Watchers

EIGHT

On the Thursday that Nora drove to Dr. Weingold’s office, Travis and Einstein went for a walk across the grassy hills and through the woods behind the house they had bought in the beautiful California coastal region called Big Sur.

On the treeless hills, the autumn sun warmed the stones and cast scattered cloud shadows. The breeze off the Pacific drew a whisper from the dry golden grass. In the sun, the air was mild, neither hot nor cool. Travis was comfortable in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.

He carried a Mossberg short-barreled pistol-grip pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. He always carried it on his walks. If he ever encountered someone who asked about it, he intended to tell them he was hunting rattlesnakes.

Where the trees grew most vigorously, the bright morning seemed like late afternoon, and the air was cool enough to make Travis glad that his shirt was flannel. Massive pines, a few small groves of giant redwoods, and a variety of foothill hardwoods filtered the sun and left much of the forest floor in perpetual twilight. The undergrowth was dense in places: the vegetation included those low, impenetrable thickets of evergreen oaks sometimes called “chaparral,” plus lots of ferns that flourished because of the frequent fog and the constant humidity of the seacoast air.

Einstein repeatedly sniffed out cougar spoor and insisted on showing Travis the tracks of the big cats in the damp forest soil. Fortunately, he fully understood the danger of stalking a mountain lion, and was able to repress his natural urge to prowl after them.

The dog contented himself with merely observing local fauna. Timid deer could often be seen ascending or descending their trails. Raccoons were plentiful and fun to watch, and although some were quite friendly, Einstein knew they could turn nasty if he accidentally frightened them; he chose to keep a respectful distance.

On other walks, the retriever had been dismayed to discover the squirrels, Which he could approach safely, were terrified of him. They froze with fear, Stared wild-eyed, small hearts pounding visibly.

WHY SQUIRRELS AFRAID? he had asked Travis one evening.

“Instinct,” Travis had explained. “You’re a dog, and they know instinctively that dogs will attack and kill them.”

NOT ME.

“No, not you,” Travis agreed, ruffling the dog’s coat. “You wouldn’t hurt them. But the squirrels don’t know you’re different, do they? To them, you look like a dog, and you smell like a dog, so you’ve got to be feared like a dog.”

I LIKE SQUIRRELS.

“I know. Unfortunately, they’re not smart enough to realize it.”

Consequently, Einstein kept his distance from the squirrels and tried hard not to terrify them, often sauntering past with his head turned the other way as if unaware of them.

This special day, their interest in squirrels and deer and birds and raccoons and unusual forest flora was minimal. Even views of the Pacific did not intrigue them. Today, unlike other days, they were walking only to pass the time and to keep their minds off Nora.

Travis repeatedly looked at his watch, and he chose a circular route that would bring them back to the house at one o’clock, when Nora was expected to return.

It was the twenty-first of October, eight weeks after they had acquired new identities in San Francisco. After considerable thought, they had decided to come south, substantially reducing the distance that The Outsider would have to travel in order to put its hands on Einstein. They would not be able to get on with their new lives until the beast found them, until they killed it; therefore, they wanted to hasten rather than delay that confrontation.

On the other hand, they did not want to risk returning too far south toward Santa Barbara, for The Outsider might cover the distance between them faster than it had traveled from Orange County to Santa Barbara last summer. They could not be certain that it would continue to make only three or four miles a day. If it moved faster this time, it might come upon them before they were ready for it. The Big Sur area, because of its sparse population and because it was a hundred ninety air miles from Santa Barbara, seemed ideal. If The Outsider got a fix on Einstein and tracked him down as slowly as before, the thing would not arrive for almost five months. If it doubled its speed somehow, swiftly crossing the open farmland and the wild hills between there and here, quickly skirting populated areas, it would still not reach them until the second week of November.

That day was drawing near, but Travis was satisfied that he had made every preparation possible, and he almost welcomed The Outsider’s arrival. Thus far, however, Einstein said that he did not feel his adversary was dangerously close. Evidently, they still had plenty of time to test their patience before the showdown.

By twelve-fifty, they reached the end of their circular route through the hills and canyons, returning to the yard behind their new house. It was a two-story structure with bleached-wood walls, a cedar-shingled roof, and massive stone chimneys on both the north and south sides. It boasted front and rear porches on the east and west, and either vantage point offered a view of wooded slopes.

Because no snow ever fell here, the roof was only gently pitched, making it possible to walk all over it, and that was where Travis made one of his first defensive modifications to the house. He looked up now, as he came out of the trees, and saw the herringbone pattern of two-by-fours that he had fixed across the roof. They would make it safer and easier to move quickly across those sloped surfaces. If The Outsider crept up on the house at night, it would not be able to enter by the downstairs windows because, at sundown, those were barricaded with interior locking shutters that Travis had installed himself and that would foil any would-be intruder except, perhaps, a maniacally determined man with an ax. The Outsider would then most likely climb the porch posts onto the front or rear porch roof to have a look at the second-floor windows, which it would find also protected by interior shutters. Meanwhile, warned of the enemy’s approach by an infrared alarm system that be had installed around the house three weeks ago, Travis would go onto the roof by way of an attic trap door. Up there, making use of the two-by-four handholds, he would be able to creep to the edge of the main roof, look down on the porch roof or on any portion of the surrounding yard, and open fire on The Outsider from a position where it could not reach him.

Twenty yards behind and east of the house was a small rust-red barn that backed up to the trees. Their property included no tillable land, and the original owner apparently erected the barn to house a couple of horses and some chickens. Travis and Nora used it as a garage because the dirt driveway led two hundred yards in from the highway, past the house, directly to the double doors on the barn.

Travis suspected that, when The Outsider arrived, it would scout the house from the woods and then from the cover of the barn. It might even wait in there, hoping to catch them by surprise when they came out for the Dodge pickup or the Toyota. Therefore, he had rigged the barn with a few surprises.

Their nearest neighbors — whom they had met only once — were over a quarter-mile to the north, out of sight beyond trees and chaparral. The highway, which was closer, was not much traveled at night, when The Outsider was most likely to strike. If the confrontation involved a great deal of gunfire, the shots would echo and reecho through the woods and across the bare hills, so the few people in the area — neighbors or passing motorists — would have trouble determining where the noise originated. He ought to be able to kill the creature and bury it before someone came nosing around.

Now, more worried about Nora than about The Outsider, Travis climbed the back-porch steps, unlocked the two dead bolts on the rear door, and went Into the house, with Einstein close behind him. The kitchen was large enough to serve also as the dining room, yet it was cozy: oak walls, a Mexican-tile floor, beige-tile counters, oak cabinets, a hand-textured plaster ceiling, the best appliances. The big plank table with four comfortable padded chairs and a stone fireplace helped make this the center of the house.

There were five other rooms — an enormous living room and a den at the front of the first floor; three bedrooms upstairs — plus one bath down and one up. One of the bedrooms was theirs, and one served as Nora’s studio where she had done a little painting since they moved in — and the third was empty, awaiting developments.

Travis switched on the kitchen lights. Although the house seemed isolated, they were only two hundred yards from the highway, and power poles followed the line of their dirt driveway.

“I’m having a beer,” Travis said, “You want anything?”

Einstein padded to his empty water dish, which was in the corner beside his food dish, and scooted it across the floor to the sink.

They had not expected to be able to afford such a house so soon after fleeing Santa Barbara — especially not when, during their first call to Garrison Dilworth, the attorney informed them that Travis’s bank accounts had, indeed, been frozen. They had been lucky to get the twenty-thousand-dollar check through. Garrison had converted some of both Travis’s and Nora’s funds into eight cashier’s checks as planned, and had sent them to Travis addressed to Mr. Samuel Spencer Hyatt (the new persona), care of the Marin County motel where they had stayed for nearly a week. But also, claiming to have sold Nora’s house for a handsome six-figure price, he had sent another packet of cashier’s checks two days later, to the same motel.

Speaking with him from a pay phone, Nora had said, “But even if you did sell it, they can’t have paid the money and closed the deal so soon.”

“No,” Garrison had admitted. “It won’t close for a month. But you need the cash now, so I’m advancing it to you.”

They had opened two accounts at a bank in Carmel, thirty-odd miles north of where they now lived. They had bought the new pickup, then had taken Garrison’s Mercedes north to the San Francisco airport, leaving it there for him. Heading south again, past Carmel and along the coast, they looked for a house in the Big Sur area. When they had found this one, they had been able to pay cash for it. It was wiser to buy than rent, and it was wiser to pay cash rather than finance the house, for fewer questions needed to be answered.

Travis was sure their ID would stand up, but he saw no reason to test the quality of Van Dyne’s papers until necessary. Besides, after buying a house, they were more respectable; the purchase added substance to their new identities.

While Travis got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, twisted off the cap, took a long swallow, then filled Einstein’s dish with water, the retriever went to the walk-in pantry. The door was ajar, as always, and the dog opened it all the way. He put one paw on a pedal that Travis had rigged for him just inside the pantry door, and the light came on in there.

In addition to shelves of canned and bottled goods, the huge pantry contained a complex gadget that Travis and Nora had built to facilitate communication with the dog. The device stood against the rear wall: twenty-eight one-inch-square tubes made of Lucite, lined up side by side in a wooden frame; each tube was eighteen inches tall, open at the top, and fitted with a pedal-release valve at the bottom. In the first twenty-six tubes were stacked lettered tiles from six Scrabble games, so Einstein would have enough letters

to be able to form long messages. On the front of each tube was a hand-drawn letter that showed what it contained; A, B, C, D, and so on. The last two tubes held blank game tiles on which Travis had carved commas — or apostrophes — and question marks. (They’d decided they could figure where the periods were supposed to go.) Einstein was able to dispense letters from the tubes by stepping on the pedals, then could use his nose to form the tiles into words on the pantry floor. They had chosen to put the device in there, out of sight, so they would not be required to explain it to neighbors who might drop in unexpectedly.

As Einstein busily pumped pedals and clicked tiles against one another, Travis carried his beer and the dog’s water dish out to the front porch, where they would sit and wait for Nora. By the time he came back, Einstein had finished forming a message.

COULD I HAVE SOME HAMBURGER? OR THREE WEENIES?

Travis said, “I’m going to have lunch with Nora when she gets home. Don’t YOU want to wait and eat with us?”

The retriever licked his chops and thought for a moment. Then he studied the letters he had already used, pushed some of them aside, and reused the rest along with a K and a T and an apostrophe that he had to release from the Lucite tubes.

OK. BUT I’M STARVED.

“You’ll survive,” Travis told him. He gathered up the lettered tiles and sorted them into the open tops of the proper tubes.

He retrieved the pistol-grip shotgun that he’d stood by the back door and carried it out to the front porch, where he put it beside his rocking chair. He heard Einstein turn off the pantry light and follow him.

They sat in anxious silence, Travis in his chair, Einstein on the redwood floor.

Songbirds trilled in the mild October air.

Travis sipped at his beer, and Einstein lapped occasionally at his water, and they stared down the dirt driveway, into the trees, toward the highway that they could not see.

In the glove compartment of the Toyota, Nora had a.38 pistol loaded with hollow-point cartridges. During the weeks since they had left Marin County, she had learned to drive and, with Travis’s help, had become proficient with the.38—also with a fully automatic Uzi pistol and a shotgun. She only had the.38 today, but she’d be safe going and coming from Carmel. Besides, even if The Outsider had crept into the area without Einstein’s knowledge, it did not want Nora; it wanted the dog. So she was perfectly safe.

But where was she?

Travis wished he had gone with her. But after thirty years of dependency and fear, solo trips into Carmel were one of the means by which she asserted— and tested — her new strength, independence, and self-confidence. She would not have welcomed his company.

By one-thirty, when Nora was half an hour late, Travis began to get a sick, twisting feeling in his gut.

Einstein began to pace.

Five minutes later, the retriever was the first to hear the car turning into the foot of the driveway at the main road. He dashed down the porch steps, which were at the side of the house, and stood at the edge of the dirt lane.

Travis did not want Nora to see that he had been overly worried because somehow that would seem to indicate a lack of trust in her ability to take care of herself, an ability that she did, indeed, possess and that she prized. He remained in his rocking chair, his bottle of Corona in one hand.

When the blue Toyota appeared, he sighed with relief. As she went by the house, she tooted the horn. Travis waved as if he had not been sitting there under a leaden blanket of fear.

Einstein went to the garage to greet her, and a minute later they both reappeared. She was wearing blue jeans and a yellow- and white-checkered shirt, but Travis thought she looked good enough to waltz onto a dance floor among begowned and bejeweled princesses.

She came to him, leaned down, kissed him. Her lips were warm.

She said, “Miss me terribly?”

“With you gone, there was no sun, no trilling from the birds, no joy.” He tried to say it flippantly, but it came out with an underlying note of seriousness.

Einstein rubbed against her and whined to get her attention, then peered up at her and woofed softly, as if to say, Well?

“He’s right,” Travis said, “You’re not being fair. Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“I am,” she said.

“You are?”

She grinned. “Knocked up.”

“Oh my,” he said.

“Preggers. With child. In a family way. A mother-to-be.”

He got up and put his arms around her, held her close and kissed her, and said, “Dr. Weingold couldn’t be mistaken,” and she said, “No, he’s a good doctor,” and Travis said, “He must’ve told you when,” and she said. “We, can expect the baby the third week of June, and Travis said stupidly, “Next June?” and she laughed and said, “I don’t intend to carry this baby for a whole extra year,” and finally Einstein insisted on having a chance to nuzzle her and express his delight.

“I brought home a chilled bottle of bubbly to celebrate,” she said, thrusting a paper bag into his hands.

In the kitchen, when he took the bottle out of the bag, he saw that it was sparkling apple cider, nonalcoholic. He said, “Isn’t this a celebration worth the best champagne?”

Getting glasses from a cupboard, she said, “I’m probably being silly, a world-champion worrier. but I’m taking no chances, Travis. I never thought I’d have a baby, never dared dream it, and now I’ve got this hinkey feeling that I was never meant to have it and that it’s going to be taken away from me if I don’t take every precaution, if I don’t do everything just right. So I’m not taking another drink until it’s born. I’m not going to eat too much red meat, and I’m going to eat more vegetables. I never have smoked, so that’s not a worry. I’m going to gain exactly as much weight as Dr. Weingold tells me I should, and I’m going to do my exercises, and I’m going to have the most perfect baby the world has ever seen.”

“Of course you are,” he said, filling their wine glasses with sparkling apple cider and Pouring some in a dish for Einstein.

“Nothing will go wrong,” she said.

“Nothing,” he said.

They toasted the baby — and Einstein, who was going to make a terrific godfather, uncle, grandfather, and furry guardian angel.

Nobody mentioned The Outsider.

Later that night, in bed in the dark, after they had made love and were just holding each other, listening to their hearts beating in unison, he dared to say, “Maybe, with what might be coming our way, we shouldn’t be having a baby just now.”

“Hush,” she said.

“But—’’

“We didn’t plan for this baby,” she said. “In fact, we took precautions against it. But it happened anyway. There’s something special about the fact that it happened in spite of all our careful precautions. Don’t you think? In spite of all I said before, about maybe not being meant to have it. well, that’s just the old Nora talking. The new Nora thinks we were meant to have it, that it’s a great gift to us — as Einstein was.”

“But considering what may be coming—”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll deal with that. We’ll come out of that all right. We’re ready. And then we’ll have the baby and really begin our life together. I love you, Travis.”

“I love you,” he said. “God, I love you.”

He realized how much she had changed from the mousy woman he’d met in Santa Barbara last spring. Right now, she was the strong one, the determined one, and she was trying to allay his fears.

She was doing a good job, too. He felt better. He thought about the baby, and he smiled in the dark, with his face buried in her throat. Though he now had three hostages to fortune — Nora, the unborn baby, and Einstein — he was in finer spirits than he had been in longer than he could remember. Nora had allayed his fears.

Vince Nasco sat in an elaborately carved Italian chair with a deep glossy finish that had acquired its remarkable transparency only after a couple of Centuries of regular polishing.

To his right was a sofa and two more chairs and a low table of equal elegance, arranged before a backdrop of bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes that had never been read. He knew they had never been read because Mario Tetragna, whose private study this was, had once pointed to them with pride and said, “Expensive books. And as good as the day they were made because they’ve never been read. Never. Not a one.”

In front of him was the immense desk at which Mario Tetragna reviewed earnings reports from his managers, issued memos about new ventures, and ordered people killed. The don was at that desk now, overflowing his leather chair, eyes closed. He looked as if he was dead of clogged arteries and a fat-impacted heart, but he was only considering Vince’s request.

Mario “The Screwdriver” Tetragna — respected patriarch of his immediate blood family, much-feared don of the broader Tetragna Family that controlled drug traffic, gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking, pornography, and other organized criminal activity in San Francisco — was a five-foot-seven-inch, three-hundred-pound tub with a face as plump and greasy and smooth as an overstuffed sausage casing. It was hard to believe that this rotund specimen could have built an infamous criminal operation. True, Tetragna had been young once, but even then he would have been short, and he had the look of a man who’d been fat all his life. His pudgy, stubby-fingered hands reminded Vince of a baby’s hands. But they were the hands that ruled the Family’s empire.

When Vince had looked into Mario Tetragna’s eyes, he instantly realized that the don’s stature and his all too evident decadence were of no importance. The eyes were those of a reptile: flat, cold, hard, watchful. If you weren’t careful, if you displeased him, he would hypnotize you with those eyes and take you the way a snake would take a mesmerized mouse; he would choke you down whole and digest you.

Vince admired Tetragna. He knew this was a great man, and he wished he could tell the don that he, too, was a man of destiny. But he had learned never to speak of his immortality, for in the past such talk had earned him ridicule from a man he’d thought would understand.

Now, Don Tetragna opened his reptilian eyes and said, “Let me be certain I understand. You are looking for a man. This is not Family business. It is a private grudge.”

“Yes, sir,” Vince said.

“You believe this man may have bought counterfeit papers and may be living under a new name. He would know how to obtain such papers, even though he is not a member of any Family, not of the fratellanza?”

“Yes, sir. His background is such that. he would know.”

“And you believe he would have obtained these papers in either Los Angeles or here,” Don Tetragna said, gesturing toward the window and the city of San Francisco with one soft, pink hand.

Vince said, “On August twenty-fifth he went on the run, starting from Santa Barbara by car because for various reasons he couldn’t take a plane anywhere. I believe he would’ve wanted a new identity as quickly as he could get it. At first, I assumed he’d go south and seek out counterfeit ID in Los

Angeles because that was closest. But I’ve spent the better part of two months talking with all the right people in L.A., Orange County, and even San Diego, all the people to whom this man could’ve gone for high-quality false ID, and I’ve had a few leads, but none panned out. So if he didn’t go south from Santa Barbara, he came north, and the only place in the north where he could get the kind of quality papers he would want—”

“Is in our fair city,” Don Tetragna said, gesturing again toward the window and smiling at the populous slopes below.

Vince supposed that the don was smiling fondly at his beloved San Francisco. But the smile didn’t look fond. It looked avaricious.

“And,” Don Tetragna said, “you would like for me to give you the names of the people who have my authorization to deal in papers such as this man needed.”

“If you can see it in your heart to grant me this favor, I would be most grateful.”

“They won’t have kept records.”

“Yes, sir, but they might remember something.”

“They’re in the business of not remembering.”

“But the human mind never forgets, Don Tetragna. No matter how hard it tries, it never really forgets.”

“How true. And you swear that the man you seek is not a member of any Family?”

“I swear it.”

“This execution must not in any way be traced to my Family.”

“I swear it.”

Don Tetragna closed his eyes again, but not for as long as he had closed them before. When he opened them, he smiled broadly but, as always, it was a humorless smile. He was the least jolly fat man Vince had ever seen. “When your father married a Swedish girl rather than one of his own people, his family despaired and expected the worst. But your mother was a good wife, unquestioning and obedient. And they produced you — a most handsome son. But you’re more than handsome. You’re a good soldier, Vincent. You have done fine, clean work for the Families in New York and New Jersey, for those in Chicago, and also for us on this coast. Not very long ago, you did me the great service of crushing the cockroach Pantangela.”

“For which you paid me most generously, Don Tetragna,”

The Screwdriver waved one hand dismissively. “We’re all paid for our labors. But we’re not talking money here. Your years of loyalty and good service are worth more than money. Therefore, you are owed at least this One favor.”

“Thank you, Don Tetragna.”

“You’ll be given the names of those who provide such papers in this City, and I’ll see that they are all forewarned of your visit. They’ll cooperate fully.”

“If you say they will,” Vince said, rising and bowing with only his head and shoulders, “I know that it is true.”

The don motioned him to Sit down. “But before you attend to this private affair, I’d like you to take another contract. There’s a man in Oakland who is giving me much grief. He thinks I can’t touch him because he’s politically well connected and well guarded. His name is Ramon Velazquez. This will be a difficult job, Vincent.”

Vince carefully concealed his frustration and displeasure. He did not want to take on a troublesome hit right now. He wanted to concentrate on tracking down Travis Cornell and the dog. But he knew Tetragna’s contract was more a demand than an offer. To get the names of the people who sold false papers, he must first waste Velazquez.

He said, “I would be honored to squash any insect that has stung you. And there’ll be no charge this time.”

“Oh, I’d insist on paying you, Vincent.”

As ingratiatingly as he knew how, Vince smiled and said, “Please, Don Tetragna, let me do this favor. It would give me great pleasure.”

Tetragna appeared to consider the request, though this was what he expected — a free hit in return for helping Vince. He put both hands on his enormous belly and patted himself. “I am such a lucky man. Wherever I turn, people want to do me favors, kindnesses.”

“Not lucky, Don Tetragna,” Vince said, sick of their mannered conversation. “You reap what you sow, and if you reap kindness it is because of the seeds of greater kindness you’ve sown so broadly.”

Beaming, Tetragna accepted his offer to waste Velazquez for nothing. The nostrils of his porcine nose flared as if he had smelled something good to eat, and he said, “But now tell me. to satisfy my curiosity, what will you do to this other man when you catch him, this man with whom you have a personal vendetta?”

Blow his brains out and snatch his dog, Vince thought.

But he knew the kind of crap The Screwdriver wanted to hear, the same hard-assed stuff most of these guys wanted to hear from him, their favorite hired killer so he said, “Don Tetragna, I intend to cut off his balls, cut off his ears, cut out his tongue — and only then put an ice pick through his heart and stop his clock.”

The fat man’s eyes glittered with approval. His nostrils flared.

By Thanksgiving, The Outsider had not found the bleached-wood house in Big Sur.

Every night, Travis and Nora locked the shutters over the inside of the windows. They dead-bolted the doors. Retiring to the second floor, they slept with shotguns beside their bed and revolvers on their nightstands.

Sometimes, in the dead hours after midnight, they were awakened by strange noises in the yard or on the porch roof. Einstein padded from window to window, sniffing urgently, but always he indicated that they had nothing to fear. On further investigation, Travis usually found a prowling raccoon or other forest creature.

Travis enjoyed Thanksgiving more than he had thought he would, given the circumstances. He and Nora cooked an elaborate traditional meal for just the three of them: roast turkey with chestnut dressing, a clam casserole, glazed carrots, baked corn, pepper slaw, crescent rolls, and pumpkin pie.

Einstein sampled everything because he had developed a much more sophisticated palate than an ordinary dog. He was still a dog, however, and though the only thing he strongly disliked was the sour pepper slaw, he preferred turkey above all else. That afternoon he spent a lot of time gnawing contentedly on the drumsticks.

Over the weeks, Travis had noticed that, like most dogs, Einstein would go out into the yard occasionally and eat a little grass, though sometimes it seemed to gag him. He did it again on Thanksgiving Day, and when Travis asked him if he liked the taste of grass, Einstein said no. “Then why do you try to eat it sometimes?”

NEED IT.

“Why?”

I DON’T KNOW.

“If you don’t know what you need it for, then how do you know you need it at all? Instinct?”

YES.

“Just instinct?”

DON’T KNOCK IT.

That evening, the three of them sat in piles of pillows on the living-room floor in front of the big stone fireplace, listening to music. Einstein’s golden coat was glossy and thick in the firelight. As Travis sat with one arm around Nora, petting the dog with his free hand, he thought eating grass must be a good idea because Einstein looked healthy and robust. Einstein sneezed a few times and coughed now and then, but those seemed natural reactions to the Thanksgiving overindulgence and to the warm, dry air in front of the fireplace. Travis was not for a moment concerned about the dog’s health.

On the afternoon of Friday, November 26, the balmy day after Thanksgiving, Garrison Dilworth was aboard his beloved forty-two-foot Hinckley Sou’wester, Amazing Grace, in his boat slip in the Santa Barbara harbor. He was polishing brightwork and, diligently bent to his task, almost didn’t see the two men in business suits as they approached along the dock. He looked up as they were about to announce themselves, and he knew who they were— not their names, but who they must work for — even before they showed him their credentials.

One was named Johnson.

The other was Soames.

Pretending puzzlement and interest, he invited them aboard.

Stepping off the dock, down onto the deck, the one named Johnson said, “We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Dilworth.”

“What about?” Garrison inquired, wiping his hands on a white rag.

Johnson was a black man of ordinary size, even a little gaunt, haggard-looking, yet imposing.

Garrison said, “National Security Agency, you say? Surely, you don’t think I’m in the hire of the KGB?”

Johnson smiled thinly. “You’ve done work for Nora Devon?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Nora? Are you serious? Well, I can assure you that Nora isn’t the sort of person to be involved—”

“You are her attorney, then?” Johnson asked.

Garrison glanced at the freckle-faced younger man, Agent Soames, and again raised his eyebrows as if to ask if Johnson was always this chilly. Soames stared expressionlessly, taking his cue from the boss.

Oh my, we’re in trouble with these two, Garrison thought.

After his frustrating and unsuccessful questioning of Dilworth, Lem sent Cliff Soames off on a series of errands: begin the procedures to obtain a court order allowing taps to be placed on the attorney’s home and office telephones; find the three pay phones nearest his office and the three nearest his house, and arrange for taps to be put on those as well; obtain telephone-company records of all long-distance calls made from Dilworth’s home and office phones; bring in extra men from the Los Angeles office to staff an around-the-clock surveillance of Dilworth, starting within three hours.

While Cliff was attending to those things, Lem strolled around the boat docks in the harbor, hoping the sounds of the sea and the calming sight of rolling water would help clear his mind and focus his thoughts on his problems. God knew, he needed desperately to get focused. Over six months had passed since the dog and The Outsider had escaped from Banodyne, and Lem had lost almost fifteen pounds in the pursuit. He had not slept well in months, had little interest in food, and even his sex life had suffered.

There’s such a thing as trying too hard, he told himself. It causes constipation of the mind.

But such admonishments did no good. He was still as blocked as a pipe full of concrete.

