He follows but not aggressively. If he loses them, locating them again is an easy matter because of the mysterious but reliable link between him and the hateful man who has usurped his life.

The BMW reaches the north exit and turns right into the street.

By the time he arrives at that same intersection, the BMW is already two blocks away, stopped at a red traffic signal and barely in sight.

For more than an hour, he follows them discreetly along surface streets, north on the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, then east on the Riverside Freeway, staying well back from them. Tucked in among the heavy morning commuter traffic, his small Camry is as good as invisible.

On the Riverside Freeway, west of Corona, he imagines switching on the psychic current between himself and the false father. He pictures the rheostat and turns it five degrees out of a possible three hundred and sixty. That is sufficient for him to sense the presence of the false father ahead in traffic, although it gives him no precise fix.

Six degrees, seven, eight. Eight is too much. Seven. Seven is ideal.

With the switch open only seven degrees, the attraction is powerful enough to serve as a beacon to him without alerting the enemy that the link has been re-established. In the BMW, the imposter rides east toward Riverside, tense and watchful but unaware of being monitored.

Yet, in the hunter's mind, the signal of the prey registers like a blinking red light on an electronic map.

Having mastered control of this strange adducent power, he may be able to strike at the false father with some degree of surprise.

Though the man in the BMW is expecting an attack and is on the run to avoid it, he's also accustomed to being forewarned of assault. When enough time passes without a disturbance in the ether, when he feels no unnerving probes, he'll regain confidence.

With a return of confidence, his caution will diminish, and he'll become vulnerable.

The hunter needs only to stay on the trail, follow the spoor, bide his time, and wait for the ideal moment to strike.

As they pass through Riverside, morning traffic thins out around them.

He drops back farther, until the BMW is a distant, colorless dot that sometimes vanishes temporarily, miragelike, in a shimmer of sunlight or swirl of dust.

Onward and north. Through San Bernardino. Onto Interstate 15.

Into the northern end of the San Bernardino Mountains. Through the El Cajon Pass at forty-three hundred feet.

Soon thereafter, south of the town of Hesperia, the BMW departs the interstate and heads directly north on U.S. Highway 395, into the westernmost reaches of the forbidding Mojave Desert. He follows, continuing to remain at such a distance that they can't possibly realize the dark speck in their rearview mirror is the same car that has trailed them now through three counties.

Within a couple of miles, he passes a road sign indicating the mileage to Ridgecrest, Lone Pine, Bishop, and Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth is the farthest-two hundred and eighty-two miles.

The name of the town has an instant association for him. He has an eidetic memory. He can see the words on the dedication page of one of the mystery novels he has written and which he keeps on the shelves in his home office in Mission Viejo, This opus is for my mother and father, Jim and Alice Stillwater, who taught me to be an honest man-and who can't be blamed if I am able to think like a criminal.

He recalls, as well, the Rolodex card with their names and address.

They live in Mammoth Lakes.

Again, he is poignantly aware of what he has lost. Even if he can reclaim his life from the imposter who wears his name, perhaps he will never regain the memories that have been stolen from him. His childhood. His adolescence. His first date. His high school experiences. He has no recollection of his mother's or his father's love, and it seems outrageous, monstrous, that he could be robbed of those most essential and enduringly supportive memories.

For more than sixty miles, he alternates between despair at the estrangement which is the primary quality of his existence and joy at the prospect of reclaiming his destiny.

He desperately longs to be with his father, his mother, to see their dear faces (which have been erased from the tablets of his memory), to embrace them and re-establish the profound bond between him self and the two people to whom he owes his existence. From the movies he has seen, he knows parents can be a curse the maniacal mother who was dead before the opening scene of Psycho, the selfish mother and father who warped poor Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides-but he believes his parents to be of a finer variety, compassionate and true, like Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life.

The highway is flanked by dry lakes as white as salt, sudden battlements of red rock, wind-sculpted oceans of sand, scrub, boron flats, distant escarpments of dark stone. Everywhere lies evidence of geological upheavals and lava flows from distant millennia.

At the town of Red Mountain, the BMW leaves the highway. It stops at a service station to refuel.

He follows until he is certain of their intention, but passes the service station without stopping. They have guns. He does not. A better moment will be found to kill the impersonator.

Re-entering Highway 395, he drives north a short distance to Johannesburg, which sits west of the Lava Mountains. He exits again and tanks up the Camry at another service station. He buys crackers, candy bars, and peanuts from the vending machines to sustain him during the long drive ahead.

