The Omega Command

Chapter 1

The carolers dominated the corner, flanking a smiling Santa Claus, who was ringing his bell over a noticeably empty urn. Perhaps Santa’s smile had shrunk since the day had begun. Perhaps not. All that could be said for sure was that his beard was dirtier, grayer, and thinner from the children pulling at it and coming away with polyester strands.

The New York City streets were icy and slick. The storm that had battered the New England coast had spared the city its brunt, touching it only with a graze. The light snow that had been falling steadily for hours now added to the difficulties of the cars struggling to negotiate over it. With only eight shopping days left until Christmas, New Yorkers were not likely to let the weather beat them.

A red Porsche snailed down the street, grinding to a stop before Santa and the carolers. The driver beeped the horn, slid down the passenger window. Santa came over and the man handed him a ten.

“Merry Christmas, sir!” said Santa.

Easton simply smiled. He was in the mood to be generous. His channels had come through with an early Christmas present. Three months of grueling, tedious, and sometimes dangerous work had paid off beautifully.

The Santa Claus thanked him again, backing away from the Porsche. Easton hit a button and the window glided back into place. The Porsche started forward again. Easton shuddered from the new cold and flipped the heater switch up a notch. He down-shifted well in advance of a red light, realizing his hand was trembling slightly over the shift knob. He had stowed the microfiche within it, and just thinking of its contents brought his breathing up a notch with the heater. The windshield began to fog. Easton swiped at it with his sleeve. The light turned green and the Porsche fishtailed through the intersection. He was almost to his destination.

The right thing, of course, would be to deliver the microfiche immediately. But his superiors would have to wait, for Easton had his therapy to consider. On the road for nearly twelve weeks, he had been forced to miss four of his sessions. He could see the brownstone now and the doorman standing before it. His stomach fluttered with anticipation. Already he felt more relaxed.

Traffic snarled and the Porsche skidded briefly before finding pavement. Snow was collecting on the windshield again and Easton switched the wipers back on. Traffic started forward in front of him, and Easton eased the Porsche to the right, sliding to the curb where the doorman stood waiting. The brownstone stood beside several others like it, an ordinary sight from the outside.

The doorman opened his door for him. “Mr. Easton, how good to see you back,” he said, signaling for a parking attendant.

Easton tipped the doorman with the usual amount, not at all uncomfortable with the use of his real name. Names meant nothing at the brownstone, professions even less. Everything was done with maximum discretion. Senators, mayors, businessmen — the brownstone was a place where they could leave their professions at the front door.

Easton watched his Porsche pull away toward the parking garage and then stepped through the door the doorman was holding for him. An impeccably attired woman was waiting inside.

“Ah, Mr. Easton, it’s been too long.”

“I’ve been traveling. Work, you understand.”

“Of course.” The woman smiled graciously. She was striking for her age, which was at least sixty. Her face showed barely a wrinkle, and her dull blond hair fell easily just below her ears. She was a walking testament to modern cosmetics and surgery. Madame Rosa had a role to play and she had to look the part. “I’ve reserved your usual room.”

“And the … subjects?” Easton asked eagerly.

Madame Rosa smiled again. “I’m sure you’ll be pleased.” She took his coat and led him toward the stairs. “Are any refreshments in order?”

“No.”

“Hashish, marijuana, cocaine?”

“Never.”

Madame Rosa scolded herself. “Ah, yes, how silly of me. Dulls the reflexes, of course. We can’t have that, can we?”

Easton just looked at her.

Madame Rosa stopped halfway up the first staircase. “Stop and see me on your way out. I’d appreciate your evaluation of our new subjects.”

Easton nodded and continued on alone. No mention had been made of price. There was simply an account to be settled at regular intervals, always in cash and never with argument. Easton reached the third floor, turned right, and entered the second room down.

The smell of sweet incense flooded his nostrils. The room was dimly lit, but Easton made out the two figures lying naked on the bed. A boy and a girl — twins. Just as he had ordered. Madame Rosa had outdone herself this time. Easton began stripping off his clothes. He was trembling, already aroused.

The girl moved from the bed and helped him with his pants, unzipping his leather boots and caressing his legs. She was thirteen or thereabouts, a dark-haired beauty with tiny mounds where her breasts would soon be. Her small nipples stood erect.

Her male twin was just as beautiful, dark hair cut not as long but smothering his ears and falling easily to his shoulders. He lay on the bed, legs spread, fondling himself, dark eyes glowing in the soft light.

Easton let himself be led by the girl onto the huge bed, careful to toss his shoulder holster to the side so it would be easily within reach. He fell backward on the sheets and settled next to the naked boy. The boy rolled on top of him, first hugging, then licking, then sliding down till his mouth neared Easton’s groin.

Easton felt the boy take him inside at the same time the girl parted his lips with hers. He groped for her thin buttocks and squeezed them to him, vaguely conscious of the boy’s head rising and falling, taking more of him in with each thrust. He wanted both of them, he wanted all of them. There was no time limit, would be no rude interruptions. They were his for as long as he wanted them. Madame Rosa’s never failed to satisfy.

Easton’s right hand wandered toward the girl’s small, hairless vagina, his left finding the boy’s long hair and caressing it as his head rose and fell … rose and fell … rose and fell. Easton felt the pleasure mounting everywhere, surging, yet he still had the sensation of something terribly wrong an instant before the door shattered inward.

At that same instant Easton’s metamorphosis back to himself was complete. He pushed the girl from him and went for his gun. But two figures had already stormed into the room with weapons blasting. The boy’s naked body absorbed the first barrage, red punctures dotting his flesh. The girl’s head exploded next to him, and Easton felt a volley of bullets pierce his abdomen as his hand closed on his pistol.

He might have lifted it from the holster had not the boy’s bloodied corpse collapsed atop him, pinning his arms. The boy’s sightless eyes locked on his, and Easton felt the bursts of pain everywhere the pleasure had been only seconds before. He was still trying for his gun, finding it just wasn’t there anymore, as his breath rushed out and all that remained was the boy’s dead stare before oblivion took him.

“I’ve already been briefed on this mess,” the President said, striding grimly into the Oval Office. “I want to know what’s being done to clean it up.”

The two men seated before his desk rose as he approached it. CIA director Barton McCall was the more nervous looking of the two. But McCall always looked that way, just as Andrew Stimson, head of the ultra-secret Gap, always appeared calm.

“New York is cooperating brilliantly,” Barton McCall reported. “Under the circumstances we couldn’t ask for more. Fortunately the woman called us first.”

The President stopped halfway into his chair. “What woman?”

“Madame Rosa,” answered McCall. “Owner of the … house where Easton was killed.”

“She knew his identity?”

“Apparently.”

“Terrific.” The President’s eyes flared toward Andrew Stimson. “Helluva ship you got running there, Andy.”

Stimson seemed unfazed by the comment. “Madame Rosa’s has enjoyed an exclusive clientele for fifteen years. Easton never told her a damn thing. She knew he was intelligence and therefore knew approximately whom to call this afternoon. She’s got a feel for such things.”

“And apparently Easton had a feel for something I don’t exactly remember seeing in his file.”

Stimson shrugged. “An agent’s private life is his own business.”

“Not when it gets him killed.”

Stimson nodded with grim acceptance. Years before, when the CIA had come under increasing scrutiny and the methods of the NSA under fire, a gap resulted between what the intelligence community needed to bring off and what it could effectively get away with. So a new organization was created to take up the slack, appropriately labeled the Gap. Stimson was its first and so far its only director.

“Just remember, sir,” he said to the President, “that the pressure men like Easton are under sometimes forces them into undesirable pastimes.”

“The mess at Madame Rosa’s can hardly be referred to as a pastime, Andy.”

“I think we’ll be surprised when we find out the identities of the customers in the other rooms at the time.”

The President cleared his throat. “The real question, gentlemen, is whether Easton’s murder was random, perhaps the result of someone else’s kinky fantasy, or whether it was carefully orchestrated.”

“Evidence seems to indicate the latter,” reported CIA chief McCall. “The men behind it were pros all the way. No one saw them go in and we’re not even sure anyone saw them go out. We got a report that two black men were seen leaving the area immediately after the murders, but even that’s sketchy. The weapons used were Mac-10s, a pair of thirty-round clips totally emptied.”

“Jesus …”

“Easton took fourteen slugs alone, the kids about the same.”

The President raised his eyebrows. “We going to have any problems from the relatives of those kids?”

McCall shook his head. “Madame Rosa was their legal guardian. She’ll take care of everything.”

The President didn’t bother pursuing the matter further. “Someone must have wanted Easton dead awfully bad. He was due in soon, wasn’t he?”

“Tonight,” answered Stimson. “That’s when the briefing was scheduled, by him I might add.”

“So he had completed his current assignment.”

“At least enough to bring it to the next level.”

“Okay, Andy, refresh my memory of what he was on to.”

“Internal subversion,” Stimson replied. “Terrorist groups, revolutionaries, that sort of thing.”

“Specifically?”

“Something big. Easton felt he was on to a group whose size and resources went way beyond anything we’ve faced before. His reports were vague, but he was closing in on the top. He believed there was a time factor involved.”

“Which this afternoon’s incident has apparently confirmed,” the President noted. “Now all we have to do is find out who was counting the minutes. Terrorists?”

“That’s the assumption,” Stimson acknowledged. “But the Gap’s dealt with plenty of terrorist groups here at home without losing agents to such brutal assassinations. Like I said before, whatever Easton uncovered was a helluva lot bigger than a run-of-the-mill bombing or hostage situation.”

“And since we have no idea what,” said the President, “I hope you gentlemen have devised a contingency plan to find the missing pieces.”

“He might have left some bit of evidence for us somewhere,” McCall suggested.

“We’re checking that possibility now,” Stimson responded. “Safe deposit and mail drops, hotel rooms, safe houses — all that sort of thing. Easton’s car, too … once we find it.”

“Find it?” said the President.

“I’m afraid it was conveniently stolen around the same time Easton was killed,” Stimson reported.

“Then the logical question is what does that leave us with? What in hell do we do?”

“Replacing Easton is our first step,” came McCall’s swift reply. “Send someone out to pick up where he left off.”

“All well and good if we knew where that was,” Stimson countered. “We haven’t got a clue, and if we did, sending a man out now would be tantamount to having him walk a greased tightrope.”

“I believe, sir,” McCall said, turning toward the President, “that my people are more than capable of picking up the pieces as soon as you authorize this as a Company operation.”

“It started with the Gap and that’s where it will end,” Stimson said staunchly.

“Stow the bullshit, gentlemen,” the President said. “I asked you here for answers, not boundary squabbles. Andy, you sound pretty adamant about keeping this within Gap jurisdiction. I assume you’ve thought out our next step.”

Stimson nodded, stealing a quick glance at his counterpart in the CIA. “What Barton said before about a replacement for Easton has to be the first priority. But there is no one present in our active files who fills the necessary criteria and who we can afford to label expendable.”

“That puts us back at square one,” muttered the President, his voice laced with frustration.