For three months, since they found Cornell’s Airstream in the school parking lot the day after Hockney’s murder, Lem had known that Cornell and the woman had been returning, on that August night, from a trip to Vegas, Tahoe, and Monterey. Nightclub table cards from Vegas, hotel stationery, matchbooks, and gasoline credit-card receipts had been found in the trailer and pickup truck, pinpointing every stop of their itinerary. He had not known

the woman’s identity, yet he had assumed she was a girlfriend, nothing more, but of course he should never have assumed any such thing. Only a few days ago, when one of his own agents went to Vegas to marry, Lem had finally realized that Cornell and the woman could have gone to Vegas for that same purpose. Suddenly their trip had looked like a honeymoon. Within hours, he confirmed that Cornell had, in fact, been married in Clark County, Nevada, on August 11, to Nora Devon of Santa Barbara.

Seeking the woman, he discovered that her house had been sold six weeks ago, after she’d vanished with Cornell. Looking into the sale, he found she had been represented by her attorney, Garrison Dilworth.

By freezing Cornell’s assets, Lem thought he had made it harder for the man to continue a fugitive existence, but now he discovered that Dilworth had helped slip twenty thousand out of Cornell’s bank and that all of the proceeds from the sale of the woman’s house had been transferred to her somehow. Furthermore, through Dilworth, she had closed out her local bank accounts four weeks ago, and that money also was in her hands. She and her husband and the dog might now have sufficient resources to remain in hiding for years.

Standing on the dock, Lem stared at the sun-spangled sea, which slapped rhythmically against the pilings. The motion nauseated him.

He looked up at the soaring, cawing seagulls. Instead of being calmed by their graceful flight, he grew edgy.

Garrison Dilworth was intelligent, clever, a born fighter. Now that the link had been made between him and the Cornells, the attorney promised to take the NSA to court to unfreeze Travis’s assets. “You’ve filed no charges against the man,” Dilworth had said. “What toadying judge would grant the power to freeze his accounts? Your manipulation of the legal system to hamper an innocent citizen is unconscionable.”

Lem could have filed charges against Travis and Nora Cornell for the violation of all sorts of laws designed to preserve the national security, and by doing so he’d have made it impossible for Dilworth to continue lending assistance to the fugitives. But filing charges meant attracting media attention. Then the harebrained story about Cornell’s pet panther — and perhaps the NSA’s entire cover-up — would come down like a paper house in a thunderstorm.

His only hope was that Dilworth would try to get in touch with the Cornells to tell them that his association with them had been at last uncovered and that contact between them would have to be far more circumspect in the future. Then, with luck, Lem would pinpoint the Cornells through their telephone number. He did not have much hope of everything working out that easily. Dilworth was no fool.

Looking around at the Santa Barbara yacht harbor, Lem tried to relax, for he knew he needed to be calm and fresh if he was to outthink the old attorney. The hundreds of pleasure boats at the docks, sails furled or packed away, bobbed gently on the rolling tide, and other boats with unfurled sails glided Serenely out toward the open sea, and people in bathing suits were sunning on the decks or having early cocktails, and the gulls darted like stitching needles across the blue and white quilt of the sky, and people were fishing from the stone breakwater, and the scene was achingly picturesque, but it was also an image of leisure, great and calculated leisure, with which Lem Johnson could not identify. To Lem, too much leisure was a dangerous distraction from the cold, hard realities of life, from the competitive world, and any leisure activity that lasted longer than a few hours made him nervous and anxious to get back to work. Here was leisure measured in days, in weeks; here, in these expensive and lovingly crafted boats, was leisure measured in month long sailing excursions up and down the coast, so much leisure that it made Lern break into a sweat, made him want to scream.

He had The Outsider to worry about as well. There had been no sign of it since the day Travis Cornell had shot at it in his rented house, back at the end of August. Three months ago. What had the thing been doing in those three months? Where had it been hiding? Was it still after the dog? Was it dead?

Maybe, out in the wilds, it had been bitten by a rattlesnake, or maybe it had fallen off a cliff.

God, Lem thought, let it be dead, please, give me that much of a break. Let it be dead.

But he knew The Outsider was not dead because that would be too easy. Nothing in life was that easy. The damn thing was out there, stalking the dog. It had probably suppressed the urge to kill people it encountered because it knew each murder drew Lem and his men closer to it, and it did not want to be found before it had killed the dog. When the beast had torn the dog and the Cornells to bloody pieces, then it would once again begin to vent its rage on the population at large, and every death would hang heavily on Lem Johnson’s conscience.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the murders of the Banodyne scientists was dead in the water. In fact, that second NSA task force had been dismantled. Obviously, the Soviets had hired outsiders for those hits, and there was no way to find out whom they had brought in.

A deeply tanned guy in white shorts and Top-Siders passed Lem and said, “Beautiful day!”

“Like hell,” Lem said.

The day after Thanksgiving, Travis walked into the kitchen to get a glass of milk and saw Einstein having a sneezing fit, but he did not think much of it. Nora, even quicker than Travis to worry about the retriever’s welfare, was also unconcerned. In California, the pollen count peaks in spring and autumn; however, because the climate permits a twelve-month cycle of flowers, no season is pollen-free. Living in the woods, the situation was exacerbated.

That night, Travis was awakened by a sound he could not identify. Instantly alert, every trace of sleep banished, he sat up in the dark and reached for the shotgun on the floor beside the bed. Holding the Mossberg, he listened for the noise, and in a minute or so it came again: in the second-floor hallway.

He eased out of bed without waking Nora and went cautiously to the doorway. The hail, like most places in the house, was equipped with a low-wattage night-light, and in the pale glow Travis saw that the noise came from the dog. Einstein was standing near the head of the stairs, coughing and shaking his head.

Travis went to him, and the retriever looked up. “You okay?”

A quick wag of the tale: Yes.

He stooped and ruffled the dog’s coat. “You sure?”

Yes.

For a minute, the dog pressed against him, enjoying being petted. Then he turned away from Travis, coughed a couple of times, and went downstairs.

Travis followed. In the kitchen, he found Einstein slurping water from the dish.

Having emptied the dish, the retriever went to the pantry, turned on the light, and began to paw lettered tiles out of the Lucite tubes.

THIRSTY.

“Are you sure you feel well?”

FINE. JUST THIRSTY. NIGHTMARE WOKE ME.

Surprised, Travis said, “You dream?”

DON’T YOU?

“Yeah. Too much.”

He refilled the retriever’s water dish, and Einstein emptied it again, and Travis filled it a second time. By then the dog had had enough. Travis expected him to want to go outside to pee, but the dog went upstairs instead and settled in the hall by the door of the bedroom in which Nora still slept.

In a whisper, Travis said, “Listen, if you want to come in and sleep beside the bed, it’s all right.”

That was what Einstein wanted. He curled up on the floor on Travis’s side of the bed.

In the dark, Travis could reach out and easily touch both the shotgun and Einstein. He took greater reassurance from the presence of the dog than from the gun.

Saturday afternoon, just two days after Thanksgiving, Garrison Dilworth got in his Mercedes and drove slowly away from his house. Within two blocks he confirmed that the NSA still had a tail on him. It was a green Ford, Probably the same one that had followed him last evening. They stayed well back of him, and they were discreet, but he was not blind.

He still had not called Nora and Travis. Because he was being followed, he suspected his phones were being tapped as well. He could have gone to a pay phone, but he was afraid that the NSA could eavesdrop on the conversation with a directional microphone or some other high-tech gadget. And if they managed to record the push-button tones that he produced by punching in the Cornells’ number, they could easily translate those tones into digits and trace the number back to Big Sur. He would have to resort to deception to contact Travis and Nora safely.

He knew he had better act soon, before Travis or Nora phoned him. These days, with the technology available to them, the NSA could trace the call back to its origins as fast as Garrison would be able to warn Travis that the line was tapped.

So at two o’clock Saturday afternoon, chaperoned by the green Ford, he drove to Della Colby’s house in Montecito to take her to his boat, the Amazing Grace, for a lazy afternoon in the sun. At least that was what he had told her on the phone.

Della was Judge Jack Colby’s widow. She and Jack were Garrison’s and Francine’s best friends for twenty-five years before death broke up the foursome. Jack had died one year after Francine. Della and Garrison remained very close; they frequently went to dinner together, went dancing and walking and sailing. Initially, their relationship had been strictly platonic; they were simply old friends who had the fortune — or misfortune — to outlast everyone they most cared about, and they needed each other because they shared so many good times and memories that would be diminished when there was no longer anyone left with whom to reminisce. A year ago, when they suddenly found themselves in bed together, they had been surprised and overwhelmed with guilt. They felt as if they were cheating on their spouses, though Jack and Francine had died years ago. The guilt passed, of course, and now they were grateful for the companionship and gently burning passion that had unexpectedly brightened their late-autumn years.

When he pulled into Della’s driveway, she came out of the house, locked the front door, and hurried to his car. She was dressed in boat shoes, white slacks, a blue- and white-striped sweater, and a blue windbreaker. Although she was sixty-nine, and though her short hair was snow-white, she looked fifteen years younger.

He got out of the Mercedes, gave her a hug and a kiss, and said, “Can we go in your car?”

She blinked, “Are you having trouble with yours?”

“No,” he said. “I’d just rather take yours.”

“Sure.”

She backed her Caddy out of the garage, and he got in on the passenger’s side. As she pulled into the street, he said, “I’m afraid my car might be bugged, and I don’t want them hearing what I’ve got to tell you.”

Her expression was priceless.

Laughing, he said, “No, I’ve not gone senile overnight. If you’ll keep an eye on the rearview mirrow as you drive, you’ll see we’re being followed. They’re very good, very subtle, but they’re not invisible.”

He gave her time, and after a few blocks Della said, “The green Ford, is it?”

“That’s them.”

“What’ve you gotten yourself into, dear?”

“Don’t go straight to the harbor. Drive to the farmer’s market, and we’ll buy some fresh fruit. Then drive to a liquor store, and we’ll buy some wine. By then, I’ll have told you everything.”

“Have you some secret life I’ve never suspected?” she asked, grinning at him. “Are you a geriatric James Bond?”

Yesterday, Lem Johnson had reopened a temporary headquarters in a claustrophobic office at the Santa Barbara Courthouse. The room had one narrow window. The walls were dark, and the overhead lighting fixture was so dim it left the corners full of hanging shadows like misplaced scarecrows. The borrowed furniture consisted of rejects from other offices. He had worked out of here in the day following the Hockney killing, but had closed it up after a week, when there was nothing more to be done in the area. Now, with the hope that Dilworth would lead them to the Cornells, Lem reopened the cramped field HQ, plugged in the phones, and waited for developments.

He shared the office with one assisting agent — Jim Vann — who was an almost too-earnest and too-dedicated twenty-five-year-old.

At the moment, Cliff Soames was in charge of the six-man team at the harbor, overseeing not only the NSA agents spotted throughout the area, but also coordinating the coverage of Garrison Dilworth with the Harbor Patrol and the Coast Guard. The shrewd old man apparently realized he was being followed, so Lem expected him, to make a break, to try to shake surveillance long enough to place a call to the Cornells in private. The most logical way for Garrison to throw off his tail was to head out to sea, go up or down the coast, put ashore on a launch, and telephone Cornell before his pursuers could relocate him. But he would be surprised to find himself accompanied out of the harbor by the local patrol; then, at sea, he would be followed by a Coast Guard cutter standing by for that purpose.

At three-forty, Cliff called to report that Dilworth and his lady friend were Sitting on the deck of the Amazing Grace, eating fruit and sipping wine, reminiscing a lot, laughing a little. “From what we can pick up with directional microphones and from what we can see, I’d say they don’t have any intention of going anywhere. Except maybe to bed. They sure do seem to be a randy old pair.”

“Stay with them,” Lem said. “I don’t trust him.”

Another call came through from the search team that had secretly entered Dilworth’s house minutes after he had left. They had found nothing related to the Cornells or the dog.

Dilworth’s office had been carefully searched last night, and nothing had been found there, either. Likewise, a study of his phone records did not produce a number for the Cornells; if he had called them in the past, he always did so from a pay phone. An examination of his AT&T credit-card records showed no such calls, so if he had used a pay phone, he had not billed it to himself but had reversed the charges to the Cornells, leaving nothing to be traced. Which was not a good sign. Obviously, Dilworth had been exceedingly cautious even before he had known he was being watched.

Saturday, afraid the dog might be coming down with a cold, Travis kept an eye on Einstein. But the retriever sneezed only a couple of times and did not cough at all, and he seemed to be fit.

A freight company delivered ten large cartons containing all of Nora’s finished canvases that had been left behind in Santa Barbara. A couple of weeks ago, using a friend’s return address to insure that no link would exist between him and Nora “Aimes,” Garrison Dilworth had shipped the paintings to their new house.

Now, unpacking and unwrapping the canvases, creating piles of paper padding in the living room, Nora was transported. Travis knew that, for many years, this work was what she had lived for, and he could see that having the paintings with her again was not only a great joy to her but would probably spur her to return to her new canvases, in the spare bedroom, with greater enthusiasm.

“You want to call Garrison and thank him?” he asked.

“Yes, absolutely!” she said. “But first, let’s unpack them all and make sure none of them is damaged.”

Posted around the harbor, posing as yacht owners and fishermen, Cliff Soames and the other NSA agents watched Dilworth and Della Colby and eavesdropped on them electronically as the day waned. Twilight descended without any indication that Dilworth intended to put to sea. Soon night fell, yet the attorney and his woman made no move.

Half an hour after dark, Cliff Soames got weary of pretending to fish off the stern of a Cheoy Lee sixty-six-foot sport yacht docked four slips away from Dilworth’s. He climbed the steps, went into the pilot’s cabin, and pulled the headphones off Hank Gorner, the agent who was monitoring the old couple’s conversation through a directional mike. He listened for himself.

“. the time in Acapulco when Jack hired that fishing boat. .

“. yes, the whole crew looked like pirates!”

“. we thought we’d have our throats cut, be dumped at sea. .

but then it turned out they were all divinity students. studying to be missionaries. and Jack said. .

Returning the headphones, Cliff said, “Still reminiscing!”

The other agent nodded. The cabin light was out, and Hank was illuminated only by a small, hooded, built-in work lamp above the chart table, so his features looked elongated and strange. “That’s the way it’s been all day. At least they have some great stories.”

“I’m going to the john,” Cliff said wearily. “Be right back.”

“Take ten hours if you want. They’re not going anywhere.”

A few minutes later, when Cliff returned, Hank Gorner pulled off his headphones and said, “They went below decks.”

“Something up?”

“Not what we’d hope. They’re gonna jump each other’s bones.”

“Oh.”

“Cliff, jeez, I don’t want to listen to this.”

“Listen,” Cliff insisted.

Hank put one earphone to his head. “Jeez, they’re undressing each other, and they’re as old as my grandparents. This is embarrassing.”

Cliff sighed.

“Now they’re quiet,” Hank said, a frown of distaste creeping over his face. “Any second they’re gonna start moaning, Cliff.”

“Listen,” Cliff insisted. He snatched a light jacket off the table and went outside again so he wouldn’t have to listen.

He took up his position in a chair on the stern deck, lifting the fishing pole once more.

The night was cool enough for the jacket, but otherwise it could not have been better. The air was clear and sweet, scented with just a slight tang of the sea. The moonless sky was full of stars. The water slapped lullingly against the dock pilings and against the hulls of the moored boats. Somewhere across the harbor, on another craft, someone was playing love songs from the forties. An engine turned over — whump-whump-whump — and there was something romantic about the sound. Cliff thought how nice it would be to own a boat and set out on a long trip through the South Pacific, toward palm-shaded islands— Suddenly that idling engine roared, and Cliff realized it was the Amazing

Grace. As he rose from his chair, dropping the fishing pole, he saw Dilworth’s boat reversing out of its slip recklessly fast. It was a sailboat, and subconsciously Cliff had not expected it to move with sails furled, but it had auxiliary engines; they knew this, were prepared for this, but still it startled him. He hurried back to the cabin, “Hank, get Harbor Patrol. Dilworth’s on the move.”

“But they’re in the sack.”

“Like hell they are!” Cliff ran out to the bow deck and saw that Dilworth had already swung the Amazing Grace around and was headed toward the mouth of the harbor. No lights at the aft end of the boat, the area around

the wheel, just one small light forward. Jesus, he was really making a break for it.

By the time they unpacked all one hundred canvases, hung a few, and carried the rest into the unused bedroom, they were starving.

“Garrison’s probably having dinner now, too,” Nora said. “I don’t want to interrupt him. Let’s call him after we’ve eaten.”

In the pantry, Einstein released letters from the Lucite tubes and spelled out a message: IT’S DARK. CLOSE THE SHUTTERS FIRST.

Surprised and unsettled by his own uncharacteristic inattention to security, Travis hurried from room to room, closing the interior shutters and slipping the bolt-type latches in place. Fascinated by Nora’s paintings and delighted by the pleasure she exhibited in their arrival, he had not even noticed that night had arrived.

Halfway toward the mouth of the harbor, confident that distance and the engine’s roar now protected them from electronic eavesdroppers, Garrison said, “Take me close to the outer point of the north breakwater, along the channel’s edge.”

“Are you sure about this?” Della asked worriedly. “You’re not a teenager.”

He patted her bottom and said, “I’m better.”

“Dreamer.”

He kissed her on the cheek and edged forward along the starboard railing, where he got into position for his jump. He was wearing dark blue swim trunks. He should have had a wetsuit because the water would be chilly. But he thought he ought to be able to swim to the breakwater, around the point of it, and haul himself out on the north side, out of sight of the harbor, all in a few minutes, long before the water temperature leached too much body heat from him.

“Company!” Della called from the wheel.

He looked back and saw a Harbor Patrol boat leaving the docks to the south, coming toward them on their port side.

They won’t stop us, he thought. They have no legal right.

But he had to go over the side before the Patrol swung in and took up a position astern. From behind, they would see him vault the railing. As long as they were to port, the Amazing Grace would conceal his departure, and the boat’s phosphorescent wake would cover the first few seconds of his swim around the point of the breakwater, long enough for the Patrol’s attention to have moved on with Della.

They were heading out at the highest speed with which Della felt comfortable. The Hinckley Sou’wester jolted through the slightly choppy waters with enough force to make it necessary for Garrison to hold fast to the railing. Still, they seemed to move past the stone wall of the breakwater at a frustratingly slow pace, and the Harbor Patrol drew nearer, but Garrison waited, waited, because he didn’t want to go into the harbor a hundred yards short of its end. If he went in too soon, he would not be able to swim all the way out to the point and around it; instead, he would have to swim straight to the breakwater and climb its flank, within full sight of all observers. Now the patrol closed to within a hundred yards — he could see them when he rose from a crouch and looked across the Hinckley’s cabin roof — and began to swing around behind them, and Garrison could not wait much longer, could not— “The point!” Della called from the wheel.

He threw himself over the railing, into the dark water, away from the boat.

The sea was cold. It shocked the breath out of him. He sank, could not find the surface, was seized by panic, flailed, thrashed, but then broke through to the air, gasping.

The Amazing Grace was surprisingly close. He felt as if he had been thrashing in confusion beneath the surface for a minute or more, but it must have been only a second or two because his boat was not yet far away. The Harbor Patrol was close, too, and he decided that even the churning wake of the Amazing Grace did not give him enough cover, so he took a deep breath and went under again, staying down as long as he could. When he came up, both Della and her shadowers were well past the mouth of the harbor, turning south, and he was safe from observation.

The outgoing tide was swiftly carrying him past the point of the northern breakwater, which was a wall of loose boulders and rocks that rose more than twenty feet above the waterline, mottled gray and black ramparts in the night. He not only had to swim around the end of that barrier but had to move toward land against the resistant current. Without further delay, he began to swim, wondering why on earth he had thought this would be a snap.

You’re almost seventy-one, he told himself as he stroked past the rocky point, which was illuminated by a navigation-warning light. What ever possessed you to play hero?

But he knew what possessed him: a deep-seated belief that the dog must remain free, that it must not be treated as the government’s property. If we’ve come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God. That was what he had told Nora and Travis — and Einstein — on the night Ted Hockney had been killed, and he had meant every word he’d said.

Salt water stung his eyes, blurred his vision. Some had gotten into his mouth, and it burned a small ulcer on his lower lip.

He fought the current, pulled past the point of the breakwater, out of sight of the harbor, then slashed toward the rocks. Reaching them at last, he hung onto the first boulder he touched, gasping, not yet quite able to pull himself out of the water.

In the intervening weeks since Nora and Travis went on the run, Garrison had plenty of time to think about Einstein, and he felt even more strongly that to imprison an intelligent creature, innocent of all crime, was an act of grave injustice, regardless of whether the prisoner was a dog. Garrison had devoted his life to the pursuit of justice that was made possible by the laws of a democracy, and to the maintenance of the freedom that grew from this justice. When a man of ideals decides he is too old to risk everything for what he believes in, then he is no longer a man of ideals. He may no longer be a man at all. That hard truth had driven him, in spite of his age, to make this night swim. Funny — that a long life of idealism should, after seven decades, be put to the ultimate test over the fate of a dog.

But what a dog.

And what a wondrous new world we live in, he thought.

Genetic technology might have to be rechristened “genetic art,” for every work of art was an act of creation, and no act of creation was finer or more beautiful than the creation of an intelligent mind.

Getting his second wind, he heaved entirely out of the water, onto the sloped north flank of the northern breakwater. That barrier rose between him and the harbor, and he moved inland, along the rocks, while the sea surged at his left side. He’d brought a waterproof penlight, clipped to his trunks, and now he used it to proceed, barefoot, with the greatest caution, afraid of slipping on the wet stones and breaking a leg or an ankle.

He could see the city lights a few hundred yards ahead, and the vague silvery line of the beach.

He was cold but not as cold as he had been in the water. His heart was beating fast but not as fast as before.

He was going to make it.

Lem Johnson drove down from the temporary HO in the courthouse, and Cliff met him at the empty boat slip where the Amazing Grace had been tied up. A wind had risen. Hundreds of craft along the docks were wallowing slightly in their berths; they creaked, and slack sail lines clicked and clinked against their masts. Dock lamps and neighboring boat lanterns cast shimmering patterns of light on the dark, oily-looking water where Dilworth’s forty-two-footer had been moored.

“Harbor Patrol?” Lem asked worriedly.

“They followed him out to open sea. Seemed as if he was going to turn north, swung close by the point, but then he went south instead.”

“Did Dilworth see them?”

“He had to. As you see — no fog, lots of stars, clear as a bell.”

“Good. I want him to be aware. Coast Guard?”

“I’ve talked to the cutter,” Cliff assured him. “They’re on the spot, flanking the Amazing Grace at a hundred yards, heading south along the coast.”

Shivering in the rapidly cooling air, Lem said, “They know he might try putting ashore in a rubber boat or whatever?”

“They know,” Cliff said. “He can’t do it under their noses.”

“Is the Guard sure he sees them?”

“They’re lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Good. I want him to know it’s hopeless. If we can just keep him from warning the Cornells, then they’ll call him sooner or later — and we’ll have them. Even if they call him from a pay phone, we’ll know their general location.”

In addition to taps on Dilworth’s home and office phones, the NSA had installed tracing equipment that would lock open a line the moment a connection was made, and keep it open even after both parties hung up, until the caller’s number and street address were ascertained and verified. Even if Dilworth shouted a warning and hung up the instant he recognized one of the Cornells’ voices, it would be too late. The only way he could try to foil the NSA was by not answering his phone at all. But even that would do him no good because, after the sixth ring, every incoming call was being automatically “answered” by the NSA’s equipment, which opened the line and began tracing procedures.

“The only thing could screw us now,” Lem said, “is if Dilworth gets to a phone we don’t have monitored and warns the Cornells not to call him.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Cliff said. “We’re on him tight.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” Lem worried. As the wind got hold of it, a metal clip on a loose line clanged loudly off a spar, and the sound made Lem jump. “My dad always said the worst happens when you least expect it.”

Cliff shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, the more I hear you quote your father, the more I think he must’ve been just about the gloomiest man who ever lived.”

Looking around at the wallowing boats and wind-chopped water, feeling as if he was moving instead of standing still in a moving world, a little queasy, Lem said, “Yeah. my dad was a great guy in his way, but he was also. impossible.”

Hank Gorner shouted, “Hey!” He was running along the dock from the

Cheoy Lee where he and Cliff had been stationed all day. “I’ve just been on

With the Guard cutter. They’re playing their searchlight over the Amazing

Grace, intimidating a little, and they tell me they don’t see Dilworth. Just

the woman.”

Lem said, “But, Christ, he’s running the boat!”

“No,” Gorner said. “There’s no lights in the Amazing Grace, but the Guard’s searchlight brightens up the whole thing, and they say the woman’s at the wheel.”

“It’s all right. He’s just below deck,” Cliff said.

“No,” Lem said as his heart started to pound. “He wouldn’t be below deck

at a time like this. He’d be studying the cutter, deciding whether to keep going or turn back. He’s not on the Amazing Grace.”

“But he has to be! He didn’t get off before she pulled out of the dock.”

Lem stared out across the crystalline-clear harbor, toward the light near the end of the northern breakwater. “You said the damn boat swung out close to the north point, and it looked as if he was going north, but then he suddenly swung south.”

“Shit,” Cliff said.

“That’s where he dropped off,” Lem said. “Out by the point of the northern breakwater. Without a rubber boat. Swimming, by God.”

“He’s too old for that crap,” Cliff protested.

“Evidently not. He went around the other side, and he’s headed for a phone on one of the northern public beaches. We’ve got to stop him, and fast.”

Cliff cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted the first names of the four agents who were positioned on other boats along the docks. His voice carried, echoing flatly off the water, in spite of the wind. Men came running, and even as Cliff’s shouts faded away across the harbor, Lem was sprinting for his car in the parking lot.

The worst happens when you least expect it.

As Travis was rinsing dinner dishes, Nora said, “Look at this.”

He turned and saw that she was standing by Einstein’s food and water dishes. The water was gone, but half his dinner remained.

She said, “When have you known him to leave a single scrap?”

“Never.” Frowning, Travis wiped his hands on the kitchen towel. “The last few days. I’ve thought maybe he’s coming down with a cold or something, but he says he feels fine. And today he hasn’t been sneezing or coughing like he was.”

They went into the living room, where the retriever was reading Black Beauty with the help of his page-turning machine.

They knelt beside him, and he looked up, and Nora said, “Are you sick, Einstein?”

The retriever barked once, softly: No.

“Are you sure?”

A quick wag of the tail: Yes.

“You didn’t finish your dinner,” Travis said.

The dog yawned elaborately.

Nora said, “Are you telling us you’re a little tired?”

Yes.

“If you were feeling ill,” Travis said, “you’d let us know right away, wouldn’t you, fur face?”

Yes.

Nora insisted on examining Einstein’s eyes, mouth, and ears for obvious signs of infection, but at last she said, “Nothing. He seems okay. I guess even Superdog has a right to be tired once in a while.”

The wind had come up fast. It was chilly, and under its lash the waves rose higher than they had been all day.

A mass of gooseflesh, Garrison reached the landward end of the north flank of the harbor’s northern breakwater. He was relieved to depart the hard and sometimes jagged stones of that rampart for the sandy beach. He was sure he had scraped and cut both feet; they felt hot, and his left foot stung with each step, forcing him to limp.

