"You bastard," Miller screamed, "if only you hadn't lied!"

"Lied? About what?"

"April twentieth was someone's birthday, all right. In 1889. Hitler's birthday. November eighth is the anniversary of the so-called beer-hall rebellion. Hitler's first attempt to take over the German government.

That was in 1923. The rebellion failed. But ten years later he did gain control. On January thirtieth. Those are the three most sacred dates in Nazi tradition. And the three dates on which our fathers, despite the risk, couldn't resist getting in touch with each other."

"All right," Halloway said, "so I didn't realize the significance of those dates."

"I don't believe you. You know what those dates mean. I can hear it in your voice."

"Obviously you're determined to believe what you want. But I assure you--"

"I've got another question," Miller interrupted. "Our fathers were all senior officers. That means they didn't serve together. They commanded separate units. When the war ended, they'd have been widely divided.

What's the basis of their bond? What makes them a group?"

"My father said they trained together," Halloway answered.

"But the Nazi army was spread all over. The eastern front, the western front, the North African front. Russia, France, Italy, Egypt If our fathers trained together, they probably never saw each other again throughout the war. You bastard, you lied again. The bond had nothing to do with their having trained together. Why, out of all the German soldiers who tried to conceal their war records, did this group get in touch with each other? They hid all over the world. But they stayed in touch. Goddamn it, why?" Halloway didn't answer. "Who were they paying blackmail to?" Miller demanded. "Why?" Silence on the other end of the line. "I think the reporter was right," Miller said. "I think there's a hell of a lot my father didn't tell me and you didn't tell me either.

But you will. I'm coming up there, Halloway.

I'm coming to Canada to choke the answers out of you."

"No! That's crazy! You can't come here! If the Justice Department is watching you, you'll draw their attention to me and--!" Halloway didn't finish his sentence. Miller had slammed down the phone.

Halloway slowly set down his own phone. For several seconds, he wasn't able to move. With effort, he turned toward his father's acrylic landscapes, which he'd been nostalgically studying when the phone rang.

The row of paintings was broken periodically by patio windows through which he saw his guards patrolling the grounds. As a rule, he would never have accepted Miller's call at this number; instead he would have gone to the secure phone in the nearby city. Kitchener. But he didn't feel it was wise to risk leaving the estate, not even to visit his family at the safe house in the city. Achingly, longingly, he missed his wife and children, but he didn't dare endanger them by bringing them back here. Earlier, Rosenberg--dangerously out of control--had called from Mexico City, babbling that the authorities there had discovered the truth about his father. Similar frightened calls had reached him from the sons of the other fathers in the group. The past was being peeled away. The Night and Fog had managed its reprisal well, twisting its vengeance ever tighter and deeper. But Halloway had a foreboding that the screw had not yet been fully turned, that another more forceful twist was yet to come. The ship, he kept thinking. By now, it would have passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the

Mediterranean Sea. Halloway wished he'd paid attention to Rosenberg's second thoughts about that ship. He wished he'd acquiesced to

Rosenberg's fears and ordered the ship to return. Too late now. Even if

Halloway tried, he wouldn't be able to get through the complex system of contacts to warn the ship in time. Whatever would happen now was out of his control. But if the Night and Fog knew about that ship just as they knew about everything else, if the truth about that ship were revealed, we'll face two enemies, the Night and Fog and our clients, Halloway thought, and I'm not sure which is worse.

1 he cargo ship Medusa had a registry as tangled as the snarl of snakes associated with her legendary namesake. Her ostensible owner was

Transoceanic Enterprises, a Bolivian corporation. But a close examination of Transoceanic Enterprises' incorporation papers would have revealed that the company, whose office address was a post office box, was owned by Atlantis Shipping, a Liberian corporation, and in Liberia the company's office was as difficult to find as the mythical continent after which Atlantis Shipping was named. This company was in turn owned by Mediterranean Transport, a Swiss concern owned by a Mexican concern owned by a Canadian concern. Many of the officers did not exist. Those who did were paid to provide no other service than that of allowing their signatures to be used on legal documents. Of the handful of actual directors, one was Aaron Rosenberg of Mexico City Imports; another was

