Retrieving data

Shot fired

Connection terminated

Working...

Tracer tone activated at 1437:39

Tracer killed at 1437:58

Xenos smiled spasmodically. Somewhere, someone was going to be real p.i.s.sed. If they didn't need a doctor for the blood coming out of their ears when his cybernetic sniper sent a 500 dB shrill squeal through the phone line before destroying the circuitry of any listening device on the line, then they sure as h.e.l.l would need a new tracer.

He waited patiently while the slow laptop processed the information it had retrieved from the device in Paolo's apartment.

4045.57 N

7349.90 W

135

It took less than a minute for the tracking program to plot the coordinates and display it on a map.

13520 39th Ave

Flushing, Queens, NY

The building Xenos was watching.

Somewhere on the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth floor of the building was the location of the tracing device.

Ten minutes later, after parking his car behind a deserted car wash, he casually crossed the street.

Valerie Alvarez also watched the building. Sitting in her car a half-block down, she stared up at the eleventh floor and sweated. She knew what was going to happen, and knew there was nothing she could do about it.

Now.

But if there was a G.o.d-and she was long past blind acceptance of that fact-there would come a time, a place, a moment when she could release the pent-up anger, frustrations, and animal fury that she held so tightly checked.

And then... G.o.d (if he existed) help them! Because there were two things Valerie knew well. One was people.

And the other... getting even!

A sigh then a check of her watch. Five minutes to three. Time to go.

She dropped the car in gear and drove to the building's garage intercom. She pressed the numbers and waited.

"Yes?"

"Hyacinth, she said in as strong a voice as she could muster. The next few hours would not be pleasant. They would be filled with psychic pain, humiliation, and bone-crushing fear. But she'd be d.a.m.ned if she'd let them know it."

"Pull up by the elevators, level six. You'll be met."

The gate rolled up and she drove in.

Four men were standing by the elevator banks on the bottom level of the garage. Three she'd never seen before; but then they seemed to have almost unlimited personnel. The other she knew too well.

She got out of her car, leaving the door open and the engine running, as she knew would be expected.

"Congresswoman," the fourth man said politely.

"Smith."

They stood there for five minutes while two of the men covered every inch of her car. They searched, probed, used monitors of some kind, as they examined it all. Finally they were done. One of the men got in and drove away, while the other returned to them.

Smith walked to the end elevator, punched in a code on a keypad, then motioned her in as the doors opened. The four of them rode up one and a half flights, then the elevator was stopped.

"I believe you know the procedure, Ms. Alvarez."

She took a deep breath, stared daggers at Smith, then spread her legs shoulder width apart and held her arms out to her sides. While two of the men began to strip her-examining her clothes closely as they went-she never blinked or reacted in any way, except by maintaining the icy stare.

"Lovely, as always," Smith said politely as he was handed her bra.

"Go to h.e.l.l."

Smith smiled. "Perhaps, one day. Perhaps after you take me to Heaven?"

She simply stared on.

Valerie ignored the leers, the lingering gropes, the mumbled comments as the men finished their thorough search of her. Then she dressed quickly as the elevator restarted.

"Have you been working out, Congresswoman?" Smith smiled.

"Felt like it," one of the men whispered to another.

Valerie turned toward him. "Get a life or an inflatable girlfriend, a.s.shole," she snapped out. Then she turned back to Smith. "You've had your show. Now give me mine!"

"Making demands?"

She took a step toward Smith. "I don't say another word-to anyone-until I see it, she said in low tones."

If the notion hadn't been so absurd, Smith thought Valerie might be ready to tear out his throat with her teeth. He slowly reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a photograph.

"You'll recognize today's Times headline, he said as she took it from him."

She studied the picture, her expression softening as she looked at the small frightened faces, at the huge bruise on the boy, at the all-too-recognizable pain in the girl's eyes.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," she mumbled.

The rest of the ride was accomplished in silence.

They trooped out on the eleventh floor and moved down the corridor to their left, Valerie never looking up from her photo.