At first he stayed close to the surf, away from the tree-lined park that lay behind the beach. Over there, where park lamps lit the walkways and where spotlights dramatically highlighted the palms, he would be more easily seen from the street. He did not think anyone would be looking for him; he was sure his trick had worked. However, if anyone was looking for him, he did not want to call attention to himself.

The gusting wind tore foam off the incoming breakers and flung it in Garrison’s face, so he felt as if he was continuously running through spiders’ webs. The stuff stung his eyes, which had finally stopped tearing from his dunk in the sea, and at last he was forced to move away from the surf line, farther up the beach, where the softer sand met the lawn but where he was still out of the lights.

Young people were on the darkish beach, dressed for the chill of the night:

couples on blankets, cuddling; small groups smoking dope, listening to music. Eight or ten teenage boys were gathered around two all-terrain vehicles with balloon tires, which were not allowed on the beach during the day and most likely weren’t allowed at night.. They were drinking beer beside a pit they’d dug in the sand to bury their bottles if they saw a cop approaching; they were talking loudly about girls, and indulging in horseplay. No one gave Garrison more than a glance as he hurried by. In California, health-food-and-exercise fanatics were as common as street muggers in New York, and if an old man wanted to take a cold swim and then run on the beach in the dark, he was no more remarkable or noteworthy than a priest in a church.

As he headed north, Garrison scanned the park to his right in search of pay phones. They would probably be in pairs, prominently illuminated, on islands of concrete beside one of the walkways or perhaps near one of the public comfort stations.

He was beginning to despair, certain that he must have passed at least one group of telephones, that his old eyes were failing him, but then he saw what he was looking for. Two pay phones with winglike sound shields. Brightly lighted. They were about a hundred feet in from the beach, midway between the sand and the street that flanked the other side of the park.

Turning his back to the churning sea, he slowed to catch his breath and walked across the grass, under the wind-shaken fronds of a cluster of three stately royal palms. He was still forty feet from the phones when he saw a car, traveling at high speed, suddenly break and pull to the curb with a squeal of tires, parking in a direct line from the phones. Garrison didn’t know who they were, but he decided not to take any chances. He sidled into the cover provided by a huge old double-boled date palm that was, fortunately, not one of those fitted with decorative spotlights. From the notch between the trunks, he had a view of the phones and of the walkway leading out to the curb where the car had parked.

Two men got out of the sedan. One sprinted north along the park perimeter, looking inward, searching for something.

The other man rushed straight into the park along the walkway. When he reached the lighted area around the phones, his identity was clear — and shocking.

Lemuel Johnson.

Behind the trunks of the Siamese date palms, Garrison drew his arms and legs closer to his body, sure that the joined bases of the trees provided him with plenty of cover but trying to make himself smaller nevertheless.

Johnson went to the first phone, lifted the handset — and tried to tear it out of the coinbox. It had one of those flexible metal cords, and he yanked on it hard, repeatedly, with little effect. Finally, cursing the instrument’s toughness, he ripped the handset loose and threw it across the park. Then he destroyed the second phone.

For a moment, as Johnson turned away from the phones and walked straight toward Garrison, the attorney thought that he had been seen. But Johnson stopped after only a few steps and scanned the seaward end of the park and the beach beyond. His gaze did not appear to rest even momentarily on the date palms behind which Garrison hid.

“You damn crazy old bastard,” Johnson said, then hurried back toward his car.

Crouched in shadows behind the palms, Garrison grinned because he knew whom the NSA man was talking about. Suddenly, the attorney did not mind the chill wind sweeping off the night sea behind him.

Damn crazy old bastard or geriatric James Bond — take your pick. Either way, he was still a man to be reckoned with.

In the basement switching room of the telephone company, Agents Rick Olbier and Denny Jones were tending the NSA’s electronic tapping and tracing equipment, monitoring Garrison Dilworth’s office and home lines. It was dull duty, and they played cards to make the time pass: two-hand pinochle and five-hundred rummy, neither of which was a good game, but the very idea of two-hand poker repelled them.

When a call came through to Dilworth’s home number at fourteen minutes past eight o’clock, Olbier and Jones reacted with far more excitement than the situation warranted because they were desperate for action. Olbier dropped his cards on the floor, and Jones threw his on the table, and they reached for the two headsets as if this was World War II and they were expecting to overhear a top-secret conversation between Hitler and Goring.

Their equipment was set to open the line and lock in a tracer pulse if Dilworth did not answer by the sixth ring. Because he knew the attorney was not at home and that the phone would not be answered, Olbier overrode the program and opened the line after the second ring.

On the computer screen, green letters announced: NOW TRACING.

And on the open line, a man said, “Hello?”

“Hello,” Jones said into the mike on his headset.

The caller’s number and his local Santa Barbara address appeared on the screen. This system worked much like the 911 police emergency computer, providing instant identification of the caller. But now, above the address on the screen, a company’s rather than an individual’s name appeared: TELEPHONE SOLICITATIONS, INC.

On the line, responding to Denny Jones, the caller said, “Sir, I’m pleased to tell you that you have been selected to receive a free eight-by-ten photograph and ten free pocket prints of any—”

Jones said, “Who is this?”

The computer was now searching data banks of Santa Barbara street addresses to cross-check the ID of the caller.

The voice on the phone said, “Well, I’m calling in behalf of Olin Mills, sir, the photography studio, where the finest quality—”

“Wait a sec,” Jones said.

The computer verified the identity of the telephone subscriber who placed the call: Dilworth was getting a sales pitch, nothing more.

“I don’t want any!” Jones said sharply, and disconnected.

“Shit,” Olbier said.

“Pinochle?” Jones said.

In addition to the six men who had been at the harbor, Lem called in four more from the temporary HQ at the courthouse.

He stationed five along the perimeter of the Oceanside park, a few hundred yards apart. Their job was to watch the wide avenue that separated the park from a business district, where there were a lot of motels but also restaurants, Yogurt shops, gift shops, and other retail enterprises. All of the businesses had phones, of course, and even some of the motels would have pay phones in their front offices; using any of them, the attorney could alert Travis and Nora Cornell. At this hour on a Saturday evening, some stores were closed, but some of them — and all of the restaurants — were open. Dilworth must not be permitted to cross the street.

The sea wind was stiffening and growing chillier. The men stood with their hands in their jackets, heads tucked down, shivering.

Palm fronds were rattled by sudden gusts. Tree-roosting birds shrilled in alarm, then resettled.

Lem sent another agent to the southwest corner of the park, out by the base of the breakwater that separated the public beach from the harbor on the other side. His job was to prevent Dilworth from returning to the breakwater, climbing it, and sneaking back across the harbor to phones in another part of the city.

A seventh man was dispatched to the northwest corner of the park, down by the water line, to be sure Dilworth did not proceed north onto private beaches and into residential areas where he might persuade someone to allow him to use an unmonitored phone.

Just Lem, Cliff, and Hank were left to comb through the park and adjoining beach in search of the attorney. He knew he had too few men for the job, but these ten — plus Olbier and Jones at the telephone company — were the only people he had in town. He could see no point ordering in more agents from the Los Angeles office; by the time they arrived, Dilworth would either have been found and stopped — or would have succeeded in calling the Cornells.

The roofless all-terrain vehicle was equipped with a roll bar. It had two bucket seats, behind which was a four-foot-long cargo area that could accommodate additional passengers or a considerable amount of gear.

Garrison was flat on his stomach on the floor of the cargo hold, under a blanket. Two teenage boys were in the bucket seats, and two more were in the cargo hold on top of Garrison, sprawled as if they were sitting on nothing more than a pile of blankets. They were trying to keep the worst of their weight off Garrison, but he still felt half-crushed.

The engine sounded like angry wasps: a high, hard buzzing. It deafened Garrison because his right ear was flat against the cargo bed, which transmitted and amplified every vibration.

Fortunately, the soft beach provided a relatively smooth ride.

The vehicle stopped accelerating, slowed, and the engine noise dropped dramatically.

“Shit,” one of the boys whispered to Garrison, “there’s a guy ahead with a flashlight, flagging us down.”

They drew to a halt, and over the whispery idling of the engine, Garrison heard a man say, “Where you boys headed?”

“Up the beach.”

“That’s private property up there. You have any right up there?”

“It’s where we live,” Tommy, the driver, responded.

“Is that so?”

“Don’t we look like a bunch of spoiled rich kids?” one of them asked, playing wiseass.

“What you been up to?” the man asked suspiciously.

“Beach cruisin’, hangin’ out. But it got too cold.”

“You boys been drinking?”

You dolt, Garrison thought as he listened to the interrogator. These are teenagers you’re talking to, poor creatures whose hormonal imbalances have thrown them into rebellion against all authority for the next couple of years. I have their sympathy because I’m in flight from the cops, and they’ll take my side without even knowing what I’ve done. If you want their cooperation, you’ll never get it by bullying them.

“Drinking? Hell no,” another boy said. “Check the cooler in back if you want. Nothing in it but Dr. Pepper.”

Garrison, who was pressed up against the ice chest, hoped to God the man would not come around to the back of the vehicle and have a look. If the guy got that close he would almost surely see there was something vaguely human about the shape under the blanket on which the boys were sitting.

“Dr. Pepper, huh? What kind of beer was in there before you drank it all?”

“Hey, man,” Tommy said. “Why’re you hassling us? Are you a cop or what?”

“Yeah, in fact, I am.”

“Where’s your uniform?” one of the boys asked.

“Undercover. Listen, I’m disposed to let you kids go on, not check your breath for liquor or anything. But I have to know — did you see an old white-haired guy on the beach tonight?”

“Who cares about old guys?” one of the boys asked. “We were looking for women.”

“You’d have noticed this old character if you’d seen him. He’d most likely have been wearing swim trunks.”

“Tonight?” Tommy said. “It’s almost December, man. You feel that wind?”

“Maybe he was wearing something else.”

“Didn’t see him,” Tommy said. “No old guy with white hair. Any you guys see him?”

The other three said they had not seen any old fart fitting the description they had been given, and then they were allowed to drive on, north from the public beach, into a residential area of seaside homes and private beaches.

When they had rounded a low hill and were out of sight of the man who had stopped them, they pulled the blanket off Garrison, and he sat up with considerable relief.

Tommy dropped the other three boys off at their houses and took Garrison home with him because his parents were out for the evening. He lived in a house that looked like a ship with multiple decks, slung over a bluff, all glass and angles.

Following Tommy into the foyer, Garrison caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He looked nothing like the dignified silver-haired barrister known by everyone in the city’s courts. His hair was wet, dirty, and matted. His face Was smeared with dirt. Sand, bits of grass, and threads of seaweed were stuck to his bare skin and tangled in his gray chest hair. He grinned happily at himself.

“There’s a phone in here,” Tommy said from the den.

After preparing dinner, eating, cleaning up, and then worrying about Einstein’s loss of appetite, Nora and Travis had forgotten about calling Garrison Dilworth and thanking him for the care with which he had packaged and shipped her paintings. They were sitting in front of the fireplace when she remembered.

In the past, when they had called Garrison, they had done so from public phones in Carmel. That had proved to be an unnecessary precaution. And now, tonight, neither of them was in the mood to get in the car and drive into town.

“We could wait and call him from Carmel tomorrow,” Travis said.

“It’ll be safe to phone from here,” she said. “If they’d made a link between you and Garrison, he’d have called and warned us off.”

“He might not know they’ve made a link,” Travis said. “He might not know they’re watching him.”

“Garrison would know,” she said firmly.

Travis nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure he would.”

“So it’s safe to call him.”

She was halfway to the phone when it rang.

The operator said, “I have a collect call for anyone from a Mr. Garrison Dilworth in Santa Barbara. Will you accept the charges?”

A few minutes before ten o’clock, after conducting a thorough but fruitless search of the park and beach, Lem reluctantly admitted that Garrison Dilworth had somehow gotten past him. He sent his men back to the courthouse and harbor.

He and Cliff also drove back to the harbor to the sport yacht from which they had based their surveillance of Dilworth. When they put in a call to the Coast Guard cutter pursuing the Amazing Grace, they learned that the attorney's lady had turned around well short of Ventura and was heading north along the coast, back to Santa Barbara.

She entered the harbor at ten thirty-six.

At the empty slip belonging to Garrison, Lem and Cliff huddled in the crisp wind, watching her bring the Hinckley smoothly and gently into its mooring. It was a beautiful boat, beautifully handled.

She had the gall to shout at them, “Don’t just stand there! Grab the lines and help tie her up!”

They obliged primarily because they were anxious to speak with her and could not do so until the Amazing Grace was secured.

Once their assistance had been rendered, they stepped through the railing gate. Cliff was wearing Top-Siders as part of his boater’s disguise, but Lem was in street shoes and not at all sure-footed on the wet deck, especially as the boat was rocking slightly.

Before they could say a word to the woman, a voice behind them said, “Excuse me, gentlemen—”

Lem turned and saw Garrison Dilworth in the glow of a dock lamp, just boarding the boat behind them. He was wearing someone else’s clothes. His pants were much too big in the waist, cinched in with a belt. They were too short in the legs, so his bare ankles were revealed. He wore a voluminous shirt.

“—please excuse me, but I’ve got to get into some warm clothes of my own and have a pot of coffee—”

Lem said, “God damn it.”

“—to thaw out these old bones.”

After a gasp of astonishment, Cliff Soames let out a hard bark of laughter, then glanced at Lem and said, “Sorry.”

Lem’s stomach cramped and burned with an incipient ulcer. He did not wince with pain, did not double over, did not even put a hand on his gut, gave no indication of discomfort because any such sign from him might increase Dilworth’s satisfaction. Lem just glared at the attorney, at the woman, then left without saying a word.

“That damn dog,” Cliff said as he fell into step at Lem’s side on the dock, “sure inspires one hell of a lot of loyalty.”

Later, bedding down in a motel because he was too tired to close the temporary field office tonight and go home to Orange County, Lem Johnson thought about what Cliff had said. Loyalty. One hell of a lot of loyalty.

Lem wondered if he had ever felt such a strong bond of loyalty to anyone as the Cornells and Garrison Dilworth apparently felt toward the retriever. He tossed and turned, unable to sleep, and he finally realized there was no use trying to switch off his inner lights until he satisfied himself that he was capable of the degree of loyalty and commitment that he had seen in the Cornells and their attorney.

He sat up in the darkness, leaning against the headboard.

Well, sure, he was damn loyal to his country, which he loved and honored.

And he was loyal to the Agency. But to another person? All right, Karen.

His wife. He was loyal to Karen in every way — in his heart, mind, and gonads.

He loved Karen. He had loved her deeply for almost twenty years.

“Yeah,” he said aloud in the empty motel room at two o’clock in the morning, “yeah, if you’re so loyal to Karen, why aren’t you with her now?”

But he wasn’t being fair to himself. After all, he had a job to do, an important job.

“That’s the trouble,” he muttered, “you’ve always — always — got a job to do.”

He slept away from home more than a hundred nights a year, one in three. And when he was home, he was distracted half the time, his mind on the

latest case. Karen had once wanted children, but Lem had delayed the start of a family, claiming that he could not handle the responsibility of children until he was sure his career was secure.

“Secure?” he said. “Man, you inherited your daddy’s money. You started out with more of a cushion than most people.”

If he was as loyal to Karen as those people were to that mutt, then his commitment to her should mean that her desires ought to come before all others. If Karen wanted a family, then family should take precedence over career. Right? At least he should have compromised and started a family when they were in their early thirties. His twenties could have gone to the career, his thirties to child-rearing. Now he was forty-five, almost forty-six, and Karen was forty-three, and the time for starting a family had passed.

Lem was overcome with a great loneliness.

He got out of bed, went into the bathroom in his shorts, switched on the light, and stared hard at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken. He had lost so much weight on this case that his face was beginning to look downright skeletal.

Stomach cramps seized him, and he bent over, holding onto the sides of the sink, his face in the basin. He’d been afflicted only for the past month or so, but his condition seemed to be worsening with startling speed. The pain took a long time to pass.

When he confronted his reflection in the mirror again, he said, “You’re not even loyal to your own self, you asshole. You’re killing yourself, working yourself to death, and you can’t stop. Not loyal to Karen, not loyal to yourself. Not really loyal to your country or the Agency, when it comes right down to it. Hell, the only thing you’re totally and unswervingly committed to is your old man’s crackpot vision of life as a tightrope walk.”

Crackpot.

That word seemed to reverberate in the bathroom long after he’d spoken it. He had loved and respected his father, had never said a word against him. Yet today he had admitted to Cliff that his dad had been “impossible.” And now — crackpot vision. He still loved his dad and always would. But he was beginning to wonder if a son could love a father and, at the same time, completely reject his father’s teachings.

A year ago, a month ago, even a few days ago, he would have said it was impossible to hold fast to that love and still be his own man. But now, by God, it seemed not only possible but essential that he separate his love for his father from his adherence to his father’s workaholic code.

What’s happening to me? he wondered.

Freedom? Freedom, at last, at forty-five?

Squinting into the mirror, he said, “Almost forty-six.”

NINE

Sunday, Travis noted that Einstein still had less of an appetite than usual, but by Monday, November 29, the retriever seemed fine. On Monday and Tuesday, Einstein finished every scrap of his meals, and he read new books. He sneezed only once and did not cough at all. He drank more water than in the past, though not an excessive amount. If he seemed to spend more time by the fireplace, if he padded through the house less energetically. well, winter was swiftly settling upon them, and animals’ behavior changed with the seasons.

At a bookstore in Carmel, Nora bought a copy of The Dog Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook. She spent a few hours at the kitchen table, reading, researching the possible meanings of Einstein’s symptoms. She discovered that listlessness, partial loss of appetite, sneezing, coughing, and unusual thirst could signify a hundred ailments — or mean nothing at all. “About the only thing it couldn’t be is a cold,” she said. “Dogs don’t get colds like we do.” But by the time she got the book, Einstein’s symptoms had diminished to such an extent that she decided he was probably perfectly healthy.

In the pantry off the kitchen, Einstein used the Scrabble tiles to tell them:

FIT AS A FIDDLE.

Stooping beside the dog, stroking him, Travis said, “I guess you ought to know better than anyone.”

WHY SAY FIT AS A FIDDLE?

Replacing the tiles in their Lucite tubes, Travis said, “Well, because it means — healthy.”

BUT WHY DOES IT MEAN HEALTHY?

Travis thought about the metaphor — fit as a fiddle — and realized he was not sure why it meant what it did. He asked Nora, and she came to the pantry door, but she had no explanation for the phrase, either.

Pawing out more letters, pushing them around with his nose, the retriever asked: WHY SAY SOUND AS A DOLLAR?

“Sound as a dollar — meaning healthy or reliable,” Travis said.

Stooping beside them, speaking to the dog, Nora said, “That one’s easier. The United States dollar was once the soundest, most stable currency in the World. Still is, I suppose. For decades, there was no terrible inflation in the dollar like in some other currencies, no reason to lose faith in it, so folks

said, ‘I’m as sound as a dollar.’ Of course, the dollar isn’t what it once was, and the phrase isn’t as fitting as it used to be, but we still use it.”

WHY STILL USE IT?

“Because. we’ve always used it,” Nora said, shrugging.

WHY SAY HEALTHY AS A HORSE? HORSES NEVER SICK?

Gathering up the tiles and sorting them back into their tubes, Travis said, “No, in fact, horses are fairly delicate animals in spite of their size. They get sick pretty easily.”

Einstein looked expectantly from Travis to Nora.

Nora said, “We probably say we’re healthy as a horse because horses look strong and seem like they shouldn’t ever get sick, even though they get sick all the time.”

“Face it,” Travis told the dog, “we humans say things all the time that don’t make sense.”

Pumping the letter-dispensing pedals with his paw, the retriever told them:

YOU ARE A STRANGE PEOPLE.

Travis looked at Nora, and they both laughed.

Beneath YOU ARE A STRANGE PEOPLE, the retriever spelled: BUT I LIKE YOU ANYWAY.

Einstein’s inquisitiveness and sense of humor seemed, more than anything else, to indicate that, if he had been mildly ill, he was now recovered.

That was Tuesday.

On Wednesday, December 1, while Nora painted in her second-floor studio, Travis devoted the day to inspecting his security system and to routine weapons maintenance.

In every room, a firearm was carefully concealed under furniture or behind a drape or in a closet, but always within easy reach. They owned two Mossberg pistol-grip shotguns, four Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnums loaded with .357s, two.38 pistols that they carried with them in the pickup and Toyota, an Uzi carbine, two Uzi pistols. They could have obtained their entire arsenal legally, from a local gun shop, once they purchased a house and established residence in the county, but Travis had not been willing to wait that long. He had wanted to have the weapons on the first night they settled into their new home; therefore, through Van Dyne in San Francisco, he and Nora had located an illegal arms salesman and had acquired what they needed. Of course, they could not have bought conversion kits for the Uzis from a licensed gun dealer. But they were able to purchase three such kits in San Francisco, and now the Uzi carbine and pistols were fully automatic.

Travis moved from room to room, checking that the weapons were properly positioned, that they were free of dust, that they did not need to be oiled, and that their magazines were fully loaded. He knew that everything would be in order, but he just felt more comfortable if he conducted this inspection once a week. Though he had been out of uniform for many years, the old military training and methodology were still a part of him, and under pressure they surfaced more quickly than he had expected.

Taking a Mossberg with them, he and Einstein also walked around the

house, stopping at each of the small infrared sensors that were, as much as possible, placed inconspicuously against backdrops of rocks or plants, snug against the trunks of a few trees, at the corners of the house, and beside an old rotting pine stump at the edge of the driveway. He had bought the components on the open market, from an electronics dealer in San Francisco. It was dated stuff, not at all state-of-the-art security technology, but he chose it because he was familiar with it from his days in Delta Force, and it was good enough for his purposes. Lines from the sensors ran underground, to an alarm box in one of the kitchen cupboards. When the system was switched on at night, nothing larger than a raccoon could come within thirty feet of the house — or enter the barn at the back of the property — without tripping the alarm. No bells would ring, and no sirens would blare because that would alert The Outsider and might run it off. They didn’t want to chase it away; they wanted to kill it. Therefore, when the system was tripped, it turned on clock radios in every room of the house, all of which were set at low volume so as not to frighten off an intruder but high enough to warn Travis and Nora.

Today, all the sensors were in place, as usual. All he had to do was wipe off the light film of dust that had coated the lenses.

“The palace moat is in good repair, m’lord,” Travis said.

Einstein woofed approval.

In the rust-red barn, Travis and Einstein examined the equipment that, they hoped, would provide a nasty surprise for The Outsider.

In the northwest corner of the shadowy interior, to the left of the big rolling door, a pressurized steel tank was clamped in a wall rack. In the diagonally opposite southeast corner at the back of the building, beyond the pickup and car, an identical vessel was bolted to an identical rack. They resembled large propane tanks of the sort people used at summer cabins for gas cooking, but they did not hold propane. They were filled with nitrous oxide, which was sometimes inaccurately called “laughing gas.” The first whiff did exhilarate you and make you want to laugh, but the second whiff knocked you out before the laugh could escape your lips. Dentists and surgeons frequently used nitrous oxide as an anesthetic. Travis had purchased it from a medical-supply house in San Francisco.

After switching on the barn lights, Travis checked the gauges on both tanks. Full pressure.

In addition to the large rolling door at the front of the barn, there was a smaller, man-size door at the rear. These were the only two entrances. Travis had boarded over a pair of windows in the loft. At night, when the alarm system was engaged, the smaller rear door was left unlocked in the hope that The Outsider, intending to scout the house from the cover of the barn, would let itself into the trap. When it opened the door and crept into the barn, it would trigger a mechanism that would slam and lock the door behind it. The front door, already locked from outside, would prevent an exit in that direction.

Simultaneous with the springing of the trap, the large tanks of nitrous oxide Would release their entire contents in less than one minute because Travis

had fitted them with high-pressure emergency-release valves tied in with the alarm system. He had caulked all of the draft-admitting cracks in the barn and had insulated the place as thoroughly as possible in order to insure that the nitrous oxide would be contained within the structure until one of the doors was unlocked from outside and opened to vent the gas.

The Outsider could not take refuge in the pickup or the Toyota, for they would be locked. No corner in the barn would be free of the gas. Within less than a minute, the creature would collapse. Travis had considered using poisonous gas of some kind, which he probably could have obtained on the underground market, but he had decided against going to that extreme because, if something went wrong, the danger to him and Nora and Einstein would be too great.

Once gas had been released and The Outsider had succumbed, Travis could simply open one of the doors, vent the barn, enter with the Uzi carbine, and kill the beast where it lay unconscious. At worst, even if the time taken airing out the building gave The Outsider a chance to regain consciousness, it would still be groggy and disoriented and easily dispatched.

When they had ascertained that everything in the barn was as it should be, Travis and Einstein returned to the yard behind the house. The December day was cool but windless. The forest surrounding the property was preternaturally still. The trees stood motionless under a low sky of slate-colored clouds.

Travis said, “Is The Outsider still coming?”

With a quick wag of the tail, Einstein said, Yes.

“Is it close?”

Einstein sniffed the clean, winter-crisp air. He padded across the yard to the perimeter of the northern woods and sniffed again, cocked his head, peered intently into the trees. He repeated this ritual at the southern end of the property.

Travis had the feeling that Einstein was not actually employing his eyes, ears, and nose in search of The Outsider. He had some way of monitoring The Outsider that was far different from the means by which he would track a cougar or squirrel. Travis perceived that the dog was employing an inexplicable sixth sense — call it psychic or at least quasi-psychic. The retriever’s use of its ordinary senses was probably either the trigger by which it engaged that psychic ability — or mere habit.

At last, Einstein returned to him and whined curiously.

“Is it close?” Travis asked.

Einstein sniffed the air and surveyed the gloom of the encircling forest, as if he could not decide on an answer.

“Einstein? Is something wrong?”

Finally, the retriever barked once: No.

“Is The Outsider getting close?”

A hesitation. Then: No.

“Are you sure?”

Yes.

“Really sure?”

Yes.

At the house, as Travis opened the door, Einstein turned away from him, padded across the back porch, and stood at the top of the wooden steps, taking one final look around at the yard and at the peaceful, shadowed, soundless forest. Then, with a faint shiver, he followed Travis inside.

Throughout the inspection of the defenses during the afternoon, Einstein had been more affectionate than usual, rubbing against Travis’s legs a great deal, nuzzling, seeking by one means or another to be petted or patted or scratched. That evening, as they watched television, then played a three-way game of Scrabble on the living-room floor, the dog continued to seek attention. He kept putting his head in Nora’s lap, then in Travis’s. He seemed as if he would be content to be stroked and have his ears gently scratched until next summer.

From the day of their first encounter in the Santa Ana foothills, Einstein had gone through spells of purely doggy behavior, when it was hard to believe that he was, in his own way, as intelligent as a man. Tonight, he was in one of those moods again. In spite of his cleverness at Scrabble — in which his score was second only to Nora’s, and in which he took devilish pleasure forming words that made sly references to her as yet unnoticeable pregnancy— he was nonetheless, this night, more of a dog than not.

