The two men stood, shook hands, then kissed each other on the cheeks.

"Buona fortuna, Corsicano," the don said with a smile.

"Vaffanculo, old man," Franco answered as he casually strolled away.

A quiet knock at the door caused Xenos to close the pad. "Come."

Valerie walked in. She looked nervous. "We're getting ready to leave."

"Right."

She took a step forward. "I just wanted to say, uh, that is..." Her mouth moved spasmodically, but nothing came out. "I never really thanked you for what you're trying to do."

Xenos studied her, the strength covered by the fragile look; the resolve beneath the worry. "I'm not doing it for you."

"I know," she said quietly. "All those children..." Her voice trailed off into the pain they all felt when the memory would-unbidden-gnaw at their ignoring consciousness.

"It's not for them either, really."

Now she looked truly confused. "I don't ... But I thought ... The girl..."

"... is dead," he finished for her. "Nothing I'm going to do will ever bring her back."

"Then why?"

Xenos stood, looked at her, then started for the door. "Forget it."

Then he stopped, his back still to her, and spoke in a somehow different voice.

"I see ... everything. I look at a situation and can immediately tell you what the outcome will be, what it could be, and how to make it come out the way you want it to."

"I've heard of the Four Phase programs," she said with a slight awe. "I heard that..."

"Forget what you heard," the bitterest laugh she'd ever been witness to responded. "They teach technique, not vision. That's why the programs turn out maybe two graduates every twenty years or so."

"Four Phase Men are born, not created. We're different-more perceptive, less caring-and all the training does is heighten that difference. That, and one other thing."

"It's drilled into us-at least it was to me-that we're not responsible, the planners and the doers. Oh, the politicians are sometimes responsible, the bad guys are always responsible, but not their instruments. By definition, the planners and the doers have clean souls and light hearts." He laughed again. "Just ask them."

He slowly turned to face the stunned woman, who had never expected to ever reach through to this man who had become so important to her and her children's lives.

"That was the basic problem between my father and me," he said simply. "He'd chosen to live a life absent of violence. He accepted that mantle and that burden and remade himself in what he perceived as G.o.d's plan for him. But he'd never insist that anyone else do as he did. It was too personal a choice."

"Then, what happened?" Valerie asked quietly, trying to respect the moment but captivated by the soul-unveiling taking place in front of her.

"Papa knew what I was even before I did." Xenos began to pace. "So he tried to teach me the code of the Maccabees, the Jewish warriors who threw the a.s.syrians and Greeks out of Palestine, despite being outnumbered one hundred to one. I just never quite got it. I saw the tactics, the heroism, the glory, the pride in country and purpose; but missed the point."

His posture, body language, tone of voice, all begged Valerie to understand.

"The Maccabees, you see, believed that once you do a thing-large or small-all the future consequences of that act were your responsibility. No justifications, double-thinks, or rationalizations to it. Simple: do it, and the fallout belongs to you. Period."

"For years, I allowed the flags and the medals and the pomp and the words to obscure that. To take me off the hook. Until finally my soul was gone. Withered, irredeemable, d.a.m.ned. I ran away from my job, my family, I hoped from G.o.d."

He shook his head. "But you can't, not really."

He rolled his head, stretched, was the picture of a man whose body was slowly being taken over by cramps, muscle strain, or... guilt.

"You've met Herb."

"Sure." Valerie spoke quietly, afraid to break the mood.

Xenos shook his head. "h.e.l.luva guy. Really. I owe him a lot that I am going to pay back to him one day." He breathed deeply several times. "He found me in college, I was on a music scholarship."

"Really?"

He tilted his head to the side as if to see a c.o.c.keyed world around him. "I was young, desperate to change the world, without a clue as to how."

"Herb showed me."

Settling on the edge of the table, Xenos seemed lost in himself, looking not at Valerie, but at some moment in a distant past.

"I don't know how he found me, how he picked me." A bitter laugh. "Just came looking, I guess."

"Oh, he understood me so well." His voice grew, well, absent. "Knew I was different, knew that I knew it. Knew how to reach me like n.o.body else in my life." He shook his head. "He promised me that, together, we could change the world."

He stood up, shoulders bent inward, head down, his voice barely audible. "We changed it." The big man seemed to be shrinking in front of her; seemed one giant lump of pain.

Then, suddenly, a strange thing happened.

He straightened, as if forced away from the memories by some inner drive to hold himself up and face the woman a foot or less away.

"I never intended to do any of this," he said in a stronger voice. "It's just that recently, I've needed to, I've been, well... He took a deep breath." "When Gabi died in my arms, when I looked around at all the children lying there like broken toys... He shook his head sadly, mystified by himself, then turned and walked out of the room."

"Please!" Valerie called after him. "Please."

He stopped, then came back to her.

"When I saved you," even before-as soon as I became involved in looking for Paolo-everything that followed became my responsibility. Herb wouldn't agree. I doubt that Colin would even agree, although he'd understand. He shook his head with finality. "Now I have to live with that, somehow make it right again."

Valerie shook her head. "But what you did saved lives. Mine, others, maybe-please G.o.d-my children. How can that be a bad thing?"

