Without Remorse

CHAPTER 37

Trial by Ordeal

'You're looking much better than the last time, Colonel,' Ritter said pleasantly in Russian. The security officer rose and walked out of the living room, giving the two men privacy. Ritter was carrying an attache case, which he set on the coffee table. 'Feeding you well?'

'I have no complaints,' Grishanov said warily. 'When can I go home?'

'This evening, probably. We're waiting for something.' Ritter opened the case. This made Kolya uneasy, but he didn't allow it to show. For all he knew there might be a pistol in there. Comfortable as his imprisonment had been, friendly as his conversations with the residents in this place were, he was on enemy soil, under the control of enemies. It made him think of another man in a distant place under very different circumstances. The differences ate at his conscience and shamed him for his fear.

'What is that?'

'Confirmation that our people are in Hoa Lo Prison.'

The Russian lowered his head and whispered something Ritter didn't catch. Grishanov looked up. 'I am glad to hear that.'

'You know, I believe you. Your letters back and forth to Rokossovskiy make that clear.' Ritter poured himself some tea from the pot on the table, filling up Kolya's cup also.

'You have treated me correctly.' Grishanov didn't know what else to say, and the silence was heavy in him.

'We have a lot of experience being friendly to Soviet guests,' Ritter assured him. 'You're not the first to stay here. Do you ride?'

'No, I've never been on a horse.'

'Ummhmm.' The attache case was quite full with papers, Kolya saw, wondering what they were. Ritter took out two large cards and an ink pad. 'Could I have your hands, please?'

'I don't understand.'

'Nothing to worry about.' Ritter took his left hand and inked the fingertips, rolling them one at a time in the appropriate boxes on one card, then the other. The procedure was duplicated with the other hand. 'There, that didn't hurt, did it? You can wash your hands now, better to do it before the ink dries.' Ritter slid one of the cards into the file, substituting it for the one removed. The other just went on top. He closed the case, then carried the old card to the fireplace, where he ignited it with his cigarette lighter. It burned fast, joining the ash pile from the fires that the custodians liked to have every other night. Grishanov came back with clean hands.

'I still don't understand.'

'It's really nothing that need concern you. You just helped me out on something, that's all. What say we have lunch? Then we can meet with a countryman of yours. Please be at ease, Comrade Colonel,' Ritter said as reassuringly as he could. 'If your side sticks to the bargain, you'll be on your way home in about eight hours. Fair enough?'

Mark Charon was uncomfortable coming here again, safe though the location might be this early into its use. Well, this wouldn't take long. He pulled his unmarked Ford to the front of the building, got out, and walked to the front door. It was locked. He had to knock. Tony Piaggi yanked it open, a gun in his hand. 'What's this?' Charon demanded in alarm.

'What's this?' Kelly asked himself quietly. He hadn't expected the car to come right up to the building, and had been loading two more rounds into the clip when the man pulled in and got out. The rifle was so stiff that he had trouble getting the clip back in, and by the time he had it up, the figure was moving too rapidly for a shot. Damn. Of course, he didn't know who it was. He twisted the scope to max-power and examined the car. Cheap body... an extra radio antenna... police car? Reflected light prevented him from seeing the interior. Damn. He'd made a small mistake. He'd expected a down-time after dropping the two on the roof. Nevertake anything for granted, dummy! The slight error made him grimace.

'What the hell is going on?' Charon snapped at them. Then he saw the body on the floor, a small hole slightly above and to the left of the open right eye.

'It's him! He's out there!' Tucker said.

'Who?'

'The one who got Billy and Rick and Burt -'

'Kelly!' Charon exclaimed, turning around to look at the closed door.

'You know his name?' Tucker asked.

'Ryan and Douglas are after him - they want him for a string of killings.'

Piaggi grunted. 'The string is longer by two. Bobby here, and Fred on the roof.' He stooped by the window again. He's got to be right across the road there...

Charon had his gun out now, for no apparent reason. Somehow the bags of heroin seemed unusually heavy now, and he set his service revolver down and unloaded them from his clothing onto the table with the rest of them, along with the mixing bowl, and the envelopes, and the stapler. That activity ended his current ability to do anything but look at the other two. That was when the phone rang. Tucker got it.

'Having fun, you cocksucker?'

'Did you have fun with Pam?' Kelly asked coldly. 'So,' he asked more pleasantly, 'who's your friend? Is that the cop you have on the payroll?'

'You think you know it all, don't you?'

'No, not all. I don't know why a man would get his rocks off killing girls, Henry. You want to tell me that?' Kelly asked.

'Fuck you, man!'

'You want to come on out and try? You swing that way too, sweetie-pie?' Kelly hoped Tucker didn't break the phone, the way he slammed it down. He just didn't understand the game, and that was good. If you didn't know the rules, you couldn't fight back effectively. There was an edge of fatigue on his voice, and Tony's also. The one on the roof hadn't had his shirt buttoned; it was rumpled, Kelly saw, examining the body through his sight. The trousers had creases inside the knees, as though the man had been sitting up all night. Had he merely been a slob? That didn't seem likely. The shoes he'd left by the opening were quite shiny. Probably up all night, Kelly judged after a few seconds' reflection. They're tired, andthey'rescared, and they don't know the game. Fine. He had his water and his candy bars, and all day.

