Steingarth looked skeptical. "And your suggestion is?"

The Englishman knelt by a motion detector and checked its wiring. "Three things. One, you pressure the president to vocally and politically support DeWitt. Twist a few arms to get the confirmation back on track, with a thorough investigation of this other nonsense to be an administration priority as soon as the China crisis is over."

Steingarth agreed. "I see the president for dinner. He's tired and has convinced himself that a vice president must be in place before he acts in Taiwan. It presents some difficulties, but it can be accomplished."

"Good." Canvas was quiet for a moment. "I'll get connections in CI-5 in London to lose a few files. Slow the process down. When the committee sees the thing might drag on forever because of lost doc.u.ments and extinct witnesses, they'll be less likely to want to press the matter. I'll also see what I can find on this Roberts fellow as well."

"My files are open to you, of course," Steingarth offered. "And your third step?"

As he rubbed at one of his tattoos-a struggling fish impaled on a stick-Canvas spoke distractedly. "I want the kids positively and finally out of Xenos's reach. Somewhere in China-rice field or prison cell I don't rightly care-but somewhere he can't get to them."

Steingarth considered for a moment. "A diplomatic flight leaves at 0830 Sunday." He coughed nervously, a violent act as if expelling a cancerous growth from deep in his bowels. "I keep track of them, in case of a, uh, necessary tactical, uh..." His voice trailed off. "If you can get them to the plane, I will see to the rest."

Canvas looked uncomfortable. "Nothing before then?"

The German shrugged. "In the best of times the State Department and FAA carefully control the Chinese comings and goings. With the climate we have helped to create, these are far from the best of times."

"Sunday," Canvas repeated absently. "Seventy-two hours." Finally he nodded. "Make the arrangements," he said with finality. "Call me on the secure line after you talk to the president."

Steingarth quickly left.

Canvas spent another ten minutes wandering in the woods, checking sensors and defenses, allowing his mind to drift and wander.

He played every scenario he could conceive of over and over in his mind. Thought of every contingency, every countermeasure, every move he might make to tilt this already lopsided table more in his direction. Knowing there would be no sleep, no rest or moments of distraction in the coming seventy-two hours, until the children were on their way to China and the threat was neutralized.

He took several brain-clearing deep breaths, looked out at the twelve-foot-high cinder block wall off in the distance, looked through it, beyond it, at all the threats and reasons for soul-numbing fear beyond, and slowly shook his head.

"Oh, Jerry," he sighed as he started back to his command post. "Where are you?"

Fifteen.

Friday "Where are you, Colin?"

Xenos sat in the back of a stretch limousine (the most inconspicuous transport he could think of, considering the area) slowly driving through some of the most exclusive roads in America. The multihundred-acre estates were worth millions, their owners worth considerably more. High-tech security systems were the norm-not telltale at all. And the country's "best, brightest, and most beautiful regularly gathered at any given mansion in the area to decide the fate of the world."

Vedette, Albina, and Franco sipped their drinks and shook their heads as palace after palace (or the front gates thereof) pa.s.sed in silent stately review.

"This place bespeaks a great deal of waste," Albina said, using his ultimate compliment for the highest level of riches attainable.

"Amazing," was Franco's only response.

Vedette looked up from his map, checked an address, then looked down again. "It's a pain in the a.s.s. Every place here has state-of-the-art thugs and street-tough systems to get around. And most of them have no particular threat outstanding. Like other people have fancy landscaping. I hate to think what our place will be like."

Xenos just stared out the window. "Okay," he said as the limousine slowly completed its circle of the area and headed back toward the interstate. "We've seen all the possibles twice. Five doors, only one right one, and we won't get a second chance." He seemed deeply distracted, as if his mind were out among the southern manors and carefully manicured grounds. "Any thoughts?" he mumbled.

"DeWitt's visited three of them in the last ten days," the surveillance expert, Vedette, said after checking his surveillance logs. "I say we eliminate the other two." He checked a computer printout. "The Collier and the Al Sheihala properties."

"Three doors."

Franco looked at the notes he'd made as they'd driven by the residences where Valerie's aide's emergency call could have been routed. "The Krusiec woman remembered a long curving driveway just inside the gate." He took a deep breath as if what followed was offered only with the most reluctance. Which it was. He didn't like this seemingly casual elimination process. He was a man who believed in careful a.n.a.lysis then overwhelming action. Not informal discussion.

But he also believed in Xenos.

"Number one has a straight drive with right-angle intersections off it," he finally offered.

"Two doors."

Vedette quickly pulled out the two files he'd compiled on the remaining possible targets.

