1It was everything he'd expected—not knowing what to expect—and more, and at the end of it Domingo Chavez held his son in his hands.

2"Well," he said, looking down at the new life that would be his to guard, educate, and in time present to the world. After a second that seemed to last into weeks, he handed the newborn to his wife.

3Patsy's face was bathed in perspiration, and weary from the five-hour ordeal of delivery, but already, as such things went, the pain was forgotten. The goal had been achieved, and she held her child. The package was pink, hairless, and noisy, the last part assuaged by the proximity of Patsy's left breast, as John Conor Chavez got his first meal. But Patsy was exhausted, and in due course a nurse removed the child to the nursery. Then Ding kissed his wife and walked alongside her bed as she was wheeled to her room. She was already asleep when they arrived. He kissed her one last time and walked outside. His car took him back onto the Hereford base, and then to the official home of Rainbox Six.

4"Yeah?" John said, opening the door.

5Chavez just handed over a cigar with a blue ring. "John Conor Chavez, seven pounds eleven ounces. Patsy's doing fine, gran-pop," Ding said, with a subdued grin. After all, Patsy had done the hard part.

6There are moments to make the strongest of men weep, and this was one of them. The two men embraced. "Well," John said, after a minute or so, reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe for a handkerchief with which he rubbed his eyes.

7"Who's he look like?"

8"Winston Churchill," Domingo replied with a laugh. "Hell, John, I've never been able to figure that one out, but John Conor Chavez is a confusing enough name, isn't it? The little bastard has a lot of heritage behind him. I'll start him off on karate and guns about age five… maybe six," Ding mused.

9"Better golf and baseball, but he's your kid, Domingo. Come on in."

10"Well?" Sandy demanded, and Chavez gave the news for the second time while his boss lit up his Cuban cigar. He despised smoking, and Sandy, a nurse, hardly approved of the vice, but on this one occasion, both relented. Mrs. Clark gave Ding a hug. "John Conor?"

11"You knew?" John Terrence Clark asked.

12Sandy nodded. "Patsy told me last week."

13"It was supposed to be a secret," the new father objected.

14"I'm her mother, Ding!" Sandy explained. "Breakfast?"

15The men checked their watches. It was just after four in the morning, close enough, they all agreed.

16"You know, John, this is pretty profound," Chavez said. His father-in-law noted how Domingo switched in and out of accents depending on the nature of the conversation. The previous day, interrogating the PIRA prisoners he'd been pure Los Angeles gang kid, his speech redolent with Spanish accent and street euphemisms. But in his reflective moments, he reverted to a man with a university master's degree, with no accent at all. "I'm a papa. I've got a son." Followed by a slow, satisfied, and somewhat awestruck grin. "Wow."

17"The great adventure, Domingo," John agreed, while his wife got the bacon going. He poured the coffee.

18"Huh?"

19"Building a complete person. That's the great adventure, sonny boy, and if you don't do it right, what the hell good are you?"

20"Well, you guys've done okay."

21"Thanks, Domingo," Sandy said from the stove. "We worked at it pretty hard."

22"More her than me," John said. "I was away so damned much, playing field- spook. Missed three Christmases, goddamnit. You never forgive yourself for that," he explained. "That's the magic morning, and you're supposed to be there."

23"Doing what?"

24"Russia twice, Iran once—getting assets out every time. Two worked, but one came apart on me. Lost that one, and he didn't make it. Russians have never been real forgiving on state treason. He bit the big one four months later, poor bastard.

25Not a good Christmas," Clark concluded, remembering just how bleak that had been, seeing the KGB scoop the man up not fifty meters from where he'd been standing, seeing the face turned to him, the look of despair on the doomed face, having to turn away to make his own escape down the pipeline he'd set up for two, knowing there was nothing else he might have done, but feeling like shit about it anyway. Then, finally, he'd had to explain to Ed Foley what had happened—only to learn later that the agent had been burned—"shopped" was the euphemism—by a KGB mole inside CIA's own headquarters building. And that fuck was still alive in a federal prison, with cable TV and central heating.

26"It's history, John," Chavez told him, understanding the look. They'd deployed on similar missions, but the Clark-Chavez team had never failed, though some of their missions had been on the insane side of hairy. "You know the funny part about this?"

27"What's that?" John asked, wondering if it would be the same feeling he'd had.

