slacks and carrying a leather drawstring satchel, walks into the plaza, map in hand, weaving her way through a party of bustling schoolchildren. Everything she is wearing seems new. She hesitates, looks around uncertainly, sees the Wells Fargo Theater, and makes smartly for it.

For the FBI men, the slick chick suddenly becomes the focus of close attention.

"Japanese? Chinese?" the lumberjack wonders.

"Viet namese or Korean," Caddon says, standing up abruptly. "How did she get here?" A taxi is turning left onto the zoo road. Spada produces a camera, but the woman has gone inside.

Twenty minutes later Caddon and the lumberjack have arms around each other's shoulders in a display of camaraderie and are grinning inanely as Spada takes a series of pictures, not of his FBI colleagues but of three people along the line of sight, emerging from the theater — the Far East woman, the musician, and an old man, almost geriatric, badly disfigured and walking with a stick. Petrov!

The lumberjack walks back to the table and examines the menu, giving his ear the briefest touch. He returns Caddon's anxious look with a brief, reassuring nod. Caddon texts the pictures through to HQ with an ID request for the Far East woman. The odd trio are speaking in English, heading out of the plaza toward the parking lot. So as not to be conspicuous, the lumberjack lets them get about twenty yards ahead before he follows. He can hear everything as if they are three feet away.

You're sure there's nothing in the diary? the woman is saying in good English. Maybe he hid it in code. A code hidden in code?

For the tenth time, the journal gave us the locations but not the codes. There's something weird about the old man's voice. It seems more metallic than human.

Very well. How are you proceeding with the alternative route?

I'm working through the list. So far none of them has known anything. The lumberjack suddenly makes sense of a mannerism. Every time the old man speaks, he puts a hand to his throat.

Damn! Another party of schoolchildren, the third in the last hour, these kids with drawing pads and pencils, cuts across his flight path. Suddenly the directional microphone is picking up an ocean of chatter. The lumberjack tries to hustle his way through the noisy crowd. To compound the problem, the breeze, away from the shelter of the plaza, is now catching the microphone, creating an unbearable din in his ear.

But, Doctor, do you not understand, we only have three days …

Of course … confident we'll get there.

In three days? The meeting takes place in three days.

Someone on the list must have known the codes. The old man is speaking angrily, or it might be anger — it's hard to say since he doesn't raise his voice. And I believe I now know who.

We will take it badly if you fail.

You dare to threaten me? … beat Stalin's gulag … in the habit of failing.

Is Sophia ready?

She'll be there …

She's the key to all this.

I told you she'll be there … London … visa? … make sure you play your …

… does he say? … she'll trigger a war, be assured.

The lumberjack can't believe he heard that, and pushes at his earphone.

A man with a blazer and flannels — chauffeur, minder, whatever — emerges from the driver's seat of the stretch limo and helps the geriatric into the back. The limo then swallows up the Asian woman like the whale with Jonah. The musician, who has been mute throughout the exchange, growls something indistinct and heads for his canary-yellow Porsche Boxster. The lumberjack takes off after the musician, and Spada takes off after the geriatric and the female. Next to him, Caddon has the registration number of the limo into the FBI computers before it has gone a hundred yards. He fires through another photograph to HQ with the single question: Who's the dame? Then he hastily calls for a tail for the limousine and sets wheels turning to check who, among all the known colleagues and acquaintances of Petrov, goes by the name of Sophia.

The stretch limo drops the Korean woman off at a motel and carries on. The Korean woman's motel turns out to be surprisingly awkward for surveillance, being on the corner of a freeway with no natural stops around it. And the nearest turnoffs are about half a mile in either direction, meaning that they either have to drift up and down a big loop of busy road or stop right there in the half-empty parking lot, overlooked by her motel room. In the event, Caddon books a spare room while Spada takes the Toyota around to the side of the building, next to trash cans and garbage, but out of her line of sight while in a position to see comings and goings. They call for reinforcements, which eventually arrive in the form of a black Audi containing three agents and the English MI6 woman, Ambra Volpe.

They drink motel coffee, sitting around on the bed and a couple of hard plastic chairs, and wait.

