"Okay, all right, I grant the point."

"Which raises the question," the first man said. "Did they know beforehand, or did they find out after the plane took off?"

"What's the city of origin for the flight?" the woman said. Toronto,"

the first man said. "So what went down in Toronto?"

"Nothing recently, so far as we know. Not even a rumor," the woman said. "So if they weren't on a job there--"

"They must have met there, been sent from there."

"Unless they both just happened to catch the same flight," the second man said. "With those guys, nothing's accidental."

"Maybe they're working for opposite sides," the second man said. "No, that's no good. They didn't look nervous getting off the plane."

"Of course not. They're professionals," the woman said. "Unlike some of us." She glanced at the second man, then turned to the first. "But the feeling I get--"

"Is they're traveling together," the first man said. "They're being discreet, but they didn't try to disguise themselves; they don't care if we notice. Something big's going down, and they're giving us a signal.

It isn't business."

"Personal?" the woman asked. "My guess is, extremely personal. They're telling us, 'we're here, we're playing it open, we're cool, so you be cool, this doesn't concern you.'"

"Maybe," the woman said. "But if you're right. God help the target they're after."

St. Paul, Minnesota. William Miller stomped the accelerator of the

Audi that had been left behind when his father disappeared four months ago. Despite his polarized glasses, the afternoon sun stabbed his eyes.

His head throbbed, but not from the sun. He skidded around a corner, raced along his tree-lined street, and veered up his driveway, stopping so abruptly he jolted against his seat belt. As he scrambled out, his wife ran frantically from the house and across the lawn. "I had to meet with the city engineer," he said. "When I checked in with my secretary

,.." Anger strained his voice. "Where is the damned thing?"

"The swimming pool."

"What?"

"I didn't see it when I had coffee on the patio this morning. Whoever did this must have waited till I left to play tennis this afternoon."

She followed as Miller hurried past the flower beds at the side of the house. He reached the back and stood at the edge of the swimming pool, staring apprehensively down.

The swimming pool was empty. He'd been planning to have one of his construction crews come over this weekend and reline it before he filled it for the summer. At the bottom, someone had used black paint, drawing a grotesque symbol whose borders stretched from end to end, from side to side of the pool. His throat felt sandy. He swallowed before he could talk. "They wanted to give us time to think they'd gone away, to make us believe they were satisfied just to have taken my father." He made a choking sound as he stared at the symbol-- large, black, obscene. A death's head. "What the hell do they want?" his wife said. He answered with a more insistent question. "And what the hell are we going to do?"

shadow game

Vienna. Again it was raining, though compared to yesterday's storm this was only a drizzle. Saul had to remind himself that this was June and not March as he put his hands in his overcoat pockets and continued along a concrete walkway next to the Danube. But then, he admitted, it wasn't hard to feel chilled after having been used to the heat of

Israel's desert. He remembered the irrigation ditches he'd worked so hard to complete. These two days of Austrian rain would have turned his meager cropland into an oasis. Imagining that wondrous possibility, he ached to go back home but wondered if he'd have the chance to do so.

Barges chugged along the river, hazy in the drizzle. He passed beneath dripping trees, entered a wooded park, and reached a gloomy covered bandstand. Its wooden floor rumbled hollowly as he crossed it. A man sat with one hip on the railing, angled sideways, smoking a cigarette, peering out toward the rain. He wore a pale brown nylon sucker, its metal fasteners open, a darker brown suit beneath it. In profile, his chin protruded. His cheeks showed sporadic pockmarks. As he exhaled smoke from his cigarette, he seemed unaware of Saul's footsteps coming toward him. For his part, Saul was aware of another man in an identical brown nylon slicker who waited beneath a nearby chestnut tree and looked with unusual interest at birds huddling in the branches above him. Saul stopped at a careful distance from the man on the railing.

The drizzle on the handstand's roof seeped through a few cracks and pattered next to him. "So, Romulus," the pockmarked man said, then turned, "how are you?"

"Obviously out of bounds."

"No kidding. You were spotted as soon as you showed up at the airport.

We've been watching you ever since."

"I didn't try to sneak in. The first thing I did was go to a phone and contact the bakery. This meeting was my idea, remember?"

"And that, my friend, is the only reason you're walking around." The pockmarked man threw his cigarette into the rain. "You've got a bad habit of breaking rules."

"My foster brother's the one who broke the rules."

"Sure. But you helped him escape instead of turning him in."

"I guess you don't have any brothers."

"Three of them."

"In my place, would you have helped them or sided against them?" The man with the pockmarks didn't reply. "Besides, my foster brother was eventually killed." Saul's voice became thick. After almost three years, his grief for Chris still hurt him terribly. "We're here to talk about you, not him."

"I admit I made a bargain with Langley. Exile. To stay in the desert.

But things have happened."

"What things?"

"The settlement where I live was attacked. My wife and son were nearly killed."

"In Israel"--the man shrugged--"attacks can happen."

"But this was personal. My son, my wife, and I were the targets!" The man's eyes narrowed. "A day before that, my wife's father disappeared!

Here in Vienna! That's why I left Israel--to find out what was--"

"Okay, I get your point. Take it easy." The man with the pockmarks gave a reassuring gesture to his partner beneath the nearby chestnut tree, who'd started approaching when he heard the emotion of Saul's voice.

"What you're saying"--the pockmarked man studied Saul--"is you're not back in business? You haven't signed on with another firm?"

"Business?

You think that's why I'm here? Business? It makes me want to throw up."

"Graphic, Romulus, but evasive. When I give my report, my superiors will want direct statements."

"You're giving your report right now. I assume you're wired. That blue van at the entrance to the park is recording every word we say. Am I right?" The man with the pockmarks didn't bother turning toward the van.