She went down. At the door they searched her, then waved her through. She didn't recognize either of them, yet that was not unusual-the whole of the Hand could have assembled and she'd have known no more than eighty, maybe ninety, of them at most. Or would have, she thought, before yesterday.

What she had noticed, however, were the pendants about their necks, the same as that which hung about Pasek's-the cross within the circle.

Inside, she pulled the curtain aside, then stopped. The White Mantis had been an opulent, bustling place-a gambling and drinking club the Hand had bought as a cover-but now it was silent. All the fittings had been ripped out, the carpets removed, the silk hangings torn down. All was bare now-eerily so.

She walked across and stood in front of the door to the main gaming hall, hearing the murmur of voices from within. She pushed through, then stopped, astonished. She had expected Pasek to be there with a few of his men; instead she found herself looking into a room packed with a hundred or more people.

She looked about her, recognizing faces-some she'd not thought to see again-and understood at once.

He'd summoned them all-all of the Hand's surviving cell leaders. Never, in the history of the Black Hand, had they met like this-all of them in one place at one time-and something told her it would not happen again.

She walked through, making for the tiny dais on the far side of the low-ceilinged room, conscious that every eye was on her. Many smiled, clearly pleased-reassured, it seemed-to see her there, and reached out to touch her arm as she passed, but one or two of them scowled, as if her very presence was a betrayal.

Coming out by the dais she found herself facing a line of Pasek's men-his four henchmen, Ashman, Grant, Blaskic, and Eyre. For the past few years they had been Pasek's constant shadows. They werebig, well-built men, a good ten or fifteen years younger than Pasek, with strong Nordic features and short, ash-blond hair.

Security types, she thought, meeting their eyes unflinchingly. Just the kind of empty, soulless type the man attracts.

"Where's Pasek?" she asked, looking to Blaskic. "He'll be here," Blaskic answered, the slightest suggestion of a smile playing on his lips. Yesterday he had been outranked by her-a lowly minion in the Hand's hierarchy-but today . . .

She turned, looking about her, making a swift calculation. There were roughly a hundred and fifty people in the room. Of those she knew fifty, perhaps sixty at most. The majority of the rest were sure to be Pasek's. All in all, then, it was finely balanced. Pasek had enough support to guarantee the success of his initial coup, yet not enough to make it absolutely safe.

She smiled inwardly, understanding suddenly just why she was there. It wasn't just that Pasek "respected" her, he needed her, to hold things together while he consolidated his rule. But only for a time.

Things would change-she understood that instinctively-and Pasek would slowly increase his stranglehold, until . . . Until he no longer needs me.

Emily turned back, knowing now what she had to do; knowing ex-actly how to play her hand.

She didn't have long to wait. A gong sounded from the next room and then a door opened at the back of the dais. Pasek stepped out.

He stood there a moment, looking about him as if noting who was there, then nodded.

"Friends," he said, lifting a hand, palm out, to greet them. "You know what has happened, and some of you are . . . uncomfortable with it. In the circumstances I felt we should meet. To clear the air."

His voice was warm, yet his eyes, when they met Emily's, were cold, uncompromising.

"Rachel . . ." he said, acknowledging her. "Would you like to start?"

She stared back at him belligerently. "Start?"

"I mean, is there anything you want to say?"

She smiled. There was plenty she'd like to say-like what a callous shit he'd been to have Chou Te-hsing murdered-but that wasn't what he meant.

"I'm here," she said, as if that said it all.

"And?"

She almost laughed. And what? That she was his loyal supporter? That she condoned what he'd done and was happy with the way things had turned out? No. The truth was, the more she thought about it, the less happy she was. She had joined the Hand because it had seemed to her to be the best way of changing things-of achieving some limited form of justice and directly affecting the lives of the common people- but in practice it hadn't worked that way, and now, under Pasek, there was even less chance of that.

She thought back to their meeting the day before. Pasek had been wrong when he'd spoken of them wanting similar things. Wrong, or simply lying. For while she saw the Hand as a vehicle for socialjustice-as a corrective rod to beat corrupt officials and counterbalance the grosser abuses of power-what he wanted was to transform it into a society of religious zealots like himself.

Which was fine, only she wasn't going to go along with that. Not without a struggle.

