The contents felt solid-- no give in the middle where cardboard might cover a hollow filled with explosives. Cautiously, he tore open the flap and peered inside. At a thick stack of photographs. He stared at the image on top. It was black-and-white, a reproduction of what evidently had been a picture taken years ago. The horror of it made him gasp. Filled with disgust, he leafed through the stack, finding other horrors, each more revolting than the one before, obscenity heaped upon obscenity.

His lungs didn't want to draw in air. Corpses. The top photograph--and the countless others beneath it--showed corpses, stacks and stacks of corpses, thrown together on top of each other, arms and legs protruding in grotesque angles, rib cages clearly outlined beneath starved flesh.

Gaunt cheeks, sunken eyes, some of which were open, accusing even in death. Scalps shaved bare. Lips drawn inward over toothless gums.

Features contorted with permanent grimaces of fright and pain. Old men.

Women. Children. So many. He almost screamed.

It's true! You have to believe me! I don't know!" Medici insisted.

"Please!" Again Seth slapped him across the mouth. The slap, though it produced less pain than a punch, resulted in paradoxically greater terror, as if assaulting Medici's dignity was the key to breaking him.

"The priest!" Seth demanded. "Cardinal Pavelic! I'm losing my patience! Who abducted the priest?"

"If I knew, I'd tell you!" This time Seth used the back of his hand, slapping Medici's head to the side, leaving angry red welts on Medici's cheek. Seth's own cheeks were as red as his hair, his usually non expressive eyes bright with what might have been pleasure. Icicle stood in a corner of the kitchen in the isolated farmhouse they'd rented, watching with interest His interest had two causes: Seth's interrogation technique and Medici's response to it. Seth had tied Medici to a chair, bound the prisoner's wrists behind the back of the chair, and looped a noose around the prisoner's neck, the tail of the noose attached to the rope that bound his wrists. Every time Medici's head jerked from a slap, the noose nigged into his throat and the resultant pressure yanked

Medici's wrists up toward his shoulder blades. Ingenious, Icicle decided. A minimum force produces a maximum effect The prisoner realizes he's inflicting most of the agony upon himself. He struggles to resist the impact of the slap, but the way he's been tied, he can't resist. His body becomes his enemy. His self-confidence, his dignity, becomes offended. You'll crack any time now, Medici, he decided. The tears streaming down Medici's face confirmed his conclusion. "One more time,"

Seth demanded. "Who abducted the cardinal?"

Medici squinted, calculating his answer. Pain had unclouded his mind.

He understood his situation now. None of his men realized where he was.

No one was going to rescue him. Pain wasn't his problem so much as how to survive. "Listen first. Why don't you listen before you slap me again?" Seth shrugged. 'The problem is, I need something to listen to."

Medici tried to swallow, but the tight noose constricted his throat

"I'm just a middleman. Clients come to me. They want weapons, information, surveillance teams, safe houses. I supply these services. They don't tell me why they want these services. I don't ask." Seth turned to

Icicle, pretending to yawn. "I ask him about the cardinal, he gives me the story of his life."

"You're not letting me explain!" Medici said. "I will when you say something!" Medici hurried on. "My clients don't tell me their plans, but I do keep my ears to the ground."

"Now he gives the grotesque images," Seth told Icicle. "I have to keep up with the ins and outs of the profession, don't I? To keep on top of things?"

"He has a problem with prepositions," Seth told Icicle. "But I haven't heard any rumors, not a whisper, about terrorists going after the cardinal. Believe me, I would have heard." Medici squirmed, causing the noose to bind his neck tighter. He made a gagging sound. "Whoever took the cardinal they weren't radicals, they weren't..."

"Terrorists. Scum," Seth said. "Your clients have no style. They're indiscriminate and clumsy. Bombs on buses." Seth pursed his lips in disgust. "Dismembered children." For an instant. Icicle wondered if

Seth had dimensions of character he hadn't recognized. But then he realized that Seth's objections were aesthetic, not moral. If Seth were paid enough, and if the plan required children to be killed as a distraction from the central purpose of executing a diplomat, this man would do it. On the other hand. Icicle thought and firmly believed, I'd never agree to killing children. Not under any circumstances. Never.

Medici continued. "Terrorists might attack the Church as an institution they believed was corrupt, abduct a cardinal whose politics disagreed with their own. They went after the Pope a few years ago, didn't they?

But what I'm telling you is I haven't heard about anyone going after the cardinal. I don't believe you're on the right trail."

"In that case," Seth said and spread his hands magnanimously, "as one professional to another"--his words implied respect, but his tone was mocking--"what course do you suggest we follow?" Medici's eyes became furtive. "Have you thought about ethe Church itself? Someone in the

Church?" Seth turned to Icicle. "A possibility." Icicle shrugged. "I'm not convinced," Seth said. 'That the cardinal might be a victim of the

Church?"

"I don't believe this predator is telling the truth."

"I can!"

Medici insisted. "We'll soon find out" Seth turned to Icicle. "We'll do it your way now."

"Thanks for the belated confidence."

"It's a matter of using every method. Force by itself can lead to convincing lies. Chemicals can elicit programmed responses. But the two together make up for each other's liabilities."

"In that case, I'll fill a hypodermic with Sodium Amytal. Stand back.

As you say, it's my turn now."

With the noose removed from his neck but his body still tied to the chair, Medici slumped, semiconscious. In theory, the Sodium Amytal had eliminated his mental censors, making it possible to elicit information that Medici otherwise, even in pain, might not reveal. The trick was not to inject so much Amytal that Medici's responses became incoherent or that he sank fully into unconsciousness.

Now it was Icicle's turn to stand before the prisoner. Holding the almost empty hypodermic in one hand, he asked the key question that had brought him from Australia to Canada and finally to Italy. "Does the expression Night and Fog mean anything to you?" Medici responded slowly.

His tongue seemed stuck in his mouth. "Yes... from the war."

"That's right. The Second World War. The Nazis used it as a terrorist tactic. Anyone disloyal to the Third Reich risked vanishing without a trace, disappearing into the Night and Fog." Icicle spoke slowly, distinctly, letting the words sink in. "Has the Night and Fog come back? Have you heard rumors about its being reactivated?" Medici shook his head. "No rumors." 'Try to remember. Did terrorists or a group pretending to be terrorists approach you? Did anyone ask for information about Cardinal Pavelic? Did anyone hire you to put surveillance on the cardinal?"

"No surveillance on the cardinal," Medici whispered. "No one asked me about him."

"Who do you think abducted the cardinal?"

"Don't know."

"Why would he have been abducted?"

"Don't know."

"Could someone within the Church be responsible?"

"Don't know."

Seth stepped forward. "That last answer's interesting. He doesn't know whether someone in the Church was responsible."

Icicle understood what Seth meant. Forty minutes ago, Medici had insisted that they direct their attention toward the Church. "Before, he was grasping for any way he could imagine to distract us. He doesn't know anything."

"But the more I think about it, his suggestion is worth exploring."

"The Church? Why not? We have to eliminate the possibilities. It's conceivable that someone within the Church discovered what the cardinal knew and passed it on to the Night and Fog."

"Or that someone in the Church is the Night and Fog."