28"I know I'm gonna die now. Someday, I mean. The little guy, he's gotta outlive me. If he doesn't, then I've screwed it up. Can't let that happen, can I? JC is my responsibility. While he grows up, I grow old, and by the time he's my age, hell, I'll be in my sixties. Jesus, I never planned to be old, y'know?"

29Clark chuckled. "Yeah, neither did I. Relax, kid. Now I'm a"—he almost said "fucking," but Sandy didn't like that particular epithet—"goddamned grandfather. I never planned on that, either."

30"It's not so bad, John," Sandy observed, cracking open the eggs. "We can spoil him and hand him back. And we will."

31It hadn't happened that way with their kids, at least not on John's side of the family. His mother was long dead from cancer, and his father from a heart attack on the job, while rescuing some children from a dwelling fire in Indianapolis, back in the late 1960s. John wondered if they knew that their son had grown up, and then grown old, and was now a grandfather. There was no telling, was there?

32Mortality and its attendant issues were normal at times like this, he supposed.

33The great continuity of life. What would John Conor Chavez become? Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief? That was mainly Domingo and Patsy's job, and he had to trust them to do it properly, and they probably would. He knew his daughter and knew Ding almost as well. From the first time he'd seen the kid, in the mountains of Colorado, he'd known that this boy had something special in him, and the younger man had grown, blossoming like a flower in a particularly tough garden. Domingo Chavez was a younger version of himself, a man of honor and courage, Clark told himself, and therefore he'd be a worthy father, as he'd proven to be a worthy husband. The great continuity of life, John told himself again, sipping his coffee and puffing on the cigar, and if it was yet one more milestone on the road to death, then so be it. He'd had an interesting life, and a life that had mattered to others, as had Domingo, and as they all hoped would, John Conor. And what the hell, Clark thought, his life wasn't over yet, was it?

34Getting a flight to New York had proven more difficult than expected. They were all fully booked, but finally Popov had managed to get himself a coach seat in the back of an old United 727. He disliked the tight fit, but the flight was short. At La Guardia, he headed for a cab, on the way out checking his inside coat pocket and finding the travel documents that had gotten him across the Atlantic. They had served him well, but they had to go. Emerging into the evening air, he surreptitiously dumped them into a trash container before walking to the cabstand. He was a weary man. His day had started just after midnight, American East Coast time, and he hadn't managed much sleep on the transatlantic flight, and his body was—how did the Americans put it? —running on empty. Maybe that explained the break with fieldcraft.

35Thirty minutes later, Popov was within blocks of his downtown apartment, when the waste-disposal crew circulated past the United Airlines terminal to change the trash bags. The routine was mechanical and fairly strenuous physical labor for the mostly Puerto Rican work crew. One at a time, they lifted the metal tops off the cans and reached in to remove the heavy-gauge plastic garbage bags, then turned to dump them into wheeled containers that would later be tipped into trucks for transport to a landfill on Staten Island. The routine was good upper-body exercise, and most of the men carried portable radios to help themselves deal with the boredom of the work.

36One can, fifty yards from the cabstand, didn't sit properly in its holder. When the cleanup man lifted the bag, it caught on a metallic edge and ripped, spilling its contents onto the concrete sidewalk. That generated a quiet curse from the worker, who now had to bend down and pick up a bunch of objects with his gloved hands. He was halfway through when he saw the crimson cardboard cover of what appeared to be a British passport. People didn't throw those things away, did they? He flipped it open and saw two credit cards inside, stamped with the same name on the passport. Serov, he saw, an unusual name. He dropped the whole package into the thigh pocket of his coveralls. He'd bring it by the lost-and-found.

37It wasn't the first time he'd discovered valuable stuff in the trash. Once he'd even recovered a fully loaded 9-mm pistol!

38By this time Popov was in his apartment, too tired even to unpack his bags.

39Instead he merely undressed and collapsed on the bed without even a vodka to help him off to sleep. By reflex, he turned on the TV and caught yet another story about the Hereford shoot-out. The TV was—govno, shit, he thought. There was the TV truck whose reporter had come close and tried to interview him. They hadn't used it, but there he was, in profile, from twenty feet away, while the reporter gave a stand-up. All the more reason to clear out now, he thought, as he drifted off. He didn't even have the energy to switch the TV off, and he slept with it on, the recurring stories entering his mind and giving him confused and unpleasant dreams throughout the night.