Nora and Travis chose to finish the evening with a little light reading— detective stories — but Einstein did not want them to bother inserting a book in his page-turning machine. Instead, he lay on the floor in front of Nora’s armchair and went instantly to sleep.

“He still seems a little draggy,” she said to Travis.

“He ate all his dinner, though. And we did have a long day.”

The dog’s breathing, as it slept, was normal, and Travis was not worried. Actually, he was feeling better about their future than he had for some time. The inspection of their defenses had given him renewed confidence in their preparations, and he believed they would be able to handle The Outsider when it arrived. And thanks to Garrison Dilworth’s courage and dedication to their cause, the government had been stymied, perhaps for good, in its efforts to track them down. Nora was painting again with great enthusiasm, and Travis had decided to use his real-estate license, under the name of Samuel Hyatt, to go back to work once The Outsider had been destroyed. And if Einstein was still a little draggy. well, he was certainly more energetic than he had been for a while and was sure to be himself by tomorrow or the day after, at the latest.

That night, Travis slept without dreaming.

In the morning, he was up before Nora. By the time he showered and dressed, she was up, too. On her way into the shower, she kissed him, nibbled On his lip, and mumbled sleepy vows of love. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was mussed, and her breath was sour, but he would have rushed her

straight back into bed if she had not said, “Try me this afternoon, Romeo. Right now, the only lust in my heart is for a couple of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.”

He went downstairs and, starting in the living room, opened the interior shutters to let in the morning light. The sky looked as low and gray as it had been yesterday, and he would not be surprised if rain fell before twilight.

In the kitchen, he noticed that the pantry door was open, the light on. He looked in to see if Einstein was there, but the only sign of the dog was the message that he had spelled out sometime during the night.

FIDDLE BROKE. NO DOCTOR. PLEASE. DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO LAB. AFRAID. AFRAID.

Oh shit. Oh Jesus.

Travis stepped out of the pantry and shouted, “Einstein!”

No bark. No sound of padding feet.

The shutters still covered the kitchen windows, and most of the room was not illuminated by the glow from the pantry. Travis snapped on the lights.

Einstein was not there.

He ran into the den. The dog was not there, either.

Heart pounding almost painfully, Travis climbed the stairs two at a time, looked in the third bedroom that would one day be a nursery and then in the room that Nora used as a studio, but Einstein was not in either place, and he was not in the master bedroom, not even under the bed where Travis was desperate enough to check, and for a moment he could not figure out where in the hell the dog had gone, and he stood listening to Nora singing in the shower — she was oblivious of what was happening — and he started into the bathroom to tell her that something was wrong, horribly wrong, which was when he thought of the downstairs bath, so he ran out of the bedroom and along the hall and descended the stairs so fast he almost lost his balance, almost fell, and in the first-floor bath, between the kitchen and the den, he found what he most feared to find.

The bathroom stank. The dog, ever considerate, had vomited in the toilet but had not possessed the strength — or perhaps the clarity of mind — to flush. Einstein was lying on the bathroom floor, on his side. Travis knelt next to him. Einstein was still but not dead, not dead, because he was breathing; he inhaled and exhaled with a rasping noise. He tried to lift his head when Travis spoke to him, but he did not have the strength to move.

His eyes. Jesus, his eyes.

Ever so gently, Travis lifted the retriever’s head and saw that those wonderfully expressive brown eyes were slightly milky. A watery yellow discharge oozed from the eyes; it had crusted in the golden fur. A similar sticky discharge bubbled in Einstein’s nostrils.

Putting a hand on the retriever’s neck, Travis felt a laboring and irregular heartbeat.

“No,” Travis said. “Oh, no, no. It’s not going to be like this, boy. I’m not going to let it happen like this.”

He lowered the retriever’s head to the floor, got up, turned toward the door — and Einstein whimpered almost inaudibly, as if to say that he did not want to be left alone.

“I’ll be right back, right back,” Travis promised. “Just hold on, boy. I’ll be right back.”

He ran to the stairs and climbed faster than before. Now, his heart was beating with such tremendous force that he felt as if it would tear loose of him. He was breathing too fast, hyperventilating.

In the master bathroom, Nora was just stepping out of the shower, naked and dripping.

Travis’s words ran together in panic: “Get dressed quick we’ve got to get to the vet now for god’s sake hurry.”

Shocked, she said, “What’s happened?”

“Einstein! Hurry! I think he’s dying.”

He grabbed a blanket off the bed, left Nora to dress, and hurried downstairs to the bathroom. The retriever’s ragged breathing seemed to have gotten worse in just the minute that Travis had been away. He folded the blanket twice, to a fourth of its size, then eased the dog onto it.

Einstein made a pained sound, as if the movement hurt him.

Travis said, “Easy, easy. You’ll be all right.”

At the door, Nora appeared, still buttoning her blouse, which was damp because she had not taken time to towel off before dressing. Her wet hair hung straight.

In a voice choked with emotion, she said, “Oh, fur face, no, no.” She wanted to stoop and touch the retriever, but there was no time to delay. Travis said, “Bring the pickup alongside the house.”

While Nora sprinted to the barn, Travis folded the blanket around Einstein as best he could, so only the retriever’s head, tail, and hind legs protruded. Trying unsuccessfully not to elicit another whimper of pain, Travis lifted the dog in his arms and carried him out of the bathroom, across the kitchen, out of the house, pulling the door shut behind him but leaving it unlocked, not giving a damn about security right now.

The air was cold. Yesterday’s calm was gone. Evergreens swayed, shivered, and there was something ominous in the way their bristling, needled branches pawed at the air. Other leafless trees raised black, bony arms toward the somber sky.

In the barn, Nora started the pickup. The engine roared. Travis cautiously descended the porch steps and went out to the driveway, walking as if he were carrying an armload of fragile antique china. The blustery wind stood Travis’s hair straight up, flapped the loose ends of the blanket, and ruffled the fur on Einstein’s exposed head, as if it were a wind with a malevolent consciousness, as if it wanted to tear the dog away from him.

Nora swung the pickup around, heading out, and stopped where Travis Waited She would drive.

It was true what they said: sometimes, in certain special moments of crisis, in times of great emotional tribulation, women are better able to bite the bullet and do what must be done than men often are. Sitting in the truck’s passenger seat, cradling the blanket-wrapped dog in his arms, Travis was in no condition to drive. He was shaking badly, and he realized that he had been crying from the time he had found Einstein on the bathroom floor. He had seen difficult military service, and he had never panicked or been paralyzed with fear while on dangerous Delta Force operations, but this was different, this was Einstein, this was his child. If he had been required to drive, he’d probably have run straight into a tree, or off the road into a ditch. There were tears in Nora’s eyes, too, but she didn’t surrender to them. She bit her lip and drove as if she had been trained for stunt work in the movies. At the end of the dirt lane, they turned right, heading north on the twisty Pacific Coast Highway toward Carmel, where there was sure to be at least one veterinarian.

During the drive, Travis talked to Einstein, trying to soothe and encourage him. “Everything’s going to be all right, just fine, it’s not as bad as it seems, you’ll be good as new.”

Einstein whimpered and struggled weakly in Travis’s arms for a moment, and Travis knew what the dog was thinking. He was afraid that the vet would see the tattoo in his ear, would know what it meant, and would send him back to Banodyne.

“Don’t you worry about that, fur face. Nobody’s going to take you away from us. By God, they aren’t. They’ll have to walk through me first, and they aren’t going to be able to do that, no way.”

“No way,” Nora agreed grimly.

But in the blanket, cradled against Travis’s chest, Einstein trembled violently.

Travis remembered the lettered tiles on the pantry floor:

FIDDLE BROKE. AFRAID. AFRAID.

“Don’t be afraid,” he pleaded with the dog. “Don’t be afraid. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

In spite of Travis’s heartfelt assurances, Einstein shivered and was afraid— and Travis was afraid, too.

Stopping at an Arco service station on the outskirts of Carmel, Nora found the vet’s address in a phone book and called him to be sure he was in. Dr. James Keene’s office was on Dolores Avenue at the southern end of town. They pulled up in front of the place at a few minutes before nine.

Nora had been expecting a typically sterile-looking veterinary clinic and was surprised to find that Dr. Keene’s offices were in his home, a quaint two-story Country English house of stone and plaster and exposed timbers with a roof that curved over the eaves.

As they hurried up the stone walk with Einstein, Dr. Keene opened the door before they reached it, as if he had been on the lookout for them. A sign indicated that the entrance to the surgery was around the side of the house, but the vet took them in at the front door. He was a tall, sorrowful-faced man with sallow skin and sad brown eyes, but his smile was warm, and his manner was gracious.

Closing the door, Dr. Keene said, “Bring him this way, please.”

He led them swiftly along a hallway with an oak parquet floor protected by a long, narrow oriental carpet. On the left, through an archway, lay a pleasantly furnished living room that actually looked lived-in, with footstools in front of the chairs, reading lamps, laden bookshelves, and crocheted afghans folded neatly and conveniently over the backs of some chairs for when the evenings were chilly. A dog stood just inside the archway, a black Labrador. It watched them solemnly, as if it understood the gravity of Einstein’s condition, and it did not follow them.

At the rear of the large house, on the left side of the hail, the vet took them through a door into a clean white surgery. Lined along the walls were white-enameled and stainless-steel cabinets with glass fronts, which were filled with bottles of drugs, serums, tablets, capsules, and the many powdered ingredients needed to compound more exotic medicines.

Travis gently lowered Einstein onto an examination table and folded the blanket back from him.

Nora realized that she and Travis looked every bit as distraught as they would have if they’d been bringing a dying child to a doctor. Travis’s eyes were red, and though he was not actively crying at the moment, he continually blew his nose. The moment she had parked the pickup in front of the house and had pulled on the hand brake, Nora had ceased to be able to repress her own tears. Now she stood on the other side of the examination table from Dr. Keene, with one arm around Travis, and she wept quietly.

The vet was apparently used to strong emotional reactions from pet owners, for he never once glanced curiously at Nora or Travis, never once indicated by any means that he found their anxiety and grief to be excessive.

Dr. Keene listened to the retriever’s heart and lungs with a stethoscope, palpated his abdomen, examined his oozing eyes with an ophthalmoscope. Through those and several other procedures, Einstein remained limp, as if paralyzed. The only indications that the dog still clung to life were his faint whimpers and ragged breathing.

It’s not as serious as it seems, Nora told herself as she blotted her eyes with a Kleenex.

Looking up from the dog, Dr. Keene said, “What’s his name?”

“Einstein,” Travis said.

“How long have you owned him?”

“Only a few months.”

“Has he had his shots?”

“No,” Travis said. “Damn it, no.”

“Why not?”

“It’s. complicated,” Travis said. “But there’re reasons that shots couldn’t be gotten for him.”

“No reason’s good enough,” Keene said disapprovingly. “He’s got no license, no shots. It’s very irresponsible not to see that your dog is properly licensed and vaccinated.”

“I know,” Travis said miserably. “I know.”

“What’s wrong with Einstein?” Nora said.

And she thought-hoped-prayed: It’s not as serious as it seems.

Lightly stroking the retriever, Keene said, “He’s got distemper.”

Einstein had been moved to a corner of the surgery, where he lay on a thick, dog-size foam mattress that was protected by a zippered plastic coverlet. To prevent him from moving around — if at any time he had the strength to move — he was tethered on a short leash to a ringbolt in the wall.

Dr. Keene had given the retriever an injection. “Antibiotics,” he explained. “No antibiotics are effective against distemper, but they’re indicated to avoid secondary bacteriological infections.”

He had also inserted a needle in one of the dog’s leg veins and had hooked him to an IV drip to counteract dehydration.

When the vet tried to put a muzzle on Einstein, both Nora and Travis objected strenuously.

“It’s not because I’m afraid he’ll bite,” Dr. Keene explained. “It’s for his own protection, to prevent him from chewing at the needle. If he has the strength, he’ll do what dogs always do to a wound — lick and bite at the source of the irritation.”

“Not this dog,” Travis said. “This dog’s different.” He pushed past Keene and removed the device that bound Einstein’s jaws together.

The vet started to protest, then thought better of it. “All right. For now. He’s too weak now, anyway.”

Still trying to deny the awful truth, Nora said, “But how could it be so serious? He showed only the mildest symptoms, and even those went away over a couple of days.”

“Half the dogs who get distemper never show any symptoms at all,” the vet said as he returned a bottle of antibiotics to one of the glass-fronted cabinets and tossed a disposable syringe in a waste can. “Others have only a mild illness, symptoms come and go from one day to the next. Some, like Einstein, get very ill. It can be a gradually worsening illness, or it can change suddenly from mild symptoms to. this. But there is a bright side here.”

Travis was crouched beside Einstein, where the dog could see him without lifting his head or rolling his eyes, and could therefore feel attended, watched over, loved. When he heard Keene mention a bright side, Travis looked up eagerly. “What bright side? What do you mean?”

“The dog’s condition, before it contracts distemper, frequently determines the course of the disease. The illness is most acute in animals that are ill-kept and poorly nourished. It’s clear to me that Einstein was given good care.”

Travis said, “We tried to feed him well, to make sure he got plenty of exercise.”

“He was bathed and groomed almost too often,” Nora added.

Smiling, nodding approval, Dr. Keene said, “Then we have an edge. We have real hope.”

Nora looked at Travis, and he could meet her eyes only briefly before he had to look away, down at Einstein. It was left to her to ask the dreaded question: “Doctor, he’s going to be all right, isn’t he? He won’t — he won’t die, will he?”

Apparently, James Keene was aware that his naturally glum face and drooping eyes presented, merely in repose, an expression that did little to inspire confidence. He cultivated a warm smile, a soft yet confident tone of voice, and an almost grandfatherly manner that, although perhaps calculated, seemed genuine and helped balance the perpetual gloom God had seen fit to visit upon his countenance.

He came to Nora, put his hands on her shoulders. “My dear, you love this dog like a baby, don’t you?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“Then have faith. Have faith in God, who watches over sparrows, so they say, and have a little faith in me, too. Believe it or not, I’m pretty good at what I do, and I deserve your faith.”

“I believe you are good,” she told him.

Still squatting beside Einstein, Travis said thickly, “But the chances. What’re the chances? Tell us straight?”

Letting go of Nora, turning to Travis, Keene said, “Well, the discharge from his eyes and nose isn’t as thick as it can get. Not nearly. No pus blisters on the abdomen. You say he’s vomited, but you’ve seen no diarrhea?”

“No. Just vomiting,” Travis said.

“His fever’s high but not dangerously so. Has he been slobbering excessively?”

“No,” Nora said.

“Fits of head-shaking and chewing on air, sort of as if he had a bad taste in his mouth?”

“No,” Travis and Nora said simultaneously.

“Have you seen him run in circles or fall down without reason? Have you seen him lie on his side and kick violently, as if he were running? Aimless wandering around a room, bumping into walls, jerking and twitching — anything like that?”

“No, no,” Travis said.

And Nora said. “My God, could he get like that?”

“If he goes into second-stage distemper, yes,” Keene said. “Then there’s brain involvement. Epileptic-like seizures. Encephalitis.”

Travis came to his feet in a sudden lurch. He staggered toward Keene, then stopped, swaying. His face was pale. His eyes filled with a terrible fear. “Brain involvement? If he recovered, would there be. brain damage?”

An oily nausea rippled in Nora. She thought of Einstein with brain damage — as intelligent as a man, intelligent enough to remember that he had once been special, and to know that something had been lost, and to know that he was now living in a dullness, a grayness, that his life was somehow less than what it had once been. Sick and dizzy with fear, she had to lean against the examination table.

Keene said, “Most dogs in second-stage distemper don’t survive. But if he made it, there would, of course, be some brain damage. Nothing that would require he be put to sleep. He might have lifelong chorea, for instance, which is involuntary jerking or twitching, rather like palsy, and often limited to the head. But he could be relatively happy with that, lead a pain-free existence, and he could still be a fine pet.”

Travis almost shouted at the vet: “To hell with whether he’d make a fine pet or not. I’m not concerned about physical effects of the brain damage. What about his mind?”

“Well he’d recognize his masters,” the doctor said. “He’d know you and remain affectionate towards you. No problem there. He might sleep a lot. He might have periods of listlessness. But he’d almost certainly remain housebroken. He wouldn’t forget that training—”

Shaking, Travis said, “I don’t give a damn if he pisses all over the house as long as he can still think!”

“Think?” Dr. Keene said, clearly perplexed. “Well. what do you mean exactly? He is a dog, after all.”

The vet had accepted their anxious, grief-racked behavior as within the parameters of normal pet-owner reactions in a case like this. But now, at last, he began to look at them strangely.

Partly to change the subject and dampen the vet’s suspicion, partly because she simply had to know the answer, Nora said, “All right, but is Einstein in second-stage distemper?”

Keene said, “From what I’ve seen so far, he’s still in the first stage. And now that treatment has begun, if we don’t see any of the more violent symptoms during the next twenty-four hours, I think we have a good chance of keeping him in first stage and rolling it back.”

“And there’s no brain involvement in first stage?” Travis asked with an urgency that again caused Keene to furrow his brow.

“No. Not in first stage.”

“And if he stays in first stage,” Nora said, “he won’t die?”

In his softest voice and most comforting manner, James Keene said, “Well, now, the chances are very high that he’d survive just first-stage distemper— and without any aftereffects. I want you to realize that his chances of recovery are quite high. But at the same time, I don’t want to give you false hope. That’d be cruel. Even if the disease proceeds no further than first stage. Einstein could die. The percentages are on the side of life, but death is possible.”

Nora was crying again. She thought she had gotten a grip on herself. She thought she was ready to be strong. But now she was crying. She went to Einstein, sat on the floor beside him, and put one hand on his shoulder, just to let him know that she was there.

Keene was becoming slightly impatient with — and thoroughly baffled by— their tumultuous emotional response to the bad news. A new note of sternness entered his voice as he said, “Listen, all we can do is give him top-flight care and hope for the best. He’ll have to remain here, of course, because distemper treatment is complex and ought to be administered under veterinary supervision. I’ll have to keep him on the intravenous fluids, antibiotics.

and there’ll be regular anticonvulsants and sedatives if he begins to have seizures.”

Under Nora’s hand, Einstein shivered as if he had heard and understood the grim possibilities.

“All right, okay, yes,” Travis said, “obviously, he’s got to stay here in your office. We’ll stay with him.”

“There’s no need—” Keene began.

“Right, yes, no need,” Travis said quickly, “but we want to stay, we’ll be okay, we can sleep here on the floor tonight.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Keene said.

“Yes, it is, oh yes, entirely possible,” Travis said, babbling now in his eagerness to convince the vet. “Don’t worry about us, Doctor. We’ll manage just fine. Einstein needs us here, so we’ll stay, the important thing is that we stay, and of course we’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience.”

“But I’m not running a hotel!”

“We must stay,” Nora said firmly.

Keene said, “Now, really, I’m a reasonable man, but—”

With both hands, Travis seized the vet’s right hand and held it tightly, startling Keene. “Listen, Dr. Keene, please, let me try to explain. I know this is an unusual request. I know we must sound like a couple of lunatics to you, but we’ve got our reasons, and they’re good ones. This is no ordinary dog, Dr. Keene. He saved my life—”

“And he saved mine, too,” Nora said. “In a separate incident.”

“And he brought us together,” Travis said. “Without Einstein, we would never have met, never married, and we’d both be dead.”

Astonished, Keene looked from one to the other. “You mean he saved your lives — literally? And in two separate incidents?”

“Literally,” Nora said.

“And then brought you together?”

“Yes,” Travis said. “Changed our lives in more ways than we can count or ever explain.”

Held fast in Travis’s hands, the vet looked at Nora, lowered his kind eyes to the wheezing retriever, shook his head, and said, “I’m a sucker for heroic dog stories. I’ll want to hear this one, for sure.”

“We’ll tell you all about it,” Nora promised. But, she thought, it’ll be a carefully edited version.

“When I was five years old,” James Keene said, “I was saved from drowning by a black Labrador.”

Nora remembered the beautiful black lab in the living room and wondered if it was actually a descendant of the animal that had saved Keene — or just a reminder of the great debt he owed to dogs.

“All right,” Keene said, “you can stay.”

“Thank you.” Travis’s voice cracked. “Thank you.”

Freeing his hand from Travis, Keene said, “But it’ll be at least forty-eight hours before we can be at all confident that Einstein will survive. It’ll be a long haul.”

“Forty-eight hours is nothing,” Travis said. “Two nights of sleeping on the floor. We can handle that.”

Keene said, “I have a hunch that, for you two, forty-eight hours is going to be an eternity, under the circumstances.” He looked at his wristwatch and said, “Now, my assistant will arrive in about ten minutes, and shortly after that we’ll open the office for morning hours. I can’t have you underfoot in here while I’m seeing other patients. And you wouldn’t want to wait in the patient lounge with a bunch of other anxious owners and sick animals; that would only depress you. You can wait in the living room, and when the office is closed late this afternoon, you can return here to be with Einstein.”

“Can we peek in on him during the day?” Travis asked.

Smiling, Keene said, “All right. But just a peek.”

Under Nora’s hand, Einstein finally stopped shivering. Some of the tension went out of him, and he relaxed, as if he had heard they would be allowed to remain close by, and was immensely comforted.

The morning passed at an agonizingly slow pace. Dr. Keene’s living room had a television set, books, and magazines, but neither Nora nor Travis could get interested in TV or reading.

Every half hour or so, they slipped down the hall, one at a time, and peeked in at Einstein. He never seemed worse, but he never seemed any better, either.

Keene came in once and said, “By the way, feel free to use the bathroom. And there’s cold drinks in the refrigerator. Make coffee if you want.” He smiled down at the black lab at his side. “And this fella is Pooka. He’ll love you to death if you give him a chance.”

Pooka was, indeed, one of the friendliest dogs Nora had ever seen. Without encouragement, he would roll over, play dead, sit up on his haunches, and then come snuffling around, tail wagging, to be rewarded with some petting and scratching.

All morning, Travis ignored the dog’s pleas for affection, as if petting Pooka would in some way be a betrayal of Einstein and would insure Einstein’s death of distemper.

However, Nora took comfort from the dog and gave it the attention it desired. She told herself that treating Pooka well would please the gods and that the gods would then look favorably upon Einstein. Her desperation produced in her a superstition just as fierce as — if different from — that which gripped her husband.

Travis paced. He sat on the edge of a chair, head bowed, his face in his hands. For long periods, he stood at one of the windows, staring out, not seeing the street that lay out there but some dark vision of his own. He blamed himself for what had happened, and the truth of the situation (which Nora recalled for him) did nothing to lessen his irrational sense of guilt.

Facing a window, hugging himself as if he were cold, Travis said quietly, “Do you think Keene saw the tattoo?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“Do you think there’s really been a description of Einstein circulated to vets? Will Keene know what the tattoo means?”

“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe we’re too paranoid about this.”

But after hearing from Garrison and learning of the lengths to which the government had gone to prevent him from getting a warning to them, they knew that an enormous and urgent search for the dog must be still under way. So there was no such thing as being “too paranoid.”

From noon until two, Dr. Keene closed the office for lunch. He invited Nora and Travis to eat with him in the big kitchen. He was a bachelor who knew how to take care of himself, and he had a freezer stocked with frozen entrées that he had prepared and packaged himself. He defrosted individually wrapped slabs of homemade lasagna and, with their help, made three salads. The food was good, but neither Nora nor Travis was able to eat much of it.

The more Nora knew of James Keene, the more she liked him. He was lighthearted in spite of his morose appearance, and his sense of humor ran toward self-deprecation. His love of animals was a light within that gave him a special glow. Dogs were his greatest love, and when he spoke of them his enthusiasm transformed his homely features and made of him a handsomer and quite appealing man.

The doctor told them of the black lab, King, that had saved him from drowning when he was a child, and he encouraged them to tell him how Einstein saved their lives. Travis recounted a colorful story about going hiking and almost walking into an injured and angry bear. He described how Einstein warned him off and then, when the half-mad bear gave chase, how Einstein challenged and repeatedly foiled the beast. Nora was able to tell a story closer to the truth: harassment by a sexual psychopath whose attack had been interrupted by Einstein and who had been held by the retriever until the police arrived.

Keene was impressed. “He really is a hero!”

Nora sensed that the stories about Einstein had so completely won the vet Over that, if he did spot the tattoo and knew what it meant, he might conceivably put it out of his mind and might let them go in peace once Einstein was recovered. If Einstein recovered.

But as they were gathering up the dishes, Keene said, “Sam, I’ve been wondering why your wife calls you ‘Travis.’

They were prepared for this. Since assuming new identities, they had decided that it was easier and safer for Nora to continue calling him Travis, rather than trying to use Sam all the time and then, at some crucial moment, slipping up. They could claim that Travis was a nickname she’d given him, that the origin was a private joke; with winks at each other and foolish grins, they could imply there was something sexual about it, something much too embarrassing to explain further. That was how they handled Keene’s question, but they were in no mood to wink and grin foolishly with any conviction, so Nora was not sure they carried it off. In fact she thought their nervous and inept performance might increase Keene’s suspicions if he had any.

Just before afternoon office hours were to begin, Keene received a call from his assistant, who’d had a headache when she had gone to lunch, and who now reported that the headache had been complicated by an upset stomach. The vet was left to handle his patients alone, so Travis quickly volunteered his and Nora’s services.

“We’ve got no veterinary training, of course. But we can handle any manual labor involved.”

“Sure, “Nora agreed, “and between us we’ve got one pretty good brain. We could do just about anything else you showed us how to do.”

They spent the afternoon restraining recalcitrant cats and dogs and parrots and all sorts of other animals while Jim Keene treated them. There were bandages to be laid out, medicines to be retrieved from the cabinets, instruments to be washed and sterilized, fees to be collected and receipts written. Some pets, afflicted with vomiting and diarrhea, left messes to be cleaned up, but Travis and Nora tended to those unpleasantnesses as uncomplainingly and unhesitatingly as they performed other tasks.

They had two motives, the first of which was that, by assisting Keene, they had a chance to be in the surgery with Einstein throughout the afternoon. Between chores, they stole a few moments to pet the retriever, speak a few encouraging words to him, and reassure themselves that he was getting no worse. The downside of being around Einstein continuously was that they could see, to their dismay, that he did not seem to be getting any better, either.

Their other purpose was to further ingratiate themselves with the vet, to give him a reason to be beholden to them, so he would not reconsider his decision to allow them to stay the night.

The patient load was far greater than usual, Keene said, and they were not able to close the office until after six o’clock. Weariness — and the labor they

shared — generated a warm feeling of camaraderie. As they made and ate dinner together, Jim Keene entertained them with a treasure of amusing animal stories culled from his experiences, and they were almost as comfortable and friendly as they would have been if they had known the vet for months instead of less than one day.

Keene prepared the guest bedroom for them, and provided a few blankets with which to make a crude bed on the floor of the surgery. Travis and Nora would sleep in the real bed in shifts, each spending half the night on the floor with Einstein.

Travis had the first shift, from ten o’clock until three in the morning. Only one light was left on in the far corner of the surgery, and Travis alternately sat and stretched out on the piled blankets in the shadows where Einstein lay.

