Pastor was there on the first ring. "All right. Talk to me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Instructions. Are you listening?"

"You're dead, Merle."

"No. If I die Anna dies. Get that through your head."

"I'm listening."

"I want you to meet me. Alone. No wires, no bugs and no guns."

"When?"

"One hour."

"Where?"

"The southbound service area on the Palisades Parkway in Englewood Cliffs."

"I can't go to New Jersey."

"You'll have to."

"And go back inside for five years on violation of parole?"

"That's your problem. You'll have to go up the parkway from the George Washington Bridge and make a U-turn at the Palisade Avenue exit and come back along the southbound lane to the service area. One hour from now-one o'clock. Alone. No outriders, no pa.s.sengers, no microphones, no tape recorders and no guns. Play it my way or you'll never see Anna again and your child will never be born."

2.

He drove back across the bridge into Fort Lee and parked in the motel lot. Vasquez evidently had been watching from the window-he came outside immediately. Mathieson said, "Picked your spot?"

"Phone booth right across the street."

Mathieson looked that way. It was on the ap.r.o.n of an Exxon station. "Too close. He may spot you."

"It doesn't matter. His wife has seen my face a hundred times. My only real protection is your protection." Vasquez drew a slip of paper from his pocket. "This is the number of that telephone across the street. Just in case. And here's something else." He pulled a bulky paper bag out of his coat pocket. "Keep it wrapped up until you're safely hidden inside the car."

"What is it?"

"George Ramiro's three fifty-seven Magnum."

"I don't want it."

"I know you don't; but will you humor me?"

He tossed the bag into the car. "All right. But I think Pastor will play it straight."

"You can't predict what these creatures may do. It's best to take every precaution. It's fifteen minutes to one, Mr. Merle. You'd better be on your way."

3.

It was an oppressive gray day. The bare trees were limp, heavy with wet snow. Wind stirred at the upper branches and white pillows fell with plopping crunches. He stepped across the curb and went through the trees-a little copse of them that masked the town streets from the parkway.

He walked through the trees until he had a good view of the service area-the station a bit to his right, the gasoline-pump islands dead ahead, cars entering the area from his left. By his watch it was 12:53.

Waiting laid a frost on his nerves; it mingled with the dreary chill in the damp air. The snow had quit falling but there was the threat of more. Cars on the service area ap.r.o.n had ground the stuff into filthy slush. He waited just within the trees, motionless in the shadows.

It was a white Continental streaked with filth from its drive. It pulled past the pumps and parked against the corner of the repair station. Frank Pastor, his nose tucked inside the upturned collar of his coat, stepped out of the car and stood there trying to spot Mathieson. The small round face was just the same-neat, almost distinguished, hardly a hoodlum's countenance. Perhaps it was the air of unruffled self-confidence that had made him a leader; or perhaps leadership had created the air. In either case he was inevitably a man arrogant with power and that was a quality which could be used against him.

A sudden attack of nerves: He imagined someone was coming after him, running through the trees in deadly silence-he looked all around, terror-stricken. There was no one.

He stepped out into the bitter wind, holding the heavy .357 Magnum in his coat pocket.

Then Pastor turned and the expression in his eyes electrified the skin of Mathieson's spine. Pastor's cold animal stare triggered all Mathieson's warning systems but he kept walking.

"You c.o.c.ksucking motherf.u.c.ker." Pastor spat the words out as if they were insects that had flown into his mouth. But he removed his hands from his pockets, empty and ungloved. A vein rose and throbbed above his eyebrow, embossed by rage. "It's your game. What's the next move?"

"You come with me."

Without waiting for a reply he turned on his heel and strode away, following his own tracks back through the woods. He could hear Pastor behind him, treading heavily in the wet.

"Get in." He took the wheel of the Pinto and when Pastor got in beside him he threw it in reverse and backed into another parked car and left a little red gla.s.s in the road when he pulled away from the curb.

Pastor did not ask questions; he did not speak at all. He stared straight ahead, his mouth pressed tight as if to contain the threat of an outburst.

Mathieson parked the car in the slot in front of the motel room door. He unlocked it and went in ahead of Pastor. His enemy entered the room boldly behind him, wearing an expression of contempt as if to indicate that he didn't care whether it was a trap.

"Strip down to your shirt-sleeves."

"What for?"

"I want to find out if you're bugged."

"I'm not."

"Want me to take your word for that?"

Pastor got out of his coat and threw it on the bed. He tossed his jacket on top of it and stepped back. He was unarmed. Inside his shirt he seemed surprisingly thin; he looked as brittle as a dead sapling.

Mathieson went through the coat and jacket carefully with especially close attention to the b.u.t.tons. There were no microphones that he could find. He found nothing other than Pastor's wallet; it contained nothing that interested him.

"Empty out your pockets. Let me have your belt."

He proceeded methodically with everything including the shoes and shirt b.u.t.tons and even the zipper of the trousers. When he was satisfied he tossed the shirt and slacks back to Pastor. "You can put them back on."

Pastor got dressed without saying a word. Then he posted himself in the middle of the room, hands at his sides. "How many copies of that movie are there?"