40The passport, credit cards, and a few other items of apparent value arrived at the waste-disposal company's Staten Island office—actually a trailer that had been towed to the spot—after the close of regular business hours. The trash collector tossed it on the correct desk and punched his time card on the way out for his drive back to Queens and his usual late dinner.

41Tom Sullivan had worked late, and was now in the bar the FBI agents frequented, a block from the Jacob Javits Federal Building in lower Manhattan.

42His partner Frank Chatham was there, too, and the two agents sat in a booth, sipping at their Sam Adams beers.

43"Anything happening on your end?" Sullivan asked. He'd been in court all day, waiting to testify in a fraud case, but had never gotten to the witness stand because of procedural delays.

44"I talked with two girls today. They both say they know Kirk Maclean, but neither one actually dated him," Chatham replied. "Looks like another dry hole. I mean, he was cooperative, wasn't he?"

45"Any other names associated with the missing girls?"

46Chatham shook his head. "Nope. They both said they saw him talking to the missing one and he walked one out once, like he told us, but nothing special about it. Just the usual singles bar scene. Nothing that contradicts anything he said. Neither one likes Maclean very much. They say he comes on to girls, asks some questions, and usually leaves them."

47"What kind of questions?"

48"The usual—name, address, work, family stuff. Same stuff we ask, Tom."

49"The two girls you talked to today," Sullivan asked thoughtfully. "Where they from?"

50"One's a New Yorker, one's from across the river in Jersey."

51"Bannister and Pretloe are from out of town," Sullivan pointed out.

52"Yeah, I know. So?"

53"So, if you're a serial killer, it's easier to take down victims with no close family members, isn't it?"

54"Part of the selection process? That's a stretch, Tom."

55"Maybe, but what else we got?" The answer was, not very much. The flyers handed out by the NYPD had turned up fifteen people who'd said they recognized the faces, but they were unable to provide any useful information. "I agree, Maclean was cooperative, but if he approaches girls, dumps those who grew up near here and have family here, then walks our victim home, hell, it's more than we have on anyone else."

56"Go back to talk to him?"

57Sullivan nodded. "Yeah." It was just routine procedure. Kirk Maclean hadn't struck either agent as a potential serial killer—but that was the best-disguised form of criminal, both had learned in the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. They also knew that the dullest of routine investigative work broke far more cases than the miracles so beloved of mystery novels. Real police work was boring, mind- dulling repetition, and those who stuck with it won. Usually.

58It was strange that morning at Hereford. On the one hand, Team-2 was somewhat cowed by what had happened the day before. The loss of comrades did that to any unit. But on the other hand, their boss was now a father, and that was always the best thing to happen to a man. On the way to morning PT, a somewhat strung-out Team-2 Leader, who'd had no sleep at all the night before, had his hand shaken by every member of the team, invariably with a brief word of congratulations and a knowing smile, since all of them were fathers already, even those younger than their boss. Morning PT was abbreviated, in acknowledgment of his physical condition, and after the run, Eddie Price suggested to Chavez that he might as well drive home for a few hours of sleep, since he'd be of little use to anyone in his current condition. This Chavez did, crashing and burning past noon, and wakening with a screaming headache.

59As did Dmitriy Popov. It hardly seemed fair, since he'd had little to drink the day before. He supposed it was his body's revenge on him for all the travel abuse on top of a long and exciting day west of London. He awoke to CNN on his bedroom TV, and padded off to the bathroom for the usual morning routine, plus some aspirin, then to the kitchen to make coffee. In two hours, he'd showered and dressed, unpacked his bags, and hung up the clothes he'd taken to Europe. The wrinkles would stretch out in a day or two, he thought. Then it was time for him to catch a cab for midtown.

60On Staten Island, the lost-and-found person was a secretary who had this as one of her additional duties, and hated it. The items dropped on her desk were always smelly, sometimes enough to make her gag. Today was no exception, and she found herself wondering why people had to place such noxious items in the trash instead of—what? she never thought to wonder. Keep them in their pockets?