'If you knew that bastard's name, how come you - goddamn it!' Tucker swore. 'You told me he's just a rich beach bum, I said I could take him out in the hospital, remember, but no!... you said leave him fuckin' be!'

'Settle down. Henry,' Piaggi said as calmly as he could manage. This is onevery serious boy we have out there. He's done six of my people. Six! Jesus. This is not the time to panic.

'We have to think this one through, okay?' Tony rubbed the heavy stubble on his face, collecting himself, thinking it through. 'He's got a rifle and he's in that big white building across the street.'

'You wanna just walk over there and get him, Tony?' Tucker pointed to Bobby's head. 'Look what he did here!'

'Ever heard of nightfall, Henry? There's one light out there, right over the door.' Piaggi walked over to the fuse box, checked the label inside the door, and unscrewed the proper fuse. 'There, the light don't work anymore. We can wait for night and make our move. He can't get us all. If we move fast enough, he might not get any.'

'What about the stuff?'

'We can leave one guy here to guard it. We get muscle in here to go after that bastard, and we finish business, okay?' It was a viable plan, Piaggi thought. The other guy didn't hold all the cards. He couldn't shoot through the walls. They had water, coffee, and time on their side.

The three stories were as close to word-for-word identical as anything he might have hoped for under the circumstances. They'd interviewed them separately, as soon as they'd recovered enough from their pills to speak, and their agitated state only made things better. Names, the place it had happened, how this Tucker bastard was dealing his heroin out-of-town now, something Billy had said about the way the bags stank - confirmed by the 'lab' busted on the Eastern Shore. They now had a driver's license number and possible address on Tucker. The address might be bogus - not an unlikely situation - but they also had a car make, from which they'd gotten a tag number. He had it all, or at least was close enough that he could treat the investigation as something with an end to it. It was a time for him to stand back and let things happen. The all-points was just now going on the air. At the next series of squad-room briefings, the name Henry Tucker, and his car, and his tag number would be made known to the patrol officers who were the real eyes of the police force. They could get very lucky, very fast, bring him in, arraign him, indict him, try him, and put his ass away forever even if the Supreme Court had the bad grace to deny him the end his life had earned. Ryan was going to bag that inhuman bastard.

And yet.

And yet Ryan knew he was one step behind someone else. The Invisible Man was using a.45 now - not his silencer; he had changed tactics, was going for quick, sure kills... didn't care about noise anymore... and he'd talked to others before killing them, and probably knew even more than he did. That dangerous cat Farber had described to him was out on the street, hunting in the light now, probably, and Ryan didn't know where.

John T. Kelly, Chief Boatswain's Mate, US Navy SEALs. Where the hell are you? If I were you... where would I be? Where would I go?

'Still there?' Kelly asked when Piaggi lifted the phone.

'Yeah, man, we're having a late lunch. Wanna come over and join us?'

'I had calamari at your place the other night. Not bad. Your mother cook it up?' Kelly inquired softly, wondering about the reply he'd get.

'That's right,' Tony replied pleasantly. 'Old family recipe, my great-grandmother brought it over from the Old Country, y'know?'

'You know, you surprise me.'

'How's that, Mr Kelly?' the man asked politely, his voice more relaxed now. He was wondering what effect it would have on the other end of the phone line.

'I expected you to try and cut a deal. Your people did, but I wasn't buying,' Kelly told him, allowing irritation to show in his voice.

'Like I said, come on over and we can talk over lunch.' The line clicked off.

Excellent.

'There, that ought to give the fucker something to think about.' Piaggi poured himself another cup of coffee. The brew was old and thick and rancid now, but it was so heavily laced with caffeine that his hands remained still only with concerted effort. But he was fully awake and alert, Piaggi told himself. He looked at the other two, smiling and nodding confidently.

'Sad about Cas,' the Superintendent observed to his friend.

Maxwell nodded. 'What can I say, Will? He wasn't exactly a good candidate for retirement, was he? Family gone, here and there both. This was his life, and it was coming to an end one way or another.' Neither man wanted to discuss what his wife had done. Perhaps after a year or so they might see the poetic symmetry in the loss of two friends, but not now.

'I hear, you put your papers in, too, Dutch.' The Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy didn't quite understand it. Talk was about that Dutch was a sure thing for a fleet command in the spring. The talk had died only days before, and he didn't know why.

'That's right.' Maxwell couldn't say why. The orders - couched as a 'suggestion' - had come from the White House, through the CNO. 'Long enough, Will. Time for some new blood. Us World War Two guys... well, time to make room, I guess.'

'Sonny doing okay?'

'I'm a grandfather.'

'Good for them!' At least there was some good news in the room when Admiral Greer entered it, wearing his uniform for once.

'James!'

'Nice principal's office,' Greer observed. 'Hiya, Dutch.'