“Not exactly.” Stimson paused. “I suggest recalling someone from the inactive list.”

“Recalling who?” McCall asked suspiciously.

Stimson didn’t hesitate. “Blaine McCracken.”

“Now, hold on just a min—”

“I’ve thought this thing out.” Stimson’s voice prevailed over McCall’s. “McCracken’s not only the perfect man for the job, he’s also … expendable.”

“With good reason,” McCall snapped.

“McCracken,” said the President. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.”

“Consider yourself fortunate,” McCall went on. “McCracken’s a rogue, a rebel, a deviant son of a bitch who—”

“Has always had a knack for successfully completing missions,” Stimson broke in.

“Always on his own terms and always with complications.”

“I would suggest that in this case the terms and complications are meaningless,” Stimson followed with barely a pause. “Results are all that matter.”

“At what cost?” McCall challenged. “McCrackenballs doesn’t obey orders and has proved an embarrassment to this government every time we’ve sent him into the field.”

The President leaned forward. “McCracken what?”

McCall cleared his throat.

“It’s a long story,” Stimson replied.

“We’ve got loads of time. Easton’s funeral isn’t for two days,” the President said bitingly.

“I’ll sum up the man we’re dealing with here as succinctly as I can,” Stimson continued as if he had memorized the words. “The early stages of McCracken’s career were routine enough. Two decorated tours in ’Nam with the Special Forces. Lots of medals. After the war the Company put him to use in Africa and later South America. Deep cover. McCracken’s specialty was infiltration.”

“Along with teaching schoolchildren how to make Molotov cocktails,” McCall added.

“His orders were to promote resistance against the rebels.”

“And there was hell to pay for his little escapades with the kiddies once the papers got hold of them. If we hadn’t covered our tracks in time, the whole episode would have made the Nicaraguan training manual business look like back-page news.”

“He was following orders,” Stimson reiterated.

“No, Andy, he was interpreting them in his own unique manner.” McCall shook his head as if in pain, turning toward the President. “We sent him to London to train with the SAS.”

“Buried him there, you mean,” Stimson snapped.

“But he dug himself up quite nicely, didn’t he?” McCall shot back. “There was an unfortunate episode where an Arab group nabbed a plane and threatened to shoot a passenger every minute the authorities exceeded their demands deadline. The British were convinced they were bluffing. McCracken was certain they weren’t. In the end, by the time the SAS stormed the plane, four passengers were dead.”

“Oh, Christ …”

“McCracken screamed at British officials on national television, shouted that they had no … balls.”

“His word?” the President asked.

“His exact word,” nodded McCall. “Then to reinforce his point, he went to Parliament Square and blew the balls right off Churchill’s statue with a machine gun, at least the general anatomical area under the statue’s greatcoat.”

The President looked dumbfounded.

Stimson leaned forward. “Because innocent people died at Heathrow. McCracken can’t stand civilian casualties.”

“And he’s convinced he’s the only man who can avoid them,” McCall countered. He swung back to the President. “McCracken’s a goddamn lone ranger who won’t even let Tonto play. Dismissal at his level was, of course, out of the question. So we started moving him around from one petty post to another to avoid further embarrassments. He finally settled as a cipher operator in Paris.”

“And he’s stuck it out, hasn’t he?” Stimson challenged. “Does everything he’s told to from confirming scrambled communications to sorting paper clips even though it’s probably busting him up inside.”

“An agent could do a lot worse.”

“Not an agent like McCracken. It’s a waste.”

“More a necessity, Andy. He’s brought all this on himself.”

“Fine. Then I’ll take the responsibility for lifting it off.” Stimson’s eyes found the President’s. “Sir, I would like McCracken reassigned from the Company to the Gap to take the place of Easton.”

“Out of the question!” McCall roared.

“Which,” the President began with strange evenness, “would have been my exact reaction if you told me yesterday that one of our agents was going to be gunned down at a bordello in the company of two pubescents. Andy, if you want to use McCracken to clean up this mess we’ve got, then use him. Just get it done.”

McCall’s face reddened. “Sir, I must protest—”

“The matter is closed, Barton.” The President sighed. “In the past twenty-four hours, we’ve had a deep-cover agent murdered and a space shuttle blown right out of the sky. Nathan Jamrock will probably be here tomorrow with a report indicating that little green men destroyed Adventurer and, who knows, maybe the same little green men visited Madame Rosa’s this afternoon carrying Mac-10s instead of ray guns. Wonder where they’ll strike next?”

A heavy knock came on the Oval Office door. Before the President could respond, his chief aide stepped swiftly into the room.

“Sorry to intrude, sir,” said the wiry, bespectacled man, “but we’ve just got word a jet has been seized by terrorists in Paris with over a hundred Americans on board.”

The President’s empty stare passed from McCall to Stimson, then to neither. “Well, boys, it looks like my question’s been answered.”

Chapter 2

“So what are they asking for?” Tom Daniels, chief of CIA operations in France, asked Pierre Marchaut, Sureté agent in charge of the seizure at Orly Airport.

Marchaut regarded the American patiently as he moved away from the telephone and consulted his notes. “The usual things, mon ami. Release of political prisoners being held in French jails, safe passage to the country of their choice, a message to be read over the networks this evening.”

Daniels strode abruptly to the window and looked out over the 767 in question, apart from other aircraft on one of Orly’s main runways.

“The deadline?” he asked Marchaut.

“The first batch of prisoners must be delivered here within two hours.”

“Delivered here? Great, just great. And if we refuse?”

“They will blow up the plane.” The burly Marchaut, whose face was dominated by a pair of thick black side-burns, shrugged. “Did you expect anything different? The terrorists also requested fresh meals for their hostages.”

“How compassionate …”

“My thoughts exactly.”

A thin man walked quickly into the operations room with a manila folder open in his hands. He spoke so rapidly in French that Daniels was barely able to keep up with him.

“We have just received positive identifications of the two male and one female terrorist involved. They are known professionals wanted in a combined total of seventeen countries. They have all killed before, especially the bearded leader, an Arab named Yachmar Bote. The woman has been linked to a number of brutal assassinations as well.”

“So now we know they are capable of doing everything they say,” Marchaut concluded grimly.

“If they’re caught, it means the death sentence,” said his assistant. “They have nothing to lose.”

“Wonderful,” Daniels moaned, starting for the phones. “I’d better call Washington.”

“What about the explosives?” Marchaut asked.

His assistant shrugged. “Inspection of pictures snapped through windows reveal heavy wiring and what appears to be plastique. But without visual inspection there is no way to be sure.”

“And the positions of the hijackers?”

“The bastards are clever. One is always seated among the passengers, presumably holding the trigger for the explosives.”

“Then a raid is out of the question,” Marchaut said with his eyes on Daniels, who had hesitated before lifting up the phone. “And so, I’m afraid, is acceding to their demands.”

Daniels stepped forward, closer to Marchaut. The others in the room, French police and airport officials, surrounded them in a ring.

“Then our only alternative is to play a waiting game,” the American said. “That would have been my suggestion anyway. It’s worked before and I don’t buy the explosives bit at all.”

“Yes,” Marchaut added, “once the deadline passes, the advantage shifts to us. Perhaps there is a way to use this request for food to our advantage. …”

“The hijackers won’t eat it,” came an American voice from outside the circle. “The passengers are their biggest worry, not you clowns. You know, feed the prey before you slaughter them. Keep them full and happy.”

The fifteen or so men and women gathered in the emergency operations center turned toward a tall athletic-looking man with dark hair and perfectly groomed black beard highlighted by a slight speckling of gray. His skin was tanned and rough, that of a man accustomed to the outdoors and quite comfortable in it. A bent nose and a scar running through his right eyebrow marred an otherwise ruggedly handsome face. His piercing eyes were almost black.

“Oh, no,” muttered Daniels.

“You know this man?” Marchaut asked, taken aback.

“Unfortunately.” Then, to the stranger, “McCracken, what in hell are you doing here?”

“All the movies were sold out, so I had to seek my entertainment elsewhere,” Blaine McCracken said. “I’m not disappointed. You people really know how to put on a show. Really give a guy his money’s worth.”

“Get out of here this instant!” Marchaut ordered.

“Intermission already?”

Marchaut started forward. McCracken’s eyes froze him.

“Do as he says, Blaine,” Daniels advised.

“And miss the finale? Not on your life, Tommy my boy.” He moved forward just a step. “You guys should really listen to yourselves. It’s a scream, let me tell you.”

“Who is this man?” a now uncertain Marchaut asked Daniels.

“He works in the CIA equivalent of the mail room over here.”

“Then what—”

“I’ll tell you what, Marchaut,” McCracken said abruptly, and the Frenchman reeled at mention of his name. “You assholes are talking about waiting the terrorists out, going beyond the deadline, and all you’re going to get for it is a planeload of hamburger. And in case you guys didn’t know it, there are forty seats in tourist being taken up by kids from a junior high in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Tell you what else, Marchaut, take a good look at the leader Bote’s file. He’s a walking psycho ward. He’s been trying to get himself killed in a blaze of glory for years. This is right up his alley, always was, right back to the time I met up with him in Chad.”

Confused, Marchaut swung toward Daniels. “I thought you said he worked in the … mail room.”

“I’m a man of many hats,” Blaine told him. “And the one I’ve got on right now tells me these terrorists want to blow the plane up. Allah must be running a special on martyrdom this week. Their demands can’t possibly be met. If you know that, don’t you think they do?”

Daniels stormed forward, eye to eye with McCracken. “You’re finished, Blaine. No more second chances, no more token appointments. Maybe they’ll send you home in a box.”

“Get this man out of here!” Marchaut screamed in French to a pair of uniformed policemen who grasped McCracken at the elbows.

“As long as you’re ordering boxes,” Blaine said, allowing himself to be led backward, “see if you can get a group rate, Tommy my boy. You’re gonna need plenty of them before this day is done.”

The police forced Blaine from the room and closed the door behind them. Agitated, Marchaut stepped nervously to the window, looking out over the captured 767.

“You must learn to keep your subordinates on a tighter leash, mon ami,” he said to Daniels.

“McCracken’s not just an underling,” the American replied. “He’s a damn pariah, the scourge of American intelligence.”

“Knowing your country’s methods, I am surprised this man has remained on the active list so long.”

Daniels simply shrugged. The elimination of McCracken had been discussed many times. But how could he explain to the Frenchman that no intelligence overlord wanted to be the one to approve the sanction for fear that failure would cost him his life? McCracken had many enemies, but his capacity for survival and, more, his instinct for revenge, kept them from contemplating true action.

Minutes passed in the operations center. Words were exchanged with nothing said or decided. The decision was thus made. The deadline was now only an hour away, and it would pass with none of the terrorists’ demands met.

The emergency phone linking Marchaut to various positions around the 767 beeped twice. The Frenchman picked it up.

“Oui?” His mouth dropped, face paling. “Someone’s what? No, I didn’t order it. No, I don’t want — Hold for a second.”

