South of Cairo, west of the Nile. The Nitrian Desert. Egypt It wasn't a mouse this time but a lizard he was watching, and it didn't do tricks as Stuart Little had. It didn't tug Drew out of his self-denying shell.

It didn't make him miss the company of others--his friends, or even strangers. All it did was crawl from its hole beneath a rock and bask in the sun for a few hours just after dawn. At dusk, it stretched out on a slab, absorbing radiant heat. Between-times, during the full destructive blaze of the day, it hid. A foot-long, squat, wrinkled, yellow, unblinking, tongue-flicking testament to God's perverse creative whims. Slumping in the dark at the back of the cave. Drew watched the monster assume its regular morning position at the tunnel's entrance. He hated the thing and for that reason tolerated it, because he knew that

God was testing him. The lizard was part of his penance. As the sun rose higher, sending rays into the cave. Drew surveyed the rocky contours of his cell, comparing their bleak austerity to the relative luxury he'd known for six peaceful years in his simple quarters in the

Carthusian monastery in Vermont. Again he compared the lizard, which he alternately called Lucifer and Quasimodo, to Stuart Little, the mouse that had been his companion for the last two years of his stay at the monastery. But the mouse had been killed, assassins had attacked the monastery to get at Drew, and he'd been forced to leave his haven, a sinner confronting a sinful world. The resulting events--his war with

Scalpel, his reunion with Arlene, his encounter with the Fraternity of the Stone--had paradoxically redeemed him and yet damned him again, compelling him to seek out this hole in the rock in the desert where

Christian monasticism had first begun, here to strive once more for purity through penance and the worship of God.

He'd done so for a year now. With no change in seasons, each day tediously the same as the one before, time seemed strangely extended and yet compressed. The year could have been an eternity or a month or a week. His only ways of measuring how long he'd been here were checking the growth of his hair and beard and watching his food supply, which gradually dwindled until he had to trek across the desert to the nearest village, a day away, and replenish his simple provisions. The villagers seeing this tall, lean, sunburned man with haunted eyes, his robes in rags, gave him distance and respect, conferring upon him the status of a holy one, though he refused to consider himself as such.

Apart from that interruption, his routine was constant-- exercise, meditation, and prayer. Lately, however, he'd felt too weak to exercise and lay at the back of the cave, intoning responses to imaginary masses.

He wondered what the lizard thought of the Latin that sometimes made it cock its ugly unblinking head toward him. Or was its reaction due to nothing more than stimulus-response? If so, what purpose did this monstrous creation serve? A rock, though unthinking, had a beauty to be appreciated. But the lizard could not appreciate the rock, except for the heat its ugly yellow skin absorbed.

And no conscious being could appreciate the obscenity of the lizard.

That was the test. Drew thought. If I can appreciate the lizard, I can save myself. I can show that I've opened myself to every aspect of God.

But bodily needs disturbed his meditation. He had to drink. A spring--one reason he'd chosen this spot--was not far away. As usual, he'd postponed slaking his thirst, partly to increase his penance, partly to increase his satisfaction when he did at last drink. This balancing of pain and pleasure caused him great mental stress. He finally resolved it by concluding that the pleasure of drinking had been intended by God as a survival mechanism. If he denied himself that pleasure, if he didn't drink, he would die. But that would be suicide, and suicide was the worst sin of all. In his weakened state, his thoughts began to free associate. Pleasure, pain. Arlene, and being separated from her. if things had been different, he could imagine nothing more rewarding than to have stayed with Arlene for the rest of his life. But the Fraternity of the Stone had made that impossible. To save Drew's life, Arlene's brother had killed a member of the

Fraternity, and to save his savior. Drew had made himself appear to be the guilty one, running and hiding. Craving love. Drew had sacrificed himself for love of a different type. He tried to move, to get to the spring, but couldn't His lips were blistered from thirst His body was ravaged by his failure to eat His mind began to swirl. The lizard raised itself, repelled by the heat of the day. It scuttled beneath its rock.

Time became even more fleeting. A shadow hovered over the entrance to the cave. Was it sundown already? Or am I hallucinating? Drew wondered. For the shadow became the silhouette of a human being, the first such silhouette Drew had seen here since he'd occupied this cell.

It couldn't be. But the shadow, growing longer, did indeed become the silhouette of a person. And the person impossibly was-- tv hen she saw the lizard scuttle from the mouth of the cave, Arlene muttered, "Shit." More forcibly, she felt a stab of suspicion that she'd been given wrong directions. After all, would the lizard have chosen that vulnerable spot in which to soak up heat if the cave were occupied? The way the squat ugly reptile had jerked its head toward the clatter of the rock she'd dislodged as she climbed the slope, the way it had tensed and fled as her shadow fell over it told her unmistakably that the lizard had been frightened by her alone, not someone in the cave. Did the corollary follow, that the cave was deserted? She paused, discouraged, but the heat of the sun on her back thrust her forward.