'So, to what do I owe all this high-level attention?'

'Will, we're going to steal one of your sailboats. You have something nice and comfortable that two admirals can handle?'

'Wide selection. You want one of the twenty-sixes?'

'That's about right.'

'Well, I'll call the Seamanship Department and have them chop one loose for you.' It made sense, the Admiral thought. They'd both been close with Cas, and when you said goodbye to a sailor, you did it at sea. He placed his call, and they took their leave.

'Run outa ideas?' Piaggi asked. His voice showed defiant confidence now. The momentum had passed across the street, the man thought. Why not reinforce that?

'I don't see that you have any to speak of. You bastards afraid of the sunlight. I'll give you some!' Kelly snarled. 'Watch.'

He set the phone down and lifted the rifle, taking aim at the window.

Pop.

Crash.

'You dumb fuck!' Tony said into the phone, even though he knew it to be disconnected. 'You see? He knows he can't get us. He knows time's on our side.'

Two panes were shattered, then the shooting stopped again. The phone rang. Tony let it ring a while before he answered.

'Missed, you jerk!'

'I don't see you going anywhere, asshole!' The shout was loud enough that Tucker and Charon beard the buzz from ten feet away.

'I think it's time for you to start runnin', Mr Kelly. Who knows, maybe we won't catch you. Maybe the cops will. They're after you too, I hear.'

'You're still the ones in the trap, remember.'

'You say so, man.' Piaggi hung up on him again, showing who had the upper hand.

'And how are you, Colonel?' Voloshin asked.

'It has been an interesting trip.' Ritter and Grishanov were sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, just two tourists tired after a hot day, joined by a third friend, under the watchful eyes of a security guard ten yards away.

'And your Vietnamese friend?'

'What?' Kolya asked in some surprise. 'What friend?'

Ritter grinned. 'That was just a little ploy on my part. We had to identify the leak, you see.'

'I thought that was your doing,' the KGB general observed sourly. It was such an obvious trap and he'd fallen right into it. Almost. Fortune had smiled on him, and probably Ritter didn't know that.

'The game goes on, Sergey. Will you weep for a traitor?'

'For a traitor, no. For a believer in the cause of a peaceful world, yes. You are very clever, Bob. You have done well.' Perhaps not, Voloshin thought, perhapsnotas far into the trap as you believe, my young American friend. You moved too fast. You managed to kill this Hicks boy, but not Cassius. Impetuous, my young friend. You miscalculated and you really don't know it, do you?

Time for business. 'What about our people?'

'As agreed, they are with the others. Rokossovskiy confirms. Do you accept my word, Mr Ritter?'

'Yes, I will. Very well, there's a PanAm flight from Dulles to Paris tonight at eight-fifteen. I'll deliver him there if you wish to see him off. You can have him met at Orly.'

'Agreed.' Voloshin walked away.

'Why did he leave me?' Grishanov asked, more surprised than alarmed.

'Colonel, that's because he believes my word, just like I believe his.' Ritter stood. 'We have a few hours to kill -'

'Kill?'

'Excuse me, that's an idiom. We have a few hours of private time. Would you like to walk around Washington? There's a moon rock in the Smithsonian. People love to touch it for some reason.'

Five- thirty. The sun was in his eyes now. Kelly had to wipe his face more often. Watching the partly broken window, he saw nothing except an occasional shadow. He wondered if they were resting. That wouldn't do. He lifted the field phone and turned the crank. They made him wait again.

'Who's calling?' Tony asked. He was the formidable one, Kelly thought, almost as formidable as he thought he was. It was a shame, really.

'Your restaurant do carry-out?'

'Getting hungry, are we?' Pause. 'Maybe you want to make a deal with us.'

'Come on outside and we can talk about it,' Kelly replied. The reply was a click.

Just about right, Kelly thought, watching the shadows move across the floor. He drank the last of his water and ate his last candy bar, looking around the area again for any changes. He'd long since decided what to do. In a way, they'd decided that for him. There was again a clock running, ticking down to a zero-time that was flexible but finite. He could walk away from this if he had to, but - no, he really couldn't. He checked his watch. It was going to be dangerous, and the passage of time would not change it any more than it already had. They'd been awake for twenty-four hours, probably longer. He'd given them fear and let them get comfortable with it. They thought they held a good playing hand now, just as he'd dared to hope they would.

Kelly slid backwards on the cement floor, leaving his gear behind. He'd need it no longer no matter how this turned out. Standing, he brushed off his clothes and checked his Colt automatic. One in the chamber, seven in the magazine. He stretched a little, and then he knew that he could delay no longer. He headed down the stairs, pulling out the keys to the VW. It started despite his sudden fear that it might not. He let the engine warm up while watching traffic on the north-south street in front of him. He darted across, incurring the noisy wrath of a southbound driver, but fitting neatly into the rush-hour traffic.

'See anything?'