Marchaut dropped the receiver and moved to the window with a dozen officials right in his tracks. They all saw a man driving a front-end loader, the kind used to transport meals from airport kitchen to plane galley, behind the 767 toward its loading bay. The driver passed out of sight quickly but not before Daniels glimpsed enough of his face through a pair of binoculars.

“Oh shit,” he muttered.

McCracken took a heavy swallow of air as the loader neared the red and white jet. He had come to Orly Airport as soon as word of the seizure had reached his small office cubicle — over AM radio, not cipher. Officials had no reason to involve him in such pursuits any longer. And, in fact, Blaine had driven to Orly determined to remain merely an observer, until examination of the runway area and obvious procrastination on the part of officials involved convinced him that asses were being dragged, as usual, and that other asses were going to become chopped meat as a result.

Didn’t they understand what they were dealing with? Didn’t they realize you couldn’t keep playing with terrorists and expect to win? Not these anyway, not Bote and whatever stooges he had brought along this time.

A raid on the plane was the only chance the passengers had to survive. And since the French were too busy picking their nails, McCracken would take it upon himself to do the dirty work. A one-man operation. Much better that way. The terrorists’ request for food had provided his cover.

He might have been able to walk away from the whole episode if it weren’t so clear history was about to repeat itself and innocent lives were going to be lost again. Five years ago in London, authorities had twiddled their fingers while terrorists squeezed triggers with theirs. McCracken wasn’t about to let that happen again. His mistake in London had been to go after a statue’s balls after it was over. He should have gone after the testicles of the damned officials who couldn’t make up their minds in time. Flesh and blood would have made his point better than ceramics.

The galley door opened and Blaine backed the loader into position, then climbed on top of the bay next to the steel casing which held 150 microwave-warmed stuffed-chicken dinners. He pressed a button and the lift began to rise, stopping when it was even with the open galley door. He had started to wheel the cart inside when a hand grasped his hair and yanked him viciously backward. Blaine tumbled to the galley floor and found his eyes locked on the barrel of Bote’s machine gun. The terrorist’s wild hair and beard seemed all one piece. He was grinning malevolently.

Dinner is served, sir, Blaine wanted to say but stopped himself because being too cute would get him thrown off the plane or shot, and either way his plan would be ruined. So he just gazed up, trying to look helpless.

“Ari, search this bastard!” Bote ordered.

A dark-skinned, black-haired boy little more than sixteen loomed overhead and shoved Blaine onto his stomach. Thin hands ruffled his person up and down, satisfied finally he wasn’t carrying a gun.

“He’s clean,” the boy named Ari said, and Bote grabbed Blaine by the collar and yanked him back to his feet.

“You a cop?” Bote asked.

“Yes,” McCracken answered, because that was the way something like this would be done.

“They send you to check us out?”

“No,” Blaine replied. “They’ve already got a hundred pictures of the plane’s inside. I’m here just to fill your request for the food.”

Bote seemed impressed with McCracken’s apparent honesty. “An unfortunate assignment all the same.”

“I volunteered.”

“You know I can’t let you leave the plane.”

Blaine nodded. “I figured as much, but it would be a good gesture on your part if you released a few passengers in my place.”

Bote raised his rifle as if to strike him, features flaring. “I am not interested in gestures. In forty minutes, when your people fail to give in to our demands, I will blow up this plane and everyone in it.” A pause. “That means you, too, now, asshole.”

Blaine stood his ground. “They plan to meet your demands,” he told Bote, again because that was what the man he was pretending to be would have said.

Bote snickered and slammed him against the galley wall, a hand full of sweater tight under his chin. The terrorist was bigger than McCracken had remembered. His body stank of perspiration and his breath reeked.

“You will pay for your lies,” Bote said softly. “You will all pay for your lies. But first you are going to distribute the dinners to our nervous passengers in need of reassurance. Ari will guide you the whole way, and if you make one move that doesn’t look right, he will kill you.” Bote nodded to the boy, who nodded back.

McCracken pulled the food cart inside the jet and then, obeying Bote’s orders, latched the heavy door behind him. He maneuvered the cart forward and swung it gingerly so it was facing the rows and rows of terrified passengers, many of them children. Blaine gazed out and seemed to meet all their stares at once. With Ari holding an Uzi a yard behind the cart, he started to pull it down the right-hand aisle.

Bote remained in the front of the cabin, poised before the movie screen, which was still in position.

Blaine knew that the third terrorist, a woman, was seated somewhere among the passengers, finger ready to press a button that would trigger the explosives. He could see the wires looped across the ceiling and peeking out from the overhead baggage compartments, where the plastique must be stored. The wires strung the explosives together, but the detonator would be transistor-powered; no wires to give the female terrorist’s position away. Determining her location was the centerpiece of McCracken’s plan, though. That a second terrorist would be so close when he acted was a godsend, but nothing mattered if he could not find the woman.

Blaine stopped the cart a bit down the aisle and continued distributing the chicken dinners that had been kept warm within the heated slots. Most of the passengers weren’t hungry but took a plate anyway just to have something to do. McCracken’s eyes strayed always a row or two ahead, seeking out the eyes of all women, in search of the pair belonging to the one holding the detonator. Most of the front rows were occupied by the children from New Jersey, which gave his eyes plenty of opportunity to roam, but the high seat backs blocked him from seeing too far ahead.

In the tenth row a woman smiled and accepted the dinner gratefully. Their eyes met and Blaine felt a gnawing in his stomach. There was something wrong about her. He broke the stare and handed a tray to the man seated next to her. The man’s eyes darted sideways toward the woman, a nervous signal — inadvertent perhaps but nonetheless confirming Blaine’s suspicions. This woman had to be the one he sought.

“Hurry up,” the boy terrorist urged, poking at the steel cart with his rifle. The boy never should have let McCracken position the cart between them, of course, but in this case fortune proved more useful than design.

Blaine reached inside the cart for another tray and let his hand wander deep into the back, where he had taped the Browning pistol. It came free easily and he moved it under a tray he was already maneuvering out with his left hand. The result was to make it appear as if he were holding the tray sandwichlike, with both hands. No reason for either of the terrorists to be suspicious.

He pulled the tray from the cart and started to lower it toward a man sitting two seats away from the female terrorist on the aisle.

As the man waved off the dinner, Blaine fired the Browning twice. The woman’s head snapped back, rupturing, and showered passengers with blood and brains.

A small black transmitter slipped from her lap onto the floor.

The boy terrorist let the shock consume him for just an instant, but an instant was all it took for McCracken to turn the gun on him, the tray that had been covering it flying to the side. He placed two bullets in the young chest before the boy could squeeze the trigger of his Uzi.

He grasped it as he fell and the bullets stitched a jagged design in the jet’s ceiling. Passengers screamed, jostled, collapsed against one another.

“Stay down!” Blaine screamed, but the last part of his warning was drowned out by Bote’s machine gun.

The bullets blasted into the food cart which had become his cover, and Blaine fired a volley back high. From this angle he didn’t want to risk hitting a passenger instead of Bote.

The terrorist was still firing in a wide arc, when McCracken rose and pumped off four rounds in his general direction, his bullets digging chasms into the thick aircraft walls. Bote kept firing the machine gun behind him as he disappeared around the corner.

Another detonator, Blaine realized with a clap of fear in his stomach, he’s going for another detonator!

McCracken vaulted over the food tray and tucked into a roll to the chorus of people still screaming. He was back on his feet almost immediately, rushing down the aisle toward the galley where Bote had taken cover. A hail of machine-gun fire forced him into a dive as he neared it. The dive carried him to the front of the galley, where Bote was grasping for something in a black bag. His free hand came around with the machine gun.

Blaine fired first.

His initial shot tore into the terrorist’s chest, pitching him backward. The next two bored into his head, obliterating it in explosions of blood and bone. Bote slipped to the floor with the black detonator gripped in his hand.

Blaine was still lying prone on the floor amid the continued screams of the passengers, when a pair of the 767’s doors shattered outward and a troop of French security police tumbled in, nearly falling over themselves.

“Smoking or nonsmoking?” he asked them, rising carefully with arms in the air.

“You’re finished this time. You know that, McCracken?” Daniels shot out accusingly in the backseat of the Peugeot heading back to the American Embassy.

“No, Tommy my boy. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Daniels shook his head. “You’re a walking embarrassment, McCracken. I thought I’d heard it all with that Parliament Square incident five years ago, but today beats everything. Now you run a rogue operation on foreign soil. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“Not off the top of my head.”

Daniels’s driver made a hard right.

“Well, you just might lose the top of your head, McCracken. This is a diplomatic disaster. Washington will have to hold your head up on a stake just to get the French to talk civil to us again.” Daniels’s stare grew incredulous. “None of this really matters to you, does it?”

“What matters to me is that none of the passengers died.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

Daniels’s emergency phone rang and he grabbed it from its rest on the back of the seat before him.

“Daniels.” A pause. His eyes found Blaine. “Yes, I’ve got him with me now … What? That wasn’t the original plan. I’m more than capable of—” Another pause. Daniels’s face reddened. His teeth ground together. “Yes, sir, I understand … Yes, sir, immediately.” He replaced the receiver and looked back at McCracken. “I’ve been ordered to send you back to Washington. Pronto. Looks like the President wants to fry your ass personally.”

“I’ll make sure he saves some grease for you, Tommy my boy. There’s plenty to go around.”

Chapter 3

First thing Tuesday morning Sandy Lister walked down a third floor corridor in the network’s New York headquarters and popped her head into the fourth doorway down.

“You ready?” she asked her assistant.

T.J. Brown nodded nervously. “The research is all finished, if that’s what you mean. But am I ready for a meeting with Shay? No way, boss.”

“Good,” said Lister. “You’ll do just fine.”

And seconds later she was hustling T.J. toward the elevator that would take them up to the fifteenth floor and the office of Stephen Shay, executive producer of the newsmagazine Overview.

Sandy had been through scenes like the one coming dozens of times before, but this one had her more nervous than usual. It was a story she really wanted, one that hadn’t come through network channels and was arguably somewhat out of her league. The network had hired her away from her previous position as anchor of a rival’s morning news program to become one of five reporters on a new television magazine slotted to compete with the flagging 60 Minutes. Overview would be more people-oriented and promised to deal with issues crucial to the American public as determined by up-to-the-minute polling. It would be fresher, more spontaneous than its counterparts. Or at least that was what the network had told Sandy and the public. Thus far four episodes had aired with another two in the can and the results had been something neither fresher nor more spontaneous than any other television newsmagazine.

The ratings, though, were at least as good as expected, especially during Sandy’s segments, mostly because the lighter, profile segments she hosted were more to the public’s liking than hard news. When you came right down to it, who wanted to hear about chemical waste anyway? Plenty of viewers had enough troubles paying the bills to make sure their toilets kept flushing, never mind worrying about someone else’s unsanitary landfill.

