Overall, he thought, a not-wholly-undesired solution.

The smallish conference room was clean, designer-decorated, comfortable, but utilitarian. Alvarez sat on one side of the table, calmly going over some files, as three men sat across from her waiting patiently. It might have been a legislative conference or the reading of a will.

Smith stood in the corner, watching the scene, bored, his mind turning over the problems he had to deal with after this meeting was over. Nothing major, just the routine of being middle management in a sophisticated multinational operation.

"Congresswoman?" one of the men at the table prompted.

Valerie closed the file, then looked up. "It's mostly right. I think he called it the 'Apple Blossom colloid,' though. Not 'collaboration.'"

"You are prepared to attest that this is a fair and accurate representation of the statement made by Source 24601 to you on the twenty-third?"

She sighed. "I am."

"Then will you please write words to that effect on the bottom of the last page and then sign the doc.u.ment."

Valerie did as she was told, then sat back. "Is that it?"

One of the men smiled warmly. "I hardly think so. There's still the matter of Source 24601's movements in the hours between your meeting and his end."

"G.o.ddammit! We've covered that three times before!" For the first time in the last two hours her anger had a voice. "I told you everything I know, gave you everything you want! For two G.o.dd.a.m.ned weeks!" She slapped the tabletop hard enough to make the file bounce and Smith step forward.

Another of the men waved Smith back.

"We appreciate your cooperation, Congresswoman. And we understand your schedule conflicts. But we must be-"

"Cooperation?!" She jumped to her feet hard enough for her chair to topple backward. "Mentirosos! You're not getting another word until I get what you promised!"

Smith came up behind her, grabbing her shoulder, trying to force her down into another chair. Her elbow flashed back, pounding into the side of the man's head. He toppled backward as though he'd been shot.

Before he could regain his balance she grabbed his left arm, twisting it violently inward and back. His head smashed down onto the edge of the table, his mouth seeming to bite the wood as his arm painfully gave way from the pressure.

Smith's m.u.f.fled scream filled the room as Valerie pulled his Glock 9mm from its shoulder holster, released him, then worked the slide. A moment later she was pointing it at the shocked men across the table.

The men from the elevator came rushing in, guns drawn, but froze when they saw their boss sprawled in a b.l.o.o.d.y heap across the table, and the gun unwaveringly moving from one of the men's heads to another.

"Put the gun down, b.i.t.c.h! one of the elevator men screamed out."

Valerie ignored him, concentrating her aim on the center man across from her. "It's over, she said in low, deadly tones."

The man simply nodded seriously. "If you wish, in a slight German accent."

"Kill us, another said casually," and it will end. We will be dead, and a moment later so will you.

"But go to your grave knowing this," the third added. "Your son-so young, so strong-will die in inconceivable pain over a long period of time. Your beautiful daughter"-he pulled a school picture of the young girl out of a file-"will be given over to men like Mr. Smith here. And when they are done with her-if she survives-her death will make your son's look pleasant."

The German-sounding man smiled. "Pull the trigger," he said in an almost inviting tone, "and take that with you to eternity."

For long seconds the gun remained steady, then slowly, almost painfully, it began to shake. She didn't resist as it was pulled from her hand.

"Gusanos," she moaned as she was forced down onto the table beside Smith.

A woman came in, ignored the scene, handing a slip of paper to the center man, who put on his gla.s.ses to read it. "Get him out of here." He gestured at Smith as he began to read.

"Sir?" The gunman holding Valerie on the table looked uncertain.

The German-sounding man handed the note to one of the others as he accepted a new note from the woman courier.

"Congresswoman Alvarez," he said without looking up from his reading. "Normally I would allow this-this out-burst-to pa.s.s with only the warning you have already received."

He handed the note to his colleague who had pa.s.sed on the first note. "But this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated at this stage of our relationship."

He thought for a moment. "You are free to go," he suddenly said. "But there will be a price. To you. To your son. Perhaps to your daughter. And you will not know that price until next we meet."

He began to confer in whispers with his two colleagues, then noticed she was still standing in front of them. "Good day, madame."

Valerie was led/dragged from the room, silently crying-a wilted version of the woman who had arrived.

After five minutes of quiet discussion, the other two men left the room as the German-sounding man picked up the telephone that was plugged into a random scrambler. He dialed a number, waited, then entered the correct code for that day and hour.

"Canvas," a slightly accented voice said across the electrically cleaned line amid chirps, whistles, and static.

"This is number five."

"Yeah."

"I have just been informed that Apple Blossom's man has been located in an intensive-care ward at Columbus Hospital. He is in a coma."

"I know," Canvas said brusquely. "He'll be dead before midnight."

"Most efficient."

"Why you pay me," sweetie. An angry pause. "Was there a reason you called?"

"A guard, one of yours, has been reported ten minutes overdue from his rounds."

A long silence. "Let me talk to Smith."

"Mr. Smith has been"-he paused as a one-word note was pa.s.sed to him from a colleague-"incommoded for the present."

Another silence. Then: "I'll take care of everything. Leave the building, go to safe house number four, and wait for my call."

"As you say, Canvas."

The line went dead.

Nine hours later, just after midnight, and after four thorough searches of the building by reinforced guards and after the unconscious guard had been found, revived, and questioned, Xenos emerged from the eleventh-floor crawl s.p.a.ce.

It was a simple matter to climb down the service ladder to the bas.e.m.e.nt, let himself into the service dock, and leave the building. He never encountered any guards, but it wouldn't have mattered if he had.

They would have simply and silently died in the night. Their last sight an angry man covered with grime carrying a nylon backpack.