Charon had been the one to suggest that the angles precluded Kelly from seeing all the way into their building. He might try to come across after all, they thought, but two of them could each cover one side of the white building. And they knew he was still there. They were getting to him. He hadn't thought it all the way through, Tony pronounced. He was pretty smart, but not that smart, and when it was dark, and when there were shadows, they'd make their move. It would work. A dinky little.22 wouldn't penetrate a car body if they could make it that far, and if they surprised him, they could -

'Just- traffic on the other side.'

'Don't get too close to the window, man.'

'Fuckin' A,' Henry said. 'What about the delivery?'

'We got a saying in the family, man, better late than never, y'dig?'

Charon was the most uncomfortable of the three. Perhaps it was just the proximity to the drugs. Evil stuff.

A little late to think about that. Could there be a way out of this?

The money for his delivery was right there, next to the desk. He had a gun.

To die like a criminal? He watched them there, left and right of the window. They were the criminals. He hadn't done anything to offend this Kelly. Well, nothing that he knew about. It was Henry who'd killed the girl, and Tony who'd set the other two up. Charon was just a crooked cop. This was a personal matter for Kelly. Not a hard thing to understand. Killing Pam that way had been brutal and foolish. He'd told Henry that. He could come out of this a hero, couldn't he? Got a tip, walked right into it. Crazy shoot-out. He could even help Kelly. And he'd never, ever get mixed up with anything like this again. Bank the money, get the promotion, and take down Henry's organization from what he knew. They'd never bust him back after that, would they? All he had to do was to get on the phone and reason with the man. Except for one little thing.

Kelly turned left, proceeded west one block, then left again, heading south towards O'Donnell Street. His hands were sweating now. There were three of them, and he'd have to be very, very good. But he was good, and he had to finish the job, even if the job might finish him. He stopped the car a block away, getting out, locking it, and walking the rest of the way to the building. The other businesses here were closed down now - he'd counted three, up and operating throughout the day, totally unaware of what was happening... in one case just across the street. Well, you planned that one right, didn't you?

Yeah, Johnnie-boy, but that was the easy part.

Thanks. He stood right there at the corner of the building, looking in all directions. Better from the other side... he walked to the corner with the phone and electrical service, using the same half-windowsill he'd used before, reaching for the parapet and doing his best to avoid the electrical wires.

Okay, now you just have to walk across the roof without making any noise.

On tar and gravel?

There was one alternative he hadn't considered. Kelly stood on the parapet. It was at least eight inches wide, he told himself. It was also quiet as he walked the flat brick tightrope towards the opening in the roof, wondering if they might be using the phone.

Charon had to make his move soon. He stood, looking at the others, and stretched rather theatrically before heading in their direction. His coat was off, his tie loose, and his five-shot Smith was at his right hip. Just shoot the bastards and then talk to this Kelly character on the phone. Why not? They were hoods, weren't they? Why should he die for what they did?

'What are you doing, Mark?' Henry asked, not seeing the danger, too focused on the window. Good.

'Tired of sittin'.' Charon pulled the handkerchief from his right hip pocket and wiped his face with it as he measured angles and distance, then back to the phone, where his only safety lay. He was sure of that. It was his only chance to get out of this.

Piaggi just didn't like the look in his eyes. 'Why not just sit back down and relax, okay? It's going to get busy soon.'

Why is he looking at the phone? Why is he looking at us?

'Back off, Tony, okay?' Charon said in a challenging voice, reaching back to replace the handkerchief. He didn't know that his eyes had given him away. His hand had barely touched the revolver when Tony aimed and fired one shot into his chest.

'Real smart guy, huh?' Tony said to the dying man. Then he noticed that the oblong rectangle of light from the roof door had a shadow in it. Piaggi was still looking at the shadow when it disappeared, replaced by a blur barely caught by his peripheral vision. Henry was looking at Charon's body.

The shot startled him - the obvious thought was that it had been aimed at himself - but he was committed, and jumped into the square hole. It was like a parachute jump, keep your feet together, knees bent, back straight, roll when you hit.

He hit hard. It was a tile-over-concrete floor, but his legs took the worst of it. Kelly rolled at once, straightening his arm. The nearest one was Piaggi. Kelly brought the gun up, leveling the sights with his chest and firing twice, changing aim then and hitting the man under the chin.

Shift targets.

Kelly rolled again, trained to do so by some NVA he'd met. There he was. Time stopped in that moment. Henry had his own gun out and aimed, and their eyes met and for what seemed the longest time they simply looked, hunter and hunter, hunter and prey. Then Kelly remembered, first, what the sight picture was for. His finger depressed the trigger, delivering a finely aimed shot into Tucker's chest. The Colt jumped in his hand, and his brain was running so fast now that he saw the slide dash backwards, electing the empty brass case, then dashing forward to feed another just as the tension in his wrist brought the gun back down, and that round, too, went into the man's chest. Tucker was off-balance from turning. Either he slipped on the floor or the impact of the two slugs destroyed his balance, dropping him to the floor.