The fact that she wasn’t a hard journalist didn’t bother Sandy and probably never would. She took pride in her interviewing technique, glad not to be likened to the coarse, falsely intimate style of Barbara Walters or the puffy, prepackaged smiles of the Entertainment Tonight staff. On those occasions where research was required, she headed the process every step of the way, refusing to just step before the camera on call and read what someone else had written. Nor would she permit redubbing of her questions and shamelessly superficial reaction shots. The result was a far more spontaneous, unaltered interview and this as much as anything accounted for the fact that Sandy’s popularity rating was the highest of any woman in broadcasting.

Accordingly, Sandy felt a growing confidence in herself. She had no desire to expand her reach into hard journalism per se, but felt ready to take a more active role in story selection and follow-through.

Starting today.

Her contract in these areas was vague. Her meeting with Stephen Shay this morning would not be. She knew what she wanted and, more, how to present it in terms he would understand. She would ask for the one specific story she wanted most. From there everything would take care of itself.

She was aware of T.J. Brown hovering close behind her as they stepped into Shay’s private office together. Sandy nodded at the secretary, who smiled and picked up the phone immediately.

“Sandy’s here, Mr. Shay.” Then, looking at Sandy, “You can go right in.”

T.J. seemed frozen in his tracks.

“Piece of cake,” Sandy whispered. “Just picture him naked.”

“Huh?”

“I had a public speaking teacher once who said to avoid nervousness when giving an important speech, just picture your audience naked.”

That made T.J. smile as they moved toward the inner office door. “Shay naked? I’ll give it a try.”

T.J. had graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism three years before, fourth in his class and just as black as when he went in. Broadcast spots for minorities were still limited, so T.J. wallowed around for a while with newspapers and radio stations before applying for a research assistant’s position at the then infantile Overview. The five anchors had screened the over four hundred applicants personally and Sandy Lister had come away especially impressed with T.J. He was actually overqualified for the job, but nonetheless seemed eager to be considered. Hiring him became Sandy’s first completed business with her new network, a decision she had not regretted for one moment, even when T.J. urged her to go harder on her subjects and dangled plenty of research to help her do so.

She stepped into Stephen Shay’s spacious office as smoothly as she stepped into the living rooms of millions of Americans on Thursday nights.

Shay rose from behind his desk and moved away from it, grasping Sandy’s hands and kissing her lightly on the cheek.

“Perfect timing, San,” he told her. “I just got the nationals from last week. Up four share points.”

Shay was a dapper, elegant man with perfectly groomed silver hair waved over his ears and a measure of his forehead. He preferred three-piece suits to all other forms of clothing, and not one person at network headquarters could ever recall seeing him without his jacket on during business hours. His face looked as soft as a baby’s, his Lagerfeld aftershave applied in just the right quantity to last the entire day without being too strong.

“That’s great,” Sandy said honestly. “Steve, I’d like you to meet my assistant T.J. Brown.”

Shay took T.J.’s extended hand. “Thomas James, isn’t it?”

“Er, yes. But how did you know?”

“You’re in my department, son. I make it my business to know. Heard good things about you, damn good things.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me. Just keep it up.” Shay’s eyes moved back to Sandy. “Since you brought your assistant up with you, I gather you want to discuss a story.”

“On the money, Steve.”

“Coming to me direct for any special reason?”

“Do I need one?”

Shay smiled. “Not at all.” He extended his hand toward a leather couch and set of matching chairs surrounding a table, drenched with sunlight from a nearby window. “Let’s sit over here.”

A pair of phones was perched in the table’s center. Men like Shay seldom strayed far from the Touchtone.

“Coffee?” he offered when they had sat down. Sandy and T.J. both declined. “I suppose you want to get right to the point. What are you on to, Sandy?”

“Nothing earth-shattering. I’d just like to do a piece on Randall Krayman.”

“Billionaire and recluse?”

“That’s the one.”

“Tough to interview a man who hasn’t been seen in public in five years. Got an in with somebody?”

“No.”

“Any of our rivals got the story on their dockets?”

“60 Minutes started to put one together, then abandoned it.”

Shay nodded. “As I remember, we tossed a Krayman piece around here as well and rejected it, probably for the same reasons. Interviews without a subject are tough, San, even for you.”

“That’s why I brought my case direct to the fifteenth floor, Steve. I think we can put a damn good piece together on Krayman without the usual interview. Make a conceptual picture of him based on interviews with others and background material.”

Shay looked away skeptically. “That kind of story isn’t your specialty, San.”

“You mean, that kind of story isn’t why you’re paying me two million a year.”

“No,” Shay said defensively, “that’s not what I mean. One on one with a subject, you’re fantastic, the best I’ve ever seen. I don’t care how Joe or Joan Hollywood reconcile their personal life with their professional life, but you make even me care. You bring these people to life and you do it in a way that doesn’t demean you. There’s no way anyone can put a price tag on that kind of gift.”

“Don’t tell that to my agent.”

“I’m serious, San. Conceptual stories are great when they work, but they’re boring as hell when they don’t. Stick to the media, San. That’s your beat.”

“But Randall Krayman is the media,” Sandy insisted. “Just hear me out. T.J.’s been doing some research, and his findings have got me thinking Krayman falls right into my beat.”

“I’m listening,” said Shay reluctantly.

“T.J.,” Sandy cued.

Brown cleared his throat and opened the manila folder he’d been fondling since the conversation began. “I’d better start at the beginning. Krayman was born in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, in 1940. His father was a moderately successful businessman who got in on the ground floor of plastics and made a fortune during the war. It looked like he had taken the business as far as it could go when he died in 1957. On paper the company was taken over by old man Krayman’s wife, but in reality all the decisions were made and the managing done by Randall, who had just turned eighteen. Randall gave up his plans to go to college and ended up quadrupling the company’s profits in only two years, turning it into perhaps the largest plastics producer in the country. Not one to rest on his laurels, Randall Krayman invested every cent of the profits he was responsible for in millions of acres of land across Wyoming, Montana, and thereabouts. Scientists knew there was oil under it somewhere, but back then, this is fifty-nine remember, no one could envision the technology needed to bring it up.”

T.J. flipped to the next page. “Except Krayman. Within ten years his wells were spouting as much crude as the best Texas had to offer and he owned every ounce of it lock, stock, and literally barrel. He made another fortune, this one too large to even contemplate. But once again he didn’t sit still. He took all his profits and launched massive investments into a new and mysterious field, something called the integrated circuit.”

“Computers,” muttered Shay.

“The beginning of the explosion thereof,” T.J. continued. “The integrated circuit laid the foundation for the computer chip, the microchip, micro-circuitry — the whole shooting match. Krayman made another incredible fortune. Some called him the first landlord in Silicon Valley.”

“Hell of a crystal ball he must have,” Shay noted. “First plastics, then oil, then computers. You can’t do much better than that.”

“And Krayman didn’t stop there either. About ten years ago his computer researchers came up with something called the Krayman Chip, an advanced ultra-density memory chip with unheard-of storage, tailor-made for computers used to control television and radio signal switching, telephone routing, radar screens — anything that qualifies as data transmissions. And most incredibly this new chip was produced through a process so cheap that Krayman was able to undercut the entire industry.”

“Yet another fortune,” concluded Shay, his interest growing with each flip of T.J.’s notes.

“That’s what I meant about Krayman being such a great part of the media,” Sandy interjected. “People should kneel and bow twice to the Krayman Tower in Houston every time they turn their televisions on.”

“That doesn’t mean they’ll turn them on to watch a story about it,” Shay said softly.

Sandy kept her calm. “Howard Hughes’s death sent the networks scrambling to scoop each other. People ended up fascinated by him because they’re fascinated generally by power and wealth, the more immeasurable the better. Well, Krayman makes Hughes look like a business school dropout. They’ll watch. Believe me.”

Shay weakened. “Any chance of getting in to see the man himself?”

Sandy shrugged. “There’s always a chance, but I doubt it. I’ve set up an interview with Francis Dolorman for a week from today. Dolorman’s the man who’s been running Krayman Industries since his boss’s extended vacation began five years ago. If anyone can set up a meet, it’s him.”

Shay’s eyebrows flickered. He hesitated. “I can spare you for a week, San. No more. And no cameras either, just the preliminary stuff. We’ll put everything you come up with together at the next staff meeting and see if there’s a story here or not.”

“Fair enough,” said Sandy.

“You were great in there, T.J.,” Sandy said, as the elevator headed down. “Thanks.”

“Like you said, boss, nothing to it. I didn’t even have to picture him naked.” T.J.’s face grew somber. The elevator came to a halt. “Now that you’ve got the go-ahead for the story, maybe you’d like to see the rest of my research.”

“Rest of your research?”

They stepped slowly from the elevator. T.J. nodded. “Into Krayman Industries. Everything’s not kosher there, if you know what I mean.”

Sandy stiffened and walked on ahead. “Sure. How about this afternoon?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

Sandy kept walking down the corridor. T.J. hurried in front of her.

“You don’t want to hear it, do you?” he charged.

Sandy looked away.

“What happened to getting to the bottom of Krayman Industries, boss?”

“Randall Krayman, T.J. That’s the story Shay approved upstairs.”

“And that sounds like Shay talking now; his distinction, not yours.” He paused and looked at Sandy as a few people walked by. “Randall Krayman is Krayman Industries. You can’t separate one from the other.”

“You can’t interview a corporation, T.J.”

“You can’t interview Krayman either, but that’s not stopping you from doing the story. I’ve got some material for you that might help it.”

Sandy’s features tensed. “This isn’t Columbia, T.J., it’s network headquarters. Things function differently here. I want this story, but it’s got to be on Shay’s terms. You know what those terms are. He made them plain.”

T.J. nodded blankly and started to walk away.

“This afternoon,” Sandy called after him. “I’ll look at what you’ve got then.”

“Sure,” T.J. said, too soft for her to hear.

The rest of the morning dragged for Sandy. She couldn’t get the confrontation with T.J. out of her mind. Surely what he had uncovered about Krayman Industries would be laced with suppositions in desperate need of substantiation. These were distractions she plainly couldn’t afford. They would cloud the true essence of her story and make pursuit of it even harder than it promised to be already.

But who was she kidding? She didn’t want to learn what T.J. had discovered because she couldn’t stand complications. She had gotten what she wanted from Shay, so her inclination was to leave well enough alone. Her field was people and with people selectivity could be maintained. The parts of their lives that didn’t figure into the story could simply be left out. It was up to her. Years disregarded in favor of the latest love affair or big budget film. Things were simpler that way. She felt more in control, even of Randall Krayman, a man she would have to profile without meeting. That was a challenge she could handle. But dragging Krayman Industries into it? No, she didn’t need that.

Sandy was still struggling with these issues when the elevator reached the lobby. It was almost noon and she had an early luncheon appointment to keep. As usual, she couldn’t exit the building without signing countless autographs. The people came in droves, and the circle around her seemed to engulf those walking past it. Sandy signed as many as she could but tried to keep moving. How she longed for those cold winter days when, wearing hat and scarf, she could walk about unrecognized. The people wanted to talk to her, discuss whatever was on their minds. Their voices rose above one another’s, competing, some reaching the level of screams as Sandy passed through the revolving door into the bright December day.