"Briarcliff," he read aloud. "Owned by a television executive named Jacob Haft. Fifty-seven, married, three children. Educated at Missouri State University, two-year fellow at Cambridge and Manchester Universities in England. Inherited his money, parlayed the family capital into a thirty percent ownership of Wilkins International Network. Not a controlling interest, but enough to get what he wants. DeWitt visited him last Sat.u.r.day night. Stayed over."

Albina checked his file on the place. A thing carefully pulled together from sources in both the straight and crook communities.

"Eighty-five-hundred-square-foot," seven-bedroom mansion, he began. "Four guesthouses, eight other outbuildings. Full-time, professional security-both automated and human. State-of-the-art and a lot of it."

He looked over at Xenos. "Media man, wealthy, English education, big estate, heavy security. Looks good, no?"

Xenos closed his eyes and slouched down in his seat. "Next."

Vedette began reading from his other file. "Heisenberg House, originally Maple Row Estate. Purchased five years ago by Heisenberg a.s.sets, Limited-of Liechtenstein and Panama. Corporate purpose believed to be as a holding company to divert cash for tax purposes. But for whom I don't know yet. Current resident is Anthony Grimes, the artist."

He shrugged as he closed the file. "Grimes is an open book. Politically conservative, wealthy, only six months in England when he was in his twenties. Some art school in the West End of London." He shook his head. "The guy's a p.u.s.s.ycat. But DeWitt did visit him Wednesday night."

Albina continued the thought. "Very little security. A few cameras," a man at the gate, another in the house, one on the monitors, one roaming. He turned a page. "A lot of cameras, some lights with motion detectors." He shrugged. "The driveway curves, but so does Haft's."

Franco was studying the man who had the backseat to himself. Xenos seemed asleep, or at the least, deeply distracted. But his lips barely moved in soundless calculations, his breath became shallow, his movement almost nil. And Franco knew.

"You've decided," he said quietly.

Xenos never moved or opened his eyes. "I'm holding high-profile hostages in a rich man's paradise. I can expect a major effort if the congresswoman goes to the police. I want a place quiet, removed, but not a place where I would be noticed. A place big enough to establish a topflight security perimeter, without it being obvious. I don't want any of the neighbors to be even a little aware of it, but I'll need any queries easily satisfied by the given eccentricity of the owner or resident."

He opened his eyes and looked at the small infiltration expert. "Any buildings or cl.u.s.ter of buildings set off by themselves-ideally, connected-on either of the estates?"

His answer came a moment later.

"Work buildings well away from the main house and guesthouses at Briarcliff, maybe fifteen hundred meters," the little man read off his carefully prepared fact sheets. "Just inside the north fence." He turned to his file on the other estate. "We've got an old abandoned, sealed-up, fallout shelter in a grove of trees-maybe two thousand meters from the nearest occupant structure at Heisenberg."

"How close to the fencing, Ugo?"

Albina pulled out a pocket ruler and checked the distance. "Close to two kilometers, a little over a mile from any fence. Almost in the center of the estate. The house and guest cottages are on the south end."

"Franco?" Xenos said in a faraway voice.

"Si, amico."

"That's your target."

Franco nodded and took the files on Heisenberg House from the others. "Si, amico." His voice was firm, committed.

Vedette looked less sure.

"Excuse me, Durete, but I don't agree. Haft fits the profile better. His estate is better prepared to withstand an a.s.sault, his position in the community more useful to a man in Apple Blossom's position."

"I agree," Albina added. "With no disrespect, we will get only one chance at this, as you have said. Perhaps we should discuss this more, Durete."

Xenos barely moved. "Before you go in, Franco, check the local photo libraries and real estate archives. There's got to be some aerial photos of Heisenberg House lying around somewhere. Make your maps from that and make sure every man in your team has one."

Franco continued studying the real estate maps and limited intelligence he had. "I'll get it done as soon as we get back."

Xenos finally moved. Sitting up, he gestured for the Corsican driver to head back to the warehouse.

"They're in there," he said to the other two in the back. "I know it."

"How?" Vedette demanded. "There is no room for error."

Xenos took a bottle of water from the ice tray, swallowing half of it in one gulp. "Two reasons. One: the name of the place. Heisenberg House. Named after the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which says 'We can be sure of nothing. It's Colin's sense of humor.'"

"Thin," Albina said with a little scorn. The man across from him in the car might be a living legend, the personification of death and destruction itself, but Albina was being asked to design a plan that would put nineteen brothers of the Union and two small children in harm's way.

And he would be d.a.m.ned certain they were hitting the right place before he did.

"What's your other reason?" he asked with toughness and resolution.

Xenos turned back to the window, closed his eyes, and slid down in the seat again.

"It's where I would hold them."

The discussion was over and the three Corsicans began planning the a.s.sault even before the car had reached the expressway.