What draws their attention to the nondescript, near-bald man who drives into the lot, none of them could have said. There has been a desultory trickle of couples, business types, the occasional family as the motel gradually fills up. Maybe it's the body language; there is something business-like about the way he steps out of his car. He stretches and looks around, as if uncertain where to go. But then the Korean woman's door clicks open. He looks around oh-so-casually, licking his lips, and walks into her room, while Caddon and Spada fume at the lack of a directional microphone.

By the time the bald one emerges twenty minutes later, carrying a small black bag, they know his name is George Novello, that he is married with no children, is a computer manager with Parallax Satellite Systems based at Valley Creek Boulevard, Exton, Pennsylvania, and that his job is maintaining a string of civilian communications satellites. They also know that he is an occasional visitor to the Pentagon as well as having security clearance to visit a couple of air force bases in New Mexico. And as the material texts into his cell phone, and Spada keeps saying What the hell are we uncovering here, boss?, Caddon feels his stomach tightening, and he needs to know what was said in that room like a man in a desert needs water. Novello takes off, and Spada hastily takes off after him. Minutes later Petrov's stretch limo arrives and gobbles up the Korean woman. She has luggage in hand as if she's traveling. Caddon and Ambra rush into the supercharged Toyota and follow at a safe distance with Caddon, familiar with the roads, at the wheel. They know that another FBI car is tailing the limo but can't pick it out from the stream of traffic. The limo, it soon becomes clear, is heading for the airport.

"What gives?" Caddon, puzzled, is leaning against the Toyota, having chased off the airport cops with a quick flash of his badge. Ambra has run back from the terminal building and is puffing slightly.

"They're gone."

"What?"

"Demos, Petrov, and the female. All three of them."

"There's hardly been time to check in."

"They were on the slipway when I left." Ambra looks over the roof of the terminal building. "Petrov has a private jumbo, would you believe that? And there they go."

The big 747 has a white underbelly and a steel-gray top, making it look like a giant shark. BB is painted on its tail, the logo for Baryon Biosystems. Its wheels are retracting as it heads into the sky, leaving a dark contrail. Spada glares at the receding aircraft as if it has, somehow, outwitted him. "So let's get his flight plan. The bastard's gotta land somewhere."

Ambra Volpe unstraps a leather holster from her thigh and hands it over along with the little blue gun. "I loved the flower on the butt, it was cute."

Caddon takes the weapon with surprise. "What gives, Ms. Volpe?"

"I'm going to follow that aircraft. Try to get my stuff to the terminal before I take off. Been nice meeting you, Neal."

PETROV'S LIST

Sharp cups both hands around a hot chocolate laced with brandy. His mouth is dry, he is shaking, and his heart is still thumping from the frantic sprint. The wall turned out to be a two-and-a-half-meter scramble; it would have been impossible without the army's basic training and the terror of close pursuit. There was a three-meter drop into a garden with wet, clogging earth. He'd looked up and glimpsed a struggling red face, and forearms on top of the wall, before face and forearms disappeared with an angry cry. On to a stone patio, trailing mud, with a dog barking furiously inside a big white house, all colonnades and French windows. He had sprinted along the side of the house and into a mews leading to a busy street. Then a long random walk — avoiding Underground stations and surveillance cameras — had taken him to a narrow lane leading to Oxford Street, at which point he began to feel safe and slowed down to a brisk walk.

A sheet of paper from Holland Park is spread out in front of him, the wrinkles smoothed out. And on the sheet of paper is a list of names.

German names, all but Hosokawa. And there are little crucifixes against three of them: Klein, von Steiner, Zimmerman.

Sharp picks up the scrambler phone, dials Jocelyn's number. "Jocelyn? Lewis here. I think we're on to something. Come over here right away."

"I can't. Not yet."

"What about Petrov's 747? Is it still on the tarmac?"

"Negative. It took off a couple of hours ago, heading for Berlin. Petrov and his gang never got off it. Ambra Volpe has just landed at Heathrow, but there are no immediate connections to Berlin and she can't follow them. Our people in Germany will pick up their trail when they land."

"With Craig missing we're a brain short. I want Ambra here, we need to pool our resources. It's urgent." Everything is urgent.

"She's in a passenger terminal. I'll give you her mobile but it's not fixed with Brahms. It's unsecured."

Sharp uses oblique language for his second call. "Wolf? This is Knife. Where are you?"