61The crimson passport was no exception. Joseph A. Serov. The photo was of a man about fifty, she thought, and about as remarkable to look at as a McDonald's hamburger. But it was a passport and two credit cards and it belonged to somebody. She lifted the phone book from her desk and called the British Consulate in Manhattan, told the operator what it was about, and got the passport control officer as a result. She didn't know that the passport-control office had for generations been the semisecret cover job for field officers of the Secret Intelligence Service. After a brief conversation, a company truck that was headed for Manhattan anyway dropped off the envelope at the consulate, where the door guard called to the proper office, and a secretary came down to collect it. This she dropped on the desk of her boss, Peter Williams.

62Williams really was a spook of sorts, a young man on his first field assignment outside his own country. It was typically a safe, comfortable job, in a major city of an allied country, and he did work a few agents, all of them diplomats working at the United Nations. From them, he sought and sometimes got low-level diplomatic intelligence, which was forwarded to Whitehall to be examined and considered by equally low-level bureaucrats in the Foreign Office.

63This smelly passport was unusual. Though his job was supposed to handle things like this, in fact he most often arranged substitute passports for people who'd somehow lost them in New York, which was not exactly a rare occurrence, though invariably an embarrassing one for the people who needed the replacements. The procedure was for Williams to fax the identification number on the document to London to identify the owner properly, and then call him or her at home, hoping to get a family member or employee who would know where the passport holder might be.

64But in this case, Williams got a telephone call from Whitehall barely thirty minutes after sending the information.

65"Peter?"

66"Yes, Burt?"

67"This passport, Joseph Serov—rather strange thing just happened."

68"What's that?"

69"The address we have for the chap is a mortuary, and the telephone number is to the same place. They've never heard of Joseph Serov, alive or dead."

70"Oh? A false passport?" Williams lifted it from his desk blotter. If it were a fake, it was a damned good one. So was something interesting happening for a change?

71"No, the computer has the passport number and name in it, but this Serov chap doesn't live where he claims to live. I think it's a matter of false papers. The records show that he is a naturalized subject. Want us to run that down, as well?"

72Williams wondered about that. He'd seen false papers before, and been trained on how to obtain them for himself at the SIS training academy. Well, why not?

73Maybe he'd uncover a spy or something. "Yes, Burt, could you do that for me?"

74"Call you tomorrow," the Foreign Office official promised.

75For his part, Peter Williams lit up his computer and sent an e-mail to London, just one more routine day for a young and very junior intelligence officer on his first posting abroad. New York was much like London, expensive, impersonal, and full of culture, but sadly lacking in the good manners of his hometown.

76Serov, he thought, a Russian name, but you could find them everywhere. Quite a few in London. Even more in New York City, where so many of the cabdrivers were right off the boat or plane from Mother Russia and knew neither the English language nor where to find the landmarks of New York. Lost British passport, Russian name.

77Three thousand four hundred miles away, the name "Serov" had been input onto the SIS computer system. The name had already been run for possible hits and nothing of value had been found, but the executive program had many names and phrases, and it scanned for all of them. The name "Serov" was enough—it had also been entered spelled as Seroff and Serof—and when the e-mail from New York arrived, the computer seized upon and directed the message to a desk officer.

78Knowing that Iosef was the Russian version of Joseph, and since the passport description gave an age in the proper range, he flagged the message and forwarded it to the computer terminal of the person who had originated the enquiry on one Serov, Iosef Andreyevich.

79In due course, that message appeared as e-mail on the desktop computer of Bill Tawney. Bloody useful things, computers, Tawney thought, as he printed up the message. New York. That was interesting. He called the number of the Consulate and got Peter Williams.

80"This passport from the Serov chap, anything else you can tell me?" he asked, after establishing his credentials.

81"Well, yes, there are two credit cards that were inside it, a MasterCard and a Visa, both platinum." Which, he didn't have to add, meant that they had relatively large credit limits.

82"Very well. I want you to send me the photo and the credit-card numbers over secure lines immediately." Tawney gave him the correct numbers to call.

83"Yes, sir. I'll do that at once," Williams replied earnestly, wondering what this was all about. And who the devil was William Tawney? Whoever it was, he was working late, since England was five hours ahead of New York, and Peter Williams was already wondering what he'd have for dinner.

84"John?"

85"Yeah, Bill?" Clark replied tiredly, looking up from his desk and wondering if he'd get to see his grandson that day.

86"Our friend Serov has turned up," the SIS man said next. That got a reaction.

87Clark's eyes narrowed at once.

88"Oh? Where?"