Brushing aside Grant and Blaskic, she stepped up onto the dais, facing Pasek.

"I'll join you," she said, eyeing him defiantly. "But there's one condition."

He stared back at her, confident, it seemed, now that he had her vocal support. "Name it."

"That you let me take out Lehmann."

There was an audible gasp from the body of the room; a look of shock on every face. All, that is, except Pasek's. He just smiled-a pale, ghostly smile-and nodded.

AFTERWARD HE SPOKE TO HER ALONE.

"How did you find out?"

"Find out?" She laughed. "What are you talking about?"

"The tape. 1 only got it an hour back. How did you hear about it?"

She stared at him. Clearly there was something she didn't know. "Lehmann . . . We're talking about Lehmann, right?"

He nodded, then. "Look, you'd best come through. You'd best see this before we talk any further."

He had cleared one of the bedrooms at the back of the Mantis and made it into a makeshift office. There was a desk, two simple ice-cast chairs, and-on the wall behind the desk-a larger version of the pendant he always wore, the cross within the circle.

"Sit down," he said, pointing to the nearest chair, then went around the desk and took a hand-held from the top drawer.

"Here," he said, handing the viewer to her. "But I warn you. It isn't pleasant."

Pleasant? What was pleasant about Lehmann? She stared at Pasek a moment, then looked down at the tiny screen of the hand-held, activating it.

Ten minutes later she understood.

"Who was she?"

"One of our southeastern operatives. Jane Vierheller, her name was."

"And the man?"

Pasek laughed coldly. "That's your man. That's Lehmann."

"Lehmann?" Emily brought the screen closer to her face, rewinding until his face came clearly into view.

So that was what he looked like. She felt a shiver of pure aversion pass through her.

"You still want to take him out?"She looked up, glaring at him. "And you don't?"

"Sure. But not just yet. Not until we're strong enough."

"Strong? Look, I don't want to depose him, I just want to kill him."

"I understand. But that won't be easy. To get to him at all we'd need quite a force. They say he's better defended than Li Yuan."

"You forget. I almost got to Soucek."

"Sure, but Soucek's a different matter. He's meant to be seen. Lehmann . . . well, no one sees Lehmann, not unless he wants them to."

She considered that. Then, with a jolt, she realized something.

"The tape! How did he get it to you? How did he know where to find us?"

Pasek leaned toward her. "He didn't. We found the tape. He meant us to find it."

"I don't understand. How?"

The woman . . . Vierheller . . . was part of a cell of five. Later in that sequence-toward the end of it-she gives Lehmann a name and a location. The name she gives is that of her cell leader, Wilhelm Dieter, the location is his apartment. Two hours back, when Dieter didn't show for the meeting here, I sent Ashman to bring him. Ashman brought him, all right, but Dieter was dead. Lehmann had killed him."

"And the tape was in his apartment, right?"

Pasek shook his head. "You have to understand what you're taking on. You need to know what Lehmann's like, otherwise . . ." He spread his hands, palms upward.

"So what do I need to know? He torched a whole deck. Only a monster would do that."

"That's true. But it's useful to know the nature of the monster, neh? To know just what he's capable of."

"Torture. Mass death. You still in any doubt we should kill the man?"

"No doubt at all. But listen. The tape wasn't with Dieter, it was inside him. Lehmann had had him cut open and his innards scooped out like a grapefruit. Then they sewed him up and laid him on his bed, facedown. There was a message burned into the skin of his back."

Emily swallowed. She had known Dieter; not well, but enough to know he had been a good man. She hoped it had been quick; that he hadn't suffered the way the woman, Vierheller, had suffered. She shuddered, then forced herself to ask. "What did it say?"

Pasek sat back, lacing his fingers together. "You can look for yourself, if you want. His body's in the next room."

"Just tell me."

"He's very direct, our friend, Lehmann. He knows what he wants."

"Cut the shit. What did it say?"

Pasek's smile disturbed her. "Just four words. Don't fuck with me. Effective, wouldn't you say?"She looked down, staring at the frozen image on the screen-at that pale, albinoid face with its awful slit of a mouth and its cold, unemo-tive eyes. Monsters . . . The times bred monsters. But this one surpassed them all.

She met Pasek's eyes again. "So what are we going to do? Just how are we going to get strong enough to take the bastard out?"

