The men in the car never saw anything more than two black forms rising up in the dark by their windows as the carbide-steel blades slid obstructionlessly down, guided by the notch in their collarbones. Their aortas severed, heart muscle turned to mush, they quivered briefly and died without sound or movement.

As the black forms vanished into the building behind them.

It was almost time for the next bulletin. Canvas's man sighed, picked up his radio, and entered the comm code for the hour. "Site one, report. Nothing." Site one, report. Again, nothing but static. "Site two, report."

He began to curse under his breath at the incompetents he was forced to deal with. He was going to kick some a.s.s when they were relieved in a few hours, he decided. "Site three, can you see your a.s.shole friends sleeping on the street?"

This time the silence was ominous.

He put aside the radio, pulled out his night-vision scope, and looked down at the car just below him. The men seemed to be asleep, slouched down in their seats. But zooming in revealed their eyes wide open, trickles of black ooze coming out of the corner of their mouths and a growing stain on their chests.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," the man whispered as he clawed for his cell phone. "Oh Jesus."

"Go," a voice on the other end of the phone said flatly.

"He's here," the man whispered in open fear. "He's f.u.c.king here!"

A pause. "Unit number?"

"Uh, this is nine-four, dammit! The sonofab.i.t.c.h is here. They're all f.u.c.king dead and he's here."

Just then he thought he heard a voice behind him-somewhere in the darkened apartment-whisper "Wait." He pulled his gun, waving it behind him, not hearing a thing, hearing too much.

"Nine-four, stand by for Canvas."

"Send help, dammit!"

Canvas rushed to the phone in the outer office, tearing it out of an aide's hands. "Talk to me, boy!"

There were sounds on the other end of the line; strange moving sounds without voice or substance. Then a too identifiable thud. Then more silence and moving sounds.

"Let it end, Colin," Xenos's voice came through the phone-tired but committed.

"Things have gotten complicated, Jerry," Canvas finally said. "We need to talk."

"Did you need to put people on my family?"

"Like I said, it's complicated." Canvas held up a hand to stop the flurry of activity around him. "It was nothing personal, it's not even about you. It's Alvarez. Let's you and me just-"

"Let it end," the voice repeated coldly. "Now"-a deathly pause-"or never."

The line went dead.

"I can have nine units in Brooklyn in twenty minutes," an aide screamed out as he picked up a telephone.

"No," Canvas said as he looked at the receiver in his hand. "He'll be gone before your people can drop their c.o.c.ks."

He hung up the phone and moved to a map of the five boroughs of New York.

"He'll go for the old Brooklyn Navy Yard or the Thirty-ninth Avenue Heliport," another aide called out. "I'll-"

"Send the cops or the Feds, not our people," Canvas said as he blankly studied the map. "Where are you going?" he whispered at the map. "Where are you? Would I"

His voice trailed off as his finger began tracing several possible routes on the map. All of a sudden he smiled.

"Pull all our people," everyone. Get them off the island and every a.s.signment. His voice was calm but commanding. "I want everything-our guys, local hire, Feds, cops, anything that moves that we control-and I want it flooding the harbor now! Any ship or boat scheduled to leave in the next six hours. From a supertanker to a fishing boat; I want them searched, every building around them as well."

He turned to his stunned, silent staff. "Move yer a.r.s.es!"

After giving new orders to a surprised Franco-leaving him talking rapidly on his cell phone-Xenos knocked on the apartment door. Two minutes later it was answered.

"Papa, I need you to..."

He half collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss into his crying father's arms.

Twenty minutes later-with his head cradled in his father's lap, with his sister and nephew trying to stop the bleeding and change the bandages, with Franco driving a hastily stolen pa.s.senger van from a nearby car lot-they drove away.

An hour later they rendezvoused with Valerie and Gary on the Jersey Turnpike.

Less than two hours later they boarded Le Pet.i.t Gitan-a French freighter in Philadelphia Harbor-and were at sea before dawn.

As Canvas was on the satellite link with Beijing.

Eight.

It never occurred to him that he might someday be his own guest.

Oh, he'd considered the possibility of dying alone and broken on some rocky plain or inner city's gutter. Had lain beaten and bloodied in hospitals and improvised way stations throughout the world.

He'd even fantasized about dying in some far-off field surrounded by flowers and green.

But a stiff-too short-mattress in a hospital of his own construction had never been a possibility.

Until it became reality.

For over a week now he'd been there. In and out of consciousness, barely aware of the concerned faces and shrouded looks, he'd lain and throbbed. But there comes a time in every recovery where the absence of tormenting pain must be replaced by real healing.

At least of the body.

Dr. Jacmil shook his head as he reviewed the chart. "How many years have we known each other, eh? Nine, ten?" He made a notation as he shook his head. "I always said you would one day end up my patient." He frowned. "But did you have to prove me right with such joie?"

Xenos would've shrugged if his upper body were not encased in a cast. "It took my being unconscious to make it happen."

"But, mon patrone, that is how I prefer your company." Jacmil put down the chart, then carefully began to test the range of motion of Xenos's legs. "Any pain?"

Xenos winced. "No."

Jacmil shook his head. "Imbecile." After examining the vastly reduced swelling around the man's eyes, rechecking the latest X rays (courtesy Franco's recently delivered machine), he made a final notation on the chart.

"So? When do I get out of here and away from your butchery?" But there was no humor in the sullen eyes or the dark voice.

The doctor shrugged. "We take the cast off this afternoon, then see how you do for a couple of days." He shook his head. "End of next week maybe. If you cooperate fully." He shook his head as he walked away. "As if there is any chance of that."