Mission accomplished, Kelly told himself. At least he'd gotten one job done after all the failures of this bleak summer. He got to his feet and walked to Henry Tucker, kicking the gun from his hand. He wanted to say something to the face that was still alive, but Kelly was out of words. Maybe Pam would rest easier now, but probably not. It didn't work that way, did it? The dead were gone and didn't know or care what they'd left behind. Probably. Kelly didn't know how that worked, though he'd wondered about it often enough. If the dead still lived on the surface of this earth, then it was in the minds of those who remembered them, and for that memory he'd killed Henry Tucker and all the others. Perhaps Pam would not rest any more easily. But he would. Kelly saw that Tucker had departed this life while he'd been thinking, examining his thoughts and his conscience. No, there was no remorse for this man, none for the others. Kelly safed his pistol and looked around the room. Three dead men, and the best thing that could be said was that he wasn't one of them. He walked to the door, and out of it. His car was a block away, and he still had an appointment to keep, and one more life to end.

Mission accomplished.

The boat was where he'd left it. Kelly parked his car, an hour later, taking out the suitcase. He locked the car with the keys inside, for that too was something he'd never need again. The drive through town and into the marina had been blissfully empty of thought, mechanical action only, maneuvering the car, stopping for some lights, proceeding through others, heading for the sea, or the Bay, one of the few places where he felt he belonged. He hefted the suitcase, walked out the dock to Springer, and hopped aboard. Everything looked okay, and in ten minutes he'd be away from everything he'd come to associate with the city. Kelly slid open the door to the main salon and stopped dead when he first smelled smoke, then heard a voice.

'John Kelly, right?'

'Who might you be?'

'Emmet Ryan? You've met my partner, Tom Douglas.'

'What can I do for you?' Kelly set his suitcase down on the deck, remembering the Colt automatic at the small of his back, inside the unbuttoned bush jacket.

'You can tell me why you've killed so many people,' Ryan suggested.

'If you think I've done it, then you know why.'

'True. I'm looking for Henry Tucker at the moment.'

'He's not here, is he?'

'Maybe you could help me, then?'

'Corner of O'Donnell and Mermen might be a good place to look. He's not going anywhere,' Kelly told the defective.

'What am I supposed to do about you?'

'The three girls this morning, are they -'

'They're safe. We'll look after them. You and your friends did nicely with Pam Madden and Doris Brown. Not your fault it didn't work out. Well, maybe a little.' The officer paused. 'I have to take you in, you know.'

'What for?'.

'For murder, Mr Kelly.'

'No.' Kelly shook his head. 'It's only murder when innocent people die.'

Ryan's eyes narrowed. He saw only the outline of the man, really, with the yellowing sky behind him. But he'd heard what he said, and part of him wanted to agree with it.

'The law doesn't say that.'

'I'm not asking you to forgive me. I won't be any more trouble to you, and I'm not going to any jail.'

'I can't let you go.' But his weapon wasn't out, Kelly saw. What did that mean?.

'I gave you that Officer Monroe back.'

'Thank you for that,' Ryan acknowledged.

'I don't just kill people. I've been trained to do it, but there has to be a reason somewhere. I had a good enough reason.'

'Maybe. Just what do you think you accomplished?' Ryan asked. 'This drug problem isn't going away.'

'Henry Tucker won't kill any more girls. I accomplished that. I never expected to do any more, but I took that drug operation down.' Kelly paused. There was something else this man needed to know. 'There's a cop at that building. I think he was dirty. Tucker and Piaggi shot him. Maybe he can come out of this a hero. There's a load of stuff there. It won't look too bad for your department that way.' And thank God I didn't have to kill a cop - even a bad one. 'I'll give you one more. I know how Tucker was getting his stuff in.' Kelly elaborated briefly.

'I can't just let you go,' the detective said again, though part of him wished it were otherwise. But that couldn't be, and he would not have made it so, for his life had rules, too.

'Can you give me an hour? I know you'll keep looking. One hour. It'll make things better for everybody.'

The request caught Ryan by surprise. It was against everything he stood for - but then, so were the monsters the man had killed. We owe him something... would I have cleared those cases without him? Who would have spoken for the dead... and besides, what could the guy do - where could he go?... Ryan, have you gone nuts? Yes, maybe he had...

'You've got your hour. After that I can recommend you to a good lawyer. Who knows, a good one might just get you off.'

Ryan rose and headed for the side door without looking back. He stopped at the door just for a second.

'You spared when you could have killed, Mr Kelly. That's why. Your hour starts now.'

Kelly didn't watch him leave. He hit his engine controls, wanning up the diesels. One hour should just about do it. He scrambled out on the deck, slipping his lines, leaving them attached to the dock piles, and by the time he got back inside the salon, the diesels were ready for turning. They caught at once, and he pivoted the boat, heading out into the harbor. As soon as he was out of the yacht basin he firewalled both throttles, bringing Springer to her top speed of twenty-two knots. With the channel empty, Kelly set his autopilot and rushed to make the necessary preparations. He cut the corner at Bodkin Point. He had to. He knew who they'd send after him.

'Coast Guard, Thomas Point.'

This is the Baltimore City Police.'