Sometimes, Einstein slept, and the sound of his breathing was more normal, less frightening. But sometimes he was awake, and his respiration was horribly labored, and he whimpered in pain and — Travis somehow knew — in fear. When Einstein was awake, Travis talked to him, reminiscing about experiences they had shared, the many good moments and happy times over the past six months, and the retriever seemed to be at least slightly soothed by Travis’s voice.

Unable to move at all, the dog was of necessity incontinent. A couple of times he peed on the plastic-covered mattress. With no distaste whatsoever, with the same tenderness and compassion a father might show in caring for a gravely ill child, Travis cleaned up. In a curious way, Travis was even pleased by the mess because, every time Einstein peed, it was proof that he still lived, still functioned, in some ways, as normally as ever.

Rainsqualls came and went during the night. The sound of rain on the roof was mournful, like funeral drums.

Twice during the first shift, Jim Keene appeared in pajamas and a robe. The first time, he examined Einstein carefully and changed his IV bottle. Later, he administered an injection after the examination. On both occasions, he assured Travis that right now they did not have to see signs of improvement to be encouraged; right now, it was good enough that there were no indications of deterioration in the dog’s condition.

Frequently during the night, Travis wandered to the other end of the surgery and read the words of a simply framed scroll that hung above the scrub sink:

TRIBUTE TO A DOG

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves Ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

— Senator George Vest, 1870

Each time he read the tribute, Travis was filled anew with wonder at Einstein’s existence. What fantasy of children was more common than that their dogs were fully as perceptive and wise and clever as any adult? What gift from God would more delight a young mind than to have the family dog prove able to communicate on a human level and to share triumphs and tragedies with full understanding of their meaning and importance? What miracle could bring more joy, more respect for the mysteries of nature, more sheer exuberance over the unanticipated wonders of life? Somehow, in the very idea of a dog’s personality and human intelligence combined in a single creature, one had a hope of a species at once as gifted as humankind but more noble and worthy. And what fantasy of adults was more common than that, one day, another intelligent species would be found to share the vast, cold universe and, by sharing it, would at last provide some relief from our race’s unspeakable loneliness and sense of quiet desperation?

And what other loss could be more devastating than the loss of Einstein, this first hopeful evidence that humankind carried within it the seeds not merely of greatness but of godhood?

These thoughts, which Travis could not suppress, shook him and drew from him a thick sob of grief. Damning himself for being an emotional basket case, he went into the downstairs hall, where Einstein would not be aware of— and perhaps be frightened by — his tears.

Nora relieved him at three in the morning. She had to insist that he go upstairs, for he was reluctant to leave Keene’s surgery.

Exhausted but protesting that he would not sleep, Travis tumbled into bed and slept.

He dreamed of being pursued by a yellow-eyed thing with wicked talons and foreshortened alligator jaws. He was trying to protect Einstein and Nora, pushing them in front of him, encouraging them to run, run, run. But somehow the monster got around Travis and tore Einstein to pieces, then savaged Nora — it was the Cornell Curse, which could not be avoided by a simple change of name to Samuel Hyatt — and at last Travis stopped running and fell to his knees and lowered his head because, having failed Nora and the dog, he wanted to die, and he heard the thing approaching — click-click-click

and he was afraid but he also welcomed the death that it promised—

Nora woke him shortly before five in the morning. “Einstein,” she said urgently. “He’s having convulsions.”

When Nora led Travis into the white-walled surgery, Jim Keene was crouched over Einstein, ministering to him. They could do nothing but stay out of the vet’s way, give him room to work.

She and Travis held each other.

After a few minutes, the vet stood up. He looked worried, and he did not make his usual effort to smile or try to lift their hopes. “I’ve given him additional anticonvulsants. I think. he’ll be all right now.”

“Has he gone into the second stage?” Travis asked. “Maybe not,” Keene said.

“Could he be having convulsions and still be in first stage?” “It’s possible,” Keene said.

“But not likely.”

“Not likely,” Keene said. “But. not impossible.” Second-stage distemper, Nora thought miserably.

She held Travis tighter than ever.

Second stage. Brain involvement. Encephalitis. Chorea. Brain damage. Brain damage.

Travis would not return to bed. He remained in the surgery with Nora and Einstein the rest of that night.

They turned on another light, brightening the room somewhat but not enough to bother Einstein, and they watched him closely for signs that the distemper had progressed to the second stage: the jerking and twitching and chewing movements of which Jim Keene had spoken.

Travis was unable to extract any hope from the fact that no such symptoms were exhibited. Even if Einstein was in the first stage of the disease and remained there, he appeared to be dying.

The next day, Friday, December 3, Jim Keene’s assistant was still too sick to come to work, so Nora and Travis helped out again.

By lunchtime, Einstein’s fever had not fallen. His eyes and nose continued to ooze a clear though yellowish fluid. His breathing was slightly less labored, but in her despair Nora wondered if the dog’s respiration only sounded easier because he was not making as great an effort to breathe and was, in fact, beginning to give up.

She could not eat even a bite of lunch. She washed and ironed both Travis’s clothes and her own, while they sat around in two of Jim Keene’s spare bathrobes, which were too big for them.

That afternoon, the office was busy again. Nora and Travis were kept in constant motion, and Nora was glad to be overworked.

At four-forty, a time that she would never forget for as long as she lived, just after they finished helping Jim deal with a difficult Irish setter, Einstein yipped twice from his bed in the corner. Nora and Travis turned, both gasping, both expecting the worst, for this was the first sound other than whimpers that Einstein had made since his arrival at the surgery. But the retriever had lifted his head — the first time he’d had the strength to lift it— and was blinking at them; he looked around curiously, as if to ask where on earth he was.

Jim knelt beside the dog and, while Travis and Nora crouched expectantly behind him, he thoroughly examined Einstein. “Look at his eyes. They’re slightly milky but not at all like they were, and they’ve stopped actively leaking.” With a damp cloth, he cleaned the crusted fur beneath Einstein’s eyes and wiped off his nose; the nostrils no longer bubbled with fresh excretions. With a rectal thermometer he took Einstein’s temperature and, reading it, said, “Falling. Down two full degrees.”

“Thank God,” Travis said.

And Nora discovered that her eyes were filling with tears again.

Jim said, “He’s not out of the woods yet. His heartbeat is more regular, less accelerated, though still not good. Nora, get one of those dishes over there and fill it with some water.”

Nora returned from the sink a moment later and put the dish down on the floor, at the vet’s side.

Jim pushed it close to Einstein. “What do you think, fella?”

Einstein raised his head off the mattress again and stared at the dish. His lolling tongue looked dry and was coated with a gummy substance. He whined and licked his chops.

“Maybe,” Travis said, “if we help him—”

“No,” Jim Keene said. “Let him consider it. He’ll know if he feels up to it. We don’t want to force water that’s going to make him vomit again. He’ll know by instinct if the time is right.”

With some groaning and wheezing, Einstein shifted on the foam mattress, rolling off his side, half onto his belly. He put his nose to the dish, sniffed the water, put his tongue to it tentatively, liked the first taste, had another, and drank a third of it before sighing and lying down again.

Stroking the retriever, Jim Keene said, “I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t recover, fully recover, in time.”

In time.

That phrase bothered Travis.

How much time would Einstein require for a full recovery? When The

Outsider finally arrived, they would all be better off if Einstein was healthy and if all of his senses were functioning sharply. The infrared alarms notwithstanding, Einstein was their primary early-warning system.

After the last patient left at five-thirty, Jim Keene slipped out for half an hour on a mysterious errand, and when he returned he had a bottle of champagne. “I’m not much of a drinking man, but certain occasions demand a nip or two.”

Nora had pledged to drink nothing during her pregnancy, but even the most solemn pledge could be stretched under these circumstances.

They got glasses and drank in the surgery, toasting Einstein, who watched them for a few minutes but, exhausted, soon fell asleep.

“But a natural sleep,” Jim noted. “Not induced with sedatives.”

Travis said, “How long will he need to recover?”

“To shake off distemper — a few more days, a week. I’d like to keep him here two more days, anyway. You could go home now, if you want, but you’re also welcome to stay. You’ve been quite a help.”

“We’ll stay,” Nora said at once.

“But after the distemper is beaten,” Travis said, “he’s going to be weak, isn’t he?”

“At first, very weak,” Jim said. “But gradually he’ll get most if not all of his old strength back. I’m sure now that he never went into second-stage distemper, in spite of the convulsions. So perhaps by the first of the year he’ll be his old self, and there should be no lasting infirmities, no palsied shaking or anything like that.”

The first of the year.

Travis hoped that would be soon enough.

Again, Nora and Travis split the night into two shifts. Travis took the first watch, and she relieved him in the surgery at three o’clock in the morning.

Fog had seethed into Carmel. It roiled at the windows, softly insistent.

Einstein was sleeping when Nora arrived, and she said, “Has he been awake much?”

“Yeah,” Travis said. “Now and then.”

“Have you. talked to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

Travis’s face was lined, haggard, and his expression was grave. “I’ve asked him questions that can be answered with a yes or no.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t answer them. He just blinks at me, or yawns, or he goes back to sleep.”

“He’s very tired yet,” she said, desperately hoping that was the explanation for the retriever’s uncommunicative behavior. “He doesn’t have the strength even for questions and answers.”

Pale and obviously depressed, Travis said, “Maybe. I don’t know. but I think. he seems. confused.”

“He hasn’t shaken the disease yet,” she said. “He’s still in the grip of it, beating the damn stuff, but still in its grip. He’s bound to be a little muddleheaded for a while yet.”

“Confused,” Travis repeated.

“It’ll pass.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’ll pass.”

But he sounded as if he believed that Einstein would never be the same again.

Nora knew what Travis must be thinking: it was the Cornell Curse again, which he professed not to believe in but which he still feared in his heart of hearts. Everyone he loved was doomed to suffer and die young. Everyone he cared about was torn from him.

That was all nonsense, of course, and Nora did not believe in it for a moment. But she knew how hard it was to shake off the past, to face only toward the future, and she sympathized with his inability to be optimistic just now. She also knew there was nothing she could do for him to haul him out of that pit of private anguish — nothing except kiss him, hold him for a moment, then send him off to bed to get some sleep.

When Travis was gone, Nora sat on the floor beside Einstein and said, “There’re some things I have to tell you, fur face. I guess you’re asleep and can’t hear me, and maybe even if you were awake you wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. Maybe you’ll never again understand, which is why I want to say these things now, while there’s at least still hope that your mind’s intact.”

She paused and took a deep breath and looked around at the still surgery, where the dim lights gleamed in the stainless-steel fixtures and in the glass of the enameled cabinets. It was a lonely place at three-thirty in the morning.

Einstein’s breath came and went with a soft hiss, an occasional rattle. He didn’t stir. Not even his tail moved.

“I thought of you as my guardian, Einstein. That’s what I called you once, when you saved me from Arthur Streck. My guardian. You not only rescued me from that awful man — you also saved me from loneliness and terrible despair. And you saved Travis from the darkness within him, brought us together, and in a hundred other ways you were as perfect as any guardian angel might hope to be. In that good, pure heart of yours, you never asked for or wanted anything in return for all you did. Some Milk-Bones once in a while, a bit of chocolate now and then. But you’d have done it all even if you’d been fed nothing but Dog Chow. You did it because you love, and being loved in return was reward enough. And by just being what you are, fur face, you taught me a great lesson, a lesson I can’t easily put into words.

For a while, silent and unable to speak, she sat in the shadows beside her friend, her child, her teacher, her guardian.

“But damn it,” she said at last, “I’ve got to find words because maybe this

is the last time I can even pretend you’re able to understand them. It’s like this. you taught me that I’m your guardian, too, that I’m Travis’s guardian, and that he is my guardian and yours. We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness. You’ve taught me that we’re all needed, even those who sometimes think we’re worthless, plain, and dull. If we love and allow ourselves to be loved. well, a person who loves is the most precious thing in the world, worth all the fortunes that ever were. That’s what you’ve taught me, fur face, and because of you I’ll never be the same.”

The rest of the long night, Einstein lay motionless, lost in a deep sleep.

Saturday, Jim Keene kept hours only in the morning. At noon he locked the office entrance at the side of his big, cozy house.

During the morning, Einstein had exhibited encouraging signs of recovery. He drank more water and spent some time on his belly instead of lying limply on his side. Head raised, he looked around with interest at the activity in the vet’s surgery. He even slurped up a raw-egg-and-gravy mixture that Jim put in front of him, downing half the contents of the dish, and he did not regurgitate what he had eaten. He was now entirely off intravenous fluids.

But he still dozed a lot. And his responses to Travis and Nora were only those of an ordinary dog.

After lunch, as they were sitting with Jim at the kitchen table, having a final cup of coffee, the vet sighed and said, “Well, I don’t see how this can be put off any longer.” From an inner pocket of his old, well-worn corduroy jacket, he withdrew a folded sheet of paper and put it on the table in front of Travis.

For a moment, Nora thought it-was the bill for his services. But when Travis unfolded the paper, she saw that it was a wanted flyer put out by the people looking for Einstein.

Travis’s shoulders sagged.

Feeling as if her heart had begun to sink down through her body, Nora moved closer to Travis so they could read the bulletin together. It was dated last week. In addition to a description of Einstein that included the three-number tattoo in his ear, the flyer stated the dog would most likely be found in the possession of a man named Travis Cornell and his wife, Nora, who might be living under different names. Descriptions — and photographs — of Nora and Travis were at the bottom of the sheet.

“How long have you known?” Travis asked.

Jim Keene said, “Within an hour after I first saw him, Thursday morning. I’ve been getting weekly updates of that bulletin for six months — and I’ve had three follow-up calls from the Federal Cancer Institute to make sure I’ll remember to examine any golden retriever for a lab tattoo and report it at

Once.”

“And have you reported him?” Nora asked.

“Not yet. Didn’t seem any point arguing about it until we saw whether he was going to pull through.”

Travis said, “Will you report him now?”

His hound-dog face settling into an expression that was even more glum than usual, Jim Keene said, “According to the Cancer Institute, this dog was at the very center of extremely important experiments that might lead to a cancer cure. Says there that millions of dollars of research money will have been spent for nothing if the dog isn’t found and returned to the lab to complete their studies.”

“It’s all lies,” Travis said.

“Let me make one thing very clear to you,” Jim said, leaning forward in his chair and folding his large hands around his coffee cup. “I’m an animal lover to the bone. I’ve dedicated my life to animals. And I love dogs more than anything else. But I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who believe that we should stop all animal experimentation, people who think medical advancements that help save human lives are not worth harming one guinea pig, one cat, one dog. People who raid labs and steal animals, ruining years of important research. they make me want to spit. It’s good and right to love life, to dearly love it in all its most humble forms. But these people don’t love life — they revere it, which is a pagan and ignorant and perhaps even savage attitude.”

“This isn’t like that,” Nora said. “Einstein was never used in cancer research. That’s just a cover story. The Cancer Institute isn’t hunting for Einstein. It’s the National Security Agency that wants him.” She looked at Travis and said, “Well, what do we do now?”

Travis smiled grimly, and said, “Well, I sure can’t kill Jim here to stop him—”

The vet looked startled.

“—so I guess we’ve got to persuade him,” Travis finished.

“The truth?” Nora asked.

Travis stared at Jim Keene for a long time, and at last said, “Yeah. The truth. It’s the only thing that might convince him to throw that damn wanted poster in the trash.”

Taking a deep breath, Nora said, “Jim, Einstein is as smart as you or me or Travis.”

“Smarter, I sometimes think,” Travis said.

The vet stared at them, uncomprehending.

“Let’s make another pot of coffee,” Nora said. “This is going to be a long, long afternoon.”

Hours later, at ten minutes past five, Saturday afternoon, Nora and Travis and Jim Keene crowded in front of the mattress on which Einstein lay.

The dog had just taken a few more ounces of water. He looked at them with interest, too.

Travis tried to decide if those large brown eyes still had the strange depth, uncanny alertness, and undoglike awareness that he had seen in them so many times before. Damn. He was not sure — and his uncertainty scared him.

Jim examined Einstein, noting aloud that his eyes were clearer, almost normal, and that his temperature was still falling. “Heart’s sounding a little better, too.”

Worn out by the ten-minute examination, Einstein flopped onto his side and issued a long weary sigh. In a moment, he dozed again.

The vet said, “He sure doesn’t seem much like a genius dog.”

“He’s still sick,” Nora said. “All he needs is a little more time to recover, and he’ll be able to show you that everything we’ve said is true.”

“When do you think he’ll be on his feet?” Travis asked.

Jim thought about that, then said, “Maybe tomorrow. He’ll be very shaky at first, but maybe tomorrow. We’ll just have to see.”

“When he’s on his feet,” Travis said, “when he’s got his sense of balance back and is interested in moving around, that ought to indicate he’s clearer in his head, too. So when he’s up and about — that’s when we’ll give him a test to prove to you how smart he is.”

“Fair enough,” Jim said.

“And if he proves it,” Nora said, “you’ll not turn him in?”

“Turn him in to people who’d create this Outsider you’ve told me about? Turn him in to the liars who cooked up that baloney wanted flyer? Nora, what sort of man do you take me for?”

Nora said, “A good man.”

Twenty-four hours later, on Sunday evening, in Jim Keene’s surgery, Einstein was tottering around as if he were a little old four-legged man.

Nora scooted along the floor on her knees beside him, telling him what a fine and brave fellow he was, quietly encouraging him to keep going. Every step he took thrilled her as if he were her own baby learning to walk. But what thrilled her more was the look he gave her a few times: it was a look that seemed to express chagrin at his infirmity, but there was also a sense of humor in it, as if he were saying, Hey, Nora, am I a spectacle — or what? Isn’t this just plain ridiculous?

Saturday night he had eaten a little solid food, and all day Sunday he had nibbled at easily digestible vittles that the vet provided. He was drinking well, and the most encouraging sign of improvement was his insistence on going Outside to make his toilet. He could not stay on his feet for long periods of time, and once in a while he wobbled and plopped backward on his butt; however, he did not bump into walls or walk in circles.

Yesterday, Nora had gone shopping and had returned with three Scrabble games. Now, Travis had separated the lettered tiles into twenty-six piles at one end of the surgery, where there was a lot of open floor space.

“We’re ready,” Jim Keene said. He was sitting on the floor with Travis, his legs drawn up under him Indian-style.

Pooka was lying at his master’s side, watching with baffled dark eyes. Nora led Einstein back across the room to the Scrabble tiles. Taking his head in her hands, looking straight into his eyes, she said, “Okay, fur face. Let’s prove to Dr. Jim that you’re not just some pathetic lab animal involved in cancer tests. Let’s show him what you really are and prove to him what those nasty people really want you for.”

She tried to believe that she saw the old awareness in the retriever’s dark gaze.

With evident nervousness and fear, Travis said, “Who asks the first question?”

“I will,” Nora said unhesitatingly. To Einstein, she said, “How’s the fiddle?”

They had told Jim Keene about the message that Travis had found the morning Einstein had been so very ill — FIDDLE BROKE — SO the vet understood what Nora was asking.

Einstein blinked at her, then looked at the letters, blinked at her again, sniffed the letters, and she was getting a sick feeling in her stomach when, suddenly, he began to choose tiles and push them around with his nose.

FIDDLE JUST OUT OF TUNE.

Travis shuddered as if the dread he had contained was a powerful electric charge that had leapt out of him in an instant. He said, “Thank God, thank you God,” and he laughed with delight.

“Holy shit,” Jim Keene said.

Pooka raised his head very high and pricked his ears, aware that something important was happening but not sure what it was.

Her heart swelling with relief and excitement and love, Nora returned the letters to their separate piles and said, “Einstein, who is your master? Tell us his name.”

The retriever looked at her, at Travis, then made a considered reply.

NO MASTER. FRIENDS.

Travis laughed. “By God, I’ll settle for that! No one can be his master, but anyone should be damned proud to be his friend.”

Funny — this proof of Einstein’s undamaged intellect made Travis laugh with delight, the first laughter of which he had been capable in days, but it made Nora weep with relief.

Jim Keene looked on in wide-eyed wonder, grinning stupidly. He said, “I feel like a child who’s sneaked downstairs on Christmas Eve and actually seen the real Santa Claus putting gifts under the tree.”

“My turn,” Travis said, sliding forward and putting a hand on Einstein’s head, patting him. “Jim just mentioned Christmas, and it’s not far away.

Twenty days from now. So tell me, Einstein, what would you most like to have Santa bring you?”

Twice, Einstein started to line up the lettered tiles, but both times he had second thoughts and disarranged them. He tottered and thumped down on his butt, looked around sheepishly, saw that they were all expectant, got up again, and this time produced a three-word request for Santa.

MICKEY MOUSE VIDEOS.

They didn’t get to bed until two in the morning because Jim Keene was intoxicated, not drunk from beer or wine or whiskey but from sheer joy over Einstein’s intelligence. “Like a man’s, yes, but still the dog, still the dog, wonderfully like, yet wonderfully different from, a man’s thinking, based on what little I’ve seen.” But Jim did not press for more than a dozen examples of the dog’s wit, and he was the first to say that they must not tire their patient. Still, he was electrified, so excited he could barely contain himself. Travis would not have been too surprised if the vet had suddenly just exploded.

In the kitchen, Jim pleaded with them to retell stories about Einstein: the Modern Bride business in Solvang; the way he had taken it upon himself to add cold water to the first hot bath that Travis had given him; and many more. Jim actually retold some of the same stories himself, almost as if Travis and Nora had never heard them, but they were happy to indulge him.

With a flourish, he snatched the wanted flyer off the table, struck a kitchen match, and burned the sheet in the sink. He washed the ashes down the drain. “To hell with the small minds who’d keep a creature like that locked up to be poked and prodded and studied. They might’ve had the genius to make Einstein, but they don’t understand the meaning of what they themselves have done. They don’t understand the greatness of it, because if they did they wouldn’t want to cage him.”

At last, when Jim Keene reluctantly agreed that they were all in need of sleep, Travis carried Einstein (already sleeping) up to the guest room. They made a blanket-cushioned place for him on the floor next to the bed.

In the dark, under the covers, with Einstein’s soft snoring to comfort them, Travis and Nora held each other.

She said, “Everything’s going to be all right now.”

“There’s still some trouble coming,” he said. He felt as if Einstein’s recovery had weakened the curse of untimely death that had followed him all of his life. But he was not ready to hope that the curse had been banished altogether. The Outsider was still out there somewhere. coming.

TEN

On Tuesday afternoon, December 7, when they took Einstein home, Jim Keene was reluctant to let them go. He followed them out to the pickup and stood at the driver’s window, restating the treatment that must be continued for the next couple of weeks, reminding them that he wanted to see Einstein once a week for the rest of the month, and urging them to visit him not only for the dog’s medical care but for drinks, dinner, conversation.

Travis knew the vet was trying to say he wanted to remain a part of Einstein's life, wanted to participate in the magic of it. “Jim, believe me, we’ll be back. And before Christmas, you’ll have to come out to our place, spend the day with us.”

“I’d like that.”

“So would we,” Travis said sincerely.

On the drive home, Nora held Einstein in her lap, wrapped in a blanket once more. He still did not have his old appetite, and he was weak. His immune system had taken severe punishment, so he would be more than usually susceptible to illness for a while. He was to be kept in the house as much as possible and pampered until he had regained his previous vigor— probably after the first of the year, according to Jim Keene.

The bruised and swollen sky bulged with saturated dark clouds. The Pacific Ocean was so hard and gray that it did not appear to be water but looked more like billions of shards and slabs of slate being continuously agitated by some geological upheaval in the earth below.

The bleak weather could not dampen their high spirits. Nora was beaming, and Travis found himself whistling. Einstein studied the scenery with great interest, clearly treasuring even the somber beauty of this nearly colorless winter day. Perhaps he had never expected to see the world outside Jim Keene’s office again, in which case even a sea of jumbled stone and a contusive sky were precious sights.

When they reached home, Travis left Nora in the pickup with the retriever and entered the house alone, by the back door, carrying the.38 pistol they kept in the truck. In the kitchen, where the lights had been on ever since their hasty departure last week, he immediately took an Uzi automatic pistol from its hiding place in a cabinet, and put the lighter gun aside. He proceeded cautiously from room to room, looking behind every large item of furniture and in every closet.

He saw no signs of burglary, and he expected none. This rural area was relatively crime-free. You could leave your door unlocked for days at a time without risking thieves who would take everything down to the wallpaper.

The Outsider, not a burglar, worried him.

The house was deserted.

Travis checked the barn, too, before driving the pickup inside, but it was also safe.

In the house, Nora put Einstein down and pulled the blanket off him. He tottered around the kitchen, sniffing at things. In the living room he looked at the cold fireplace and inspected his page-turning machine.

He returned to the kitchen pantry, clicked on the light with his foot pedal, and pawed letters out of the Lucite tubes.

HOME.

Stooping beside the dog, Travis said, “It’s sure good to be here, isn’t it?”

Einstein nuzzled Travis’s throat and licked his neck. The golden coat was fluffy and smelled clean because Jim Keene had given the dog a bath, in his surgery, under carefully controlled conditions. But as fluffy and fresh as he was, Einstein still did not look himself; he seemed tired, and he was thinner, too, having lost a few pounds in less than a week.

Pawing out more letters, Einstein spelled the same word again, as if to emphasize his pleasure: HOME.

Standing at the pantry door, Nora said, “Home is where the heart is, and there’s plenty of heart in this one. Hey, let’s have an early dinner and eat it in the living room while we run the videotape of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Would you like that?”

Einstein wagged his tail vigorously.

Travis said, “Do you think you could handle your favorite food — a few weenies for dinner?”

Einstein licked his chops. He dispensed more letters, with which he expressed his enthusiastic approval of Travis’s suggestion.

HOME IS WHERE THE WEENIES ARE.

When Travis woke in the middle of the night, Einstein was at the bedroom window, on his hind feet with his forepaws braced on the sill. He was barely visible in the second-hand glow of the night-light in the adjoining bathroom. The interior shutter was bolted over the window, so the dog had no view of the front yard. But perhaps, for getting a fix on The Outsider, sight was the sense on which he least depended.

“Something out there, boy?” Travis asked quietly, not wanting to wake Nora unnecessarily.

Einstein dropped from the window, padded to Travis’s side of the bed, and put his head up on the mattress.

Petting the dog, Travis whispered, “Is it coming?”

Replying with only a cryptic mewl, Einstein settled down on the floor beside the bed and went to sleep again.

In a few minutes, Travis slept, too.

He woke again near dawn to find Nora sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Einstein. “Go back to sleep,” she told Travis.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she whispered drowsily. “I woke up and saw him at the window, but it’s nothing. Go to sleep.”

He did manage to fall asleep a third time, but he dreamed that The Outsider had been smart enough to learn how to use tools during its six-month-long pursuit of Einstein and now, yellow eyes gleaming, it was smashing its way through the bedroom shutters with an ax.