She was still signing autographs, hands beginning to stiffen, when the man shoved his way through the crowd to reach her. Sandy was only vaguely conscious of him until he was right before her, and then she felt a tremor of fear because his hand was reaching out, probing for her with something dark between its fingers.

At that instant Sandy knew all the fear celebrities live with in public, the vulnerability of fame and all its risks. John Lennon had been shot because he wouldn’t give an autograph, a bullet for every two letters.

The man grasped her with his left hand and Sandy felt a scream forming behind her lips. But it didn’t emerge until her eyes followed the man’s hand as it slid across her white jacket, leaving a trail of blood behind.

Then he was collapsing and pulling her down, and Sandy saw he was bleeding everywhere, his overcoat open now to reveal splotches of scarlet. His voice, dry and rasping, reached her as they fell together to the sidewalk, his words barely discernible through lips pressed against her ear.

“Stop them! You’ve got to stop them!”

Sandy was screaming again, feeling the man’s dying hands clutch at her.

“No time left! No—”

The man died with a rush of breath right then, but not before pushing the thin dark object into Sandy’s pocket-book.

Chapter 4

McCracken reclined tensely as the 747 streaked beneath the clouds toward Dulles International Airport. The pilot’s voice announced that the temperature in Washington was thirty degrees with overcast skies and a good chance of snow. Dull and dreary to say the least, which fitted Blaine’s mood perfectly.

They had given him little time to settle his affairs in Paris and then pack. Take everything, his orders said, you won’t be coming back. Three men escorted him to Orly late Tuesday morning, but none of them accompanied him on the plane. Why should they bother? McCracken had no place to go but home. Running was not an option. Sure he could do it, quite effortlessly in fact. But they would catch up with him before too long. There was no place he could hide if they wanted him bad enough. All that crap about being too good to go after was the stuff of fiction, not reality. No matter how good you were, there were always enough of them to get you.

Blaine wondered what they would do if he didn’t show up at the airport. What if he just boarded another jet and headed for South America? No, they couldn’t let him go. If he cooperated, they’d let him live, but total freedom was out of the question. They’d bury him somewhere deep where he couldn’t scratch his balls without an eye down his shorts.

The jet landed and McCracken moved slowly through Dulles en route to the baggage claim area. The whole of his life filled two suitcases and a packer bag, and he was not surprised to see a burly well-dressed man waiting to help him tote the stuff and escort him from the airport. The big man recognized him immediately, and his eyes avoided Blaine’s as he hefted one of the suitcases.

“This way,” the man said, and those were the only words exchanged between them. There was no reason to say more.

The man led him toward a Cadillac limousine with its engine purring. Blaine opened the back door for himself as the big man climbed behind the wheel.

“Good afternoon, Mr. McCracken. I trust your flight was comfortable.”

The voice surprised Blaine because he had expected to ride alone. A reception party seemed uncalled for.

“There was enough turbulence to make me feel right at home,” he told the gray-haired man in a tan overcoat. Blaine sat down and closed the door behind him. The driver pulled away. The opaque glass divider slid up between the seats.

“The name’s Stimson, Blaine, Andrew Stimson. I run the Gap.”

More surprise flashed in McCracken’s eyes. “The name was sufficient.” He hesitated. “I was expecting the standard Company escort, a couple of twin goons like your driver up there. I guess I should feel honored.”

“The Company doesn’t even know you’re back in the States.”

“What?”

“I brought you in on my own,” Stimson explained. “It was all arranged up front until that business at Orly yesterday soured the President on you real fast. Your file was put on hold. The Company, and everyone else for that matter, think you’re still under detention in Paris. I’ve arranged it so everyone thinks someone else has the key.”

“What about Daniels?” Blaine asked.

“Don’t worry about that. I’m sure Daniels won’t question an order he thinks came from this high up.”

“Thinks?”

“Don’t push it. The point is, since no one talks to anybody else anyway, the ruse could go on indefinitely.”

“Then it looks like you’ve sprung a jailbird, Mr. Stimson.”

“Call me Andy. With what I’m about to tell you, we might as well be on a first-name basis.”

“So what is it?” Sandy Lister asked T.J. after handing over the thin round object she had found in her purse an hour after spending nearly three at the police station.

“You mean the stiff planted this on you and you didn’t give it to the cops?” T.J. asked, flustered.

“The man died giving it to me. I’d like to know what it is first.”

“That doesn’t sound like the girl who gave me the lecture on professional ethics this morning.” T.J. held the object out before him. “Never had much use for computers, have you, boss?”

“As a matter of fact, no. Why?”

“Because this is a floppy disk used for storing programs.”

“Can you find out what’s on it?”

“Just as soon as I switch on my terminal.” T.J. lowered the disk to his desk. “What about the stiff?”

“The first job for your terminal. His name was Benjamin Kelno, but that’s all I know.”

“Just let my magic fingers get to work, boss.”

“I’ll be in my office. Call when you’ve got something.”

A half hour later, after several reroutings and overrides on T.J.’s part, a capsule biography of Benjamin Kelno flashed up on the screen. He read quickly, stopping halfway through, when his lips began to quiver.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ …”

The limousine turned onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

“I guess you had a good reason for springing me,” Blaine said, breaking the silence.

“I understand you have a reputation for getting things done.”

“Sure. Just ask the French for a reference.”

“I wasn’t talking about methods. I was talking about results, and you’re as good at getting them as any operative I’ve ever heard of.”

McCracken just looked at him.

“Ever heard of Tom Easton, Blaine?”

“A Gap man, isn’t he?”

“Was. Somebody killed him in New York yesterday. It wasn’t pretty. He was working on something big and now that work has died with him. We haven’t a clue as to what he was on to.”

“How was he killed?”

Stimson settled back. It didn’t surprise him that a man like McCracken would want to know that first. “There’s a … house in New York called Madame Rosa’s. …”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, Easton was a regular customer,” Stimson said, and went on to relate all the lurid details of the assassination.

“Professional,” was McCracken’s only comment.

“Brutally so,” Stimson added. “Apparently, whoever we’re dealing with isn’t fond of subtle methods. Or the stakes of what Easton uncovered ruled them out.”

“You want me to pick up where he left off,” Blaine concluded.

“And retrace his steps.”

“As long as I can skip Madame Rosa’s. Little boys and girls have never been my style.”

“They knew he was headed there,” Stimson said. “Everything was planned out.”

“You said Easton was a regular customer. It fits.”

“Security at Madame Rosa’s is tighter than anyone’s in the capital, and that includes the Oval Office. If it was breached, you can bet somebody big was behind it, someone who stood to lose a lot if Easton made it in.”

“When was he due?”

“Last night.”

“That’s cutting it pretty close.”

Stimson nodded. “The opposition waited for him to expose himself.”

“Literally,” Blaine added. “Easton’s field was internal subversion, right?”

“His specialty. Terrorist groups, revolutionaries — that sort of thing.”

“Then the implication is one of those paid the visit to Madame Rosa’s.”

“But which? The execution was utterly clean, more worthy of a KGB hit squad than a domestic terrorist group made up of unhappy college students.”

Blaine’s eyebrows flickered. “You’re underestimating them just as Easton did.”

“I’ve been through the Gap files a dozen times. No one listed there could possibly have pulled this off.”

“So we’re dealing with someone new … or someone your files haven’t done justice to.”

“How do we find out who?”

McCracken smiled at Stimson’s use of we. Obviously, the Gap director had already assumed he would cooperate, since the alternative was probably a return to detention in Paris. Blaine thought briefly.

“Easton’s car, did you find it?”

Stimson nodded without enthusiasm. “Stripped clean and partially burned.”

“You go over it?”

“There wasn’t much to go over. But yes, we did.” Stimson shook his head. “Nothing.”

“The car’s been brought here to Washington, I assume.”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to have a look at it.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever visited Madame Rosa’s must have known Easton left a bit of security in his car. Otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to steal it. I’m hoping they didn’t find what they were looking for.”

“In which case, our people would have.”

McCracken smiled knowingly. “It meant more to the killers. If they had found it, they wouldn’t have bothered to torch the car. Obviously, they didn’t want anyone else picking up where they left off and maybe getting luckier.”

Stimson nodded. “Interesting.”

“I’ll check it out first thing tomorrow after a steak dinner and a good night’s sleep.”

“I’ve arranged accommodations.”

“Safe house?”

“The Four Seasons Hotel under an assumed name. Remember, no one else knows I’ve brought you in, and we’ve got to keep it that way.”

“That could provide some complications.”

“I don’t think so. You’ll report to me and only to me.”

“No channel cover or access code? No backup?”

Stimson shook his head. “There isn’t time. And even if there were …” He seemed to be groping for words. “The thing of it is, Blaine, I know all about you. A rogue, a renegade, ‘McCrackenballs’—all that shit. And shit’s just what it is, because when everything’s said and done, you succeed. I’m not holding a leash on you, but also I can’t accept responsibility if this thing blows up and one of my counterparts at a three-letter agency grabs hold of you.” Stimson’s stare held Blaine’s. “Look, I don’t care whose nuts you have to bust to get to the bottom of this, just do it. You’ve got all the resources of the Gap behind you, and when all this is over, I can promise you a position on any terms you dictate.”

Blaine eyed him closely. “You’ve assumed I’d go along with this all along.”

Stimson nodded. “Like I said, I know all about you. They’ve had you stashed in purgatory for five years now. I’m offering a way out.”

“To heaven or hell, Andy?”

“That remains to be seen.”

The President’s meeting with Nathan Jamrock, who in addition to heading the shuttle program served as chief of the controversial Special Space Projects section devoted to the deployment of weapons in space, didn’t begin until six P.M. The militarization of space was considered by most in Washington to be inevitable as well as the one area where America held a distinct strategic advantage over the Soviet Union. If the next war was not fought above Earth, many thought, it would at least begin there. The present Space-Stat alert system had been developed with precisely that in mind.

“Then you’re telling me you’re no further along now than you were two days ago,” the President said dejectedly, after Jamrock had finished his latest report.

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“What about the tapes?”

Jamrock shook his head and reached into his jacket pocket for a package of Rolaids. This was going to be a six-tablet meeting, he figured. “Computer magnifications and enhancements have yielded nothing new. By the time Caswell had gotten the camera up in the direction of … whatever was coming, the transmission had been jammed.”

“Jammed by what, Nate?”

Jamrock’s teeth sliced into his first pair of Rolaids. “The same sophisticated apparatus we suspect that’s keeping our ground-based radar from tracking the damn thing. It’s nothing our current technology can definitively account for any more than we can account for the means by which the shuttle was destroyed. Of course that doesn’t mean the Russians haven’t come up with something we’re not yet aware of.”