Ensign Tomlinson took the call. A new graduate of the Coast Guard Academy at New London, he was here for seasoning, and though he ranked the Chief Warrant Officer who ran the station, both the boy and the man understood what this was all about. Only twenty-two, young enough that his gold officer's bars still had the original shine, it was time to turn him loose on a mission, Paul English thought, but only because Portagee would really be running things. Forty-One-Bravo, the second of the station's big patrol craft, was warmed up and ready. The young ensign sprinted out, as though they might leave without him, much to the amusement of CWO English. Five seconds after the lad had snapped on his life vest, Forty-One-Bravo rumbled away from the dock, turning north short of the Thomas Point Light.

The man sure didn't give me any slack, Kelly thought, seeing the cutter closing from starboard. Well, he'd asked for an hour, and an hour he'd received. Kelly almost flipped on his radio for a parting salute, but that wouldn't have been right, and more was the pity. One of his diesels was running hot, and that was also a pity, though it wouldn't be running hot much longer.

It was a kind of race now, and there was a complication, a large French freighter standing out to sea; right where Kelly needed to be, and he would soon be caught between her and the Coast Guard.

'Well, here we are,' Ritter said, dismissing the security guard who'd followed them like a shadow all afternoon. He pulled a ticket from his pocket. 'First class. The booze is free, Colonel.' They'd been able to skip passport control on the strength of an earlier phone call.

'Thank you for your hospitality.'

Ritter chuckled. 'Yeah, the US government's flown you three quarters of the way around the world. I guess Aeroflot can handle the rest.' Ritter paused and went on formally. 'Your behavior to our prisoners was as correct as circumstances allowed. Thank you for that.'

'It is my wish that they get home safely. They are not bad men.'

'Neither are you.' Ritter led him to the gate, where a large transfer vehicle waited to take him out to a brand-new Boeing 747. 'Come back sometime. I'll show you more of Washington.' Ritter watched him board and turned to Voloshin.

'A good man, Sergey. Will this injure his career?'

'With what he has in his head? I think not.'

'Fine with me,' Ritter said, walking away.

They were too closely matched. The other boat had a slight advantage, since it was in the lead, and able to choose, while the cutter needed her half-knot speed advantage to draw closer so painfully slowly. It was a question of skill, really, and that, too, was down to whiskers of difference from one to the other. Oreza watched the other man slide his boat across the wake of the freighter, surfing it, really, sliding her onto the front of the ship-generated wave and riding it to port, gaining perhaps half a knot's momentary advantage. Oreza had to admire it. He couldn't do anything else. The man really was sailing his boat downhill as though a joke against the laws of wind and wave. But there was nothing funny about this, was there? Not with his men standing around the wheelhouse carrying loaded guns. Not with what he had to do to a friend.

'For Christ's sake,' Oreza snarled, easing the wheel to starboard a little. 'Be careful with those goddamned guns!' The other crewmen in the wheelhouse snapped the covers down on their holsters and ceased fingering their weapons.

'He's a dangerous man,' the man behind Oreza said.

'No, he isn't, not to us!'

'What about all the people he -'

'Maybe the bastards had it comin'!' A little more throttle and Oreza slid back to port. He was at the point of scanning the waves for smooth spots, moving the forty-one-foot patrol boat a few feet left and right to make use of the surface chop and so gain a few precious yards in his pursuit, just as the other was doing. No America's Cup race off to Newport had ever been as exciting as this, and inwardly Oreza raged at the other man that the purpose of the race should be so perverse.

'Maybe you should let -'

Oreza didn't turn his head. 'Mr Tomlinson, you think anybody else can conn the boat better'n me?'

'No, Petty Officer Oreza,' the Ensign said formally. Oreza snorted at the windowglass. 'Maybe call a helicopter from the Navy?' Tomlinson asked lamely.

'What for, sir? Where you think he's goin', Cuba, maybe? I have double his bunkerage and half a knot more speed, and he's only three hundred yards ahead. Do the math, sir. We're alongside in twenty minutes any way you cut it, no matter how good he is.' Treat the man with respect, Oreza didn't say.

'But he's dangerous,' Ensign Tomlinson repeated.

'I'll take my chances. There...' Oreza started his slide to port now, riding through the freighter's wake, using the energy generated by the ship to gain speed. Interesting, this is how a dolphin does it... that got me a whole knot's worth and my hull's better at this than his is... Contrary to everything he should have felt, Manuel Oreza smiled. He'd just learned something new about boat-handling, courtesy of a friend he was trying to arrest for murder. For murdering people who needed killing, he reminded himself, wondering what the lawyers would do about that.

No, he had to treat him with respect, let him run his race as best he could, take his shot at freedom, doomed though he might be. To do less would demean the man, and, Oreza admitted, demean himself. When all else failed there was still honor. It was perhaps the last law of the sea, and Oreza, like his quarry, was a man of the sea.