Exhausted, so dehydrated that she'd stopped sweating, she needed to get to shelter. She plodded the rest of the way up the slope, her shadow stretching toward the cave, and strained to see within the darkness. The silence from inside reinforced her suspicion that she'd been misdirected. The question was, had the misdirection been an honest mistake or a deliberate deception? Yesterday morning, two hours after she'd left the nearest village, her rented car had stopped, its engine coughing into silence. An experienced mechanic, she'd lifted the hood and tried to diagnose the problem, but she couldn't find what was wrong.

She'd debated returning to the village, but the distance she'd traveled by car was a half day's walk, almost the same amount of time it would take to continue forward and reach her destination. She'd filled her canteen before she left the village. Familiar with desert survival, she knew that if she conserved her body's moisture by resting in shadow during the heat of midday, hiking at dusk and through the night, she'd have enough water to reach this cave in the morning, with enough left over to return. Provided she rationed her intake. But when she'd made camp just before noon, anchoring a thin canvas sheet across the space between two boulders, crawling under to shield herself from the worst of the sun, she'd heard the faint crunch of footsteps--from behind her and to her right. Their stealthy approach had told her everything. She'd been unwilling to risk using her handgun, the reports from which would have carried for miles across the otherwise silent desert and perhaps have attracted other predators. So she'd pretended to be alarmed and defenseless when the two Arabs, each wearing a sun-bleached cotton headscarf and robe, confronted her with pistols, gesturing for her to take off her clothes.

Distracting them with a glimpse of her breasts, she'd pivoted, kicking, disarmed the nearer gunman by breaking his wrist, continued spinning with the blur of a dervish, kicked the second assailant's gun hand again snapping bone, and killed them in a rapid succession with fists to the throat, cracking their windpipes. It happened so quickly that they died still leering. She hid their bodies among rocks where the scavengers of the desert would dispose of them. Proceeding to another campsite, again erecting the thin canvas sheet, she wondered whether the men had found her by accident or whether they'd followed her from the village where she'd asked directions. If the men who'd tried to assault her were indeed from that village, if they'd sabotaged her car, it wasn't surprising that this cave was abandoned--she'd been given false information simply to lead her deeper into the wilderness.

Again she despaired. Having come all the way from New York City, only to find that her search was not yet over, she wanted to raise her fists and curse at the sky. But she needed to escape from the sun. The thought of rinsing her dry swollen mouth with tepid water from her canteen compelled her. A tall, limber, green-eyed, auburn-haired, sensuous woman, in her mid-thirties, wearing a wide-brimmed canvas hat, a knapsack, khaki shirt and pants, and hiking boots, she aimed her handgun against unseen dangers and entered the cave.

It smelled vinegary, like carbon dioxide. Beneath that odor was another--a musky animal smell that made her conclude that the cave had recently been used for a den. Standing just inside the entrance, blocking out the sunlight, she stared toward the darkness. Though the cave was by no means cool, it was much less hot than the outside inferno. Handgun ready, she held her breath, straining to listen for sounds. "Drew?" Her voice was tentative, uneasy. After all, if he were here, he'd have spoken to her by now. Unless, like the lizard, he'd noticed her coming and scuttled to a hiding place. In which case, her quest had been useless, her hope mat he'd welcome her a cruel tease. The echo of her voice died down. Again she held her breath, listening.

Something--intuition--told her that the cave was occupied. She heard--or thought she heard--a subtle brush of cloth, a slight exhale of air, a faint scrape of flesh against stone. The almost imperceptible sounds came from far in the back. She crouched and shifted to the right, away from the mouth of the cave, simultaneously hiding her silhouette and allowing sunlight to enter the cave. Now that her eyes were accustomed to the dark, the added illumination was sufficient for her to see the worn sandals on the dusty feet of the scabrous legs of a man sprawled against the rear wall. His tattered robe was tugged above his fleshless knees. The hands stretched out against each thigh looked skeletal.

"Dear God." The echo of the cave amplified her anguished whisper.

"Drew," she said louder. She rushed to him, tugging him toward the sunlight, shocked by his matted, waist-long beard and hair, by his gaunt ravaged face. "Oh, Jesus, Drew." Through eyes that were slits, he studied her. His blistered mouth quivered. She hurried to unhitch the canteen from her belt, twisting its cap off. "Don't try to talk." But he persisted, his voice so weak she could barely hear it. The sound reminded her of a footstep on dry crusted mud. "at..." He made a desperate effort to try again. "arlene?" The tone communicated surprise, disbelief. And something else. Something akin to the awe one would feel when having a vision.

"It's me. I'm here. Drew. I'm real. But stop trying to talk." She raised the canteen to his blistered lips, pouring just a few drops of water between them. Like a sponge, his flesh seemed to absorb the water. She gripped his wrist, his pulse so weak she could barely feel it. She ran her hands along his body, startled by how much weight he'd lost. "You finally got what you wanted," she said. "You fucked yourself up. If you weren't so weak"--she poured a few more drops of water between his parched lips--"I'd be furious instead of sorry for you."