They gave Einstein his medicines on schedule, and he swallowed his pills obediently. They explained to him that he needed to eat well in order to regain his strength. He tried, but his appetite was returning only slowly. He would need a few weeks to regain the pounds he had lost and to recover his old vitality. But day by day his improvement was perceptible.

By Friday, December 10, Einstein seemed strong enough to risk a short walk outside. He still wobbled a little now and then, but he no longer tottered with every step. He’d had all of his shots at the veterinary clinic; there was no chance of picking up rabies on top of the distemper he’d just beaten.

The weather was milder than it had been in recent weeks, with temperatures in the low sixties and no wind. The scattered clouds were white, and the sun, when not hidden, laid a warm life-giving caress on the skin.

Einstein accompanied Travis on an inspection tour of the infrared sensors around the house and the nitrous-oxide tanks in the barn. They moved a bit more slowly than the last time they had walked this line together, but Einstein seemed to enjoy being back on duty.

Nora was in her studio, working diligently on a new painting: a portrait of Einstein. He was not aware that he was the subject of her latest canvas. The picture was to be one of his Christmas gifts and would, once opened on the holiday, be hung above the fireplace in the living room.

When Travis and Einstein came out of the barn, into the yard, he said, “Is it getting closer?”

Upon being asked that question, Einstein went through his usual routine, though with less exertion, less sniffing of the air, and less study of the shadowy forest around them. Returning to Travis, the dog whined anxiously.

“Is it out there?” Travis asked.

Einstein gave no answer. He merely surveyed the woods again — puzzled.

“Is it still coming?” Travis asked.

The dog did not reply.

“Is it nearer than it was?”

Einstein padded in a circle, sniffed the ground, sniffed the air, cocked his head one way and then the other. Finally he returned to the house and stood at the door, looking at Travis, waiting patiently.

Inside, Einstein went directly to the pantry.

MUZZY.

Travis stared at the word on the floor. “Muzzy?”

Einstein dispensed more letters and nosed them into place.

MUFFLED. FUZZY.

“Are you talking about your ability to sense The Outsider?” A quick tail wag: Yes.

“You can’t sense it any more?”

One bark: No.

“Do you think… it’s dead?”

DON’T KNOW.

“Or maybe this sixth sense of yours doesn’t work when you’re sick — or debilitated like you are now.”

MAYBE.

Gathering up the lettered tiles and sorting them into the tubes, Travis thought for a minute. Bad thoughts. Unnerving thoughts. They had an alarm system around the property, yes, but to some extent they were depending on Einstein for an early warning. Travis should have felt comfortable with the precautions he had taken and with his own abilities, as a former Delta Force man, to exterminate The Outsider. But he was tormented by the feeling that he had overlooked a hole in their defenses and that, come the crisis, he would need Einstein’s full powers and strength to help him deal with the unexpected.

“You’re going to have to- get well as fast as you can,” he told the retriever. “You’re going to have to try to eat even when you have no real appetite. You’re going to have to sleep as much as you can, give your body a chance to knit up, and don’t spend half the night at the windows, Worrying.”

CHICKEN SOUP.

Laughing, Travis said, “Might as well try that, too.”

A BOILERMAKER KILLS GERMS DEAD.

“Where’d you get that idea?”

BOOK. WHAT’S BOILERMAKER?

Travis said, “A shot of whiskey dropped into a glass of beer.”

Einstein considered that for a moment.

KILL GERMS BUT BECOME ALCOHOLIC.

Travis laughed and ruffled Einstein’s coat. “You’re a regular comedian, fur face.”

MAYBE I SHOULD PLAY VEGAS.

“I bet you could.”

HEADLINER.

“You certainly would be.”

ME AND PIA ZADORA.

He hugged the dog, and they sat in the pantry laughing, each in his own way.

In spite of the joking, Travis knew that Einstein was deeply troubled by the loss of his ability to sense The Outsider. The jokes were a defensive mechanism, a way to hold off fear.

That afternoon, exhausted from their short walk around the house, Einstein slept while Nora painted feverishly in her studio. Travis sat by a front window, staring out at the woods, repeatedly going over their defenses in his mind, looking for a hole.

On Sunday, December 12, Jim Keene came out to their place in the afternoon and stayed for dinner. He examined Einstein and was pleased with the dog’s improvement.

“Seems slow to us,” Nora said fretfully.

“I told you, it’ll take time,” Jim said.

He made a couple of changes in Einstein’s medication and left new bottles of pills.

Einstein had fun demonstrating his page-turning machine and his letter-dispensing device in the pantry. He graciously accepted praise for his ability to hold a pencil in his teeth and use it to operate the television and the videotape recorder without bothering Nora and Travis for help.

Nora was at first surprised that the veterinarian looked less sad-eyed and sorrowful than she remembered. But she decided his face was the same; the only thing that had changed was her perception of him. Now that she knew him better, now that he was a friend of the first rank, she saw not only the glum features nature had given him but the kindness and humor beneath his somber surface.

Over dinner, Jim said, “I’ve been doing a little research into tattooing— to see if maybe I can remove the numbers in his ear.”

Einstein had been lying on the floor nearby, listening to their conversation. He got to his feet, wobbled a moment, then hurried to the kitchen table and jumped into one of the empty chairs. He sat very erect and stared at Jim expectantly.

“Well,” the vet said, putting down a forkful of curried chicken that he’d lifted halfway to his mouth, “most but not all tattoos can be eradicated. If! know what sort of ink was used and by what method it was embedded under the skin, I might be able to erase it.”

“That would be terrific,” Nora said. “Then even if they found us and tried to take Einstein back, they couldn’t prove he’s the dog they lost.”

“There’d still be traces of the tattoo that would show up under close inspection,” Travis said. “Under a magnifying glass.”

Einstein looked from Travis to Jim Keene as if to say, Yeah, what about that?

“Most labs just tag research animals,” Jim said. “Of those that tattoo, there’re a couple of different standard inks used. I might be able to remove it and leave no trace except a natural-looking mottling of the flesh. Microscopic examination wouldn’t reveal traces of the ink, not a hint of the numbers. It’s a small tattoo, after all, which makes the job easier. I’m still researching techniques, but in a few weeks we might try it — if Einstein doesn’t mind some discomfort.”

The retriever left the table and padded into the pantry. They could hear the pumping of the letter-dispensing pedals.

Nora went to see what message Einstein was composing.

DON’T WANT TO BE BRANDED. AM NOT A COW.

His desire to be free of the tattoo went deeper than Nora had thought. He wanted the mark removed in order to escape identification by the people at the lab. But evidently he also hated carrying those three numbers in his ear because they marked him as mere property, a condition that was an affront to his dignity and a violation of his rights as an intelligent creature.

FREEDOM.

“Yes,” Nora said respectfully, putting a hand on his head, “I do understand. You are a. a person, and a person with”—this was the first time she had thought of this aspect of the situation—”a soul.”

Was it blasphemous to think Einstein had a soul? No. She did not think blasphemy entered into it. Man had made the dog; however, if there was a God, He obviously approved of Einstein — not least of all because Einstein’s ability to differentiate right from wrong, his ability to love, his courage, and his selflessness made him closer to the image of God than were many human beings who walked the earth.

“Freedom,” she said. “If you’ve got a soul — and I know you do — then you were born with free will and the right to self-determination. The number in your ear is an insult, and we’ll get rid of it.”

After dinner, Einstein clearly wanted to monitor — and participate in — the conversation, but he ran out of energy and slept by the fire.

Over a short brandy and coffee, Jim Keene listened as Travis outlined their defenses against The Outsider. Encouraged to find holes in their preparations, the vet could think of nothing except the vulnerability of their power supply. “If the thing was smart enough to bring down the line that runs in from the main highway, it could plunge you into darkness in the middle of the night and render your alarm useless. And without power those tricky mechanisms in the barn wouldn’t slam the door behind the beast or release the nitrous oxide.”

Nora and Travis took him downstairs, into the half-basement under the rear of the house, to show him the emergency generator. It was powered by a forty-gallon tank of gasoline buried in the yard, and it would restore electricity to the house and barn and alarm system after only a ten-second delay following the loss of the main supply.

“As far as I can see,” Jim said, “you’ve thought of everything.”

“I think we have, too,” Nora said.

But Travis scowled. “I wonder.

On Wednesday, December 22, they drove into Carmel. Leaving Einstein with Jim Keene, they spent the day buying Christmas gifts, decorations for the house, ornaments for a tree, and the tree itself.

With the threat of The Outsider moving inexorably closer to them, it seemed almost frivolous to make plans for the holiday. But Travis said, “Life is short. You never know how much time you’ve got left, so you can’t let Christmas slide by without celebrating, no matter what. Besides, my Christmases haven’t been so terrific these last few years. I intend to make up for that.”

“Aunt Violet didn’t believe in making an event of Christmas. She didn’t believe in exchanging gifts or putting up a tree.”

“She didn’t believe in life,” Travis said. “And that’s just one more reason to do this Christmas up right. It’ll be your first good one, as well as Einstein’s first.”

Starting next year, Nora thought, there’ll be a baby in the house with which to share Christmas, and won’t that be a hoot!

Aside from suffering a little mild morning sickness and having put on a couple of pounds, she’d not yet shown any signs of pregnancy. Her belly was still flat, and Dr. Weingold said that, considering her body type, she had a chance of being one of those women whose abdomen underwent only moderate distension. She hoped she was lucky in that regard because, after the birth, getting back into shape would be a lot easier. Of course, the baby was not due for six months yet, which gave her plenty of time to get as big as a walrus.

Returning from Carmel in the pickup — the back of which was filled with packages and a perfectly formed Christmas tree — Einstein slept half on Nora’s lap. He was worn out from his busy day with Jim and Pooka. They got home less than an hour before dark. Einstein led the way toward the house—

— but suddenly stopped and looked around curiously. He sniffed the chilly air, then moved across the yard, nose to the ground, as if tracking a scent.

Heading toward the back door with her arms full of packages, Nora did not at first see anything unusual in the dog’s behavior, but she noticed that Travis had halted and was staring hard at Einstein. She said, “What is it?”

“Wait a second.”

Einstein crossed the yard to the edge of the woods on the south side. He stood rigid, head thrust forward, then shook himself and moved on along the perimeter of the forest. He stopped repeatedly, standing motionless each time, and in a couple of minutes he came all the way around to the north.

When the retriever returned to them, Travis said, “Something?”

Einstein wagged his tail briefly and barked once: Yes and no.

Inside, in the pantry, the retriever laid out a message.

FELT SOMETHING.

“What?” Travis asked.

DON’T KNOW.

“The Outsider?”

MAYBE.

“Close?”

DON’T KNOW.

“Are you getting your sixth sense back?” Nora asked.

DON’T KNOW. JUST FELT.

“Felt what?” Travis asked.

The dog composed an answer only after considerable deliberation.

BIG DARKNESS.

“You felt a big darkness?”

Yes.

“What’s that mean?” Nora asked uneasily.

CAN’T EXPLAIN BETTER. JUST FELT IT.

Nora looked at Travis and saw a concern in his eyes that probably mirrored the expression in her own.

A big darkness was out there somewhere, and it was coming.

Christmas was joyous and fine.

In the morning, sitting around the light-bedecked tree, drinking milk and eating homemade cookies, they opened presents. As a joke, the first gift that Nora gave Travis was a box of underwear. He gave her a bright orange and yellow muumuu obviously sized for a three-hundred-pound woman: “For March, when you’ll be too big for anything else. Of course, by May you’ll have outgrown it.” They exchanged serious gifts, also — jewelry and sweaters and books.

But Nora, like Travis, felt the day belonged to Einstein more than to anyone else. She gave him the portrait on which she had been working all month, and the retriever seemed stunned and flattered and delighted that she had seen fit to immortalize him in paint. He got three new Mickey Mouse videotapes, a pair of fancy metal food and water bowls with his name engraved on them to replace the plastic dishes he had been using, his own small battery powered clock that he could take with him to any room in the house (he was showing an increasing interest in time), and several other presents, but he Was repeatedly drawn to the portrait, which they propped against the wall for his inspection. Later, when they hung it above the living-room fireplace, Einstein stood on the hearth and peered up at the picture, pleased and proud.

Like any kid, Einstein perversely took almost as much pleasure in playing With empty boxes, crumpled wrapping paper, and ribbons as he did with the gifts themselves. And one of his favorite things was a joke gift: a red Santa cap with a white porn-porn on the tip, which was held on his head by an elastic strap. Nora put it on him just for fun. When he saw himself in a mirror, he was so taken with his appearance that he objected when, a few minutes later, she tried to take the cap off him. He kept it on most of the day.

Jim Keene and Pooka arrived in the early afternoon, and Einstein herded them straight into the living room to look at his portrait above the mantel. For an hour, watched over by Jim and Travis, the two dogs played together in the back yard. That activity, having been preceded by the excitement of the morning’s gift-giving, left Einstein in need of a nap, so they returned to the house, where Jim and Travis helped Nora prepare Christmas dinner.

After his nap, Einstein tried to interest Pooka in Mickey Mouse cartoons, but Nora saw that he met with only limited success. Pooka’s attention span didn’t even last long enough for Donald or Goofy or Pluto to get Mickey into trouble. In respect of his companion’s lower 10, and apparently not bored with such company, Einstein turned the television off and engaged in strictly doggy activities: some light wrestling in the den and a lot of lying around, nose to nose, silently communing with each other about canine concerns.

By early evening, the house was filled with the aromas of turkey, baked corn, yams, and other goodies. Christmas music played. And in spite of the interior shutters that had been bolted over the windows when the early-winter night had fallen, in spite of the guns near at hand, in spite of the demonic presence of The Outsider that always lurked in the back of her mind, Nora had never been happier.

During dinner, they talked about the baby, and Jim asked if they had given any thought to names. Einstein, eating in the corner with Pooka, was instantly intrigued by the idea of participating in the naming of their firstborn. He dashed immediately to the pantry to spell out his suggestion.

Nora left the table to see what name the dog thought suitable.

MICKEY.

“Absolutely not!” she said. “We’re not naming my baby after a cartoon mouse.”

DONALD.

“Nor a duck.”

PLUTO.

“Pluto? Get serious, fur face.”

GOOFY.

Nora firmly restrained him from pushing the letter-dispensing pedals any more, gathered up the used tiles and put them away, turned off the pantry light, and went back to the table. “You may think it’s hilarious,” she told Travis and Jim, who were choking with laughter, “but he’s serious!”

After dinner, sitting around the tree in the living room, they talked about many things, including Jim’s intention of getting another dog. “Pooka needs to have another of his kind,” the vet said. “He’s almost a year and a half old now, and I’m of the belief that human companionship isn’t enough for them after they’re well past the puppy stage. They get lonely like we do. And since I’m going to get him a companion, I might as well get a female purebred lab and maybe wind up with some nice puppies to sell later. So he’s going to have not only a friend but a mate.”

Nora had not noticed that Einstein was any more interested in that part of the conversation than in any other. However, after Jim and Pooka had gone home, Travis found a message in the pantry and called Nora over to have a look at it.

MATE. A COMPANION, PARTNER, ONE OF A PAIR.

The retriever had been waiting for them to notice the carefully arranged tiles. Now he appeared behind them and regarded them quizzically.

Nora said, “Do you think you’d like a mate?”

Einstein slipped between them, into the pantry, disarranged the tiles, and made a reply.

IT’S WORTH THINKING ABOUT.

“But, listen, fur face,” Travis said, “you’re one of a kind. There’s no other dog like you, with your JO.”

The retriever considered that point but was not dissuaded.

LIFE IS MORE THAN INTELLECT.

“True enough,” Travis said. “But I think this needs a lot of consideration.”

LIFE IS FEELINGS.

“All right,” Nora said. “We’ll think about it.”

LIFE IS MATE. SHARING.

“We promise to think about it and then discuss it with you some more,” Travis said. “Now it’s getting late.”

Einstein quickly made one more message.

BABY MICKEY?

“Absolutely not!” Nora said.

That night, in bed, after she and Travis made love, Nora said, “I’ll bet he is lonely.”

“Jim Keene?”

“Well, yes, I bet he’s lonely, too. He’s such a nice man, and he’d make someone a great husband. But women are just as choosy about looks as men are, don’t you think? They don’t go for husbands with hound-dog faces. They marry the good-looking ones who half the time treat them like dirt. But I didn’t mean Jim. I meant Einstein. He must get lonely now and then.”

“We’re with him all the time.”

“No, we’re really not. I paint, and you do things in which poor Einstein doesn’t get included. And if you do go back to real estate eventually, there’ll be a lot of time when Einstein’s without anyone.”

“He has his books. He loves books.”

“Maybe books aren’t enough,” she said.

They were silent for so long that she thought Travis had fallen asleep. Then he said, “If Einstein mated and produced puppies, what would they be like?”

“You mean — would they be as smart as he is?”

“I wonder. Seems to me there’s three possibilities. First, his intelligence isn’t inheritable, so his puppies would just be ordinary puppies. Second, it is inheritable, but the genes of his mate would dilute the intelligence, so the puppies would be smart but not as smart as their father; and each succeeding generation would get dimmer, duller, until eventually his great-great-greatgrandpups would just be ordinary dogs.”

“What’s the third possibility?”

“Intelligence, being a survival trait, might be genetically dominant, very dominant.”

“In which case his puppies would be as smart as he is.”

“And their puppies after them, on and on, until in time you’d have a colony of intelligent golden retrievers, thousands of them all over the world.”

They were silent again.

Finally she said, “Wow.”

Travis said, “He’s right.”

“What?”

“It is something worth thinking about.”

Vince Nasco had never anticipated, back in November, that he would need a full month to get a whack at Ramon Velazquez, the guy in Oakland who was a thorn in the side of Don Mario Tetragna. Until he wasted Velazquez, Vince would not be given the names of people in San Francisco who dealt in false ID and who might help him track down Travis Cornell, the woman, and the dog. So he had an urgent need to reduce Velazquez to a hunk of putrefying meat.

But Velazquez was a goddamn shadow. The man did not make a step without two bodyguards at his side, which should have made him more rather than less conspicuous. However, he conducted his gambling and drug enterprises — infringing on the Tetragna franchise in Oakland — with all the stealth of Howard Hughes. He slipped and slithered on his errands, using a fleet of different cars, never taking the same route two days in a row, never meeting in the same place, using the street as an office, never staying anywhere long enough to be made, marked, and wiped out. He was a hopeless paranoid who believed everyone was out to get him. Vince couldn’t keep the man in sight long enough to match him with the photograph that the Tetragnas had supplied. Ramon Velazquez was smoke.

Vince didn’t get him until Christmas Day, and it was a hell of a mess when it went down. Ramon was at home with a lot of relatives. Vince came at the Velazquez property from the house behind it, over the high brick wall between one big lot and the other. Coming down on the other side, he saw Velazquez and some people at a barbecue on the patio near the pool, where they were roasting an enormous turkey — did people barbecue turkeys anywhere but in

California? — and they all spotted him immediately though he was half an acre away. He saw the bodyguards reaching for weapons in their shoulder holsters, so he had no choice but to fire indiscriminately with his Uzi, spraying the entire patio area, taking out Velazquez, both bodyguards, a middle-aged woman who must have been somebody’s wife, and an old dame who had to be somebody’s grandmother.

Ssssnap.

Ssssnap.

Ssssnap.

Ssssnap.

Ssssnap.

Everyone else, inside and outside of the house, was screaming and diving for cover. Vince had to climb the wall back into the yard of the house next door — where nobody was home, thank God — and as he was hauling his ass over the top, a bunch of Latino types at the Velazquez place opened fire on him. He barely got away with his hide intact.

The day after Christmas, when he showed up at a San Francisco restaurant owned by Don Tetragna, to meet with Frank Dicenziano, a trusted Family capo who answered only to the don himself, Vince was worried. The fratellanza had a code about assassinations. Hell, they had a code about everything — probably even bowel movements — and they took their codes seriously, but the code of assassination was maybe taken a little more seriously than others. The first rule of that code was: You don’t hit a man in the company of his family unless he’s gone to ground and you just can’t reach him any other way. Vince felt fairly safe on that score. But another rule was that you never shot a man’s wife or kids or his grandmother in order to get at him. Any hit man who did such a thing would probably wind up dead himself, wasted by the very people who had hired him. Vince hoped to convince Frank Dicenziano that Velazquez was a special case — no other target had ever eluded Vince for a month — and that what had happened in Oakland on Christmas Day was regrettable but unavoidable.

Just in case Dicenziano — and by extension, the don — was too furious to listen to reason, Vince went prepared with more than a gun. He knew that, if they wanted him dead, they would crowd him and take the gun away from him before he could use it, as soon as he walked into the restaurant and before he knew the score. So he wired himself with plastic explosives and was prepared to detonate them, wiping out the entire restaurant, if they tried to fit him for a coffin.

Vince was not sure if he would survive the explosion. He had absorbed the life energies of so many people recently that he thought he must be getting close to the immortality he had been seeking — or was already there — but he could not know how strong he was until he put himself to the test. If his choice was standing at the heart of an explosion. or letting a couple of Wiseguys pump a hundred rounds into him and encase him in concrete for a dunk in the bay. he decided the former was more appealing and, perhaps, offered him a marginally better chance of survival.

To his surprise, Dicenziano — who resembled a squirrel with meatballs in his cheeks — was delighted with how the Velazquez contract had been fulfilled. He said the don had the highest praise for Vince. No one searched Vince when he entered the restaurant. At a corner booth, as the first men in the room, he and Frank were served a special lunch of dishes not on the menu. They drank three-hundred-dollar Cabernet Sauvignon, a gift from Mario Tetragna.

When Vince cautiously raised the issue of the dead wife and grandmother, Dicenziano said, “Listen, my friend, we knew this was going to be a hard hit, a demanding job, and that rules might have to be broken. Besides, these people were not our kind of people. They were just a bunch of wetback spics. They don’t belong in this business. If they try to force their way into it, they can’t expect us to play by the rules.”

Relieved, Vince went to the men’s room halfway through lunch and disconnected the detonator. He didn’t want to set the Plastique off accidentally now that the crisis was past.

At the end of lunch, Frank gave Vince the list. Nine names. “These people— who are not all Family people, by the way — pay the don for the right to operate their ID businesses in his territory. Back in November, in anticipation of your success with Velazquez, I spoke to these nine, and they’ll remember that the don wants them to cooperate with you in any way they can.”

Vince set out the same afternoon, looking for someone who would remember Travis Cornell.

Initially, he was frustrated. Two of the first four people on the list could not be reached. They had closed up shop and gone away for the holidays. To Vince, it seemed wrong that the criminal underworld would take off for Christmas and New Year’s as if they were schoolteachers.

But the fifth man, Anson Van Dyne, was at work in the basement beneath his topless club, Hot Tips, and at five-thirty, December 26, Vince found what he was after. Van Dyne looked at the photograph of Travis Cornell, which Vince had obtained from the back-issue files of the Santa Barbara newspaper. “Yeah, I remember him. He’s not one you forget. Not a foreigner looking to become an instant American like half my customers. And not the usual sad-assed loser who needs to change his name and hide his face. He’s not a big guy, and he doesn’t come on tough or anything, but you get the feeling he could mop up the floor with anyone who crossed him. Very self-contained. Very watchful. I couldn’t forget him.”

“What you couldn’t forget,” said one of the two bearded boy wonders at the computers, “is that gorgeous quiff he was with.”

“For her, even a dead man could get it up,” the other one said.

The first said, “Yeah, even a dead man. Cake and pie.”

Vince was both offended and confused by their contributions to the conversation, so he ignored them. To Van Dyne, he said, “Is there any chance you’d remember the new names you gave them?”

“Sure. We got it on file,” Van Dyne said.

Vince could not believe what he had heard. “I thought people in your line of work didn’t keep records? Safer for you and essential for your clients.”

Van Dyne shrugged. “Fuck the clients. Maybe one day the feds or the locals hit us, put us out of business. Maybe I find myself needing a steady flow of cash for lawyers’ fees. What better than to have a list of a couple of thousand bozos living under phony names, bozos who’d be willing to be squeezed a little rather than have to start all over again with new lives.”

“Blackmail,” Vince said.

“An ugly word,” Van Dyne said. “But apt, I’m afraid. Anyway, all we care about is that we are safe, that there aren’t any records here to incriminate us. We don’t keep the data in this dump. Soon as we provide someone with a new ID, we transmit the record of it over a safe phone line from the computer here to a computer we keep elsewhere. The way that computer is programmed, the data can’t be pulled out of it from here; it’s a one-way road; so if we are busted, the police hackers can’t reach our records from these machines. Hell, they won’t even know the records exist.”

This new high-tech criminal world made Vince woozy. Even the don, a man of infinite criminal cleverness, had thought these people kept no records and had not realized how computers had made it safe to do so. Vince thought about what Van Dyne had told him, getting it all sorted out in his mind. He said, “So can you take me to this other computer and look up Cornell’s new ID?”

“For a friend of Don Tetragna’s,” Van Dyne said, “I’ll do just about anything but slit my own throat. Come with me.”

Van Dyne drove Vince to a busy Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. The place must have seated a hundred and fifty, and every table was occupied, mostly by Anglos rather than Asians. Although the joint was enormous and was decorated with paper lanterns, dragon murals, imitation rosewood screens, and strings of brass wind chimes in the shapes of Chinese ideograms, it reminded Vince of the kitschy Italian trattoria in which he had murdered the cockroach Pantangela and the two federal marshals last August. All ethnic art and decor — from Chinese to Italian to Polish to Irish — were, when boiled down to their essence, perfectly alike.

The owner was a Chinese man in his thirties, who was introduced to Vince simply as Yuan. With bottles of Tsingtao provided by Yuan, Van Dyne and Vince went into the owner’s basement office, where two computers stood on two desks, one out in the main work area and the other shoved into a corner. The one in the corner was switched on, though nobody was working at it.

“This is my computer,” Van Dyne said. “No one here ever works with it. They never even touch it, except to open the phone line to put the modem in operation every morning and to close it at night. My computers at Hot Tips are linked to this one.”

“You trust Yuan?”

“I got him the loan that started this business. He owes me his good fortune.

And it’s pretty much a clean loan, nothing that can be linked to me in any way, or to Don Tetragna, so Yuan remains an upstanding citizen who’s of no interest to the cops. All he does for me in return is let me keep the computer here.”

Sitting in front of the terminal, Van Dyne began to use the keyboard. In two minutes he had Travis Cornell’s new name: Samuel Spencer Hyatt.

“And here,” Van Dyne said as new data flickered up. “This is the woman who was with him. Her real name was Nora Louise Devon of Santa Barbara. Now, she’s Nora Jean Aimes.”

“Okay,” Vince said. “Now wipe them off your records.”

“What do you mean?”

“Erase them. Take them out of the computer. They’re not yours any more. They’re mine. Nobody else’s. Just mine.”

A short while later, they were back at Hot Tips, which was a decadent place that revolted Vince.

In the basement, Van Dyne gave the names Hyatt and Aimes to the bearded boy wonders who seemed to live down there around the clock, like a couple of trolls.

First, the trolls broke into the Department of Motor Vehicle computers. They wanted to see whether, in the three months since acquiring new identities, Hyatt and Aimes had settled down somewhere and filed a change of address with the state.