It was devilishly close. Portagee was just too damned good at driving his boat, and for that reason all the harder to risk what he'd planned. Kelly did everything he knew how. Planing Springer diagonally across the ship's wake was the cleverest thing he'd ever done afloat, but that damned Coastie matched it, deep hull and all. Both bis engines were redlined now, and both were running hot, and this damned freighter was going just a little too fast for things. Why couldn't Ryan have waited another ten friggin' minutes? Kelly wondered. The control for the pyro charge was next to him. Five seconds after he hit that, the fuel tanks would blow, but that wasn't worth a damn with a Coast Guard cutter two hundred goddamned yards back. Now what?

'We just gained twenty yards,' Oreza noted with both satisfaction and sorrow.

He wasn't even looking back, the petty officer saw. He knew. He had to know. God, you'regood, the Quartermaster First Class tried to say with his mind, regretting all the needling he'd inflicted upon the man, but he had to know that it had only been banter, one seaman to another. And in running the race this way he, too, was doing honor to Oreza. He'd have weapons there, and he could have turned and fired to distract and annoy his pursuers. But he didn't, and Portagee Oreza knew why. It would have violated the rules of a race such as this. He'd run the race as best he could, and when the time came he'd accept defeat, and there would be both pride and sadness for both men to share, but each would still have the respect of the other.

'Going to be dark soon,' Tomlinson said, ruining the petty officer's reverie. The boy just didn't understand, but he was only a brand-new ensign. Perhaps he'd learn someday. They mostly did, and Oreza hoped that Tomlinson would learn from today's lesson.

'Not soon enough, sir.'

Oreza scanned the rest of the horizon briefly. The French-flagged freighter occupied perhaps a third of what he could see of the water's surface. It was a towering hull, riding high on the surface and gleaming from a recent painting. Her crew knew nothing of what was going on. A new ship, the petty officer's brain noted, and her bulbous bow made for a nice set of bow waves that the other boat was using to surf along.

The quickest and simplest solution was to pull the cutter up behind him on the starboard side of the freighter, then duck across the bow, and then blow the boat up... but... there was another way, a better way...

'Now!' Oreza turned the wheel perhaps ten degrees, sliding to port and gaining fully fifty yards seemingly in an instant. Then he reversed his rudder, leaped over another five-foot roller, and prepared to repeat the maneuver. One of the younger seamen hooted in sudden exhilaration.

'You see, Mr Tomlinson? We have a better hull form for this sort of thing than he does. He can beat us by a whisker in flat seas, hut not in chop. This is what we're made for.' Two minutes had halved the distance between the boats.

'You sure you want this race to end, Oreza?' Ensign Tomlinson asked.

Not sodumb after all, is he? Well, he was an officer, and they were supposed to be smart once in a while.

'All races end, sir. There's always a winner and always a loser,' Oreza pointed out, hoping that his friend would understand that, too. Portagee reached in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and lit it with his left hand while his right - just the fingertips, really - worked the wheel, making tiny adjustments as demanded by the part of his brain that read and reacted to every ripple on the surface. He'd told Tomlinson twenty minutes. He'd been pessimistic. Sooner than that, he was sure.

Oreza scanned the surface again. A lot of boats out, mostly heading in, not one of them recognizing the race for what it was. The cutter didn't have her police lights blinking. Oreza didn't like the things: they were an insult to his profession. When a cutter of the United States Coast Guard pulled alongside, you shouldn't need police lights, he thought. Besides, this race was a private thing, seen and understood only by professionals, the way things ought to be, because spectators always degraded things, distracted the players from the game.

He was amidships on the freighter now, and Portagee had swallowed the bait... as he had to, Kelly thought. Damn but that guy was good. Another mile and he'd be alongside, reducing Kelly's options to precisely zero, but he did have his plan now, seeing the ship's bulbous bow, partly exposed. A crewman was looking down from the bridge, as on that first day with Pam, and his stomach became hollow for a moment, remembering. So long ago, so many things in between. Had he done right or wrong? Who would judge? Kelly shook his head. He'd let God do that. Kelly looked back for the first time in this race, measuring distance, and it was damnably close.

The forty-one boat was squatting back on her stem, pitched up perhaps fifteen degrees, her deep-displacement hull cutting through the choppy wake. She rocked left and right through a twenty-degree arc, her big down-rated marine diesels roaring in their special feline way. And it was all in Oreza's hands, throttles and wheels at his skilled fingertips while his eyes scanned and measured. His prey was doing exactly the same, milking every single turn from his own engines, using his skill and experience. But his assets added up short of Portagee's, and while that was too bad, that's how things were.

Just then Oreza saw the man's face, looking back for the first time.

It'stime, my friend. Come on, now, let's end this honorably. Maybe you'll get lucky and you'll get out after a while and we can be friends again.

'Come on, cut power and turn to starboard,' Oreza said, hardly knowing he spoke, and each man of his crew was thinking exactly the same thing, glad to know that they and their skipper were reading things the same way. It had been only a half-hour race, but it was the sort of sea story they would remember for their whole careers.