Amazingly his eyes crinkled. They glowed faintly with... What?

Amusement? Love? He inhaled as if to... "Laugh," she said, "and I'll hit you over the head with this canteen." But somehow he did have strength to laugh, just a short stubborn "hah," and of course she did not make good on her threat She simply poured another few drops of water into his mouth, knowing she wouldn't be able to give him more for a while, lest he become sick to his stomach, but reassured because his attempt at a laugh was a life sign. She'd gotten here in time. His spirit hadn't failed. He was going to be all right

Just when she let him have another sip of water, she stiffened with doubt Despite the heat, apprehension chilled her. There wasn't enough water for both of them to walk out of here. Her swollen tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She had to drink. The tepid water tasted bitter. Even so, she swallowed, felt less lightheaded, took another sip, then poured a few more drops between Drew's lips. Gradually his pulse strengthened. He breathed easier, deeper. But his voice remained a croak. "Misjudged..." He grinned with embarrassment, like a child who'd been naughty. She shook her head, not understanding. "Should have drunk sooner..." He coughed. Again she shook her head. "Should have gone for food sooner... Didn't realize... how weak I was... Couldn't reach the spring."

"What springy His eyes drooped. "Damn it.

Drew, what spring?"

"Outside... down the slope... to the right."

"How far?"

"A hundred yards... around the curve of the hill... a cluster of rocks." She gave him one more sip of water and stood. "I'll be back."

She took off her knapsack, left the dark of the cave, and at once felt the hammer force of the blinding sun. Wincing from a pain behind her eyes, she clambered down the dusty slope and followed the curve of the hill. But after what she judged was a hundred yards, she still hadn't found a cluster of rocks at the base of the slope. Panic slithered within her. Had Drew been delirious? Had he only imagined there was a spring? No, there had to be a spring. Otherwise, how could he have survived here? If she didn't find it, if Drew didn't become more lucid before the canteen was emptied, there was every chance both of them would die. She walked twenty-five yards farther, felt her knees weaken, and knew that she couldn't risk continuing. For as far as she could see along the slope of this hill, no mound of rocks provided a goal.

Discouragement weighed upon her. Mustering strength, licking her parched lips, she turned to go back to the cave. Instead of swinging to the right toward the contour of the hill, she pivoted left toward the broad expanse of the desert. And tingled when she saw the mound.

She stumbled toward it. As far as they went, Drew's instructions had been accurate. But he'd left out a crucial detail. The cluster of rocks was a hundred yards around the curve of the hill, all right. But out from the hill, not against it And if you looked that way, the cluster was so obvious, so tall and wide, so clear a landmark, that you couldn't fail to notice it She made her feet move faster. The rocks became larger. Climbing over them, down to a hollow, she found a stagnant pool protected from wind, skimmed dust to the side, glanced around to make sure no skeletons of animals warned against trusting the water, and dipped her mouth beneath the surface. Hot, the water did not refresh her. Nonetheless, she felt her body absorb it. Quickly she filled the canteen. Ten minutes later, she stooped to enter the dark of the cave. Drew was flat on his back. Eyes slitted, he shrugged and tried to grin. "Forgot to tell you..."

"I know what you forgot to tell ethe, friend. I found it just the same." She raised the canteen to his lips. He swallowed gratefully. She drank as well. That still left the problem of food. In her knapsack, she'd carried enough provisions for an emergency--peanuts and beef jerky, along with dried fruit. But after she searched the cave and found nothing to eat, she had to conclude that what she'd brought was not sufficient for both of them to cross the desert. She gave Drew more water, took some herself, and became more hopeful as his energy returned. "Why are you here?" he asked. "Isn't it obvious?" He shook his head. "Because I love you,"

she said. He breathed deeply, overcome with powerful emotion. "Love...

Yes." It was hard for him to continue. "But how did you find me?"

"Persistence."

"I don't understand." He gathered strength. "I thought I'd hidden my trail." She nodded. "Then how... ?"

"The Fraternity."

Drew shuddered.

""gyou ran from them," she said, "to save my brother's life. Because he saved yours. You thought you'd eluded them. You haven't." She reached in her knapsack and pulled out a bag of peanuts. Chewing, she savored their salt. He reached for one. "Promise not to swallow it right away."

He nodded. She pressed one between his lips. "If you weren't so grungy,

I'd kiss you."

"Threats'll get you nowhere." He slumped. "The Fraternity?"

"They followed you from the moment you left my brownstone in New York,"

she said. "The reason you thought you'd gotten away was they never made a move against you. After England, Italy, and Morocco, you felt it was safe to come to Egypt. But they followed you here as well. They've been keeping track of you."

"You know this... ?"

"Because two weeks ago, one of them came to see me." Drew groaned.