"Hello, Knife. I'm in a taxi, heading for home."

"Don't go home. Come to my house first. Did our friend give you the address?"

"She did, but I'm filthy, I'm jet-lagged, and I don't have a clean change of clothes. I'm going home to sleep."

"Come here first. There's a party and it's wild."

"Twenty minutes."

Little crucifixes. One name, Max Krafft, has been circled in pencil, and next to it is written, in Cyrillic letters: On mojet znat. And in the margin: Sleza?

Ambra Volpe has a haggard, just-crossed-the-Atlantic look. She declines an offer of coffee. Sharp swallows the last of his hot chocolate and passes over the list to Ambra. "Take a look."

She drops her holdall, takes off her jacket and lets it drop, kicks off her shoes, and flops back on a couch; it's an informal, almost familiar gesture that Sharp likes. She scans the sheet of paper. "Is this a copy? It looks like the original."

"I'd no time to copy anything. The safe was alarmed and it was a case of grab it and run."

"Ouch."

"Bad news," Sharp agrees, splayed out on an armchair. "Now Petrov will know we're on to him. He'll cover his tracks."

There is a taut silence while they assimilate the fact. Ambra waves the list in the air and Sharp scans it again. She asks, "Who are these people? How do they connect? What about the first three on the list, the ones with the crucifixes?"

Sharp asks, "How's your Russian? I can order a coffee, just about."

Ambra stretches out an elegant hand and Sharp returns the sheet. She yawns and says, "On mojet znat means ‘he might know.' "

"He might know what?"

"Well it doesn't say, Lewis. And before you ask, sleza means ‘teardrop.' The names being German, Lewis, adds weight to your mad theory about a Nazi weapon."

Sharp says, "Some of these names are ringing bells."

Ambra sits up abruptly. "I'm going home. Anthrax bombs or not, I need clean knickers."

THE BIBLE CODES: UPTOWN PHOENIX

It's a sticky Tuesday afternoon and Caddon and his team are scurrying through the air above desert terrain. They have to get to Phoenix quickly.

Caddon explains the business of DNA testing in language of exaggerated simplicity to the new girl, Joanna. He does this in the eight-seater Cessna they boarded at Ontario International Airport, thirty-five miles east of downtown Los Angeles, having been transported there in a black FBI helicopter. She listens, a pupil at the feet of the master, as Caddon expounds. He explains that in the pioneering days of DNA profiling, you needed big samples of body fluid to get a match. It wasn't always reliable, and smart lawyers, more often than not, made sure that the results of testing didn't even get the length of a trial.

They were shooting fish in a barrel?

You got it. But as the technology came along, we needed less and less until now the lab people just need microscopic quantities. At the same time they've pushed the accuracy to the stage where it matches fingerprints for reliability.

The fish are shooting back? Jo says, looking impressed.

Exactly. And nowadays we can even use old and partially decayed samples. Not that there's anything old and decayed about the DNA sample we've picked up. It's a dream.

A good polymerase chain reaction, was it? Lots of short tandem repeats?

Caddon takes a long swig from a mineral water bottle and gives her a sideways look.

An apple core in the pickup truck at the Goldfield mine shaft has in fact yielded enough DNA to bring joy and sunshine into Caddon's life, and to persuade the most hardheaded skeptic that the aforesaid apple was eaten by an individual whose DNA was identical to that of one Virgil Rabbit.

"Weren't so bad in the pen. Main thing was to keep to yourself — there were some mighty peculiar people in there. Good stock of books, regular visits, one or two other perks." The preacher grins slyly as if he expects the FBI agents to chase him up on that.

For Jo the term cathouse is acquiring a whole new meaning. There are at least two dozen of them. The cabin stinks. It stinks of cats and unwashed human as well as other ill-defined smells. She is perched on the edge of a worn armchair that might once have been blue and looks as if it is wasting away from some terminal disease. Her clothes are covered in hundreds of little white cat hairs. She is beginning to develop an itch on her left thigh but doesn't want to draw attention to the aforesaid thigh by scratching it. A pine table is covered with books, old newspapers, cut-out magazine articles, an opened can of cat food, and three or four skinny cats, the number varying. Caddon and Spada are sitting uncomfortably on a sofa, also once blue, part of a set. Through an open door Jo can see a bedroom with an unmade bed and a dresser whose walnut veneer is beginning to peel. Sitting on the dresser is another skinny cat, its head immersed in an aluminum foil carton holding the remains of a Chinese carry-out. Next to it is a beer mug containing some green liquid that she prefers not to think about.

