Xenos grabbed him and spun the old man around. "Look at me, d.a.m.n you! I am your son! You taught me to play the piano, to sing. You were the one who was always there for me! Please, G.o.d, I need you here for me now!"

But the old man's eyes remained squinted tightly shut. "My son is dead."

Xenos released the old man, seemed to sag, almost deflate. "I don't sleep, Papa." His voice was sad and pained, more like a child's than a man's. "I see their faces, all their faces, Papa. They're all there. Everything you always said. They just stare at me, mock me." He dropped his head; his shoulders curled in; in every respect the image of a man beyond exhaustion. "Judge me."

For the briefest flicker of a second, the old man barely opened his eyes wide enough to see the son, the man, he felt almost a physical longing for. He felt his hand start to reach up...

He spun around, tightly closing his eyes and stalking away.

"You are a ghost! A phantom of my son who has been sent to mock me! I deny you!"

"Papa, the too familiar voice called out in the night. But the old man continued on."

Then a screeching of tires, a shot, and the old man-a veteran of too many gang wars and pogroms in his life-dived into a storefront doorway. When the sounds stopped, moments later, he cautiously looked back out at a completely deserted street.

Deserted except for a shining blackish stain near the s.p.a.ce between the buildings.

He slowly walked back-propelled by something more than instinct and less than certainty-stopping by the stain, crouching down, touching it with his tobacco-stained fingers to confirm for his eyes the horrific truth his heart already knew.

Staring into his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, his anger-at himself, at his son, at the world that had come between them then and now-boiled and raged, finally finding voice and fury.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Give me back my son!"

Five.

"Stupid."

The impeccably dressed older European gentleman opposite the big man in the back of the limousine looked over at the comment.

"Excuse me?" he asked.

"You heard me right enough." The big man's tone was full of contempt and disbelief.

A second man merely shrugged. "The situation was thrust upon us."

"We did what we could," a third added. "When that failed, we relied on your talents."

The big man shook his head. "You made it worse by not letting me handle things from the start. If you had, Goldman would be dead and Alvarez would be, well, compliant at worst."

"But, Canvas, you didn't kill Goldman."

"Of course not, you stupid carp! After your pointless games, I have to find out how far operational integrity has been compromised, don't I? Who he's working for and what he's told them and why. Christ!" he spit out. "If you'd just blown the b.u.g.g.e.r away when he came out of the college p.r.i.c.k's apartment, I wouldn't be missing Liverpool v. Man U." He began to gaze out the window at the pa.s.sing farms and fields. "Good b.l.o.o.d.y match it was going to be too."

Silence settled over the car.

"Wo xihuan daifu hao xie de," the first man whispered casually as he checked his watch.

"Dm," the second responded while seemingly obsessed with a loose thread on his jacket sleeve.

The third smiled in the direction of Canvas, who never looked away from his window. "Ni neng jieshao xie sheme liangcai ma?"

The first yawned. "Wo xiang baoxian."

"Gentlemen," Canvas said in a quiet voice, "before you start talking about my relative quality, or getting insurance against my possible failure, I think you should know two things."

He turned to face them, his eyes cold, narrow, his body virtually emanating death and destruction. "First, you'll only get one chance at severing our relationship. Fail that and I start the severing."

He leaned back, seeming to relax as he returned to studying the countryside. "Second, I understand that gutter slop you like to speak. So no secrets, right? Wo dong le."

"Our apologies, Canvas." The European bowed slightly toward the big man.

"Forget that and tell me about this new Alvarez bulls.h.i.t."

"It is not bulls.h.i.t." He clearly disliked the word. "It is an ultimatum, and it is most complicated."

"You must remember," the third man quickly added, "that options available to us in other circ.u.mstances are unavailable now."

Canvas poured himself a drink. "And why is that?"

"An unscheduled disappearance of a high-visibility member of Congress; visible, unexplained wounds or injuries; or worse-a death?" The second shook his head. "That would raise our profile to an unacceptable level."

"Unacceptable," the European repeated. "Ms. Alvarez has reasoned the situation most clearly, I'm afraid."

"We'll see," Canvas said as he stretched. "I'll see."

For over ten hours Valerie had waited. Constantly evaluating, watching, waiting.

Should I do it now?

Are there enough of them here-the right ones of them-to really hurt?

Have I gotten all I can?

After the usual, routine humiliations, she had been driven for hours-she thought to somewhere in Connecticut. There she'd been searched again, insulted again, and eventually brought into the presence of her three, usual interrogators.

But there'd been something different about it this time. The men in the car, the guards and others in the corridors of this carefully unmarked building, all seemed tenser, nervous, taut. At first she thought they had sensed her plan, or had somehow discovered it outright. But she quickly realized it was something else.

As they'd waited to be let into the conference room where the questioning would take place, she noticed two heavily armed guards in front of a door at the far end of the corridor. She saw the covert, worried looks of the others as they glanced in that direction, then whispered among themselves. But she'd had little time to a.n.a.lyze or guess at the cause of their discomfort.

The questioning had begun simply enough, routine questions about surveillance and suspicions that opened each session. Her secured briefcase had been gingerly placed on the table in front of her-the men obviously aware of its intricate b.o.o.by traps. No one mentioned it throughout the meticulous beginning. It was simply silently acknowledged as her interrogators checked off their lists of the routine Q&A that they lived by.

Finally the preliminaries were over and the main event began.

"Congresswoman, have you retrieved the reports we requested?"

"I have."

The first man-the German she couldn't look at without undisguised rage-had nodded toward the briefcase. "If you please."