“I’ve already spoken with the Soviets and I’m satisfied that they had nothing to do with what happened. They claimed and I’ve already confirmed that two of their unmanned crafts were destroyed under similar circumstances. Somebody obviously wants control of space for themselves. That still doesn’t tell us what that somebody is up to.” The President paused. “But I’ll tell you this much, whoever it is has got something big up there, and destroying our shuttle was an outright act of war. Why? And what was Caswell trying to describe?”

Jamrock fidgeted impatiently in his chair. “Our only means of learning that will be to send something else up.” He swallowed the grit from his Rolaids. “Mr. President, I can have Pegasus ready for launch in nine days.”

The President tapped his fingers on his desk, considering the implications of Jamrock’s suggestion. Pegasus was the prototype for what was envisioned as a fleet of laser-armed shuttles that could knock out of the sky anything that strayed too far into American air space. Short of a Star Wars shield, such a fleet would provide the ultimate security from enemy attack, along with being the controversial first step in the militarization of space. Pegasus had been tested and deemed ready for deployment. Technologically, all lights were green. Politically, red ones flashed everywhere.

“There’s plenty of demand from the press and on the Hill for another series of hearings, Nate.”

“NASA couldn’t survive them, sir. And even if we could, it probably wouldn’t matter much. Whatever was responsible for Adventurer’s destruction is still up there, and I’m betting whoever’s controlling it isn’t finished yet. Forget questionable O-rings and frozen SRBs. What happened up there this time was an act of war.

The President turned his gaze out the window at the night sky. “How many days to get Pegasus airborne?”

“Nine.”

“Make it eight, Nate.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Sandy Lister said, rising uneasily from her office chair.

“You’d better, boss,” T.J. Brown told her. “Benjamin Kelno worked for Krayman Industries. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“T.J.—”

He stood up and looked at her across the desk. “Just hear me out. He showed up with the computer disk the very day you got approval for the Krayman story, pouring blood all over the sidewalk, but he still made it here because he wanted you to have that disk. Not anybody, just you. What was it he whispered?”

“That time was running out, that I had to stop them.”

“Stop who, boss?”

“You want me to say Krayman Industries, but I won’t.”

“But it fits!”

“What fits? You’re grasping, T.J. We don’t even know what’s on the disk yet, do we?”

T.J. shrugged. “It’s some sort of predetermined flight program. For what I don’t know. But that air force friend of mine just might be able to help. I’m having lunch with him tomorrow.”

“Look, Krayman Industries is a major multinational corporation, a Dow Jones blue chip. It’s crazy to think they’d be implicated in anything like this.”

“There’s lots about them you don’t know. Like I told you this morning.”

Sandy sat back down. “Then maybe it’s time I learned.”

Chapter 5

Easton’s car had been taken to the CIA’s forensic laboratory, located not in Langley but on spacious grounds overlooking Rock Creek Park near the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest D.C. That was to be McCracken’s first stop Wednesday morning thanks to a pass secured for him by Andrew Stimson. The pass was made out in a false name, Stimson’s signature being the sole important feature. Clearly, no one could be allowed to learn Blaine was in Washington. Word spread fast in the capital, and if it reached the wrong people, the operation would be blown.

The CIA’s private lab was better known as the “Toy Factory” since its primary task over the years had been to develop new weapons for use in the field. McCracken bypassed these sections, which made up the bulk of the Toy Factory, and moved toward an area reserved for forensic work of a more mundane nature, where Easton’s Porsche was being stored. The car sat in a separate garage bay and McCracken was escorted to it by a man in a white lab coat who seemed intent on charting Blaine’s every move on his clipboard.

“This may take a while,” McCracken said when they reached the bay.

“My orders are to remain with you,” the man said. “But I’ll stay out of your way.”

He unlocked the bay door and slid it up, revealing the formerly flaming red Porsche, now charred black and marred by cracked and bubbled paint. The scent of burnt metal was still in the air. The handles had been stripped and Blaine had to use the inside latch to get the door open.

The car was a shell. Its seats had been ripped out along with just about everything mechanical. The steering column was bent at an impossible angle, as if someone had tried for the wheel as well but then gave up.

Blaine spent the next two hours going over every inch of the Porsche, oblivious to his escort’s claims that it had all been done already. His hands and clothes were grimy from the effort and his enthusiasm waned with each chunk of flesh lost on the spiny underside of the dash. He looked at the escort before starting on the two remaining tires and decided that CIA personnel were more than capable of inspecting the innards of burnt rubber.

It didn’t make any sense, Blaine thought. Burning the car indicated they hadn’t found what Easton had hidden. That meant it was still in the Porsche somewhere, unless the fire had claimed it. But Easton’s hiding place would be a spot impervious to flames.

McCracken climbed back through the door and settled himself where the front seat used to be. The hiding place would be convenient, within arm’s reach, so as not to attract attention when Easton used it. It would not have to be big but would be reinforced, protected with padding perhaps.

His fingers wrapped around the shift knob, which was leaning off to the side. With nothing better to do, he stripped it off even though it had already obviously been checked by both Easton’s killers and the CIA. He unscrewed the lower portion, squeezing with all his strength. It came off, exposing the knob’s hollow interior, a perfect hiding place for something small. He stuck his index finger through the opening and felt around the inside. Nothing but dust. He rolled the knob around in his hand, then wedged his finger back inside and held it up to the light as if it were a mystical crystal ball that might show him the answer.

The knob remained black and charred. No magic today. …

Blaine was about to discard it when something occurred to him. The knob was an inch in height but only three-quarters of an inch of his finger was inside. That left another quarter-inch within the knob unaccounted for. Another compartment. There had to be another compartment.

Blaine removed his finger and wiped the black grime from the top of the knob. Shifting instructions for the famed Porsche five-speed appeared. Neutral was in the middle, represented by a red N. Blaine pushed the N.

The charred top of the shift knob popped up.

Unseen by his escort, McCracken lowered the knob to his lap and peered inside.

There was a section of microfiche, thin and blackened around the edges. He lifted it carefully out and eased it between layers of his clean white handkerchief.

“I give up,” Blaine said, tossing the shift knob aside.

“About time,” responded his escort gratefully.

McCracken met Andrew Stimson thirty minutes later on a park bench on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“We’ll let the computers have a go at this,” Stimson said, fitting the microfiche into a clear plastic envelope. “Fiche is composed almost totally of a plastic, highly flammable material. There’s probably enough information on this one to fill a dozen magazine pages, but I don’t know how much even the computers will be able to salvage after the heat it’s been exposed to.”

“A name, a location, anything,” Blaine said.

“We’ll do the best we can. If we get lucky, there’ll be repetition of certain words and phrases the computer can lock on to.”

“Could take a while.”

“Probably.”

“Then I think I’ll catch the shuttle to New York and pay Madame Rosa a visit.” The taxi slid down East Eighty-sixth Street, taking the ice ruts as they came.

“Early snow’s a bad sign for the winter,” the cabbie told Blaine. “A bad sign.”

They passed a corner where a Santa Claus was surrounded by singing carolers, their breath misting in perfect rhythm in the bright air. Blaine hadn’t been in the States for Christmas since his banishment five years before. Lots of mistletoe and roasted chestnuts had come and gone. Christmas in America was like Christmas nowhere else, but he found himself strangely unmoved by the joyous atmosphere of people rushing around and not seeming to mind it much.

Truth was, he disliked the holiday season because it left him empty. Holidays were for sharing, but Blaine had nothing to share and no one to share it with. He was an only child of parents dead for several years, with a splattering of aunts and uncles across the country whose names he could barely remember. There had been many women in his life, but the affairs had never lasted long enough to be labeled relationships.

This rarely bothered Blaine, but Christmas was an exception. His work had been his life and that work allowed no attachments. Enemies could get to you through people who were close, and anyone who thought that to be a violation of the rules of the game didn’t really know the game. You flew alone, ate alone, lived alone, and mostly slept alone. Some operatives chanced marriage but seldom children because children were the most vulnerable of all, too easy to make disappear.

Worst of all, Blaine reckoned, was that the fear of attachments came not only out of regard for the opposition but for your own people as well. Your superiors liked leverage. They always treated family men better because if they misbehaved there were always those buttons that could be pushed.

“This it?” the cabbie asked him.

They had come to a halt in front of a brownstone with a doorman blowing breath onto his gloves before the entrance.

“Yeah, this is it,” Blaine told the driver, flipping him a twenty with instructions to keep the change.

Blaine stepped out of the cab and approached the entrance to Madame Rosa’s to find his path blocked by the rather burly doorman.

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

Blaine fingered his beard. “A trim will do for today. I’ll take the manicure next week.”

The doorman was not amused. “This is a private club, sir.”

“Club? Is that what they’re calling these places today? My, my, leave the country for a few years and the whole damn dictionary changes.”

The doorman’s eyes swept around him, obviously unsure. Avoiding a scene was foremost on his mind. Making one was foremost on McCracken’s.

“Tell Madame Rosa a friend of Tom Easton’s is here to see her.”

“I know no woman by that name, sir.”

Blaine moved a little closer, leery of the bigger man’s feet and hands. “Let me spell it out for you. Either I go by you or through you. Your choice.”

The doorman moved toward a phone suspended in a box to the right of the windowless entrance. “Who should I say is here?” he asked McCracken.

“Rudolph R. Reindeer …”

Blaine knew the name didn’t matter because the doorman was already going for his gun. The man’s bulky jacket precluded a quick draw, which allowed McCracken the instant he needed to close the gap between them and to lock his hand on the doorman’s drawing wrist. Blaine pounded his face once with a fist and then slammed his groin with a knee rocketed from the pavement in a blur of motion. The doorman gasped, eyes dimming, and started to slump. McCracken grabbed him, providing support, and pounded rapidly on the door.

“Hey, you inside! Help! Open the door! This guy’s sick!”

McCracken could feel himself and the doorman being observed through the peephole.

“Come on!” he urged, striking the door harder.

It finally opened and a short, slender Oriental man stepped out.

“I don’t know what happened,” Blaine explained, as he helped drag the doorman in. “He just collapsed.”

The door closed behind them.

“Excellent performance,” came the voice of a woman through thin raps of solitary applause. And then Blaine saw the gun in the Oriental’s hand. “Now, if you would be good enough to put your hands in the air …”

T.J. Brown met his air force contact for lunch five hours after depositing the computer disk on his desk. The captain’s name was Alan Coglan and T.J. had become friendly with him during research for a story he had done a few months back on the new breed of test pilots.

Coglan arrived at the restaurant late and approached the table nervously, face as stiff as his air force uniform.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, holding the disk in his hand and making no move to sit down.

“Does it matter?”

“I’ll say it does.” Now Coglan seated himself but kept his legs outside the table. He had left his overcoat on. T.J. watched him smother the disk with a napkin and slide it across the table. “I’m giving this back to you because I want nothing to do with it. You never met me, understand? And if you won’t tell me how you got this disk, go to the FBI and tell them — right now before it’s too late.”

T.J.’s eyes showed fear. “Al, you’re scaring the shit out of me. That ain’t no way to treat a friend. All this over a goddamn flight plan?”