Few answers had been found. Far more questions had been asked. And he still had no idea if the operation he'd stumbled into had any concrete connection with the disappearance of a nineteen-year-old boy who owed the Corsican Brotherhood either $100,000 or a law degree. But he did know two things, engraved in granite and in his mind.

Someone-the Corsicans, Paolo, the interrogators, maybe even Alvarez or someone yet unknown-was dragging Xenos back into the life and world that he'd forsaken years before out of a need for spiritual and moral survival.

And for that, someone had to pay.

The next morning, he arrived in Washington, D.C.

Three.

The Longworth House Office Building is dark at the best of times. Its dark woods, high ceilings, windowless corridors, too few ceiling lights with every third bulb removed for energy conservation, long ago caused it to be dubbed "the Congressional Cave. It is a place for new members of the House on their way up, old members on their way out, and the usual one-termers that came and went every session."

But it was close to the House Chamber, closer to the main pressroom, and photogenic as h.e.l.l. So a few of the truly powerful members treasured their suites there for the limelight that existed just beyond the cave's mouth.

And Valerie Alvarez was one of those.

She almost always smiled as she walked past the pressroom-lingering to go on the record on whatever. Smiling seductively, shaking her head sagely. Generally winning friends and admirers from those gray individuals who had been a.s.signed-or sentenced-to cover the House of Representatives.

Marks-one and all-for her to play to her advantage ... as she always had.

Maybe that defined her, some of the willingly used thought. The "b.i.t.c.h on wheels who would do anything, say anything; persuade, finagle, seduce any opponents to her goals."

Or perhaps it was more complicated than that, her defenders in the media would argue. Possibly what she was, who she was, had more to do with who she'd been. That to understand the successful-high-flying-politician, you needed to look first at the strength at her core; the resilience and perseverance and resolve of the woman who had raised herself from almost nothing to the highest corridors of power in the land.

Or, wind and weather permitting-a misogynist establishment and a media hungry for sound-bite caricatures permitting-she was more than all of that.

Or less.

Even Valerie didn't know for sure.

The result of a clumsy date rape or seduction (her parents never did agree on which), Valerie had been born into the kind of poverty that liberals weep over and conservatives deny.

That neither ever does anything about.

Her father was a drug dealer, gang member, and violent alcoholic. Her mother, well, was a victim. No other words ever seemed to fit the young girl's first memories.

For years she'd watched helplessly as her father beat her mother unconscious, whipped her brothers with a studded leather belt. Came to her-crying, drunk, her siblings' blood on his torn T-shirt-calling for his little girl to "hold your daddy. Show me how much you love me."

Then he died.

Shot dead with his own gun as he lay in an alcoholic stupor on the couch. The police merely shrugged it off; another meaningless minority death. Bad for the precinct's statistics, true; otherwise insignificant.

But liberating to the little girl.

The boys in the neighborhood quickly found Valerie when she reached her teens.

Tall, well developed at an early age, an inner arrogance and strength both drew them to her and kept them at a distance. s.e.x was just another challenge for her to master, as she had school and athletics. The mechanics of it grew quickly boring-pushing, shoving, vocalizing-but the possibilities for control, for the power that that control implied, that ignited her far more than any foreplay or awkward fumbling in the back of cars.

It was in college, though, that the wild girl began to see a world beyond the moment; a prospect of greater things, better places, and new forms of power that were unavailable to uncultivated, uncultured members of society.

So she reinvented herself.

As the five or six reporters-their pads and camera crews at the ready-waited for Congresswoman Alvarez to arrive, they continued their recent game of speculation.

"Fund-raising scandal," one said.

"Secret abortion, another proclaimed with certainty."

"An affair with the president was the most popular, if least believed."

But, whatever the reason, her drastically lowered profile was beginning to cost her in the most important way possible... she was down in the polls.

Valerie was considered to be the leading Democratic candidate for the upcoming New York gubernatorial race. A liberal who was well liked by the party's conservatives, with strong ethnic appeal and a charm that guaranteed her the larger upstate towns, she seemed formidable compet.i.tion.

Seemed, until two weeks ago.

The photogenic politician had dropped from sight. Her carefully orchestrated sound bites on almost every night's newscasts dried up. And-on the House floor-the normally articulate and appealing woman had become inexplicably monosyllabic.

The rumors had started almost immediately ... the consensus being that she was remodeling herself for her race for the Governor's Mansion.

After so long an absence from her usual limelight, the growing crowd of press was anxious to see how she would emerge this time.

At Columbia, a school she'd chosen for convenience and the sheer challenge of admission, Valerie learned the world was round and possibilities endless.

If you weren't a half Puerto Rican street girl with a penny-ante criminal record and no connections.

So the reconstruction began.

Appeal was taught to become grace. s.e.xual manipulation metamorphosed into psychological influences. And sensing that the sorority system would find her out, she concentrated on athletics. Running track, swimming, she could display herself in acceptable ways, connecting with the star jock or influential professor.

Who, amazingly, always brought out more in her-in the bedroom or the cla.s.sroom-than she'd ever thought herself capable of.

Most important, her strength and native capability were concealed from some, flaunted to others. Allowed to be discovered or nurtured; coaxed out or challenged. It was a flawless, if aimless, performance.

Until one day-in a cla.s.s on "Political Brinksmanship in the Late 20th Century"-the prize suddenly became clear.

She married the attractive, connected but weak-and white-a.s.sistant professor in her senior year.

Moonlighting as a consultant to various successful candidates, her husband explained to the eager young woman the intricacies of modern politics. The art of the favor. Why people contribute money or time. What makes a good speech or a bad one.

The roots of real power.