The man's head turned again. Oreza was barely half a ship-length back now. He could easily read the name on the transom, and there was no sense stringing it out to the last foot. That would spoil the race. It would show a meanness of spirit that didn't belong on the sea. That was something done by yachtsmen, not professionals.

Then Kelly did something unexpected. Oreza saw it first, and his eyes measured the distance once, then twice, and a third time, and in every case the answer came up wrong, and he reached for his radio quickly.

'Don't try it!' the petty officer shouted onto the 'guard' frequency.

'What?' Tomlinson asked quickly.

Don't do it! Oreza's mind shouted, suddenly alone in a tiny world, reading the other's mind and revolting at the thought it held. This was no way for things to end. There was no honor in this.

Kelly eased his rudder right to catch the bow wave, his eyes watching the foaming forefoot of the freighter. When the moment was right, he put the rudder over. The radio squawked. It was Portagee's voice, and Kelly smiled hearing it. What a good guy he was. Life would he so lonely without men such as he.

Springer lurched to starboard from the force of the radical turn, then even more from the small hill of water raised by the freighter's bow. Kelly held on to the wheel with his left hand and reached with his right for the air tank around which he'd strung six weight belts, Jesus, he thought instantly as Springer went over ninety degrees, Ididn'tcheck the depth. What if the water's not deep enough - oh, God... oh, Pam...

The boat turned sharply to port. Oreza watched from only a hundred yards away, but the distance might as well have been a thousand miles for all the good it did, and his mind saw it before reality caught up: already heeling hard to the right from the turn, the cruiser rode up high on the curling bow-wave of the freighter and, crosswise to it, rolled completely over, her white hull instantly disappearing in the foaming forefoot of the cargo ship... It was no way for a seaman to die.

Forty- One-Bravo backed down hard, rocking violently with the passage of the ship's wake as she came to a stop. The freighter stopped at once, too, but it took fully two miles, and by that time Oreza and his cutter were poking through the wreckage. Searchlights came on in the gathering darkness, and the eyes of the coastguardsmen were grim.

'Coast Guard Forty-One, Coast Guard Forty-One, this is US Navy sailboat on your port beam, can we render assistance, over?'

'We could use some extra eyes. Navy. Who's aboard?'

'Couple of admirals, the one talking's an aviator, if that helps.'

'Join in, sir.'.

He was still alive. It was as much a surprise to Kelly as if would have been to Oreza. The water here was deep enough that he and the air tank had plummeted seventy feet to the bottom. He fought to strap the tank to his chest in the violent turbulence of the passing ship overhead. Then he fought to swim clear of the descending engines and heavy gear from what had seconds earlier been an expensive cruiser. Only after two or three minutes did he accept the fact that he'd survived this trial by ordeal. Looking back, he wondered just how crazy he'd been to risk this, but for once he'd felt the need to entrust his life to judgment superior to his own, prepared to take the consequences either way. And the judgment had spared him. Kelly could see the Coast Guard hull over to the east... and to the west the deeper shape of a sailboat, pray God the right one. Kelly disengaged four of the weight belts from the tank and swam towards it, awkwardly because he had it on backwards.

His head broke the surface behind the sailboat as it lay to, close enough to read the name. He went down again. It took another minute to come up on the west side of the twenty-six-footer.

'Hello?'

'Jesus - is that you?' Maxwell called.

'I think so.' Well, not exactly. His hand reached up.

The doyen of naval aviation reached over the side, hauled the bruised and sore body aboard, and directed him below.

'Forty- One, this is Navy to your west now... this doesn't look real good, fella.'

'I'm afraid you're right. Navy. You can break off if you want. I think we'll stay a while,' Oreza said. It had been good of them to quarter the surface for three hours, a good assist from a couple of flag officers. They even handled their sailboat halfway decent. At another time he'd have taken the thought further and made a joke about Navy seamanship. But not now. Oreza and Forty-One-Bravo would continue their search all night, finding only wreckage.

It made the papers in a big way, but not in any way that made sense. Detective Lieutenant Mark Charon, following up a lead on his own time - on administrative leave following a shooting, no less - had stumbled into a drug lab and in the ensuing gun battle had lost his life in the line of duty while ending those of two major traffickers. The coincidental escape of three young women resulted in the identification of one of the deceased traffickers as a particularly brutal murderer, which perhaps explained Charon's heroic zeal, and closed a number of cases in a fashion that the police reporters found overly convenient. On page six was a squib story about a boating accident.

Three days later, a file clerk from St Louis called Lieutenant Ryan to say that the Kelly file was back but she couldn't say from where. Ryan thanked her for her effort. He'd closed that case along with the rest, and didn't even try the FBI records center for Kelly's card, and thus made unnecessary Bob Ritter's substitution of the prints of someone unlikely ever to visit America again.

The only loose end, which troubled Ritter greatly, was a single telephone call. But even criminals got one phone call, and Ritter didn't want to cross Clark on something like that. Five months later, Sandra O'Toole resigned her position at Johns Hopkins and moved to the Virginia tidewater, where she took over a whole floor of the area's teaching hospital on the strength of a glowing recommendation from Professor Samuel Rosen.