Perhaps because Charlotte and Emily had to use the restrooms back at the Red Mountain stop, he is on the highway ahead of the BMW, but that doesn't matter because he no longer needs to follow them. He knows where they are going.

Mammoth Lakes, California.

Jim and Alice Stillwater. Who taught him to be an honest man.

Who can't be blamed if he is able to think like a criminal. To whom he dedicated a novel. Beloved. Cherished. Stolen from him but soon to be reclaimed.

He is eager to enlist them in his crusade to regain his family and his destiny. Perhaps the false father can deceive his children, and perhaps even Paige can be fooled into accepting the imposter as the real Martin Stillwater. But his parents will recognize their true son, blood of their blood, and will not be misled by the cunning mimicry of that family-stealing fraud.

Since turning onto Highway 395, where traffic is light, the BMW had maintained a steady sixty to sixty-five miles an hour, though the road made greater speed possible in many areas. Now, he pushes the Camry north at seventy-five and eighty. He should be able to reach Mammoth Lakes between two o'clock and two-fifteen, half an hour to forty-five minutes ahead of the imposter, which will give him time to alert his mother and father to the evil intentions of the creature that masquerades as their son.

The highway angles northwest across Indian Wells Valley, with the El Paso Mountains to the south. Mile by mile, his heart swells with emotion at the prospect of being reunited with his mom and dad, from whom he has been cruelly separated. He aches with the need to embrace them and bask in their love, their unquestioning love, their undying and perfect love.

The Bell JetRanger executive helicopter that conveyed Oslett and Clocker to Mammoth Lakes belonged to a motion-picture studio that was a Network affiliate. With black calfskin seats, brass fixtures, and cabin walls plushly upholstered in emerald-green lizard skin, the ambiance was even more luxurious than in the passenger compartment of the Lear. The chopper also offered a more entertaining collection of reading matter than had been available in the jet, including that day's editions of The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety plus the most recent issues of Premier, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Forbes, Fortune, GQ, Spy, The Ecological Watch Society Journal, and Bon Appetit.

To occupy his time during the flight, Clocker produced another Star Trek novel, which he had purchased in the gift shop at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel before they checked out. Oslett was convinced that the spread of such fantastical literature into the tastefully appointed and elegantly managed shops of a five-star resort-formerly the kind of place that catered to the cultured and powerful, not merely the rich-was as alarming a sign of society's imminent collapse as could be found, on a par with heavily armed crack-cocaine dealers selling their wares in schoolyards.

As the JetRanger cruised north through Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon National Park, along the western flank of the Sierra Nevadas, and eventually directly into those magnificent mountains, Oslett kept moving from one side of the helicopter to the other, determined not to miss any of the stunning scenery. The vastnesses beneath him were so sparsely populated, they might have been expected to trigger his nearly agoraphobic aversion to open spaces and rural landscapes. But the terrain changed by the minute, presenting new marvels and ever-more-splendid vistas at a sufficiently swift pace to entertain him.

Furthermore, the JetRanger flew at a much lower altitude than the Lear, giving Oslett a sense of headlong forward motion. The interior of the helicopter was noisier and shaken by more vibrations than the passenger compartment of the jet, which he also liked.

Twice he called Clocker's attention to the natural wonders just beyond the windows. Both times the big man merely glanced at the scenery for a second or two, and then without comment returned his attention to Six-Breasted Amazon Women of the Slime Planet.

"What's so damned interesting in that book?" Oslett finally demanded, dropping into the seat directly opposite Clocker.

Finishing the paragraph he was reading before looking up, Clocker said, "I couldn't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because even after I told you what I find interesting in this book, it wouldn't be interesting to you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Clocker shrugged. "I don't think you'd like it."

"I hate novels, always have, especially science fiction and crap like that."

"There you go."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that you've confirmed what I said-you don't like this sort of thing.

"Of course I don't."

Clocker shrugged again. "There you go."

Oslett glared at him. Gesturing at the book, he said, "How can you like that trash?"

"We exist in parallel universes," Clocker said.

"What?"

"In yours, Johannes Gutenberg invented the pinball machine."

"Who?"

"In yours, perhaps the most famous guy named Faulkner was a virtuoso on the banjo."

Scowling, Oslett said, "None of this crap is making any sense to me."