Richard Halloway of Ontario Shipping. Medusa regularly crisscrossed the

Atlantic, carrying textiles, machinery, and food to and from Greece,

Italy, France, Spain, England, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. But the profit from these shipments was minimal, and if not for another cargo that was often hidden among the textiles, machinery, and food, neither

Aaron Rosenberg nor Richard Halloway would have been able to maintain his luxurious lifestyle. That cargo was aboard the Medusa as she proceeded toward her rendezvous with a freighter whose registration was equally tangled and whose owner had an opulent estate on the Libyan coast. Tomorrow night, off the coast of northern Africa, crates would be transferred. Medusa would continue toward Naples to deliver

Brazilian coffee, her waterline higher now that she no longer carried plastic explosives, fragmentation grenades, antipersonnel mines, automatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, portable rocket launchers, and heat-seeking missiles. Under usual circumstances, these weapons would have been smuggled out of Belgium, the principal European supplier of black-market arms, and transported under various disguises to Marseilles. There, Medusa would have picked up "medical supplies"

and distributed them to various terrorist groups along the southern

European coast. But recent antiterrorist surveillance, the result of increased terrorist bombings, made Marseilles and other European ports too dangerous for arms smuggling. The alternative was to bring the arms from South America, where various civil wars had resulted in ample stockpiles of Soviet and American munitions, most of which were readily for sale. Thus Medusa had brought Brazilian coffee piled on top of

Contra weapons supplied by the CIA across the Atlantic to meet a Libyan freighter in the Mediterranean thirty-six hours from now. Whatever

Libya chose to do with the arms was not Transoceanic's concern. The hundred-million-dollar fee was all Rosenberg and Halloway cared about.

Tel Aviv, Israel. The instant the helicopter touched down, Misha Pletz scrambled out. He ran toward the smallest of several corrugated-metal buildings at the south corner of the airport. A burly man in a short-sleeved white shirt waited for him. "Did you bring it with you?"

Misha shouted. The burly man gestured toward a briefcase in his hand.

"Do you want to read it in the car or--?"

"No right here," Misha said.

They entered the air-conditioned building. "We received the message forty minutes ago," the man said, pulling a document from his briefcase.

"When I saw the code name, I contacted you at once." Misha took the paper. He'd been at a kibbutz twenty miles outside the city, fulfilling his promise to Erika and Saul to ensure that their son was protected.

Leaving Christopher with Mossad-affiliated guardians had been one of the most difficult things he'd ever been required to do. "Your parents love you, and they'll be back soon," Misha had said. "I love you, too." He'd kissed the boy, and unsure if Erika and Saul were even alive, afraid his emotion would distress their son, he'd hurried toward the waiting helicopter. Flying back toward Tel Aviv, the pilot had told Misha to put on his earphones--headquarters wanted him. Though the helicopter's radio was equipped with a scrambler, Misha's assistant had refused to reveal the nature of the urgent message they'd received, but he had revealed its source. The Coat of Many Colors. The code name had the force of a blow. It belonged to Erika's missing father, Joseph Bernstein. His eyes accustomed to the shadows of the building, Misha studied the document.

"How did this come in? Which station, which country?"

"Our embassy in Washington," the assistant said. "One of our people there was trained by Joseph ten years ago. So our man's in a coffee shop this morning. He looks next to him at the counter and guess who's sitting there?" Misha tingled. "Is our man positive? There's no possibility of doubt?"

"None. It was Joseph for sure. That's probably why Joseph chose him for a relay--because they knew each other well. Apparently Joseph wanted to guarantee that the source of the message wasn't suspicious to us.

Contact lasted no longer than a minute. Joseph told our man we weren't to worry about him. He was taking care of unfinished business, he said.

The end was near."

"And what was that supposed to mean?"

"Our man asked. Joseph refused to elaborate. Instead he passed a note to our man. It was solid information, he said. He wanted you to know about it. He expected you to act upon it. The next thing, he was gone."

"Just like that? Didn't our man try to follow him?"

" Try' is the word. Joseph knows every trick there is. He lost our man within two blocks."

"Did he say how Joseph looked?" 'Terrible. Pale. Thin. Shaky hands.

The eyes were the worst, he said."

"What about them?"

"They seemed--and I quote--our man lapsed into subjectivity here--tormented."