"This is your property, Mr. Reality?" Jo asks conversationally.

"Virtual. Call me Virtual. Hey, you're kinda young for an FBI agent. Just out of the Academy, are you?"

"That's right."

"So what was it like at Quantico?"

"Interesting. This place is yours?"

"Near the marine base, ain't it?"

"Near enough to hear their gunfire. This place is yours?"

"Sure it's mine. Gunfire, huh?" Virgil Rabbit heads for a cocktail bar and pours himself a large Grand Marnier to which he adds an equal volume of vodka.

Spada says, "Mr. Reality, you were at Goldfield a few days ago."

"Was I?"

"We've got an apple core with your DNA in it, and it says you were eating the apple next to the shaft of an old copper mine at Goldfield." This is a lie. The core was on the floor of the truck. But Caddon wants Rabbit nailed to the site of the UFO, not a pickup truck that could have been anywhere with some lawyer declaring that Rabbit was an innocent hitchhiker.

"Maybe it's a crime to eat an apple these days. Maybe I need a lawyer. Maybe I should just clam up."

Jo notices that the hand holding the vodka is trembling slightly. It might be an age thing; the man's expression is cool enough. Caddon says, "That's up to you, sir. We'd prefer your cooperation, though. Better for everyone. Save you having to answer in front of a grand jury."

By the time Virgil Rabbit has been subpoenaed and appeared in front of a grand jury, the London saucer will have come and gone, if you were to believe the crazy letter. Jo wonders if Rabbit knows it.

"Okay, so I was at some mine shaft near Goldfield. So what?"

"Well, sir, also at the mine shaft there was this pickup truck with scorch marks and a Pontiac that looked like someone had taken a giant blowtorch to it."

"I don't own no pickup truck and no Pontiac."

"There were also four dead people. Two of them were burned black, two of them had been shot in the back running. We're not suggesting that you were involved in any of this," Spada lies again. "We just want to know how the apple core got there."

Rabbit takes a big gulp of his drink. "Must've happened after I passed through."

"What were you doing there, sir?"

"Passing through. Backpacking."

"You're a backpacker, then?"

"Uh-huh. Passed through last Thursday. Don't remember no pickup truck and no Pontiac."

Two cats on the table briefly hiss and spit. Something catches Jo's eye. A newspaper cutting. She strolls casually over to the table. "The UFO they saw near Payson …"

Rabbit looks over his shoulder. "Kinda interesting, don't you think?"

"You go in for stuff like that, Virgil?" She can't bring herself to call him Virtual. "The paper says it was just a military exercise. Some people, every time they see lights in the sky, they think UFO."

"Or maybe every time there's a UFO, the government puts out a story about a military exercise." Rabbit gives a thin smile. "Second Thessalonians chapter two. Near the end of time we shall see the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders."

"I guess we work for Satan," Caddon says.

"But there's no life out there." Jo says it to provoke.

Again that razor-thin smile. "Ain't dumb, miss. Kin tail you just want me to talk. You ever heard of the Bible code?" Jo gives an encouraging shake of the head, and Rabbit continues: "I had to do some real digging in the codes but it's all there. The UFOs come from Mars."

"Mars, right."

"There's a lot of activity on Mars now. There's about fifty thousand abductees held on the planet. There's military bases there."

"The place is a desert. You can Google it, see for yourself."

"Come on, miss, that's a cover-up. The pictures are doctored. There are even NASA employees will tell you that in private. The public just don't know what's happening on the Red Planet. But they'll know when the End Times come." He cackles. "They'll know when Satan unleashes his forces from the planet. Won't be too long a-coming. I see this in the codes everywhere I look. Satan is the prince and the power of the air. Ephesians chapter two, verse two."

"What do you think about UFOs? They come from Mars? We'll be there in thirty years and we'll know."