“Bingo,” one of them said.

An address appeared on the screen, and the bearded operator ordered a printout.

Anson Van Dyne tore the paper off the printer and handed it to Vince. Travis Cornell and Nora Devon — now Hyatt and Aimes — were living at a rural address on Pacific Coast Highway south of the town of Carmel.

On Wednesday, December 29, Nora drove into Carmel alone for an appointment with Dr. Weingold.

The sky was overcast, so dark that the white seagulls, swooping against the backdrop of clouds, were by contrast almost as bright as incandescent lights. The weather had been much the same since the day after Christmas, but the promised rain never came.

Today, however, it came in torrents just as she pulled the pickup into one of the spaces in the small parking lot behind Dr. Weingold’s office. She was wearing a nylon jacket with a hood, just in case, and she pulled the hood

over her head before dashing from the truck into the one-story brick building. Dr. Weingold gave her the usual thorough examination and pronounced her fit as a fiddle, which would have amused Einstein.

“I’ve never seen a woman at the three-month mark in better shape,” the doctor said.

“I want this to be a very healthy baby, a perfect baby.”

“And so it shall be.”

The doctor believed that her name was Aimes and her husband’s name was Hyatt, but he never once indicated disapproval of her marital status. The situation embarrassed Nora, but she supposed that the modern world, into which she had fluttered from the cocoon of the Devon house, was liberal-minded about these things.

Dr. Weingold suggested, as he had done before, that she consider a test to determine the baby’s sex, and as before she declined. She wanted to be surprised. Besides, if they found out they were going to have a girl, Einstein would start campaigning for the name “Minnie.”

After huddling with the doctor’s receptionist to schedule the next appointment, Nora pulled the hood over her head again and went out into the driving rain. It was coming down hard, drizzling off a section of roof that had no gutters, sluicing across the sidewalk, forming deep puddles on the macadam of the parking lot. She sloshed through a miniature river on her way to the pickup, and in seconds her running shoes were saturated.

As she reached the truck, she saw a man getting out of a red Honda parked beside her. She didn’t notice much about him — just that he was a big guy in a small car, and that he was not dressed for the rain. He was wearing jeans and a blue pullover, and Nora thought: The poor man is going to get soaked to the skin.

She opened the driver’s door and started to get into the truck. The next thing she knew, the man in the-blue sweater was coming in after her, shoving her across the seat and clambering behind the wheel. He said, “If you yell, bitch, I’ll blow your guts out,” and she realized that he was jamming a revolver into her side.

She almost yelled anyway, involuntarily, almost tried to keep on going across the front seat and out the door on the passenger’s side. But something in his voice, brutal and dark, made her hesitate. He sounded as if he would shoot her in the back rather than let her escape.

He slammed the driver’s door, and now they were alone in the truck, beyond help, virtually concealed from the world by the rain that streamed down the Windows and made the glass opaque. It didn’t matter: the doctor’s parking lot was deserted, and it could not be seen from the street, so even out of the truck she would have had no one to whom to turn.

He was a very big man, and muscular, but it was not his size that was most frightening. His broad face was placid, virtually expressionless; that serenity, completely unsuited to these circumstances, scared Nora. His eyes were worse. Green eyes — and cold.

“Who are you?” she demanded, trying to conceal her fear, sure that visible terror would excite him. He seemed to be balanced on a thin line. “What do you want with me?”

“I want the dog.”

She had thought: robber. She had thought: rapist. She had thought: psychopathic thrill killer. But she had not for a moment thought that he might be a government agent. Yet who else would be looking for Einstein? No one else even knew the dog existed.

“What’re you talking about?” she said.

He pushed the muzzle of the revolver deeper into her side, until it hurt.

She thought of the baby growing within her. “All right, okay, obviously you know about the dog, so there’s no point playing games.”

“No point.” He spoke so quietly that she could hardly hear him above the roar of the rain that drummed on the roof of the cab and snapped against the windshield.

He reached over and pulled down the hood of her jacket, opened the zipper, and slid his hand down her breasts, over her belly. For a moment she was terrified that he was, after all, intent on rape.

Instead, he said, “This Weingold is a gynecologist-obstetrician. So what’s your problem? You have some damn social disease or are you pregnant?” He almost spit out the words “social disease,” as if merely pronouncing those syllables made him sick with disgust.

“You’re no government agent.” She spoke entirely from instinct.

“I asked you a question, bitch,” he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. He leaned close, digging the gun into her side again. The air in the truck was humid. The all-enveloping sound of rain combined with the stuffiness to create a claustrophobic atmosphere that was nearly intolerable. He said, “Which is it? You got herpes, syphilis, clap, some other crotch rot? Or are you pregnant?”

Thinking that pregnancy might gain her a dispensation from the violence of which he seemed so capable, she said, “I’m going to have a baby. I’m three months pregnant.”

Something happened in his eyes. A shifting. Like movement in a subtle kaleidoscopic pattern that was composed of bits of glass all the same shade of green.

Nora knew that admitting pregnancy was the worst thing she could have done, but she did not know why.

She thought about the.38 pistol in the glove compartment. She could not possibly open the glove box, grab the gun, and shoot him before he pulled the trigger of the revolver. Still, she’d have to remain constantly on the lookout for an opportunity, for a laxness on his part, that would give her a chance to go for her own weapon.

Suddenly he was climbing on top of her, and again she thought he was going to rape her in broad daylight, in the veiling curtains of rain but still daylight. Then she realized he was just changing places with her, urging her

behind the wheel while he moved into the passenger’s seat, keeping the muzzle of the revolver on her the whole time.

“Drive,” he said.

“Where?”

“Back to your place.”

“But—”

“Keep your mouth shut and drive.”

Now she was at the opposite side of the cab from the glove box. To get to it, she would have to reach in front of him. He would never be that lax.

Determined to keep a rein on her galloping fear, she now found that she had to rein in despair as well.

She started the truck, drove out of the parking lot, and turned right in the street.

The windshield wipers thumped nearly as loud as her heart. She wasn’t sure how much of the oppressive sound was made by the impacting rain and how much of it was the roar of her own blood in her ears.

Block by block, Nora searched for a cop — although she had no idea what she should do if she saw one. She never had to figure it out because no cops were anywhere to be seen.

Until they were out of Carmel and on the Pacific Coast Highway, the blustering wind not only drove rain against the windshield but also flung bristling bits of cypress and pine needles from the huge old trees that sheltered the town’s streets. South along the coast, as they headed into steadily less populated areas, no trees overhung the road, but the wind off the ocean hit the pickup full force. Nora frequently felt it pulling at the wheel. And the rain, slashing straight at them from the sea, seemed to pummel the truck hard enough to leave dents in the sheet metal.

After at least five minutes of silence, which seemed like an hour, she could no longer obey his order to keep her mouth shut. “How did you find us?”

“Been watching your place for more than a day,” he said in that cool, quiet voice that matched his placid face. “When you left this morning, I followed you, hoping you’d give me an opening.”

“No, I mean, how did you know where we lived?”

He smiled. “Van Dyne.”

“That double-crossing creep.”

“Special circumstances,” he assured her. “The Big Man in San Francisco Owed me a favor, so he put pressure on Van Dyne.”

“Big man?”

“Tetragna.”

“Who’s he?”

“You don’t know anything, do you?” he said. “Except how to make babies, huh? You know about that, huh?”

The hard taunting note in his voice was not merely sexually suggestive: it Was darker, stranger, and more terrifying than that. She was so frightened of the fierce tension that she sensed in him each time he approached the subject of sex that she did not dare reply to him.

She turned on the headlights as they encountered thin fog. She kept her attention on the rain-washed highway, squinting through the smeary windshield.

He said, “You’re very pretty. If I was going to stick it into anyone, I’d stick it into you.”

Nora bit her lip.

“But even as pretty as you are,” he said, “you’re like all the others, I’ll bet. If I stuck it into you, then it’d rot and fall off because you’re diseased like all the others — aren’t you? Yeah. You are. Sex is death. I’m one of the few who seem to know it, even though proof is everywhere. Sex is death. But you’re very pretty.

As she listened to him, her throat got tight. She was having difficulty drawing a deep breath.

Suddenly his taciturnity was gone. He talked fast, still soft-voiced and unnervingly calm, considering the crazy things he was saying, but very fast:

“I’m going to be bigger than Tetragna, more important. I’ve got scores of lives in me. I’ve absorbed energies from more than you’d believe, experienced The Moment, felt The Snap. It’s my Gift. When Tetragna’s dead and gone, I’ll be here. When everyone now alive is dead, I’ll be here because I’m immortal.”

She didn’t know what to say. He had come out of nowhere, somehow knowing about Einstein, and he was a lunatic, and there seemed to be nothing she could do. She was as angry about the unfairness of it as she was afraid. They had made careful preparations for The Outsider, and they had taken elaborate steps to elude the government — but how were they supposed to have prepared for this? It wasn’t fair.

Silent again, he stared at her intently for a minute or more, another eternity. She could feel his icy green gaze on her as surely as she would have felt a cold, fondling hand.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said.

“No.”

Perhaps because he found her pretty, he chose to explain. “I’ve only ever told one person before, and he made fun of me. His name was Danny Slowicz, and we both worked for the Carramazza Family in New York, biggest of the five Mafia Families. Little muscle work, once in a while killing people who needed killed.”

Nora felt sick because he was not merely crazy and not merely a killer but a crazy professional killer.

Unaware of her reaction, switching his gaze from the rain-swept road to her face, he continued. “See, we were having dinner in this restaurant, Danny and me, washing down clams with Valpolicella, and I explained to him that I was destined to lead a long life because of my ability to acquire the vital energies of people I wasted. I told him, ‘See, Danny, people are like batteries, walking batteries, filled with this mysterious energy we call life. When I off someone, his energy becomes my energy, and I get stronger. I’m a bull, Danny,’ I says. ‘Look at me — am I a bull or what? And I got to be a bull ‘cause I have this Gift of being able to take the energy from a guy.’ And you know what Danny says?”

“What?” she asked numbly.

“Well, Danny was a serious eater, so he kept his attention on his plate, face in his food, until he scarfs a few more clams. Then he looks up, his lips and chin dripping clam sauce, and he says, ‘Yeah, Vince, so where’d you learn this trick, huh? Where’d you learn how to absorb these life energies?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s my Gift,’ and he said, ‘You mean like from God?’ So I had to think about that, and I said, ‘Who knows where from? It’s my Gift like Mantle’s hitting was a gift, like Sinatra’s voice was a gift.’ And Danny says, ‘Tell me this — suppose you waste a guy who’s an electrician. After you absorb his energy, would you all of a sudden know how to rewire a house?’ I didn’t realize he was putting me on. I thought it was a serious question, so I explained how I absorb life energy, not personality, not all the stuff the guy knows, just his energy. And then Danny says, ‘So if you blew away a carnival geek, you wouldn’t all of a sudden get the urge to bite the heads off chickens.’ Right then I knew Danny thought I was either drunk or nuts, so I ate clams and didn’t say any more about my Gift, and that’s the last time I told anyone until I’m here telling you.”

He had called himself Vince, so now she knew his name. She did not see what good it would do her to know it.

He had told his story without any indication that he was aware of the insane black humor in it. He was a deadly serious man. Unless Travis could deal with him, this guy was not going to let them live.

“So,” Vince said, “I couldn’t risk Danny going around telling anyone what I’d told him, because he’d color it up, make it sound funny, and people would think I was nuts. The big bosses don’t hire crazy hit men; they want cool, logical, balanced guys who can do the work clean. Which is what I am, cool and balanced, but Danny would have had them thinking the other way. So that night I slit his throat, took him to this deserted factory I knew, cut him into pieces, put him in a vat, and poured a lot of sulfuric acid over him. He was a favorite nephew of the don’s, so I couldn’t take a chance of anyone finding a body that might be traced back to me. Now, I got Danny’s energy in me, along with a lot of others.”

The gun was in the glove box.

Some small hope could be taken from the knowledge that the gun was in the glove box.

While Nora was visiting Dr. Weingold, Travis whipped up and baked a double batch of chocolate cookies with peanut-butter chips. Living alone, he had learned to cook, but he had never taken pleasure in it. During the past few months, however, Nora had improved his culinary skills to such an extent that he enjoyed cooking, especially baking.

Einstein, who usually hung around dutifully throughout a baking session, in the anticipation of receiving a sweet morsel, deserted him before he had finished mixing the batter. The dog was agitated and moved around the house from window to window, staring out at the rain.

After a while, Travis got edgy about the dog’s behavior and asked if something was wrong.

In the pantry, Einstein made his reply.

I FEEL A LITTLE STRANGE.

“Sick?” Travis asked, worried about a relapse. The retriever was recovering well, but still recovering. His immune system was not in condition for a major new challenge.

NOT SICK.

“Then what? You sense. The Outsider?”

NO. NOT LIKE BEFORE.

“But you sense something?”

BAD DAY.

“Maybe it’s the rain.”

MAYBE.

Relieved but still edgy, Travis returned to his baking.

The highway was silver with rain.

The daytime fog grew slightly thicker as they drove south along the coast, forcing Nora to slow to forty miles an hour, thirty in some places.

Using the fog as an excuse, could she slow the truck enough to risk throwing open her door and leaping out? No. Probably not. She would have to let their speed drop below five miles an hour in order not to hurt herself or her unborn child, and the fog simply was not dense enough to justify reducing speed that far. Besides, Vince kept the revolver pointed at her while he talked, and he would shoot her in the back as she turned to make her exit.

The pickup’s headlamps and those of the few oncoming cars were refracted by the mist. Halos of light and scintillate rainbows bounced off the shifting curtains of fog, briefly seen, then gone.

She considered running the truck off the road, over the edge in one of the few places where she knew the embankment to be gentle and the drop endurable. But she was afraid she would misjudge where she was and, by mistake, drive off the brink into a two-hundred-foot emptiness, crashing with terrible force into the rocky coastline below. Even if she went over at the right point, a calculated and survivable crash might knock her unconscious or induce a miscarriage, and if possible she wanted to get out of this with her life and the life of the child within her.

Once Vince started talking to her, he could not stop. For years he had husbanded his great secrets, had hidden his dreams of power and immortality from the world, but his desire to speak of his supposed greatness evidently had never diminished after the fiasco with Danny Slowicz. It was as if he had stored up all the words he had wanted to say to people, had put them on reels and reels of mental recording tape, and now he was playing them back at high speed, spewing out all this craziness that made Nora sick with dread.

He told her how he had learned of Einstein — the killing of the research scientists in charge of various programs under the Francis Project at Banodyne. He knew of The Outsider, too, but was not afraid of it. He was, he said, on the brink of immortality, and gaining ownership of the dog was one of the final tasks he had to complete in order to achieve his Destiny. He and the dog were destined to be together because each of them was unique in this world, one of a kind. Once Vince had achieved his Destiny, he said, nothing could stop him, not even The Outsider.

Half the time, Nora didn’t understand what he was saying. She supposed that if she did understand it, she would be as insane as he clearly was.

But though she did not always grasp his meaning, she knew what he intended to do to her and to Travis once he had the retriever. At first, she was afraid of speaking about her fate, as if putting it into words would somehow make it irrevocable. At last, however, when they were no more than five miles from the dirt lane that turned off the highway and led up to the bleached-wood house, she said, “You won’t let us go when you’ve got the dog, will you?”

He stared at her, caressing her with his gaze. “What do you think, Nora?”

“I think you’ll kill us.”

“Of course.”

She was surprised that his confirmation of her fears did not fill her with greater terror. His smug response only infuriated her, damping her fear while increasing her determination to spoil his neat plans.

She knew, then, that she was a radically changed woman from the Nora of last May, who would have been reduced to uncontrollable shudders by this man’s bold self-assurance.

“I could run this truck right off the road, take my chances with an accident,” she said.

“The moment you pulled on the wheel,” he said, “I’d have to shoot you and then try to regain control.”

“Maybe you couldn’t. Maybe you’d die, too.”

“Me? Die? Maybe. But not in anything as minor as a traffic accident. No, no. I’ve got too many lives in me to go that easily. And I don’t believe you’ll try it anyway. In your heart of hearts, you believe that man of yours will pull a sharp one, save you and the dog and himself. You’re wrong, of course, but you can’t stop believing in him. He won’t do anything because he’ll be afraid of hurting you. I’ll go in there with a gun in your belly, and that will paralyze him long enough for me to blow his head off. That’s why I’ve only got the revolver. It’s all I need. His caring for you, his fear of hurting you, will get him killed.”

Nora decided it was very important that she not let her fury show. She must try to look frightened, weak, utterly unsure of herself. If he underestimated her, he might slip up and give her some small advantage.

Taking her eyes off the rainy highway for only a second, she glanced at him and saw that he was staring at her not with amusement or psychopathic rage, as she would have expected, and not with his usual bovine placidity either, but with something that looked very much like affection and maybe gratitude.

“I’ve dreamed for years of killing a pregnant woman,” he said, as if that was a goal no less worthwhile and commendable than wanting to build a business empire or feed the hungry or nurse the sick. “I have never been in a situation where the risk of killing a pregnant woman was low enough to justify it. But in that isolated house of yours, once I’ve dealt with Cornell, the conditions will be ideal.”

“Please, no,” she said shakily, playing the weakling, though she didn’t have to fake the nervous quiver in her voice.

Still speaking calmly but with a trace more emotion than before, he said, “There’ll be your life energy, still young and rich, but in the instant you die, I’ll also receive the energy of the child. And that’ll be perfectly pure, unused, a life that’s unsoiled by the many contaminants of this sick and degenerate world. You’re my first pregnant woman, Nora, and I’ll always remember you.,

Tears shimmered at the corners of her eyes, which was not just good acting, either. Although she did believe Travis would find some way to handle this man, she was afraid that, in the turmoil, she or Einstein would die. And she did not know how Travis would be able to cope with his failure to save all of them.

“Don’t despair, Nora,” Vince said. “You and your baby will not entirely cease to exist. You’ll both become a part of me, and in me you’ll live forever.”

Travis took the first tray of cookies out of the oven and put them on a rack to cool.

Einstein came sniffing around, and Travis said, “They’re too hot yet.”

The dog returned to the living room to look out the front window at the rain.

Just before Nora turned off the Coast Highway, Vince slid down on the seat, below the window level, out of sight. He kept the gun on her. “I’ll blow that baby right out of your belly if you make the slightest wrong move.”

She believed him.

Turning onto the dirt lane, which was muddy and slippery, Nora drove up

the hill toward the house. The overhanging trees shielded the road from the worst of the rain but collected the water on their branches and sent it to the ground in fatter droplets or rivulets.

She saw Einstein at a front window, and she tried to come up with some signal that would mean “trouble,” that the dog would instantly understand. She couldn’t think of anything.

Looking up at her, Vince said, “Don’t go all the way to the barn. Stop right beside the house.”

His plan was obvious. The corner of the house where the pantry and cellar stairs were located had no windows. Travis and Einstein would not be able to see the man getting out of the truck with her. Vince could hustle her around the corner, onto the back porch, and inside before Travis realized something was wrong.

Maybe Einstein’s canine senses would detect danger. Maybe. But. Einstein had been so ill.

Einstein padded into the kitchen, excited.

Travis said, “Was that Nora’s truck?”

Yes.

The retriever went to the back door and did a dance of impatience — then stood still, cocked his head.

Nora’s stroke of luck came when she least expected it.

When she parked alongside the house, engaged the hand brake, and switched off the engine, Vince grabbed her and dragged her across the seat, out of his side of the truck because that was the side against the back end of the house and most difficult to see from windows at the front corner of the structure. Climbing from the pickup, pulling her by one hand, he was looking around to be sure Travis was not nearby; distracted, he couldn’t keep his revolver on Nora as closely as before. As she slid across the seat, past the glove box, she popped open the door and snatched up the.38 pistol. Vince must have heard or sensed something because he swung toward her, but he was too late. She jammed the.38 into his belly and, before he could raise his gun and blow her head off, she squeezed the trigger three times.

With a look of shock, he slammed back against the house, which was only three feet behind him.

She was amazed by her own cold-bloodedness. Crazily, she thought that no one was so dangerous as a mother protecting her children, even if one child was unborn and the other was a dog. She fired once more, point-blank, at his chest.

Vince went down hard, face-first on the wet ground.

She turned from him and ran. At the corner of the house she almost collided

with Travis, who vaulted over the porch railing and landed in a crouch in front of her, holding the Uzi carbine.

“I killed him,” she said, hearing hysteria in her voice, fighting to control it. “I shot him four times, I killed him, my God.”

Travis rose from a crouch, bewildered. Nora threw her arms around him and put her head against his chest. As chilling rain beat upon them, she reveled in the living warmth of him.

“Who—” Travis began.

Behind Nora, Vince issued a shrill breathless cry and, rolling onto his back, fired at them. The bullet struck Travis high in the shoulder and knocked him backward. If it had been two inches to the right, it would have hit Nora in the head.

She was almost pulled off her feet when Travis fell because she was holding him. But she let go fast enough and went to the left, in front of the truck, out of the line of fire. She got only a quick look at Vince, who was holding his revolver in one hand and clutching his stomach with the other, trying to get off the ground.

In that glimpse before she cowered down in front of the pickup, she had not seen any blood on the man.

What was happening here? He could not possibly have survived three rounds in the stomach and one in the chest. Not unless he actually was immortal.

Even as Nora scrambled for the cover of the truck, Travis had been getting off his back, sitting up in the mud. Blood was visible on him, spreading across his chest from his shoulder, soaking his shirt. He still had the Uzi in his right hand, which functioned in spite of the wound in that shoulder. As Vince pulled off a wild second shot, Travis opened fire with the Uzi. His position was no better than Vince’s; the spray of bullets snapped into the house and ricocheted along the side of the truck, indiscriminate fire.

He stopped shooting. “Shit.” He struggled onto his feet.

Nora said, “Did you get him?”

“He made it around the front of the house,” Travis said, and headed that way.

Vince figured he was approaching immortality, almost there, if he had not already arrived. He was in need of — at most — only a few more lives, and his only concern was that he would be snuffed out when he was that close to his Destiny. As a result, he took precautions. Like the latest and most expensive model Kevlar bulletproof vest. He was wearing one under his sweater, which was what had stopped the four shots the bitch had tried to pump into him. The slugs had flattened against the vest, drawing no blood whatsoever. But, Jesus, they had hurt. The impact had knocked him against the wall of the house and had driven the breath out of him. He felt as if he had lain on a giant anvil while someone repeatedly pounded a blacksmith’s hammer into his gut.

Hunched over his pain, hobbling toward the front of the house, trying to get out of the way of the damn Uzi, he was sure he was going to be shot in the back. But somehow he made it to the corner, climbed the porch steps, and got out of Cornell’s line of fire.

Vince took some satisfaction in having wounded Cornell, though he knew it wasn’t mortal. And having lost the element of surprise, he was in for a protracted battle. Hell, the woman looked to be almost as formidable as Cornell himself — a crazy Amazon.

He could have sworn there was something of the timid mouse in the woman, that it was her nature to submit. Obviously, he misjudged her — and that spooked him. Vince Nasco was not accustomed to making such mistakes; mistakes were for lesser men, not for the child of Destiny.

Scuttling across the front porch, certain that Cornell was coming fast behind him, Vince decided to go into the house instead of heading for the woods. They would expect him to run for the trees, take cover, and reconsider his strategy. Instead, he’d go straight into the house and find a position from which he could see both the front and rear doors. Maybe he’d take them by surprise yet.

He was passing a large window, heading for the front door, when something exploded through the glass.

Vince cried out in surprise and fired his revolver, but the shot went into the porch ceiling, and the dog — Jesus, that’s what it was, the dog — hit him hard. The gun flew out of his hand. He was knocked backward. The dog clung to him, claws snagged in his clothes, teeth sunk in his shoulder. The porch railing disintegrated. They tumbled out into the front yard, into the rain.

Screaming, Vince hammered at the dog with his big fists until it squealed and let go of him. Then it went for his throat, and he just knocked it off in time to prevent it tearing open his windpipe.

His gut still throbbed, but he hitched and stumbled back to the porch, looking for his revolver — and found Cornell instead. Bleeding from his shoulder, Cornell was on the porch, looking down at Vince.

Vince felt a great wild surge of confidence. He knew that he had been right all along, knew that he was invincible, immortal, because he could look straight into the muzzle of the Uzi without fear, without the slightest fear, so he grinned up at Cornell. “Look at me, look! I’m your worst nightmare.”

Cornell said, “Not even close,” and opened fire.

In the kitchen Travis sat in a chair, with Einstein at his side, while Nora dressed his wound. As she worked, she told him what she knew about the man who had forced his way into the truck.

“He was a damn wild card,” Travis said. “No way we could ever have known he was out there.”

"I hope he’s the only wild card.”

Wincing as Nora poured alcohol and iodine into the bullet hole, wincing again as she bound the wound with gauze by passing it under his armpit, he said, “Don’t worry about making a great job of it. The bleeding’s not that bad. No artery’s been hit.”

The bullet had gone through, leaving a hideous exit wound, and he was in considerable pain, but for a while yet he would be able to function. He would have to seek medical attention later, maybe from Jim Keene to avoid the questions that any other doctor would surely insist on having answered. For now, he was only concerned that the wound be bound tight enough to allow him to dispose of the dead man.

Einstein was battered, too. Fortunately, he had not been cut when he smashed through the front window. He did not seem to have any broken bones, but he had taken several hard blows. Not in the best of shape to begin with, he looked bad — muddy and rain-soaked and in pain. He would need to see Jim Keene, too.

Outside, rain was falling harder than ever, pounding on the roof, gurgling noisily through gutters and downspouts. It was slanting across the front porch and through the shattered window, but they did not have time to worry about water damage.

“Thank God for the rain,” Travis said. “No one in the area will have heard the gunfire in this downpour.”

Nora said, “Where will we dump the body?”

“I’m thinking.” And it was hard to think clearly because the pain in his shoulder throbbed up and into his head.

She said, “We could bury him here, in the woods—”

“No. We’d always know he was there. We’d always worry about the body being dug up by wild animals, found by hikers. Better. there’re places along the Coast Highway where we could pull over, wait until there’s no traffic, drag him out of the bed of the truck, and toss him over the side. If we pick a place where the sea comes in right to the base of the slope, it’ll carry him out, move him away, before anyone notices him down there.”

As Nora finished the bandage, Einstein abruptly got up, whined. He sniffed the air. He went to the back door, stood staring at it for a moment, then disappeared into the living room.

“I’m afraid he’s hurt worse than he seems to be,” Nora said, applying a final strip of adhesive tape.

“Maybe,” Travis said. “But maybe not. He’s just been acting peculiar all day, ever since you left this morning. He told me it smelled like a bad day.”

“He was right,” she said.

Einstein returned from the living room at a run and went straight to the pantry, switching on the lights and pumping the pedals that released lettered tiles.

“Maybe he has an idea about disposing of the body,” Nora said.

As Nora gathered up the leftover iodine, alcohol, gauze, and tape, Travis painfully pulled on his shirt and went to the pantry to see what Einstein had to say.

