"I've a room at the Washington Island INS Depot BOQ and some things in my parents' attic in Victoria. I don't plan to uproot you, girl. If I use up all my accrued vacation, it will carry me into my twenty-year retirement option."

She grabbed his upper arms and searched his face. "Are you sure? Don't youwant to make admiral or something?"

He shook his head. "No. I might have limped on, after this case, for want of something better. But I have something better. Todas las cosas tienen su tiempo."

She blinked. "After this case."

"Well, yes. After all, even if it wasn't worth solving in and of itself, they've tried to kill us. How can we have a life together until that's stopped?"

She sighed. "You made me forget, for a moment."

The dead.

"Well, yes. You do that for me, too."

The door opened, and the congresswoman came back in, followed by a hotel room-service waiter with the champagne and glasses.

"I know I'm not exactly in the mainstream of your life, Pea, but after Geoffrey I never heard about you seeing anybody else." She waved the waiter out after he'd managed the cork. "How long have you and Commander Beck-I guess Thomas is more appropriate-known each other?"

"Four days now," Patricia said absently, eyes locked with Thomas's.

The congresswoman, pouring from the bottle, knocked one of the flutes over.

"What?"

Thomas looked over at the suddenly distraught face and felt sympathy. Looking at it from the outside, it was insane.

"They've been a very intense four days," he allowed.

He picked up Terkel and Guterson and their police escort in the lobby. Terkel, after a nervous glance at Thomas's expression, said, "Are you all right, sir? Is the congresswoman making waves?"

He stared at Terkel. "No, she took it rather well. I was surprised."

In fact, she'd followed him to the door after his reluctant farewell to Patricia and whispered, "Thank you for letting me be part of this. We've been apart so long-"

She'd been unable to continue, settling for squeezing his hand before letting the door close.

"Took what rather well? The briefing?"

"No, the engage-" He stopped himself. Terkel had no way of knowing about the engagement. Until Thomas had given Patricia the ring, even he'd been unsure whether he'd have the nerve. "There was some trouble at first, but the congresswoman and I have reached an understanding. She won't be looking overour shoulder, and she won't be interfering.

"What did my face look like, just now, that made you ask?"

Terkel shrugged. "Uh, serious. Perhaps a little, well, sad." He looked embarrassed to say it.

He hadn't wanted to leave Patricia; that was certain. And the depth of this commitment, this new course in his life-well, that was a bit scary. I'm surprised he didn't say I looked terrified. "Don't worry about it, Bart." He remembered the press of Patricia's body against his-the promise of it. "I'm better than all right."

They made the run out to the Abattoir in ten minutes, both police patrol boats planing at over forty-five knots, hooting slower craft out of their way with a burst of their sirens and flashes of light.

When they delivered Thomas to the Abbott Detention Center landing, the police escort stayed with their boats. Terkel and Guterson followed him through the layers of security into the prison.

At every checkpoint he studied the guards, the men behind the armored glass throwing switches, the distant figures standing watch atop walls. He wondered if any of them spoke with a gravelly voice. Jazz didn't want me to come. I hope he wasn't right. Thomas had argued, "What good would it do to take me out? Surely they must know it wouldn't stop the investigation."

Chief Dallas, Thomas's escort to Admiral Pachefski the last time he'd come, met them inside. "Your man is in hex fifteen, medium security for felonious but nonviolent offenders. We've arranged for an exercise court, as you requested, though it's not the safest way. We'll have guards up on the walls, but out of earshot.

I reviewed the record-I don't see why he'll talk to you when he wouldn't talk to reduce his sentence."

Thomas shrugged. "No harm in trying."

"What does he have to do with the Open Lotus?"

"Perhaps nothing. But if he does, then it's not something I'm free to discuss, Chief."

"Right, sir. Just making conversation."

Still probing for the admiral?

At the entrance to the exercise court, Thomas waited while the guards coordinated the remote unlock with central control.

"Go ahead, sir," Chief Dallas said. "They'll send him in from the cellblock side."

Thomas turned to Terkel and Guterson. "You guys hang by the gate. I want to try him alone.""Aye, aye, sir," said Guterson.

Terkel nodded.

The court was bare, gray seacrete walls and netless basketball hoops beneath a sky made brilliant blue by the drabness below. High on the walls two guards with rifles were silhouetted against the blue at opposite corners of the court. A rack with basketballs and soccer balls stood against the wall. Rectangles painted on opposite walls represented soccer goals.

A door of bars clanked open on the other side, and a single figure walked into the court dressed in bright orange prison shorts, shirts, and sandals.

Thomas pulled out the copies he'd made of the passports and driver's licenses and left the briefcase with Terkel. Patterson of the Houston Field Office had confirmed the driver's licenses were like those Armando had been convicted of selling. They would pass a cursory computer check and the embedded anticounterfeiting measures were all in place indicating stolen legitimate stock.

He walked slowly across the court, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

He'd deliberately left his dress uniform on, the better to differentiate himself from the detention center personnel.

"Hola, Armando. Como estas?"

The figure froze and said, "I'm okay."

Thomas kept his face still. They'd done a good job. The man looked like Armando, but the Armando from the records-his booking photograph, not the Armando he'd seen delivered here just four days before.

He wondered if it was a mistake or deliberate. Perhaps even the prisoners had switched places on their own, or the guards pulled the wrong prisoner because of the resemblance. There were sixty thousand prisoners in the detention center, over seventy percent male.

"What happened to Armando?" he asked quietly.

"What do you mean?" The man asked. He was sweating.

"Surely they told you Armando doesn't speak English."

The man's eyes widened. "I learn."

"Or that I was personally acquainted with him?"