"No." Her voice had been firm but carefully controlled. She must play for the moment, that instant when she had won all she could and not an instant sooner.

The man sighed. "Need I remind you of the consequences to your-"

"You don't have to say anything, you traitorous b.a.s.t.a.r.d! When this is over," I'm going to see that everyone knows who- The German looked exasperated. "They will know nothing. Not if you care anything for your children, madame. Now open the case." He was barely controlling his anger.

"Not till I get some things first."

The third man actually smiled. "What do you expect us to give you?"

It was hard, the hardest moment of her life, but she kept her voice calm and reasonable. "I want my children released immediately. They're to be taken to the home of Speaker Wilson. I'm scheduled to call there at ten in the morning. If they're not there, then it's all over."

"What, precisely, is over," Ms. Alvarez?

"All of this!" You get no more from me-not personally, not doc.u.ments. Nothing. Not till I get what I want.

The man shook his head. "You will not sacrifice your children."

Valerie took a deep breath. "If they're not there, then they're probably dead already." She paused. "And you'll have no more hold over me."

"We'll have you," the third said simply. "And we will have the contents of your case. That might well suffice."

Valerie actually managed a laugh. "Who do you think you're talking to? Ratas de cantarilla incontinente sin dientes!" she sneered. "If the KGB couldn't ever open one of those without destroying the contents-with all their techno know-how-what the h.e.l.l are you second-raters going to do? She laughed openly, fully; in relief and fear of what might happen next, sure. But also a laughter born of a final freedom of action."

The laughter shocked the men behind the table, who quickly consulted with each other, then with a bandaged man, Mr. Smith from the last session.

"You can open it," Smith finally lisped out from behind swollen lips and a black eye. "And there's lots we can do to you." He came around the table toward her.

"You learn slow, Zippy," Valerie said softly as she evened the weight on her feet, took a more solid stance, gauged the diminishing distance between them, as the man approached.

Smith nodded. "But I do learn." He seemed to look past her. "Jimmy."

She never heard the man come up behind her, punching her in the side with a hammerblow that bent her over. The man pulled her arms back, forcing her to bend over the conference table, her face less than a foot from her frowning interrogators.

"Open the case," Ms. Alvarez, "the German said softly." "Spare us all this ... unpleasantness."

"Chingate, enanos!" She felt Smith come up behind her, tearing at her jeans, pushing the other man away as she flailed behind her; praying to grab a hunk of hair, an eye, anything that would inflict pain.

"Open the f.u.c.king case," Smith spat out in a hoa.r.s.e leer as he tore her panties off. "Or I'm going to do you ugly and for hours!"

As she heard the man begin to undo his belt, as the men across the table looked on in mild discomfort, her briefcase was pushed in front of her.

"All right!" But her cry seemed unnoticed by the man behind her as he lifted her higher on the table and began to spread her flailing legs.

"Mr. Smith!" the German called out angrily.

Reluctantly the man backed off.

Valerie slowly pushed herself off the table.

"Please cover yourself, Congresswoman," the second said solicitously. "Then open the case."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Smith angrily panting as she pulled up her jeans.

"This isn't over yet, b.i.t.c.h, he muttered beneath his breath."

"Too right, she mumbled back, then turned to the case."

Standing it on its end, she dialed a combination into one lock, then a different number into the other. There was an audible click, and a wave of relief around the table.

Then Valerie spun around, the handle of the case coming off in her hand revealing two large, pointed spikes. She plunged them deep into the right side of Smith's face.

The man's pained screams were more animal than human and they filled the room and corridor beyond. He collapsed on the floor, rolling around, blood covering his face and forming abstract art on the pale yellow carpet.

Valerie was wrestled back onto the table, held painfully in place by two men.

But her interrogators were stunned into silence by her smiling face, bent up toward them, speaking in a quiet, almost satisfied tone.

"Not till I get what I want."

But that had been ten hours ago. Ten hours spent locked in a small windowless empty office. Handcuffed, gagged, but somehow satisfied. Because she knew that soon the waiting and the planning and the praying would be over, and the end would come.

For all of them.

She looked up as the door was opened. Two of the men from earlier walked in-tense, worried looks on their faces-followed by a big man whose face revealed nothing.

The new man looked her over casually, then shook his head. "Unbelievable, was all he said as he turned to leave. Then he stopped, walking back into the office, crouching by Valerie. He reached over, gently pulling down her gag."

"So the boss finally shows up," Valerie rasped out of her too dry throat.

"In a manner of speaking." He gestured at her cuffs and she was quickly unlocked. "You're a tough little cow, I'll give you that."

Valerie cautiously stretched, then stood, after the big man stepped back. "Have my children been released?"

Canvas smiled. "I bet you're dying to know." He stepped toward her, leaning close, whispering in her ear. "Wonder for a bit longer, sweetheart."

He easily caught the kick that was aimed at his crotch, held her by the ankle for a moment, shook his head like a parent who'd caught his child in a foolish lie, then simply tipped her over onto the floor.

"I like spirit, Valerie. May I call you Valerie?" As she scrambled to her feet, he spun backward to his left, catching her too-slowly-thrown punch at the elbow and throwing her forward. Again, she ended up in a pile on the floor. "But there's a time and place for it." He shrugged as she got up more slowly, more cautiously, this time. "And this is neither the time nor the place, right?"

He reached out so suddenly that Valerie was unable to do anything as she was shoved back against the wall, an iron grip squeezing the life from her throat.

"We'll talk later," Canvas said casually after a full minute of her breathless struggling.