THE OUTSIDER IS HERE.

Travis slammed a new magazine into the butt of the Uzi carbine, put an extra in one pocket, and gave Nora one of the Uzi pistols that was kept in the pantry.

Judging by Einstein’s sense of urgency, they had no time to go through the house, closing and bolting shutters.

The clever scheme to gas The Outsider in the barn had been built upon the certainty that it would approach at night and reconnoiter. Now that it had come in daylight and had reconnoitered while they were distracted by Vince, that plan was useless.

They stood in the kitchen, listening, but nothing could be heard above the relentless roar of the rain.

Einstein was not able to give them a more precise fix on their adversary’s location. His sixth sense was still not working up to par. They were just lucky that he had sensed the beast at all. His morning-long anxiety had evidently not been related to any presentiment about the man who had come home with Nora but had been, even without his knowledge, caused by the approach of The Outsider.

“Upstairs,” Travis said. “Let’s go.”

Down here, the creature could enter by doors or windows, but on the second floor they would at least have only windows to worry about. And maybe they could get shutters closed over some of those.

Nora climbed the stairs with Einstein. Travis brought up the rear, moving backward, keeping the Uzi aimed down at the first floor. The ascent made him dizzy. He was acutely aware that the pain and weakness in his injured shoulder was slowly spreading outward through his entire body like an ink stain through a blotter.

On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he said, “If we hear it come in, we can back off, wait until it starts to climb toward us, then step forward and catch it by surprise, blow it away.”

She nodded.

They had to be silent now, give it a chance to creep into the downstairs, give it time to decide they were on the second floor, let it gain confidence, let it approach the stairs with a sense of security.

A strobe-flash of lightning — the first of the storm — pulsed at the window at the end of the hall, and thunder cracked. The sky seemed to have been shattered by the blast, and all the rain stored in the heavens collapsed upon the earth in one tremendous fall.

At the end of the hallway, one of Nora’s canvases flew out of her studio and crashed against the wall.

Nora cried out in surprise, and for an instant all three of them stared stupidly at the painting lying on the hall floor, half thinking that its poltergeist-like flight had been related to the great crash of thunder and the lightning.

A second painting sailed out of her studio, hit the wall, and Travis saw the canvas was shredded.

The Outsider was already in the house.

They were at one end of the short hall. The master bedroom and future nursery were on the left, the bathroom and then Nora’s studio on the right. The thing was just two doors away, in Nora’s studio, demolishing her paintings.

Another canvas flew into the hallway.

Rain-soaked, muddied, battered, still somewhat weak from his battle with distemper, Einstein nevertheless barked viciously, trying to warn off The Outsider.

Holding the Uzi, Travis moved one step down the hall. Nora grabbed his arm. “Let’s not. Let’s get out.”

“No. We’ve got to face it.”

“On our terms,” she said.

“These are the best terms we’re going to get.”

Two more paintings flew out of the studio and clattered down on top of the growing pile of wrecked canvases.

Einstein was no longer barking but growling deep in his throat.

Together, they moved along the hall, toward the open door of Nora’s studio.

Travis’s experience and training told him they ought to split up, spread out, instead of grouping into a single target. But this was not Delta Force. And their enemy was not a mere terrorist. If they spread out, they would lose some of the courage they needed to face the thing. Their very closeness gave them strength.

They were halfway to the studio door when The Outsider shrieked. It was an icy sound that stabbed right through Travis and quick-froze his bone marrow. He and Nora halted, but Einstein took two more steps before stopping.

The dog was shuddering violently.

Travis realized he, too, was shaking. The tremors aggravated the pain in his shoulder.

Breaking fear’s hold, he rushed to the open door, treading on ruined canvases, spraying bullets into the studio. The weapon’s recoil, though minimal, was like a chisel chipping into his wound.

He hit nothing, heard nothing scream, saw no sign of the enemy.

The floor in there was littered with a dozen mangled paintings and glass from the broken window by which the thing had entered after climbing onto the front porch roof.

Waiting, Travis stood with his legs spread wide. The gun in both hands. Blinking sweat out of his eyes. Trying to ignore the seething pain in his right shoulder. Waiting.

The Outsider must be to the left of the door — or behind it on the right, crouched, ready to spring. If he gave it time, maybe it would grow tired of waiting and would rush him, and he could cut it down in the doorway.

No, it’s as smart as Einstein, he told himself. Would Einstein be so dumb as to rush me through a narrow doorway? No. No, it’ll do something more intelligent, unexpected.

The sky exploded with thunder so powerful it vibrated the windows and shook the house. Chain lightning sizzled through the day.

Come on you bastard, show yourself.

He glanced at Nora and Einstein, who stood a few steps away from him, with the master bedroom on one side of them and the bathroom on the other side, the stairs behind them.

He looked again through the doorway, at the window glass among the debris on the floor. Suddenly he was certain that The Outsider was no longer in the studio, that it had gone out through the window, onto the roof of the front porch, and that it was coming at them from another part of the house, through another door, perhaps out of one of the bedrooms, or from the bathroom — or maybe it would explode at them, shrieking, from the top of the steps.

He motioned Nora forward, to his side. “Cover me.”

Before she could object, he went through the doorway, into the studio, moving in a crouch. He nearly fell in the rubble, but stayed on his feet and spun around, ready to open fire if the thing was looming over him.

It was gone.

The closet door was open. Nothing in there.

He went to the broken window and cautiously looked out onto the roof of the rain-washed porch. Nothing.

Wind keened over the dangerously sharp shards of glass still bristling from the window frame.

He started back toward the upstairs hail. He could see Nora out there, looking in at him, scared, but gamely clutching her Uzi. Behind her, the door to the future nursery opened, and it was there, yellow eyes aglow. Its monstrous jaws cracked wide, full of teeth far sharper than the wicked glass shards in the window frame.

She was aware of it, started to turn, but it struck at her before she had a chance to fire. It tore the Uzi out of her hands.

It had no chance to gut her with its razor-edged six-inch claws because, even as the beast was tearing the pistol out of her hands, Einstein charged it, snarling. With catlike quickness, The Outsider shifted its attention from Nora to the dog. It whipped around on him, lashed out as if its long arms Were constructed with more than one elbow joint. It snatched Einstein up in both horrendous hands.

Crossing the studio to the hall door, Travis had no clear shot at The Outsider because Nora was between him and that hateful thing. As Travis reached the doorway, he cried out for her to fall down, to give him a line of fire, and she did, immediately, but too late. The Outsider scooped Einstein into the nursery and slammed the door, as if it were an evil nightmare-spawned jack-in-the-

box that had popped out and popped back in with its prey, all in the blink of an eye.

Einstein squealed, and Nora rushed the nursery door.

“No!” Travis shouted, pulling her aside.

He aimed the automatic carbine at the closed door and emptied the rest of the magazine into it, punching at least thirty holes in the wood, crying out through clenched teeth as pain flared through his shoulder. There was some risk of hitting Einstein, but the retriever would be in worse danger if Travis did not open fire. When the gun stopped spitting bullets, he ripped out the empty magazine, took a full magazine from his pocket and slammed that into the gun. Then he kicked open the ruined door and went into the nursery.

The window stood open, curtains blowing in the wind.

The Outsider was gone.

Einstein was on the floor, against one wall, motionless, covered with blood.

Nora made a wrenching sound of grief when she saw the retriever.

At the window, Travis spotted splashes of blood leading across the porch roof. Rain was swiftly washing the gore away.

Movement caught his eye, and he looked toward the barn, where The Outsider disappeared through the big door.

Crouching over the dog, Nora said, “Oh my God, Travis, my God, after all he’s come through and now he has to die like this.”

“I’m going after the son-of-a-bitching bastard,” Travis said ferociously. “It’s in the barn.”

She moved toward the door, too, and he said, “No! Call Jim Keene and then stay with Einstein, stay with Einstein.”

“But you’re the one who needs me. You can’t go after it alone.”

“Einstein needs you.”

“Einstein is dead,” she said through tears.

“Don’t say that!” he screamed at her. He was aware that he was irrational, as if he believed Einstein would not really be dead until they said he was dead, but he could not control himself. “Don’t say he’s dead. Stay here with him, damn it. I’ve already hurt that fucking fugitive from a nightmare, hurt it bad I think, it’s bleeding, and I can finish it off myself. Call Jim Keene, stay with Einstein.”

He was also afraid that, in all of this activity, she was going to induce a miscarriage, if she had not already done so. Then they would have lost not only Einstein but the baby.

He left the room at a run.

You’re in no condition to go into that barn, he told himself. You’ve got to cool down first. Telling Nora to call a vet for a dead dog, telling her to stay with it when, in fact, you could have used her at your side. No good. Letting rage and a thirst for vengeance get the best of you. No good.

But he could not stop. All of his life he had lost people he loved, and except in Delta Force he’d never had anyone to strike back at because you can’t take vengeance on fate.. Even in Delta, the enemy was so faceless — the

lumpish mass of maniacs and fanatics who were “international terrorism”— that vengeance provided little satisfaction. But here was an enemy of unparalleled evil, an enemy worthy of the name, and he would make it pay for what it had done to Einstein.

He raced down the hallway, descended the stairs two and three at a time, was hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea, and nearly fell. He grabbed at the banister to steady himself. He leaned on the wrong arm, and hot pain flared in his wounded shoulder. Letting go of the railing, he lost his balance and tumbled down the last flight, hitting the bottom hard.

He was in worse shape than he had thought.

Clutching the Uzi, he got to his feet and staggered to the back door, onto the porch, down the steps, into the yard. The cold rain cleared his fuzzy head, and he stood for a moment on the lawn, letting the storm wash some of the dizziness out of him.

An image of Einstein’s broken, bloody body flashed through his mind. He thought of the amusing messages that would never be formed on the pantry floor, and he thought of Christmases to come without Einstein padding around in his Santa cap, and he thought of love that would never be given or received, and he thought of all the genius puppies who would never be born, and the weight of all that loss nearly crushed him into the ground.

He used his grief to sharpen his rage, honed his fury until it had a razored edge.

Then he went to the barn.

The place swarmed with shadows. He stood at the open door, letting the rain beat on his head and back, peering into the barn, squinting at the layered gloom, hoping to spot the yellow eyes.

Nothing.

He went through the door, bold with rage, and sidled to the light switches on the north wall. Even when the lights came on, he could not see The Outsider.

Fighting off dizziness, clenching his teeth in pain, he moved past the empty space where the truck belonged, past the back of the Toyota, slowly along the side of the car.

The loft.

He would be moving out from under the loft in a couple of steps. If the thing was up there, it could leap down on him— That speculation proved a dead end, for The Outsider was at the back of the barn, beyond the front end of the Toyota, crouched on the concrete floor, whimpering and hugging itself with both long, powerful arms. The floor around it was smeared with its blood.

He stood beside the car for almost a minute, fifteen feet from the creature, Studying it with disgust, fear, horror, and a weird fascination. He believed he could see the body structure of an ape, maybe a baboon — something in the simian family, anyway. But it was neither mostly one species nor merely a patchwork of the recognizable parts of many animals. It was, instead, a thing unto itself. With its oversized and lumpish face, immense yellow eyes,

steam-shovel jaw, and long curved teeth, with its hunched back and matted coat and too-long arms, it attained a frightful individuality.

it was staring at him, waiting.

He took two steps forward, bringing up the gun.

Lifting its head, working its jaws, it issued a raspy, cracked, slurred, but still intelligible word that he could hear even above the sounds of the storm:

“Hurt.”

Travis was more horrified than amazed. The creature had not been designed to be capable of speech, yet it had the intelligence to learn language and to desire communication. Evidently, during the months it pursued Einstein, that desire had grown great enough to allow it to conquer, to some extent, its physical limitations. It had practiced speech, finding ways to wring a few tortured words from its fibrous voice box and malformed mouth. Travis was horrified not at the sight of a demon speaking but at the thought of how desperately the thing must have wanted to communicate with someone, anyone. He did not want to pity it, did not dare pity it, because he wanted to feel good about blowing it off the face of the earth.

“Come far. Now done,” it said with tremendous effort, as if each word had to be torn from its throat.

Its eyes were too alien ever to inspire empathy, and every limb was unmistakably an instrument of murder.

Unwrapping one long arm from around its body, it picked up something that had been on the floor beside it but that Travis had not noticed until now:

one of the Mickey Mouse tapes Einstein had gotten for Christmas. The famous mouse was pictured on the cassette holder, wearing the same outfit he always wore, smiling that familiar smile, waving.

“Mickey,” The Outsider said, and as wretched and strange and barely intelligible as its voice was, it somehow conveyed a sense of terrible loss and loneliness. “Mickey.”

Then it dropped the cassette and clutched itself and rocked back and forth in agony.

Travis took another step forward.

The Outsider’s hideous face was so repulsive that there was almost something exquisite about it. In its unique ugliness, it was darkly, strangely seductive.

This time, when the thunder crashed, the barn lights flickered and nearly went out.

Raising its head again, speaking in that same scratchy voice but with cold, insane glee, it said, “Kill dog, kill dog, kill dog,” and it made a sound that might have been laughter.

He almost shot it to pieces. But before he could pull the trigger, The Outsider’s laughter gave way to what seemed to be sobbing. Travis watched,’ mesmerized.

Fixing Travis with its lantern eyes, it again said, “Kill dog, kill dog, kill dog,” but this time it seemed racked with grief, as if it grasped the magnitude of the crime that it had been genetically compelled to commit.

It looked at the cartoon of Mickey Mouse on the cassette holder.

Finally, pleadingly, it said, “Kill me.”

Travis did not know if he was acting more out of rage or out of pity when he squeezed the trigger and emptied the Uzi’s magazine into The Outsider. What man had begun, man now ended.

When he was done, he felt drained.

He dropped the carbine and walked outside. He could not find the strength to return to the house. He sat down on the lawn, huddled in the rain, and wept.

He was still weeping when Jim Keene drove up the muddy lane from the Coast Highway.

ELEVEN

On Thursday afternoon, January 13, Lem Johnson left Cliff Soames and three other men at the foot of the dirt lane, where it met the Pacific Coast Highway. Their instructions were to allow no one past them but to remain on station until — and if — Lem called for them.

Cliff Soames seemed to think this was a strange way to handle things, but he did not voice his objections.

Lem explained that, since Travis Cornell was an ex-Delta man with considerable combat skills, he ought to be handled with care. “If we go storming in there, he’ll know who we are as soon as he sees us coming, and he might react violently. If I go in alone, I’ll be able to get him to talk to me, and maybe I can persuade him to just give it up.”

That was a flimsy explanation for his unorthodox procedure, and it did not wipe the frown off Cliff’s face.

Lem didn’t care about Cliff’s frown. He went in alone, driving one of the sedans, and parked in front of the bleached-wood house.

Birds were singing in the trees. Winter had temporarily relaxed its hold on the northern California coast, and the day was warm.

Lem climbed the steps and knocked on the front door.

Travis Cornell answered the knock and stared at him through the screen door before saying, “Mr. Johnson, I suppose.”

“How did you. oh yes, of course, Garrison Dilworth would have told you about me that night he got his call through.”

To Lem’s surprise, Cornell opened the screen door. “You might as well come in.”

Cornell was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, apparently because of a sizable bandage encasing most of his right shoulder. He led Lem through the front room and into a kitchen, where his wife sat at the table, peeling apples for a pie.

“Mr. Johnson,” she said.

Lem smiled and said, “I’m widely known, I see.”

Cornell sat at the table and lifted a cup of coffee. He offered no coffee to Lem.

Standing awkwardly for a moment, Lem eventually sat with them. He said, “Welt, it was inevitable, you know. We had to catch up with you sooner or later.”

She peeled apples and said nothing. Her husband stared into his coffee.

What’s wrong with them? Lem wondered.

This was not remotely like any scenario he had imagined. He was prepared for panic, anger, despondency, and many other things, but not for this strange apathy. They did not seem to care that he had at last tracked them down.

He said, “Aren’t you interested in how we located you?”

The woman shook her head.

Cornell said, “If you really want to tell us, go ahead and have your fun.”

Frowning, puzzled, Lem said, “Well, it was simple. We knew that Mr. Dilworth had to’ve called you from some house or business within a few blocks of that park north of the harbor. So we tied our own computers into the telephone company’s records — with their permission, of course — and put men to work examining all the long-distance calls charged to all the numbers within three blocks of that park, on that one night. Nothing led us to you. But then we realized that, when charges are reversed, the call isn’t billed to the number from which the call is placed; it appears on the records of the person who accepts the reversed charges — which was you. But it also appears in a special phone-company file so they’ll be able to document the call if the person who accepted the charges later refuses to pay. We went through that special file, which is very small, and quickly found a call placed from a house along the coast, just north of the beach park, to your number here. When we went around to talk to the people there — the Essenby family — we focused on their son, a teenager named Tommy, and although it took some time, we ascertained that it had, indeed, been Dilworth who used their phone. The first part was terribly time-consuming, weeks and weeks, but after that. child’s play.”

“Do you want a medal or what?” Cornell asked.

The woman picked up another apple, quartered it, and began to strip off the peel.

They were not making this easy for him — but then his intentions were much different from what they would be expecting. They could not be criticized for being cool toward him when they did not yet know that he had come as a friend.

He said, “Listen, I’ve left my men at the end of the lane. Told them you might panic, do something stupid, if you saw us coming in a group. But why I really came alone was. to make you an offer.”

They both met his eyes at last, with interest.

He said, “I’m getting out of this goddamn job by spring. Why I’m getting Out. you don’t have to know or care. Just say that I’ve gone through a sea change. Learned to deal with failure, and now it doesn’t scare me any more.” He sighed and shrugged. “Anyway, the dog doesn’t belong in a cage. I don’t give a good goddamn what they say, what they want — I know what’s right. I know what it’s like being in a cage. I’ve been in one most of my life, Until recently. The dog shouldn’t have to go back to that. What I’m going to Suggest is that you get him out of here now, Mr. Cornell, take him off through the woods, let him somewhere that he’ll be safe, then come back and face the music. Say that the dog ran off a couple of months ago, in some other place, and you think he must be dead by now, or in the hands of people who’re taking good care of him. There’ll still be the problem of The Outsider, which you must know about, but you and I can work up a way to deal with that when it comes. I’ll put men on a surveillance of you, but after a few weeks I’ll pull them, say it’s a lost cause—”

Cornell stood up and stepped to Lem’s chair. With his left hand he grabbed hold of Lem’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. “You’re sixteen days too late, you son of a bitch.”

“What do you mean?”

“The dog is dead. The Outsider killed him, and I killed The Outsider.”

The woman laid down her paring knife and a piece of apple. She put her face in her hands and sat forward in her chair, shoulders hunched, making soft, sad sounds.

“Ah, Jesus,” Lem said.

Cornell let go of him. Embarrassed, depressed, Lem straightened his tie, smoothed the wrinkles out of his shirt. He looked down at his pants — brushed them off.

“Ah, Jesus,” he repeated.

Cornell was willing to lead them to the place in the forest where he had buried The Outsider.

Lem’s men dug it up. The monstrosity was wrapped in plastic, but they didn’t have to unwrap it to know that it was Yarbeck’s creation.

The weather had been cool since the thing had been killed, but it was getting rank.

Cornell would not tell them where the dog was buried. “He never had much of a chance to live in peace,” Cornell said sullenly. “But, by God, he’s going to rest in peace now. No one’s going to put him on an autopsy table and hack him up. No way.”

“In a case where the national security is at stake, you can be forced—”

“Let them,” Cornell said. “If they haul me up before a judge and try to make me tell them where I buried Einstein, I’ll spill the whole story to the press. But if they leave Einstein alone, if they leave me and mine alone, I’ll keep my mouth shut. I don’t intend to go back to Santa Barbara, to pick up as Travis Cornell. I’m Hyatt now, and that’s what I’m going to stay. My old life’s gone forever. There’s no reason to go back. And if the government’s smart, it’ll let me be Hyatt and stay out of my way.”

Lem stared at him a long time. Then: “Yeah, if they’re smart, I think they’ll do just that.”

Later that same day, as Jim Keene was cooking dinner, his phone rang. It was Garrison Dilworth, whom he had never met but had gotten to know during the past week by acting as liaison between the attorney and Travis and Nora. Garrison was calling from a pay phone in Santa Barbara.

“They show up yet?” the attorney asked.

“Early this afternoon,” Jim said. “That Tommy Essenby must be a good kid.”

“Not bad, really. But he didn’t come to see me and warn me out of the goodness of his heart. He’s in rebellion against authority. When they pressured him into admitting that I made the call from his house that night, he resented them. As inevitably as billy goats ram their heads into board fences, Tommy came straight to me.”

“They took away The Outsider.”

“What about the dog?”

“Travis said he wouldn’t show them where the grave was. Made them believe that he’d kick a lot of ass and pull down the whole temple on everyone's heads if they pushed him.”

“How’s Nora?” Dilworth asked.

“She won’t lose the baby.”

“Thank God. That must be a great comfort.”

Eight months later, on the big Labor Day weekend in September, the Johnson and Gaines families got together for a barbecue at the sheriffs house. They played bridge most of the afternoon. Lem and Karen won more often than they lost, which was unusual these days, because Lem no longer approached the game with the fanatical need to win that had once been his Style.

He had left the NSA in June. Since then, he had been living on the income from the money he had long ago inherited from his father. By next spring, he expected to settle on a new line of work, a small business of some kind, in which he would be his own boss, able to set his own hours.

Late in the afternoon, while their wives made salads in the kitchen, Lem and Walt stood out on the patio, tending to the steaks on the barbecue.

“So you’re still known at the Agency as the man who screwed up the Banodyne crisis?”

“That’s how I’ll be known until time immemorial.”

“Still get a pension though,” Walt said.

“Well, I did put in twenty-three years.”

“Doesn’t seem right, though, that a man could screw up the biggest case Of the century and stilt walk away, at forty-six, with a full pension.”

“Three-quarter pension.”

Walt breathed deeply of the fragrant smoke rising off the charring steaks. Still. What is our country coming to? In less liberal times, screwups like you Would have been flogged and put in the stocks, at least.” He took another

deep whiff of the steaks and said, “Tell me again about that moment in their kitchen.”

Lem had told it a hundred times, but Walt never got tired of hearing it again. “Well, the place was neat as a pin. Everything gleamed. And both Cornell and his wife are neat about themselves, too. They’re well-groomed, well-scrubbed people. So they tell me the dog’s been dead two weeks, dead and buried. Cornell throws this angry fit, hauls me out of my chair by my shirt, and glares at me like maybe he’s going to rip my head off. When he lets go of me, I straighten my tie, smooth my shirt. and I look down at my pants, sort of out of habit, and I notice these golden hairs. Dog hairs. Retriever hairs, sure as hell. Now could it have been that these neat people, especially trying to fill their empty days and take their minds off their tragedy, didn’t find the time to clean the house in more than two weeks?”

“Hairs were just all over your pants,” Walt said.

“A hundred hairs.”

“Like the dog had just been sitting there minutes before you came in.”

“Like, if I’d been two minutes sooner, I’d have set right down on the dog himself.”

Walt turned the steaks on the barbecue. “You’re a pretty observant man, Lem, which ought to’ve taken you far in the line of work you were in. I just don’t understand how, with all your talents, you managed to screw up the Banodyne case so thoroughly.”

They both laughed, as they always did.

“Just luck, I guess,” Lem said, which was what he always said, and he laughed again.

When James Garrison Hyatt celebrated his third birthday on June 28, his mother was pregnant with his first sibling, who eventually became his sister.

They threw a party at the bleached-wood house on the forested slopes above the Pacific. Because the Hyatts would soon be moving to a new and larger house a bit farther up the coast, they made it a party to remember, not merely a birthday bash but a goodbye to the house that had first sheltered them as a family.

Jim Keene drove in from Carmel with Pooka and Sadie, his two black labs, and his young golden retriever, Leonardo, who was usually called Leo. A few close friends came in from the real-estate office where Sam—”Travis” to everyone — worked in Carmel Highlands, and from the gallery in Cannel where Nora’s paintings were exhibited and sold. These friends brought their retrievers, too, all of them second-litter offspring of Einstein and his mate, Minnie.

Only Garrison Dilworth was missing. He had died in his sleep the previous year.

They had a fine day, a grand time, not merely because they were friends and happy to be with one another, but because they shared a secret wonder and joy that would forever bind them into one enormous extended family.

All members of the first litter, which Travis and Nora could not have borne adopting out, and which lived at the bleached-wood house, were also present:

Mickey, Donald, Daisy, Huey, Dewey, Louie.

The dogs had an even better time than the people, frolicking on the lawn, playing hide-and-seek in the woods, and watching videotapes on the TV in the living room.

The canine patriarch participated in some of the games, but he spent much of his time with Travis and Nora and, as usual, stayed close to Minnie. He limped — as he would for the rest of his life — because his right hind leg had been cruelly mangled by The Outsider and would not have been usable at all if his vet had not been so dedicated to the restoration of the limb’s function.

Travis often wondered whether The Outsider had thrown Einstein against the nursery wall with great force and then had assumed he was dead. Or at the moment when it held the retriever’s life in its hands, perhaps the thing had reached down within itself and found some drop of mercy that its makers had not designed into it but which had somehow been there anyway. Perhaps it remembered the one pleasure it and the dog had shared in the lab — the cartoons. And in remembering the sharing, perhaps it saw itself, for the first time, as having a dim potential to be like other living things. Seeing itself as like others, perhaps it then could not kill Einstein as easily as it had expected. After all, with a flick of those talons, it could have gutted him.

But though he had acquired the limp, Einstein had lost the tattoo in his ear, thanks to Jim Keene. No one could ever prove that he was the dog from Banodyne — and he could still play “dumb dog” very well when he wished.

At times during young Jimmy’s third birthday extravaganza, Minnie regarded her mate and offspring with charmed befuddlement, perplexed by their attitudes and antics. Although she could never fully understand them, no mother of dogs ever received half the love that she was given by those she’d brought into the world. She watched over them, and they watched over her, guardians of each other.

At the dark end of that good day, when the guests were gone, when Jimmy was asleep in his room, when Minnie and her first litter were settling down for the night, Einstein and Travis and Nora gathered at the pantry off the kitchen.

The scrabble-tile dispenser was gone. In its place, an IBM computer stood on the floor. Einstein took a stylus in his mouth and tapped the keyboard. The message appeared on the screen:

THEY GROW UP FAST.

“Yes, they do,” Nora said. “Yours faster than ours.”

ONE DAY THEY WILL BE EVERYWHERE.

“One day, given time and a lot of litters,” Travis said, “they’ll be all over the world.”

SO FAR FROM ME. IT’S A SADNESS.

“Yes, it is,” Nora said. “But all young birds fly from the nest sooner or later.”

AND WHEN I’M GONE?

“What do you mean?” Travis asked, stooping and ruffling the dog’s thick coat.

WILL THEY REMEMBER ME?

“Oh yes, fur face,” Nora said, kneeling and hugging him. “As long as there are dogs and as long as there are people fit to walk with them, they will all remember you.”