The man's hand was wiping his right palm on his shirt as if to dry it. "Ah. No me dijeron eso." Even the accent was wrong-Mexican Spanish, not South American like Armando Ortega's.

The man was trying to be casual, but his entire body seemed tense. He turned the wiping motion into scratching, moving over to his ribs. He leaned closer, "It's likethis, senor." His scratching hand moved around his side, to his back.

Thomas didn't see it coming, but he sensed it. The man's entire body was tense to an unbearable degree, a man desperately determined and/or afraid. It was a powerful thrust, upward, toward Thomas's heart, and he was turning his hips as it came in, blocking with the back of his hand, keeping the arteries, tendons, and nerves of his arm away from the blade. He felt it rip through his uniform tunic and score his skin, but by that time his body was out of the way and the knife was tangled in the uniform. He brought his arm down on top of the knife arm and rotated his entire body, twisting the arm and wrist up in front of his face, locking the elbow and forcing his attacker's torso down.

The man started to resist, and Thomas twisted his hip back into him. The man screamed, and Thomas felt something "pop" in the vicinity of the man's elbow. The knife dropped to the court with a metallic clatter. He shoved the man away from him, intending to pick up the knife, when a bullet scattered concrete chips where his attacker had just been.

"Hold your fire!" he yelled. He scooped up the knife. One of the guards on the wall had his rifle leveled at the prisoner. Thomas stepped into the line of fire.

Terkel and Guterson were running across the court toward him.

Thomas swiveled his head at the other guard. "Stand down! If either of you fires another shot, I'll arrest you!" To Terkel and Guterson, he said, "Shield the prisoner.

I don't want him conveniently silenced."

Chief Dallas came through the door, two armed guards with him. "Are you all right, Commander?"

"Stay back, Chief! All of you!" Thomas pointed at the guards. "Stop right there."

"You're bleeding, Commander!" said Chief Dallas.

Thomas looked down. His dress whites had a spectacular red stain spreading across them. "I'm obliged to you. You can have one of the prison doctors join us inside, but first of all I want to talk to Admiral Pachefski. Immediately!"

Thomas made them clear the corridor before he and Terkel helped the prisoner out of the court. They took over the hex guardroom, evicting the two guards on break and posting Guterson outside.

The knife was a prison special, some unidentified scrap of carbon steel shaped and sharpened on concrete with a handle of wrapped cloth and tape. Thomas tried it on a piece of paper and shuddered as the edge sliced through the paper as easily as an X-Acto knife.

"So, since we know who your aren't-who are you?""El muerto andando," the man said. He cradled his arm, hunched over it, and rocked back and forth. His skin was white around his lips. "Ay, mi pobre hija."

"Why are you the walking dead? And what about your daughter?"

The man shook his head.

"What did they say they'd do to her?"

"I've failed so they will do it."

Thomas crouched before the man, trying to catch his eyes. "If they're going to do it anyway, why not tell me? Perhaps I can stop it."

For a moment he saw hope struggle with despair and pain. "No. These men are unstoppable. They are untouchable."

"Is she a prisoner here?"

"She should not be, but she is."

Thomas winced. He was pressing a handkerchief to the slice over his stomach and the position was awkward. "Why shouldn't she be here?"

"They took her from the camp last night and showed her to me through a espejo, a two-way mirror. She didn't commit any crime. The pendejos brought her to make me do this."

Thomas felt sick. He'd requested the prisoner interview yesterday at noon.

Whoever it was moved quickly.

"What did they say they would do?"

"Violacion. En coda orificio. Despues, muerte."

Terkel raised his eyebrows-his Spanish was rudimentary. Thomas stood and stepped over to him. Quietly he translated, "Rape, in every orifice; then death." He felt slightly dizzy. The wound, though superficial, had bled a great deal. He sat on a tabletop against the wall. "They wanted him to kill me; then the guards were to kill him, as a reaction. When he failed, they still tried to kill him, though it's defensible.

They can say they thought he was still a danger to me, but mostly they wanted to cover their tracks."

Terkel had been present when Jazz had argued against this visit. "But why? That would bring CID down on the Abattoir like the Inquisition."

"Wouldn't it though," Thomas said thoughtfully. He crouched before the prisoner. "Su nombre verdadero? Y su crimen?"

"Maximilian Vigil." He pronounced it "vee-heel." "Mi crimen es violation de la frontera."

"Illegal entry into the U.S.," Thomas said for Terkel's benefit. "They picked himbecause he looked like the real Armando, and he had a convenient daughter they could threaten. El nombre de su hija?"

"Zaneta Vigil. She is only fifteen." He began crying silently.

The doctor and Admiral Pachefski arrived together.

The doctor looked at Thomas's bloody front and started forward. "It's a scratch, doctor. Senor Vigil here has a severely dislocated elbow."

"He won't bleed to death with a dislocated elbow. Let me see."

"Why are my personnel being kept out of this room, Commander?" asked the admiral.

"Because I believe your personnel tried to kill this prisoner before he could talk to me. By the way, do you vouch for this doctor? He is a doctor, isn't he?"

Pachefski narrowed his eyes. "Yes. Lieutenant Lotts is known to me. I believe he's a trauma specialist."

"That's right, Admiral," the doctor said. "Please open your tunic, Commander."

Thomas let the surgeon help him remove his tunic and shirt.

The surgeon pulled the handkerchief away from the wound. "Your definition of a scratch is a little different from mine, Commander, but you're right. This won't kill you anytime soon. Keep the pressure on. We'll have you over to the hospital in a bit, to stitch you up." He turned his attention to Vigil's elbow.

Admiral Pachefski spoke. "It's better than the last injury you received out here, but I'm beginning to think people don't like you, Commander. So, are you going to tell me what this is about, this time?"