“A goddamn flight plan,” Coglan parodied. “Sure, the goddamn orbital flight plan of the space shuttle Adventurer.”

McCracken raised his hands and let the small Oriental push him against the wall in order to search him. The man found his Browning but kept right on jostling him up and down until he was satisfied that was all Blaine had been carrying.

He turned slowly and faced an elegant woman dressed in a blue sequined gown.

“Your errand boy here didn’t take my wallet, Madame Rosa,” Blaine told her.

The woman smiled comfortably. “I thought I’d give you the pleasure of telling me who you are and what you’re doing here yourself.” Her eyes moved to the Oriental. “Chen, show him to my study.”

The Oriental led Blaine down a lavishly appointed hallway lined with original artwork and antique sculptures displayed on pedestals. They stopped at the last door down, and Chen waited inside with him until Madame Rosa made her appearance.

“Stay by the door,” she instructed him.

Chen bowed slightly and took his leave.

Madame Rosa closed the door behind him.

McCracken glanced around the room. It contained a strange mix of colonial furniture and modern technology. A row of video screens was built into the wall above a rolltop desk. A board with either red or green lights flashing for each of the brownstone’s rooms rested on an ancient cherry carpenter’s table.

“So that’s why my ruse didn’t work,” Blaine said, eyes back on the monitors, specifically one that showed the brownstone’s front. Five others provided different views of the building’s exterior.

“It was quite a performance,” said Madame Rosa.

“I aim to please.”

“Just so long as you’re not contemplating any encores in here. Chen is quite adept at dealing with intruders. He would be most pleased if I turned you over to him.”

“Can he buy his clothes in men’s sizes yet?”

Madame Rosa cracked a smile which held no trace of amusement. “All others who underestimated him were buried soon after. I brought Chen over from China. His reputation preceded him.”

McCracken walked about the room, inspecting it. “In which case he must fit in perfectly at this glorified whorehouse. Tell me, did you ever consider putting a red light over the front door?”

Madame Rosa’s face grew taut with impatience. “You mentioned Mr. Easton to the doorman outside.”

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“If you’re here to threaten closing me down, forget it. I’m protected … all the way to Washington.”

Blaine’s dark eyes dug deep into the madam’s. “Lady, you piss me off and I won’t close you down, I’ll blow you up.”

“You worked with Easton?”

“Let’s say we fished in the same stream and I’m taking over his boat. We have a code in our business that lives on after death. I’m here to find out who killed him.”

Madame Rosa’s sequined gown seemed to blink. “I told everything I know to the others.”

“I like hearing things firsthand.”

“And just who are you?”

“The name’s Blaine McCracken if it matters.”

“It doesn’t.”

“We were talking about Easton. A regular customer, I presume.”

The woman nodded. “Twice a month when he could fit it into his schedule.”

“Same days?”

She shook her head. “Never. His work and security factors made that impossible. Sometimes he would book his appointments only hours in advance, sometimes days. Monday was different.”

“How so?”

“We had filled a … special order for him. He had been waiting for some time.”

The twins, McCracken realized. What kind of world had he entered here?

“That distresses you, Mr. McCracken?”

“Treating people like they were something out of a Sears catalogue has never rubbed me the right way.”

“Then consider yourself in a minority. People need relief, refuge, a place where their wildest dreams can be made a reality. A house like mine releases people’s pent-up inhibitions in a way that hurts no one.”

“Tell that to Easton … and his twins.”

Madame Rosa hesitated. “That was an entirely different situation.”

“And quite puzzling, if you ask me.” Blaine walked over to the bank of six video monitors. “I assume there’s another of these at your security station.”

“Of course.”

Blaine nodded. “So two men were able to bypass all this surveillance to get in and out of the building and murder three people in between. Something smells.”

“They were professionals.”

“So am I.”

“Maybe the killers were just better.”

“More likely they had inside help.”

Madame Rosa’s features flared. “I will not stand here and—”

“I’m not finished yet. Not only did they get in and out without being seen, they also knew exactly what room Easton would be found in. No need for trial and error, right?”

“He used the same room all the time,” she replied defensively.

“But someone would have had to tell the killers that, wouldn’t they? And maybe this same person, or persons, looked the other way, perhaps pulled the plug on your million-dollar surveillance for five minutes or so Monday afternoon.” Blaine paused. “You’re still standing there, madame.”

“Your conclusions are unfounded. Discretion has always been a primary concern here. My people go through more security checks than the President’s staff.”

“What about beyond your people?” he challenged her. “Someone might have known something. Enough.”

“No,” the woman replied after a pause long enough to convince Blaine she was holding something back.

“Madame Rosa,” he began more compassionately, forming a lie, “I’m here on no one else’s authority but my own. This is purely personal. The killers of Tom Easton cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Otherwise, none of our kind are safe.”

“There is nothing I know that can help, I assure you.” Her eyes softened and she seemed to feel less threatened. “But if there’s anything else I can do …”

Blaine nodded. “I’m retracing all of Easton’s steps up to the time he died. I’d like to see the room where he was killed.”

Chapter 6

“I’ll have Chen show you upstairs,” Madame Rosa said. “But the authorities have been over the room a dozen times. You won’t find anything they haven’t already.”

“Won’t know that till I try, madame.”

Madame Rosa accompanied Chen and Blaine to the stairs and left them to go up on their own. Following behind the Oriental, Blaine drastically altered his estimation of the man, or perhaps just conceded it. He had known Chen’s kind many times over the years, mostly in ‘Nam. Quick, silent killers who could move with the air and vanish into the wind. They were nimble and lithe, capable of killing efficiently with their bare hands. McCracken had heard of several large and powerful men like himself who had fallen prey to their misjudgments of killers like Chen. He would have to make sure he didn’t follow them.

Blaine kept his distance as Chen led him to the third floor and unlocked a door no different from the others.

The inside of the room was something else again.

Obviously, Washington or Langley or both had decreed that it be left as it was, and no amount of days since the killing could stop Blaine’s stomach from pitching. The blood was everywhere, dried and blotchy, splattered against the walls and floor, soaked into the sheets. The scent of incense was thick in the air, but nothing could erase the lingering smells of death or the feeling of it. McCracken felt certain that even blindfolded he would have been able to pick this room as the one where violent death had occurred. A bit queasy, he stepped farther inside. Chen remained in the corridor and pulled the door three quarters closed.

Blaine could see it all happening in his mind. The children rolling atop Easton, young faces mechanical and uncertain, innocence adding to their fear and thus the perversity of the scene. Then the doors bursting open and two men rushing through, hot bullets tearing from their guns barrels, separating blood and bone from body and spilling them about. Thoughts of the confused, dying children made Blaine tremble, and suddenly the room felt ice cold.

He had to get out. Of course Madame Rosa had been right about there being nothing up here for him to find. But still he’d had to see and feel it all for himself. That much accomplished, he moved for the door.

In the corridor Chen was gone.

That did not fit. His orders would have been to stick close to this intruder into the private world of Madame Rosa. Then where was he?

Blaine pushed the question aside. He just wanted to be rid of this place. There was nothing that could be of any help to him here. He descended the stairs on his own, leery now, senses sharp as an animal’s at a killing field. He reached the ground floor. The brownstone felt deserted.

There was a noise down the hallway in the direction of Madame Rosa’s study, too brief to be identified but sharp enough to be out of place. Blaine moved toward it. Halfway down the corridor he drew the Browning pistol Madame Rosa had returned to him before permitting him to go upstairs.

He neared the woman’s office, uncomfortable with the silence. The door was ajar, and Blaine saw that the room was dark inside save for the light stolen from a window and the dull haze cast by the video monitoring screens. He was operating on instinct now, and it was instinct that led him through the door gun-first.

And instinct that made him pull his wrist back fast so the swirling object struck his gun instead of his hand. The Browning went flying.

Chen came at Blaine with his nunchuku, swinging them hard and fast in a blur of motion. Blaine ducked and a china lamp shattered into a thousand pieces. Blaine back-pedaled, steadying himself. The effectiveness of “nunchuks,” twin foot-long wooden blocks connected by wire or cord, was due mostly to myth. The Americans had made them into a flashy weapon when in truth they were the least effective and glamorous of any weapon from feudal Japan. McCracken had never had much faith in or fear of the nunchuks. You just had to keep your calm and seize the advantage when it came.

Chen charged at him again, snapping the nunchuks in a straight overhead angle, using one as a fulcrum to whip the other out from the cord. Blaine felt the hard wood whistle by his ear twice, dodging at the last instant both times. Chen now seemed like a cobra frustrated by the mongoose, his moves rushed and less certain, sweat forming on his brow. The advantage became Blaine’s until he tripped over something in the dim light and went sprawling. He found himself almost eye to eye with a dying Madame Rosa, whose head lay in the blood pouring from the narrow slit in her throat. So it must be wire, not cord, that strung the twin sections of the nunchuks together, and the wire was what Chen had used to do the job.

Chen swooped at him with a throaty scream and swung the nunchuks in a roundhouse fashion. McCracken managed to get to the side and raise his arm fast enough to keep the weapon from a killing blow, taking the full force on the fatty part of his forearm. The pain exploded horribly, but there was no time to be slowed by it. Blaine grasped the wooden section hard and pulled, only Chen went with his action instead of resisting it, coming straight in and lashing a kick under his chin as McCracken struggled to rise.

Blaine felt himself drifting backward, drifting altogether. His head banged against a table and he managed to move it in time to avoid Chen’s next strike, which split the table in two, showering both of them with splinters. Chen was off-balance now and Blaine came in hard against his legs, using his superior size and strength to its best advantage. He shoved Chen backward, but again the Oriental flowed with the move, using McCracken’s own momentum to smash him headlong into the wall. The nunchuks came down hard on his muscular back and Blaine felt his whole spine go numb.

Somehow he found the strength to rise and this time it was Chen who did the underestimating, coming in with a wide strike to finish him. The wood whistled through the air in a long arc, too long, giving Blaine the time to dart inside Chen’s center and grab his flailing arm when the nunchuk strike was well past its impact point. Blaine threw his right hip across the Oriental’s small body and circled his thin neck hard with his free arm with enough force to throw Chen up and over his hip. The Oriental’s back and head smashed onto the floor.

As he struggled to rise, Blaine slipped behind him, manipulating the nunchuks to his advantage now. Holding on to one section with his left hand, Blaine grasped the other with his right and drew the sections back fast and hard, yanking them apart. Whatever grip Chen retained on them was relinquished.

Blaine’s knee found Chen’s back at the same time the wire dug deep into his throat, slicing the flesh as smoothly as cheese. Blood sprayed forward. The Oriental’s head snapped backward and then slumped over obscenely to his chest, nearly severed from his neck. McCracken pushed the writhing corpse to the floor and stepped over it on the way to Madame Rosa’s body.

Incredibly, he found she was still alive. Just barely, but alive. Her dying eyes sought him out. He thought he saw her mouth move, trying to form the shadow of a syllable. Her face was ghastly pale and the blood was still oozing from the tear in her throat.