Pasek's smile broadened. He leaned toward her conspiratorially. "We're going to do what we should have done years back. We're going to make sure that the Hand's the coming force . . . the only force in the land. You understand?"

"War," she said quietly. War against the myriad other terrorist organizations; that was what he was talking about. A war to make the Black Hand not merely dominant but supreme.

"That's right," he said, nodding slowly, his eyes gleaming at the thought of it. "And then you can have that bastard. I promise you, Rachel. On my mother's memory. . . ."

THE door was LOCKED, the room in darkness. For hours now Pei K'ung had sat there, hunched forward, her hands gripping her knees, watching the holograms flicker in the air above the table-so real and yet so distant. She had seen her husband as a child, playing in the orchards of Tongjiang with his elder brother, Han, his round face laughing as he ran between the trees; had watched him on the day of his coronation as he stepped down from the Temple of Heaven, resplendent in his silks of imperial yellow, like a young god sent among them; had witnessed his grief at the news of his wives' deaths, then watched him clutch his baby son Kuei Jen to him, his face filled with disbelief and joy after the floating palace of Yangjing had been destroyed; had spied on him in his bridal bed and looked on as he stood at the window of his study, his face wistful as he watched the young maids play ball in the gardens.

So much she'd seen. So much she'd forced herself to witness.

Pei K'ung sighed, then clapped her hands. At once the room's lights came up, the hologram vanishing like a wraith. She stood, the blood pulsing at her temples, and reached out to steady herself.

Too much, she thought. 1 have seen too much.

She closed her eyes, trying to shut it out, to push it far away, but she could not help herself: she kept seeing it, time and again, Fei Yen lying on the bed beneath him, her arms opening to him, her tiny breasts like offerings, and his face . . .

She drew a sharp breath. Stupid, she thought, angry with herself; not merely that she had succumbed to the temptation, but that she'd acted so ... predictably.

"It's over," she told herself with more confidence than she felt. "It was over long ago. Those were just images. Fading memories."

Yes, and yet the sharp clarity of those images seemed to belie that fact. Looking at them she had felt her stomach tighten with jealousy- as if it had been only yesterday.

She went to the mirror and pointed a finger at herself accusingly.

"Stupid, Pei K'ung . . . How could you be so stupid!"

She should not have Jet the woman's taunts get to her. But now it was too late. Now she was infected by Fei Yen's image. She could not turn her head nor close her eyes without seeing the woman there in her husband's bed, there, moving slowly, sensuously, beneath him, then, as he climaxed, smiling triumphantlyback at the recording lens, as if to mock her across the years!

"Damn you!" she said, not sure whether she meant Fei Yen or herself. She felt like punishing the woman-humiliating her in front of her servants-yet even a cast-off wife had her rights, her status, and besides, she would need Li Yuan's permission before she did such a thing, and how could she possibly do that?

She turned, then went quickly to the door, unlocking it and throwing it open.

"Mistress?" the waiting Steward asked, bowing low.

"Send my maids," she said. "I shall bathe before dinner."

She went back inside, composing herself. Li Yuan had already gone-he would be at Tsu Ma's within the hour-but still her duties claimed her. With her husband gone she would sit at the head of his table, entertaining whichever guests remained. But there was an hour and forty minutes before then.

She heard footsteps in the corridor outside. A moment later both of her maids stood before her. They curtseyed breathlessly, "Mistress!"

"Run a bath," she said imperiously. "And lay out my clothes. Then leave me."

There was the briefest exchange of glances between them-for they were used to seeing to her every need-then, without a word, they set to work.

Pei K'ung went to the table, looking down at the golden cases of the holograms and shaking her head.

When she had married him she had thought it would be simple, never guessing-never even suspecting- what he would awake in her.

She was not meant to be his mate, merely his helper. Her sexuality had been neutered by the marriage contract; she herself rendered into a false male-a female eunuch. She shuddered.

I should have stayed where I was. I was contented there. 1 knew my place. Here . . .

She sighed, then went across to the bathroom, watching one of them pour scent into the water and strew the surface with rose petals. Here I know nothing anymore. Only that I've changed. Finished, they bowed and backed away. She heard the door click shut, then spun around and went to her desk, activating the intercom. "Tsung Ye?"