"You shoot good for a woman," Fabre said matter-of-factly as he took the pistol from Valerie's hand and gave her another.

"I've had a lot of experience lately," she mumbled as she tested the heft of the new pistol. "Heavy sonofab.i.t.c.h."

Fabre adjusted her hands around the gun's b.u.t.t. "Heckler & Koch VP 70, 9mm. No external hammer so it can't catch on your clothes. Eighteen-round clip, with one up the pipe. Very nice." He smiled spasmodically. "Longer trigger pull, but more accurate with more hitting power. Try it."

Valerie sighted in on the target-a mannequin of a man holding a doll of a small child in his arms-located in the bas.e.m.e.nt of their temporary headquarters. She slowly squeezed the trigger, surprised at how long it took until the sound exploded around her.

"Loud," was all she said as the shot kicked up dirt from the pile behind and to the left of the target.

The a.s.sa.s.sin shrugged. "Big muzzle flash tells the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds where you are anyway." He nodded for her to fire again. "Every shot goes up and left with you. You're probably a natural shot, that tells me. So"-he took her hands and adjusted her aim lower and to the right-"we make adjustments."

Valerie sighted in on the new aiming point, then jerked the trigger. The round flew low and to the left. Angrily she slammed the gun down on the table in front of her.

"What's wrong?" the Corsican said patiently.

Valerie started pacing. "It's too d.a.m.ned close," she yelled. "You honestly expect me to be able to take a shot at a man holding one of my babies in front of him?" She was furious-at the Corsican, at herself for her inability to make the kind of shot she'd made on ranges for years.

At the terror of possibly being the cause of one of her children's deaths-directly instead of indirectly.

"It's an unusual trigger pull," Fabre said quietly, understanding. Then he c.o.c.ked his head to an angle and picked up the gun. "There is an old Corsican story," he began as he casually held the gun in front of him, wiping its blue steel exterior with a silicone cloth to ease its holster pull. "The story of Lucien ecraser." He smiled openly, casually, a strange sight amid the smell of gunpowder and fear. "My papa named me for him."

"ecraser was a secretary of the Nicosian Union of the Brotherhood. The man charged with settling the Union's accounts with those it transacted business with.

"Some camorra owed the Union a great deal of money and ecraser went to collect. They refused." He spread his hands in a gesture of futility. "What could he do? He killed three of the five leaders and made his collection."

"What does this have to do..." But Valerie cut herself off when she saw a clouded expression cross the huge man's face.

"Six months later ecraser returns home from business to find his house burned to the ground, his family dead or dying. His teenage daughter missing, taken into bondage by the Spanish b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

Again, the gesture of futility. "What could he do? He buried his family, paid holy obeisance to G.o.d's greater wisdom, then went in search of his daughter."

"He found her in a private camorra brothel in Malaga, near Gibraltar." He smiled suddenly. "Beautiful town, great hotel right on the beach if you like such things." Then the mood returned. "Anyways...

"ecraser shot his way in, finding the two men who had taken his daughter, hiding behind her nakedness on a bed." He paused, the objective voice returning. "She was lying on the bed, you see, and they were on the floor behind her, only their eyes and the top of their heads peeking out from behind, holding guns on her. You get it?"

Valerie nodded.

"Well," he continued, "what could he do?"

A silence filled the room, then the Heckler & Koch flashed up to shoulder level and two blasts shouted out.

Stunned, Valerie walked out from behind the table, over to the mannequin. Tracing her fingers over the still smoking, unquestionably fatal holes in its right eye and forehead... inches from the head of the baby doll.

Fabre stood very still, looking not at the target, but deep into Valerie's shocked eyes.

"He could do... what he had to do."

For the next three hours Valerie practiced unflaggingly with the gun. Each round, each lungful of cordite and saltpeter invigorating her, cleansing her, hardening her for the night to come. Finally Fabre seemed satisfied and took the gun from her swelling hands.

"You soak them in heavy salt and sugar water for an hour, then rinse with very hot water. Your fingers come alive then." He cleared the weapon, then nodded at the target. "Go get the baby, please."

After rinsing her mouth with cold water, swallowing some and spitting out the rest, she walked over and worked the baby from the terrorist's grasp.

"Another reason I like the H&K," Fabre said simply as he slammed a new clip into the handle. He turned the b.u.t.t of the gun toward her. "You see this little lever, set on green?"

Valerie nodded. "The safety. What about it?"

The experienced Corsican weapons expert laughed loud and long. "In a manner of speaking only. On green you fire one shot per trigger pull. On red-"

"It won't fire, I know," she interrupted.

"Not quite." He flipped the almost invisible lever to the red pin spot. "Step away, please."