“Se … bas … tian,” she rasped, and the disjointed word seemed to come more from the slit in her neck than her mouth. “Se—”

She started the word again, but this time a gurgle swallowed it and her eyes locked forever on the six monitors broadcasting black and white pictures of what had been her world.

McCracken was back on his feet immediately. He had to get out of there before Chen’s people arrived. The front door was the only way out he knew. He found his Browning and held it before him as he rushed back up the corridor.

Still there was no one. What had happened? Where were Madame Rosa’s customers, her security guards?

He was almost to the door when a closet caught his eye. He threw it open and grabbed the first coat he saw, black cashmere and perfect for hiding his bloodied clothes. Shoving his arms through the too short sleeves, McCracken rushed out the heavy door into the street.

No doorman either. Madame Rosa’s seemed utterly deserted.

The cold air struck him and with it the pain. Blaine instinctively catalogued his injuries. His forearm was swollen thick and numb but nothing was broken. His back ached and made movement painful; again, though, nothing serious. Beyond that there was a throbbing through his entire body. He blocked out the pain, glad for the frigid air because it braced him.

Blaine didn’t run because that would draw too much attention. At a fast walk he passed several pay phones and debated using one to call Stimson at the Gap. No, his first priority was to escape the area. A cab would do; he needed a cab. Hailing one would mean staying in the same spot, perhaps for several minutes. Blaine decided to chance it.

Luckily, one pulled over in seconds. McCracken was in the backseat almost before the driver came to a halt.

“Take it easy, Mac,” the driver said. “You in a rush?”

“Yeah.”

“Where to?”

“Just drive.”

It was the icy stare in Blaine’s black eyes that made the cabbie turn back around, gulping air. McCracken needed time to think, to regroup and find a safe place from which to call Stimson.

And tell him what?

Madame Rosa had been murdered because she knew something, something she might have told Blaine if given time.

Sebastian …

Her last word. But who or what was Sebastian and why would she send Blaine to him or it? Another connection perhaps, a link in a chain being severed one piece at a time.

He could tell that much to Stimson. It was all he knew. The people behind Easton’s murder were not going to leave a trail. All tracks had to be covered. Stimson would run Sebastian through his computers, Chen, too, and perhaps some of those tracks would be revealed. There was the microfiche to consider as well. If they had been able to decipher it at the Gap, Blaine’s job would be that much easier.

The cab reeled over the ice ruts like a roller-coaster car, until it stopped in traffic across from a group of merry carolers and Santa Claus ringing his bell. Santa shoved a copper cup toward passersby who tried to avoid making a donation.

Santa saw the snarl in traffic and moved into the street to take advantage of it. Blaine wondered if he got a percentage of the take for his trouble. He leaned back and squeezed his eyes closed, the cold air streaming through the window, keeping him alert. Horns honked, blared.

A bell disturbed him and forced his eyes open.

“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”

Santa was coming toward the driver’s side of the cab, aiming for the open window. Blaine slid over to roll it up, but the fake-bearded man got there too fast.

“Merry Christmas! Something for the poor and needy, sir?”

Blaine shrugged. Paying the man would be the quickest way to get rid of him. He reached into his pocket, groping for some change.

Santa thrust his copper cup farther into the car. There was something peculiar about the angle at which he held it …

Blaine’s hand emerged with a pair of quarters.

… and something even more peculiar about the way he held his eyes.

It was the eyes that moved McCracken to action more than anything. Just as Santa started his cup forward, Blaine lurched to the side and watched its liquid contents spray by him, splattering the upholstery. Hot steam began to rise as the vinyl and cloth beneath it melted.

Acid! McCracken realized, the Browning already in his hand.

Santa had his gun out, too, but Blaine sent two shots into him high and hard before he could fire it, staining his lapels the scarlet color of his suit. Santa pitched backward, slammed into another traffic-wedged car, and then slumped to the cement.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” screamed the cabbie, and his hand groped desperately for the door handle.

A number of bystanders chuckled because it looked like Santa had finally gone for one dollar too much. A few even applauded.

There was no mistaking the actions of the carolers, though.

In unison, as if rehearsed, they pulled weapons from inside their overcoats. The first out was a sawed-off shotgun and its wielder fired both barrels as Blaine hugged the taxi’s floor. The pellets turned the car’s frame into a pincushion and the cabbie’s head into splinters of bone. The shock of death forced his foot down, and the cab shot off to the right, colliding with one car, another, then pushing a third with it onto the sidewalk before coming to a stop.

Blaine was tossed violently one way and then the other. His hand grasped for the door handle and yanked it hard. The door sprung open and the movement threw his body onto the sidewalk. The cab itself provided cover.

The carolers fanned out in military fashion, oblivious to the screams and panic of those around them. A series of sprays from the machine pistol of one tore into the cab’s engine block and rocketed flames outward.

McCracken rolled away, exposing himself long enough for a pair of carolers to empty clips at him, chewing cement and spitting glass everywhere. He rolled again and found cover behind a truck.

He crawled under it and locked his Browning on two carolers gliding across the street with heavy rifles in hand before them. Only seven shots remained in the Browning, and his spare clip was still in the overcoat he had left at Madame Rosa’s. He had to make each shot count.

He squeezed off a pair at the two approaching carolers, taking both in the head and dropping them there. Before their bodies had even struck pavement, a hail of fire coughed up fresh tar before him, coming from two directions at once. The impact stunned him briefly, and he was only vaguely conscious of figures darting across the street to better their positions.

Christ, how many carolers had there been? Six? Eight? Ten maybe? … A fucking army!

Blaine could tell they were trying to encircle him. They would keep him pinned where he was with heavy fire while they readied a simultaneous offensive he could not possibly survive. He could hear the distant wail of sirens now, but traffic and icy roads considered, the police could not possibly arrive in time to be of any help to him. He would have to beat the carolers on his own.

How, though?

Blaine pushed himself backward and felt his foot dip into an opened manhole at the rear of the truck. He had a vision of plunging downward to his death and saving the carolers the bother. Wait! Plunge, yes, but not to his death!

McCracken dragged his frame backward so that his legs passed into the manhole, beneath which lay the labyrinth of tunneled storm drains the DPW was currently servicing. A perfect escape route.

But he needed more.

With his legs dangling down the manhole, Blaine waited for the next hail of fire from the approaching carolers before firing two of the Browning’s shells into the truck’s fuel tank. Gas began to spill immediately, some spraying him.

He could feel the carolers’ footsteps almost on top of the truck now. Sirens wailed closer but not close enough. Then he saw feet, lots of them, everywhere around the truck. That was his cue. He pushed the rest of his body into the manhole and plunged into the bowels of New York City.

Upon landing, Blaine yanked a wad of cash from one pant pocket and his lighter from another, flicking it to life. The dried bills caught on contact and he hurled the flaming packet through the manhole opening into the spill of gasoline.

The explosion came almost instantly. McCracken felt the intense heat of the blast surge into him as he ducked and covered his head. He feared for a moment that the flames might follow the heat and consume him. They descended as if shot from a flamethrower, then gave way to coarse black smoke. There were more explosions, smaller secondary ones, mixed with agonized screams from above.

The screams didn’t last long, though. All of the carolers had been too close to the truck to avoid the blast. Most of them were probably in pieces by now.

Blaine rose to his feet, finding that his head just cleared the ceiling of the storm drain. His plunge through the manhole had brought the pain to his back again, but he moved quickly in spite of it. The drain, lit by sporadically placed lamps, was growing dank and putrid by the time he was a hundred yards in.

Finding a spot to climb out proved harder than he had hoped. The many manhole covers he passed were impossible to push off from below. He had to keep walking until he found another DPW crew performing similar service.

It took a good half mile before he came upon one.

“Mayor’s office,” he said, straight-faced, to the men gawking disbelievingly at him as he climbed a ladder back to the street. “Just wanted to make sure you boys weren’t tanking on the job.”

Blaine was no longer concerned about being spotted by potential assailants. He was predominantly conscious instead of his grubby, damp clothes and the attention they might attract. He would have to make arrangements to wash and change somehow, but first he would have to call Stimson. He had plenty to tell him.

He reached an available public phone at the corner of Fifty-sixth and Madison and pulled the Gap director’s private number from his memory. The call went through unhindered by operator assistance or anything as mundane as regular charges. The access code punched prior to the number overruled the need for that.

“Yes?” The phone was answered by a male voice, but not Stimson’s.

“I need Stimson.”

“He is unavailable.”

“Get him.”

“He is—”

“Get him, you ass! Now!”

“I’ll send out a page,” the voice said after a brief pause.

Blaine wished he could have reached through the phone to tear the damn bureaucrat’s throat out. It was another minute before Stimson came on the line.

“This is Stimson.”

“We’ve got problems.”

“Blaine, is that you? What’s happened?”

“Long story. You’ll be hearing about much of it before too long, I suspect.”

“Complications?”

“Violent ones. There are lots of people dead up here, Andy, and I was lucky not to be among them.”

Stimson paused. “Were you blown?”

“My investigation of Madame Rosa’s didn’t include the fringe benefits.”

“Blaine, please!”

“No, Andy, I wasn’t blown. They were waiting for somebody, that much I can tell you, and they must have had a pretty good idea it was me.”

“I need details, Blaine, details!”

“Madame Rosa’s dead. Her whole place is deserted. Somebody pulled a lot of strings and they waited until I got there to pull them. Outside I was made by Santa Claus and a bunch of elves who carried sawed-offs instead of Christmas presents. And you might be getting a bill from the city for one truck.”

“When I told you to crack all the balls you wanted, you took me at my word, didn’t you?”

“Only because I didn’t want mine cracked, Andy. This thing must be even bigger than we thought. And if you ask me, the Santa Claus I blew away has connections in places other than the North Pole.” Blaine paused. “What about the microfiche? Anything?”

“Nothing concrete, but we’re making progress.”

“If your computers can handle a little more work, I need a few checks made.”

“I’ve got pen in hand.”

“First, I need everything you can get me on someone or something called Sebastian.”

“That’s it, just Sebastian?”

“He or it was involved somehow with Madame Rosa, if that helps any.”

“It might. What else?”

“An Oriental named Chen, probably of Chinese extraction. Very small but very deadly. Alas, now very dead.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised. …”

“He’s probably a hired gun. Freelance. I’d like to know who he’s been working for lately.”

“Why?”

“Because somebody placed him with Madame Rosa, somebody with a lot of time, patience, and reasons. The Easton thing was set up for quite a while. Either Madame Rosa’s was infiltrated through and through, or Easton’s killers were invisible.”

“Do you need to be brought in?” Stimson asked grimly.

“The way I look right now, Andy, I’d have to travel in the baggage compartment. No, I’ll get cleaned up and hole up here for a few hours while you dig up that information for me. When should I call?”

“It’s almost two now. Say anytime after four.”

“Perfect.” Blaine was about to say goodbye when one final thought occurred to him. “Oh, and, Andy, that Santa Claus who’s seen his last chimney?”

“Yes?”

“He was black.”