"Quite a few. Benson has one. Fusco, Draper, each of the other three men you saw in the various shots." Mathieson went to the window and looked out along the motel lot. Across the street he vaguely made out the shadow of a man inside the phone booth on the Exxon ap.r.o.n-Vasquez.

"You may have worked out some clever kind of trap for me," Mathieson said. "If so, I think you should know that we've got your wife near here and if I don't telephone at specific intervals to let them know I'm all right, she'll be taken away to a place where you'll never get her back."

"There's no trap. What's your price?"

Mathieson studied him for a long time. There was no satisfaction in it but he detected the bitterness of defeat in his enemy. Finally Mathieson said, by way of a test, "You're too calm to suit me."

Pastor made a quarter turn on the carpet to face him squarely. His voice was utterly without tone. "I made up my mind I'd play your game. Whatever it takes to get Anna back. You want to kill me, then you'll kill me. No gimmicks, no cross, no tricks. I came here to find out the price. You've got me over the barrel, all right, I've played the game before. Quit s.h.i.tting me-quit wasting time. What's the price?"

"Freedom."

"You already got that."

"Only as long as I've got your wife. The real price is our freedom after you get her back."

"You've got the floor."

"We hooked her on heroin, Pastor. Your heroin, from one of your own pushers. We hooked her bad. She's a falling-down freaked-out hopeless helpless junkie. She needs smack so bad she'd cut herself open and put her insides on exhibit if it would buy her a fix."

In his coat pocket he gripped the Magnum but Pastor didn't move off his stance. He blinked several times and looked at the floor.

Mathieson said, "You've seen some of the members of my group. On the film. There are others you've never seen. Do you get the point of all this?"

"Suppose you spell it out."

"We can reach you, Pastor. You're not impregnable. If they can a.s.sa.s.sinate presidents then people like you can be reached just as easily. Now I know about your laws of revenge. I know you can put up with the idea of an enemy who wants to kill you. What you can't put up with is the knowledge that if anything ever happens to me or Paul Draper or John Fusco or Walter Benson, then the target for all the survivors will be not merely you personally but your wife and your two daughters and your child who's about to be born. That's my edge, Pastor, and that's why we took your wife and made a junkie out of her. We did it to prove we could do it. To prove we can do it again if you force us to. All it takes is one bullet, aimed at any of us, and the rest of us will tear your family apart limb from limb. That's the pact we've made among us. That's what you've got to know."

For a moment Pastor closed his eyes. Then they snapped open. "Suppose you get run over by a bus that has nothing to do with me?"

"That's your hard luck." Mathieson watched him warily-tried to see what was going on behind the eyes.

"Merle, everybody's got to die."

"I'm not offering you a way out. I'm offering you time. You can have your family as long as the four of us and our families stay alive. That's all I'm promising. With some luck it might be twenty or thirty years. It's more than you ever offered us."

Pastor's face gleamed unhealthily. He rubbed his thumb across the pads of his fingers. "When do I get her back?"

"When you see my point."

"h.e.l.l, I see your point, Merle."

Pastor's face gave away nothing-not anger, not even contempt. It was too easy. Mathieson felt the need to provoke a reaction: He needed to know he'd struck bedrock. He said, "You might like to know I was the one who put Gillespie and George Ramiro out of the way."

"Did you."

"Don't you care?"

"You'll never know what I care about. What is it, Merle, you want to see me grovel? That what you want, the satisfaction? Look, you played the game and you won it. I haven't got any surprises up my sleeve, I'm not a magician. I don't like the way this turned out but all right, Anna's hooked on smack, there's worse things, I'll just get her unhooked. All right, the game's over, you won it, now you want to stand around here and gloat over it, is that what you want?"

"I want to know I'm free of you. Now and forever. Wherever I go, whatever I choose to do. That's what I want."

"Merle, I'd kill you in half a second. I'll hate you to my last breath and my grandchildren will grow up hating you and yours. And someday they'll come for their revenge. But then you knew that before. You said it yourself-all you're trying to buy is some time. All right, you've bought the time. I'll see you around, maybe, in twenty or thirty years. In the meantime you got what you want-you're free of me."

Mathieson stared at him. Slowly he took it out of his pocket: the .357 Magnum. "I should have killed you after all."

"You want to do it, do it now, get it over with."

"George Ramiro's gun. I could leave it here next to your corpse and they'd pin it on Ramiro."

"You won't use it."

"What makes you think I won't?"

"Because you had too much fun setting this up," Pastor said. "Because I'm going to spend the next twenty years eating my guts out hating you and that's why you set this whole f.u.c.king stinking thing up and you don't figure to throw it all over for one lousy quick shot at me."

Mathieson put the gun back in his pocket. Dismally he turned to the door. "Wait here. In a few minutes you'll get a phone call telling you where to pick her up."

"Sure," Pastor said. "Good-bye, Merle."

Mathieson walked out.

4.

He got into the car and drove out of the motel. He drove two blocks and stopped in a shopping center and used the sidewalk phone. He dipped into his pocket for the number Vasquez had given him.

"Me."

Vasquez said, "Roger and Homer are just getting into their car. They're backing out now."

"Pastor still inside the other room?"

"Yes. Here comes the car. I'll go now. Give us three minutes or so. You're in the shopping center?"