"The heavens belong to God, not man. We have no right to go there. Listen to Moses speaking to the children of Israel: If there is found among you a man or a woman who has been wicked in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing His covenant, who has gone and served other gods and worshipped them, either the sun or moon or any of the hosts of heaven which I have not commanded you, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has committed that wicked thing, and stone to death that man or woman with stones. Deuteronomy seventeen, straight from the mouth of Moses. He's speaking for God and He's telling His children to kill the idolaters who …"

"You carry all that in your head?" Caddon asks.

"Big hunks of the Book. Read it fifty-three times."

Caddon springs it: "Are you still interested in toxins, Mr. Reality?"

"Maybe." Cautiously.

"There's something I don't understand, Virtual. How does a preacher come to be interested in toxins?"

"I ain't a preacher no more."

"I suppose the flock objected to having their loved ones dug up."

"I've repented of that particular sin and moved on."

Jo carries on strolling casually around the living room. A big tomcat arches its back and rubs itself against her leg. She looks at the titles of books in a big bookcase and can't believe some of them. Just next to the corridor leading to the bedroom is a closed door. There is a stench here, and it's not just cats. She glances back at Rabbit. He has his back to her and is paying her no attention. Spada is staring at Rabbit in a fixed, unblinking way that says he is watching her.

Rabbit is finishing his liqueur and vodka. "I'll try to explain, but it's hard if you haven't studied the Bible codes like I have. You know I'm beginning to think I want a lawyer."

"Why, there's something in the codes needs a lawyer?"

It's a wooden handle and it turns quietly. The door reveals a steep flight of steps. Rabbit's voice fades as she goes down: " … the face on Mars … the Sphinx … the plagues on Egypt …" There is another door at the bottom. "This generation is the spawn of the Devil …" Here the stench is terrific, and with a lurch of her stomach she recognizes it as putrefaction. " … the Wisdom of Solomon … the bites of locusts and flies did slay, and there was not found a healing for their life …" The door is unlocked, but the handle is thick with grease and something else, some dark substance.

"Hey! Keep out o' there!" Rabbit's voice is raised angrily and his face is purple.

She looks up, turns the slippery handle. "Can't hear you down here."

"You got no right to open that door."

"What's that you said? Go right ahead and open the door?"

The smell of putrefying flesh hits her like a physical blow. She finds a light switch, clicks it on, surveys the scene in the light from a dim bulb. And as she tries not to gag, she realizes why Virgil Rabbit keeps cats.

THE SPIRIT MESSENGER

"Fact One: Craig is missing. Fact Two: he told us he was being followed. The man was terrified. Use your head, Jocelyn. We've been penetrated. Someone's trying to stop us."

"Oh, use your own head, Lewis. You said yourself he was in a highly stressed condition and behaving strangely."

"This is a safe house?"

"You know damned well it is."

"I'd feel even safer with a handgun around."

"So you said. You'd end up shooting the concierge. Let's not get paranoid."

"Paranoid keeps us alive, Jocelyn. And someone wants us stopped."

"Don't be ridiculous." She hesitates, while Sharp wonders what's coming. Then: "We've lost the Petrov gang."

"Did I hear correctly? Would you repeat that, please?"

"Somewhere in the Berlin traffic. I guess our embassy people aren't too practiced …"

What brand of mind-boggling incompetence …? "Jocelyn, I saw some botch-ups in my army days, but this …"

"And something else."

"Something else? How can there be more than this?"

"We have four days until Saturday, Lewis. Four days." She slams the door on the way out.

Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark …

Like a lighthouse. Sharp awakens with a start. The light is flashing through the crack under his bedroom door.

Downey? No, he's still missing. Sharp is alone in the safe house.

He opens the door a crack. The computer screen is flashing on and off, making deep shadows, strobing armchairs and sofas, coffee table, Hammer movie poster, the heavy velvet curtains. But he'd switched it off! And the living room is empty. He crosses to the terminal and touches the mouse, mystified and afraid.

So you got as far as Krafft and Bauer?

Startled, he types: Who is this?

But have you found how Petrov connects to them?

I asked who you are.

And the girl called Miki? They've told you about her?

I asked who you are.

Find the common bond, Lewis. Find Krafft and Bauer before Petrov's people get to them. And find what happened at the end ot the war.

Tell me more? And say who you are.

Proceed with care. There are people who don't like what you're doing.

The screen goes dead.