"There you go," Clocker said, and returned his attention to Kirk and Spock in Love, or whatever the epic was titled.

Oslett wanted to kill him. This time, in Karl Clocker's cryptic patter, he detected a subtly expressed but deeply felt disrespect.

He wanted to snatch off the big man's stupid hat and set fire to it, duck feather and all, grab the paperback out of his hands and tear it to pieces, and pump maybe a thousand rounds of hollow-point 9mm ammo into him at extreme close range.

Instead, he turned to the window to be soothed by the majesty of mountain peaks and forests seen at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

Above them, clouds were moving in from the northwest. Plump and gray, they settled like fleets of dirigibles toward the mountain tops.

At 1:10 Tuesday afternoon, at an airfield outside of Mammoth Lakes, they were met by a Network representative named Alec Spicer. He was waiting on the blacktop near the concrete-block and corrugated steel hangar where they set down.

Though he knew their real names and was, therefore, at least of a rank equal to Peter Waxhill's, he was not as impeccably attired, suave, or well-spoken as that gentleman who had briefed them over breakfast. And unlike the muscular Jim Lomar at John Wayne Airport* in Orange County last night, he let them carry their own luggage to the green Ford Explorer that stood at their disposal in the parking area behind the hangar.

Spicer was about fifty years old, five feet ten, a hundred and sixty pounds, with brush-cut iron-gray hair. His face was all hard planes, and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses even though the sky was overcast. He wore combat boots, khaki slacks, khaki shirt, and a battered leather flight jacket with numerous zippered pockets. His erect posture, disciplined manner, and clipped speech pegged him for a retired-perhaps cashiered-army officer who was unwilling to change the attitudes, habits, or wardrobe of a military careerist.

"You're not dressed properly for Mammoth," Spicer said sharply as they walked to the Explorer, his breath streaming from his mouth in white plumes.

"I didn't realize it would be quite so cold here," Oslett said, shuddering uncontrollably.

"Sierra Nevadas," Spicer said. "Almost eight thousand feet above sea level where we stand. December. Can't expect palm trees, hula skirts, and pin colds."

"I knew it would be cold, just not this cold."

"You'll freeze your ass off," Spicer said curtly.

"This jacket's warm," Oslett said defensively. "It's cashmere."

"Good for you," Spicer said.

He raised the hatch on the back of the Explorer and stood aside to let them load their luggage into the cargo space.

Spicer got behind the wheel. Oslett sat up front. In the back seat, Clocker resumed reading The Flatulent Ferocity from Ganymede.

Driving away from the airfield into town, Spicer was silent for a while.

Then, "Expecting our first snow of the season later today."

"Winter's my favorite time of the year," Oslett said.

"Might not like it so much with snow up to your ass and those nice oxfords turning hard as a Dutchman's wooden shoes."

"Do you know who I am?" Oslett asked impatiently.

"Yes, sir," Spicer said, clipping his words even more than usual but inclining his head slightly in a subtle acknowledgment of his inferior position.

"Good," Oslett said.

In places, tall evergreens crowded both sides of the roadway.

Many of the motels, restaurants, and roadside bars boasted ersatz alpine architecture, and in some cases their names incorporated words that called to mind images from movies as diverse as The Sound of Music and Clint Eastwood vehicles, Bavarian this, Swiss that, Eiger, Matterhorn, Geneva, Hofbrau.

Oslett said, "Where's the Stillwater house?"

"We're going to your motel."

"I understood there was a surveillance unit staking out the Still water house," Oslett persisted.

"Yes, sir. Across the street in a van with tinted windows."

"I want to join them."

"Not a good idea. This is a small town. Not even five thousand people, when you don't count tourists. Lot of people going in and out of a parked van on a residential street-that's going to draw unwanted attention."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"Phone the surveillance team, let them know where to reach you. Then wait at the motel. The minute Martin Stillwater calls his folks or shows up at their door-you'll be notified."

"He hasn't called them yet?"

"Their phone's rung several times in the past few hours, but they aren't home to answer it, so we don't know if it's their son or not."

Oslett was incredulous. "They don't have an answering machine?"

"Pace of life up here doesn't exactly require one."

"Amazing. Well, if they're not at home, where are they?"

"They went shopping this morning, and not long ago they stopped for a late lunch at a restaurant out on Route 203. They should be home in another hour or so."

"They're being followed?"