89"New York. A British passport was found in a dustbin at La Guardia Airport, along with two credit cards. Well," he amended his report, "the passport and credit cards were in the name of one Joseph A. Serov."

90"Run the cards to see if—"

91"I called the legal attache in your embassy in London to have the accounts run, yes. Should have some information within the hour. Could be a break for us, John," Tawney added, with a hopeful voice.

92"Who's handling it in the U.S.?"

93"Gus Werner, assistant director, Terrorism Division. Ever met him?"

94Clark shook his head. "No, but I know the name."

95"I know Gus. Good chap."

96The FBI has cordial relationships with all manner of businesses. Visa and MasterCard were no exceptions. An FBI agent called the headquarters of both companies from his desk in the Hoover Building, and gave the card numbers to the chiefs of security of both companies. Both were former FBI agents themselves—the FBI sends many retired agents off to such positions, which creates a large and diverse old-boy network—and both of them queried their computers and came up with account information, including name, address, credit history, and most important of all, recent charges. The British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Chicago O'Hare leaped off the screen—actually the faxed page—at the agent's desk in Washington.

97"Yeah?" Gus Werner said, when the young agent came into his office.

98"He caught a flight from London to Chicago late yesterday, and then a flight from Chicago to New York, about the last one, got a back-room ticket on standby.

99Must have dumped the ID right after he got in. Here. " The agent handed over the charge records and the flight information. Werner scanned the pages.

100"No shit," the former chief of the Hostage Rescue Team observed quietly. "This looks like a hit, Johnny."

101"Yes, sir," replied the young agent, fresh in from the Oklahoma City field division. "But it leaves one thing out—how he got to Europe this time. Everything else is documented, and there's a flight from Dublin to London, but nothing from here to Ireland," Special Agent James Washington told his boss.

102"Maybe he's got American Express. Call and find out," Werner ordered the junior man.

103"Will do," Washington promised.

104"Who do I call on this?" Werner asked.

105"Right here, sir." Washington pointed to the number on the covering sheet.

106"Oh, good, I've met him. Thanks, Jimmy." Werner lifted his phone and dialed the international number. "Mr. Tawney, please," he told the operator. "It's Gus Werner calling from FBI Headquarters in Washington."

107"Hello, Gus. That was very fast of you," Tawney said, half in his overcoat and hoping to get home.

108"The wonders of the computer age, Bill. I have a possible hit on this Serov guy.

109He flew from Heathrow to Chicago yesterday. The flight was about three hours after the fracas you had at Hereford. I have a rental car, a hotel bill, and a flight from Chicago to New York City after he got here. "

110"Address?"

111"We're not that lucky. Post office box in lower Manhattan," the Assistant Director told his counterpart. "Bill, how hot is this?"

112"Gus, it's bloody hot. Sean Grady gave us the name, and one of the other prisoners confirmed it. This Serov chap delivered a large sum of money and ten pounds of cocaine shortly before the attack. We're working with the Swiss to track the money right now. And now it appears that this chap is based in America. Very interesting."

113"No shit. We're going to have to track this mutt down if we can," Werner thought aloud. There was ample jurisdiction for the investigation he was about to open.

114American laws on terrorism reached across the world and had draconian penalties attached to them. And so did drug laws.

115"You'll try?" Tawney asked.

116"You bet your ass on that one, Bill," Werner replied positively. "I'm starting the case file myself. The hunt is on for Mr. Serov."

117"Excellent. Thank you, Gus."

118Werner consulted his computer for a codeword. This case would be important and classified, and the codeword on the file would read… no, not that one. He told the machine to pick another. Yes. PREFECT, a word he remembered from his Jesuit high school in St. Louis.

119"Mr. Werner?" his secretary called. "Mr. Henriksen on line three."

120"Hey, Bill," Werner said, picking up the phone.

121"Cute little guy, isn't he?" Chavez asked.

122John Conor Chavez was in his plastic crib-tray, sleeping peacefully at the moment. The name card in the slot on the front established his identity, helped somewhat by an armed policeman in the nursery. There would be another on the maternity floor, and an SAS team of three soldiers on the hospital grounds—they were harder to identify, as they didn't have military haircuts. It was, again, the horse-gone-lock-the-door mentality, but Chavez didn't mind that people were around to protect his wife and child.