Xenos lay there, ignoring the sounds from beyond his screened-off part of the ward. Ignoring the doctor's muttering, the children's singing, the sound of construction just outside the window. The pain of the examination, of the healing wounds, of his life, all slipped into some nether place that he denied existence to.

For the moment, at least, all that existed was the problem.

Twenty-four hours on the French freighter had left them in Norfolk Harbor, then on a hastily chartered jet (through a well-camouflaged Corsican front company) that touched down at a discreet airstrip outside of Toulon-after filing four false flight plans and touching down five times as diversions. In the almost forty-eight hours of packed-together, high-tension travel, the improvised party had barely spoken to each other, so involved were they in their own problems.

Franco had been on the phone or radio constantly. Issuing orders, seeking advice, making arrangements, he was a flurry of nonstop activity until touchdown. In consultation with Xenos during the man's rare moments of consciousness and lucidity.

Valerie slept.

She'd neither intended to have nor had any control over it. After so many days, nights, hours of bone-chilling tension, her body had just shut down like a car out of gas. It blessedly denied her worries about her children-whom she had already begun to mourn-as well as the dozens of other things that tormented her every waking.

Understanding, somehow, that she was now safe and could be allowed this momentary respite.

However guilty it might make her feel each time she woke up.

Sarah Goldman and her son had both been enervated by the experience. Frightened but exhilarated by their glimpse into Xenos's world. As she had told her son, "Know someone before you judge them." And their knowledge was expanding daily. Bradley sat and studied his wounded uncle-whom he'd only heard alluded to in the past. Fascinated by the life that the man seemed to imply and angered by being cheated out of someone who might've replaced his long-absent father.

But for Avidol-as he sat at his son's side throughout the fevered chills, the pained moans, and the seemingly uncontrollable muscle spasms-the journey had been one of completion rather than flight.

And although he couldn't have known it, it was for Xenos as well.

Seventeen years before-after a decade of bitter arguments and running resentments-the men had severed all ties to each other. The older declaring the younger dead because of his betrayals of the precepts the old man held so dearly.

The younger denying existence to the older out of self-delusion and a naive belief that his starting-out life was meant to be lived alone and would be made stronger for it.

So Avidol remained by his stricken future throughout the harrowing journey. Wiping his boy's face with cool, damp cloths. Holding him still enough for the bandages to be changed. Brushing hairs out of his face or readjusting a blanket during those few peaceful moments.

Remembering the pain of the past, even as he consigned it to the past.

All the while praying for his, for their, soul.

But all of this was secondary to Xenos at this moment. Bare flashes of memory or experience that mattered not at all in the face of the problem at hand. Instead, he concentrated on that problem, examining its contours, shapes, complications. Constantly turning it over and around and inside out to examine it as closely as a biologist his microbe. So that he might fathom its innermost secrets and possibilities.

To stay ahead of Canvas.

What would he do now? How would he continue the search? Would he continue? What were his resources, goals-immediate and long-term? Had he told the truth? Was Alvarez alone the object, or had it now become a scorched-earth operation to leave no witnesses to whatever was being planned?

The questions were, by themselves, impossible to solve. All except one.

Canvas would never stop.

So contingencies must be made.

As soon as he'd regained consciousness Xenos had reviewed their escape with Franco. It had been accomplished with typical Corsican thoroughness and skill. Unlikely to be followed or unraveled much beyond Norfolk. And they were now safely ensconced in either the clinic (Xenos and his family) or a Brotherhood safe haven (Valerie).

Guards-trained, experienced men-had a low-key but deadly presence in both locales with orders to "protect our sheep no matter what." The harbor, airport, airstrips, boat landings, and the narrow roads leading in and out of the smuggler's paradise were being closely watched for strangers. Descriptions of Canvas and those of his men that Valerie could recall had been given to the local police along with a generous bounty.

By all usual standards, the fugitives were as safe as they could possibly be.

But Canvas was not usual, as Xenos well knew.

So the wounded man had already begun making his plans to move them all again, this time to Corsica itself. To a friendly village in the interior where discovery was as impossible as life to a mannequin. A place where negotiations could be started to turn the whole thing off, once and for all.

Until then, Xenos would never stop thinking, planning, predicting.

Because Canvas wouldn't.

"Jerry?"

The tiny, timid voice called him back from his black thoughts. And the small face at the foot of his bed reminded him of a world beyond red death and black destruction.

So long as he didn't look at the artificial arm.

"]e entendre la pet.i.t souris?"

The little girl crouched down, her eyes barely showing above the big man's feet. "Cri. Cri. Cri," she giggled. "There is a mouse here! Mon Dieu!" Gabi jumped up, laughing.

"Oh," Xenos gasped with a forced smile. "It's the biggest mouse I've ever seen." Then, after the blank look on her face, "Le gran souris!"

The girl exploded in laughter and hurried around the bed. "Jerry! Jerry!" She stopped when she saw the edge of the cast under the blanket. But this girl had been born into worse and it affected her for only a moment. "Que apprit?" Her voice was matter-of-fact, calm.

"I fell down."

"J'en suis fache."

Painfully-although he showed none of it-Xenos reached out and stroked the smiling face. "How are your English lessons going?"

"Mervill-"

"Dans anglais, si vous plaisez, mademoiselle."

"Jerry..."

He frowned in an exaggerated way. "J'insiste."

Gabi took a deep breath-looked at the man she'd idolized since she'd first seen him come over a hill into her burning village and he'd pulled her from the rubble of her dead family's house, like an angel from G.o.d-then slowly, laboriously, began.

"Mois English is very good, merci."