Xenos never moved, never blinked or breathed. "I should've let them kill us," he said flatly. "You, me, your children."

"How could you?"

"Easily," was the atonal reply. "But because I didn't, the Chinese takeover of the government which would've happened peacefully-without fuss or bother or notice-has become the prelude to war. Because of what I did, a hundred thousand people could die." Maybe more. I can see it! Lay it out in detail to you with numbers, throw weights, troop movements, and strike contours! Christ! He picked up a newspaper from a nearby table. "It's all there if you want to see it!"

He threw the paper across the room.

"And I always see it," he muttered sadly.

His shoulders dropped, his head bowed, he began to shuffle away. "And it's my responsibility. I started it. I'm the only one who can stop it."

Torn between thinking of Xenos as a madman or as a prophet-or as both-Valerie looked down at the paper, then back at the man who seemed covered in blood and guilt.

"Can you stop it?" she asked weakly.

He sighed. "Don't be late," was his only comment as he sat down at a computer terminal and began to work.

She watched him for a moment, shivered uncontrollably, then hurried out to Fabre in the waiting car.

In the subbas.e.m.e.nt of his headquarters, in a room protected against nuclear attack and twenty-first-century eavesdropping, Herb turned to the attorney general designate, eyeing him suspiciously.

"It's your dime, Senator."

"Where you been, Herb?" Buckley's answer was an expressionless stare. "Let me put it another way. How close are you to figuring out the s.h.i.t that's been going on?"

"I'm sure you're more on top of that than I am," Herb said easily. "It was your commission."

Buckley smiled, an oddly unsettling expression. "I also sat on a committee with access to the Pei interrogations." A brief pause. "Interesting reading in light of recent developments."

"Whatever are you suggesting?" Herb was going to make the man commit himself before reacting.

A fact the senator seemed to understand. "My commission," he began easily, "dealt with evidence, not conjecture. The FBI, the CIA, the president, and the American people all believe the Taiwanese are responsible for this crisis. Who am I to argue?"

"Yes," the old intelligence chief agreed, "which makes you a wonderful candidate to be Pei's traitor-this Apple Blossom."

Buckley smiled, charmingly, happily, completely at ease. "But I'm not, and I think we both know that."

"I only know what I read in the papers."

"Then read these papers-originals with no copies-from my commission's, uh, parallel investigation."

Herb began flipping through the files. "And why would you investigate Messieurs Kingston and DeWitt?"

The senator stood to leave. "Call it a hunch. Call it jealousy. Call it anything you want."

Herb looked up at the man. "These are exactly the kinds of things I'd expect the real traitor to come up with."

Buckley chuckled. "Yeah. I thought of that. The door closed behind him."

Hours later Herb turned to the two other men who had been with him since Buckley left.

He knew them each intimately, had recruited them individually out of the service or college, had personally investigated them each time he'd advanced their careers.

Had done so again in the days since his return to Washington.

"Simply put, boys, I'm asking you all to commit treason on the most serious levels possible."

n.o.body moved, spoke, or even raised an eyebrow. They just sat, waiting. Each man had a copy of Buckley's files, and there were nine cartons of other files stacked against the far wall.

Cartons labeled: Buckley, Kingston, and DeWitt.

"I want ideas," the old man said with pride as he looked at their professionally receptive faces, "propositions, thoughts. Three areas."

"One: how do we slow down the Kingston nomination?"

"Two: how do we slow down the DeWitt confirmation?"

"Three: which one of them is Apple Blossom?"

One of the men looked up from the papers. "How do you know you can trust Buckley? He fits the profile as tightly as the other two."

"Four," Herb answered quickly, "can we trust the good senator?"

"How long do we have?" the taller one asked.

"Almost no time."

"a.s.sets available?" the other asked calmly.

Herb shrugged. "The three of us. Whatever resources we can steal or subvert."

"Why don't we just kill all three, take no chances on guessing wrong?" one of the men who were pale knock-offs of the man in the warehouse asked.

"I'd like to avoid that. At least for now."

The men thought about it for a few minutes. Then the talking began.

Within an hour, a favorite emerged. Within another twenty minutes, they all began to believe in their choice. Two hours after that, a general plan had been agreed on.

It was raw, without sophistication or contingencies-but Xenos would add those, Herb knew. And it was risky beyond measure.

But, with a little luck, it would work.

Avidol found Xenos sitting on the warehouse roof. Looking up at the stars, fiddling with a pad, distracted in the way he'd become ever since he was a child when he was deep in thought.

"Jerry? How are you?"

Xenos jumped up and helped his father to one of the several lawn chairs that had been set up there. "Papa, you shouldn't be up here. You should rest."

Avidol shook his head firmly. "My place is where I am needed." He kissed his son on the hand. "And you need me, no?"

"I, I've hurt you. Got you shot, made you violate your strongest principles and values. I'm surprised you're even talking to me."

Avidol patted the hand he wouldn't release. "We are all free wills in this world. G.o.d's only promise to individual men. We make our choices. You chose to save your family when running away again would've been easier. I chose to kill a man rather than be killed."

He sighed. "It is a thing I will remember until I die." An irretrievable act that violated my most basic beliefs. The slightest hesitation. "But I am prepared to take responsibility for that act."