123"Most of 'em are," John Clark agreed, remembering what Patsy and Maggie had been like at that age—only yesterday, it so often seemed. Like most men, John always thought of his children as infants, never able to forget the first time he'd held them in their hospital receiving blankets. And so now, again, he basked in the warm glow, knowing exactly how Ding felt, proud and a little intimidated by the responsibility that attended fatherhood. Well, that was how it was supposed to be. Takes after his mother, John thought next, which meant after his side of the family, which, he thought, was good. But John wondered, with an ironic smile, if the little guy was dreaming in Spanish, and if he learned Spanish growing up, well, what was the harm in being bilingual? Then his beeper went off. John grumbled as he lifted it from his belt. Bill Tawney's number. He pulled his shoe- phone from his pants pocket and dialed the number. It took five seconds for the encryption systems to synchronize.

124"Yeah, Bill?"

125"Good news. John, your FBI are tracking down this Serov chap. I spoke with Gus Werner half an hour ago. They've established that he took a flight from Heathrow to Chicago yesterday, then on to New York. That's the address for his credit cards. The FBI are moving very quickly on this one."

126The next step was checking for a driver's license, and that came up dry, which meant they were also denied a photograph of the subject. The FBI agents checking it out in Albany were disappointed, but not especially surprised. The next step, for the next day, was to interview the postal employees at the station with the P.O.

127box.

128"So, Dmitriy, you got back here in a hurry," Brightling observed.

129"It seemed a good idea," Popov replied. "The mission was a mistake. The Rainbow soldiers are too good for such an attack on them. Sean's people did well.

130Their planning struck me as excellent, but the enemy was far too proficient. The skill of these people is remarkable, as we saw before. "

131"Well, the attack must have shaken them up," his employer observed.

132"Perhaps," Popov allowed. Just then, Henriksen walked in.

133"Bad news," he announced.

134"What's that?"

135"Dmitriy, you goofed up some, son."

136"Oh? How did I do that?" the Russian asked, no small amount of irony in his voice.

137"Not sure, but they know there was a Russian involved in cueing the attack on Rainbow, and the FBI is working the case now. They may know you're here."

138"That is not possible," Popov objected. "Well… yes, they have Grady, and perhaps he talked… yes, he did know that I flew in from America, or he could have figured that out, and he knows the cover name I used, but that identity is gone— destroyed."

139"Maybe so, but I was just on the phone with Gus Werner. I asked him about the Hereford incident, if there was anything I needed to know. He told me they've started a case looking for a Russian name, that they had reason to believe a Russian, possibly based in America, had been in contact with the PIRA. That means they know the name, Dmitriy, and that means they'll be tracking down names on airline passenger lists. Don't underestimate the FBI, pal," Henriksen warned.

140"I do not," Popov replied, now slightly worried, but only slightly. It would not be all that easy to check every transatlantic flight, even in the age of computers. He also decided that his next set of false ID papers would be in the name of Jones, Smith, Brown, or Johnson, not that of a disgraced KGB chairman from the 1950s.

141The Serov ID name had been a joke on his part. Not a good one, he decided now.

142Joseph Andrew Brown, that would be the next one, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov thought, sitting there in the top-floor office.

143"Is this a danger to us?" Brightling asked.

144"If they find our friend here," Henriksen replied.

145Brightling nodded and thought quickly. "Dmitriy, have you ever been to Kansas?"

146"Hello, Mr. Maclean," Tom Sullivan said.

147"Oh, hi. Want to talk to me some more?"

148"Yes, if you don't mind," Frank Chatham told him.

149"Okay, come on in," Maclean said, opening the door all the way, walking back to his living room, and telling himself to be cool. He sat down and muted his TV. "So, what do you want to know?"

150"Anyone else you remember who might have been close to Mary Bannister?" The two agents saw Maclean frown, then shake his head.

151"Nobody I can put a name on. I mean, you know, it's a singles bar, and people bump into each other and talk, and make friends and stuff, y'know?" He thought for a second more. "Maybe one guy, but I don't know his name… tall guy, 'bout my age, sandy hair, big guy, like he works out and stuff… but I don't know his name, sorry. Mary danced with him and had drinks with him, I think, but aside from that, hey, it's too dark and crowded in there."

152"And you walked her home just that one time?"

153"'Fraid so. We talked and joked some, but we never really hit it off. Just casual. I never, uh, made a move on her, if you know what I mean. Never got that far, like.