None of them noticing a thin, blue-sheathed fiber-optic cable slide up and out of the elevator's ceiling.

Crouching on top of the one private elevator in the building, Xenos ignored the whirring of gears and cables rushing by. He sat there calmly, riding up and down several times without realizing it. His body might be trapped by the confines of the elevator shaft, but his mind was elsewhere, wandering through the more-complex-by-the-moment problem. Reviewing what had happened. a.n.a.lyzing, interpreting.

Planning.

The doorman and concierge might have been easy marks, might have been people of high integrity. He'd never bothered to find out. But a security guard-now lying handcuffed and unconscious in some landscaping by the side of the building-had been another issue.

The man was more than run-of-the-mill minimum-waged security. He'd been sharp, obviously trained, carrying a backup piece on his ankle and cell phone in place of a radio. But men like that were anachronistic to Xenos; dinosaurs trained to think and react with one-dimensional thinking.

And Xenos lived in a three-dimensional world.

The man's uniform had been a close enough fit, and his keys easily interpreted. Xenos had let himself in through a garage fire door, then made his way to the lobby by a back hall. Pulling his hat low against the closed-circuit cameras that seemed to be everywhere, he casually waited for the first up elevator, then pressed the b.u.t.tons for floors nine through fourteen. Noticing that eleven wasn't listed on this elevator's control panel.

He left the elevator between the seventh and eight floors.

Jumping from elevator to elevator while in motion required not only timing but luck. Like moving through a maze, he waited to leap lightly from his up to the next down. To the next up. Finally landing crouched and ready for detection and flight on the secured elevator.

From on top he could easily see the camera installation that monitored the inside of the car, so he never considered getting in. Just rode up and down for fifteen minutes, waiting.

He knew that the guard would be missed at some point-with no idea exactly when that would be. But the road led from the apartment to the tracer; from the tracer to the men, from the men to here.

Next stop, the eleventh floor.

He'd witnessed the humiliating search of the congress-woman. Had heard the words, noted the tensions. But he'd noted much besides.

The men-though vulgar and coa.r.s.e-had restrained themselves to a large extent.

The man in charge-Xenos thought "Smith" as an alias showed a lack of imagination and he stored that fact away-was far from the casual air he exuded. He was a man under careful control, born from someone else's orders. A greeter and deliveryman-not a boss.

The congresswoman had stood up to the search with poise and controlled anger. She showed no resistance, cooperated when asked, but seemed less intimidated by the men than by some threat they held over her.

The way Smith had held the photograph, it was clear that he considered that threat to be an immutable trump card. Almost like the key to Fort Knox.

And from the behavior of all of them, this wasn't the first time the scene had played itself out.

Was playing itself out ... on the eleventh floor.

He still didn't know the connection between what had happened and Paolo DeBenetti. Or even if there was one. The men and Alvarez might be part of some other mystery, nothing to do with Corsicans or missing students. Maybe someone had leaked. h.e.l.l, there were more than enough groups within the community that wanted him back in the fold.

Or dead.

It was very likely that word had leaked about his search for the boy. That old cells-hungry for an old familiar body-had merely set the tracer in place to find and locate the man on top of the elevator. Alvarez and their hold over her might even be peripheral or unconnected to an effort to bring him in or take him out. Two disparate intelligence operations run out of the same headquarters, having nothing to do with each other.

But coincidence and survival were uneasy lovers at best.

His decision made, he lightly grabbed the service ladder, allowed the elevator to slide out from beneath him, then eased into the crawlway above the eleventh floor.

If anything happened to him-and it usually did, he thought with bitter humor-any events during the next twenty-four hours in the private elevator would be captured by the video tap he'd installed in the elevator's camera cable. Captured and relayed to the VTR in his car. And if he didn't check in with his "safety"-a double-blind contact that the Corsicans had provided called Quattro Cani-the car would be privately LoJacked, and the tape sent to Franco in Toulon.

What happened then, Xenos didn't care about. Because if it happened, it meant he'd be dead. The nightmare, the pain, the wandering finally over.