154Yeah, sure, I walked her home, but didn't even go in the building, didn't kiss her good night, even, just shook hands. " He saw Chatham taking notes. Was this what he'd told them before? He thought so, but it was hard to remember with two federal cops in his living room. The hell of it was he didn't remember much about her. He'd selected her, loaded her into the truck, but that was all. He had no idea where she was now, though he imagined she was probably dead. Maclean knew what that part of the project was all about, and that made him a kidnapper and accessory to murder, two things he didn't exactly plan to give to these two FBI guys. New York had a death penalty statute now, and for all he knew so did the federal government. Unconsciously, he licked his lips and rubbed his hands on his slacks as he leaned back on the couch. Then he stood and faced toward the kitchen. "Can I get you guys anything?

155"No, thanks, but you go right ahead," Sullivan said. He'd just seen something he hadn't noticed in their first interview. Tension. Was it the occasional flips people got talking to FBI agents, or was this guy trying to conceal something? They watched Maclean build a drink and come back.

156"How would you describe Mary Bannister?" Sullivan asked.

157"Pretty, but no knockout. Nice, personable—I mean, pleasant, sense of humor, sense of fun about her. Out-of-town girl in the big city for the first time—I mean, she's just a girl, y'know?"

158"But nobody really close to her, you said?"

159"Not that I know of, but I didn't know her that well. What do other people say?"

160"Well, people from the bar said you were pretty friendly with her…" "Maybe, yeah, but not that friendly. I mean, it never went anywhere. I never even kissed her." He was repeating himself now, as he sipped at his bourbon and water. "Wish I did, but I didn't," he added.

161"Who at the bar are you close to?" Chatham asked.

162"Hey, that's kinda private, isn't it?" Kirk objected.

163"Well, you know how it goes. We're trying to get a feel for the place, how it works, that sort of thing."

164"Well, I don't kiss and tell, okay? Not my thing."

165"I can't blame you for that," Sullivan observed with a smile, "but it is kinda unusual for the singles bar crowd."

166"Oh, sure, there's guys there who put notches on their guns, but that's not my style."

167"So, Mary Bannister disappeared, and you didn't notice?"

168"Maybe, but I didn't think much about it. It's a transient community, y'know?

169People come in and out, and some you never see again. They just disappear, like. "

170"Ever call her?"

171Maclean frowned. "No, I don't remember that she gave me her number. I suppose she was in the book, but, no, I never called her."

172"Just walked her home only that one time?"

173"Right, just that one time," Maclean confirmed, taking another pull on his drink and wishing these two inquisitors out of his home. Did they—could they know something? Why had they come back? Well, there was nothing in his apartment to confirm that he knew any female from the Turtle Inn. Well, just some phone numbers, but not so much as a loose sock from the women he'd occasionally brought here. "I mean, you guys looked around the first time you were here," Maclean volunteered.

174"No big deal. We always ask to do that. It's just routine," Sullivan told their suspect. "Well, we have another appointment in a few minutes up the street.

175Thanks for letting us talk to you. You still have my card?

176"Yeah, in the kitchen, stuck on the refrigerator."

177"Okay. Look, this case is kinda hard for us. Please think it over and if you come up with anything—anything at all, please call me, okay?"

178"Sure will." Maclean stood and walked them to the door, then came back to his drink and took another swallow.

179"He's nervous," Chatham said, out on the street.

180"Sure as hell. We have enough to do a background check on him?"

181"No problem," Chatham replied.

182"Tomorrow morning," the senior agent said.

183It was his second trip to Teterboro Airport, in New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan, but this time it was a different aircraft, with HORIZON CORP. painted on the rudder fin. Dmitriy played along, figuring that he could escape from any place in the United States, and knowing that Henriksen would warn Brightling not to try anything drastic. There was an element of anxiety to the trip, but no greater than his curiosity, and so Popov settled into his seat on the left side and waited for the aircraft to start its engines and taxi out. There was even a flight attendant, a pretty one, to give him a shot of Finlandia vodka, which he sipped as the Gulfstream V started rolling. Kansas, he thought, a state of wheat fields and tornadoes, less than three hours away.

184"Mr. Henriksen?"

185"Yeah, who's this?"

186"Kirk Maclean."

187"Anything wrong?" Henriksen asked, alerted by the tone of his voice.