The shadow of a missing Corsican student and a blackmailed member of Congress grew all the more ominous with the sound of a familiar voice behind him.

"h.e.l.luva place for a dead man to show up, Jerry."

"What's one more dead man to you?"

"On other days, in other places, not much. I grant you that." There was a pause while Xenos felt the author of the voice draw nearer. Close enough to reach out and strangle the life out of. "But this is one of those special days, it seems." A light laugh. "You still remember those days, don't you, Jerry?" The voice seemed to genuinely care about the answer.

Xenos never turned to look into the cold familiar eyes. "Go away." There was death in the sound.

The much older man in the thousand-dollar suit just smiled casually. "When one of my favorite people comes to town?" He laughed, with the sincerity of a man who seemed to understand human emotions. "Now, what kind of friend would I be then?"

"We were a lot of things, Herb," Xenos said as he turned to face the man, "but I don't remember friends being one of them."

Herb shrugged. "Semantics." He nodded down DuPont Circle. "Walk with me, Jerry." He set out as if expecting a recalcitrant puppy to fall into place.

After a moment, Xenos came up alongside.

Herb pulled the stub of a cigar from his jacket and began chewing it. "You see," he began without preamble, "we naturally get nervous when one of our corpses turns up inside the Beltway. Especially when we find them talking to Congress."

"I imagine you would." Xenos was completely relaxed... and aware of the two men who had dropped in behind them when they'd started off; as well as the two men just out of listening distance up ahead. He just a.s.sumed a car somewhere behind. "Faced any interesting hearings lately?"

Herb gestured up at the Capitol dome. "They're more interested in immolating each other than us, these days. Been kind of restful actually." He began chewing again until a tourist family moved well past. "Until this morning."

"Sorry to wake you."

"I'm sure you are, I'm sure you are. But the thing is, well, I am awake now, you see. That's the problem."

Xenos stopped and faced the man who he once thought of as a savior and now saw only as the devil. "We done with the word games?" Herb shrugged. "Say your piece and leave."

The older man shook his head sadly. "You've lost all sense of grace and charm in your Greek hills." He sat down on a marble bench, looking up at the much bigger man. "I've been asked to give you a message."

Xenos laughed. "Since when are you a messenger boy?

"Since this morning," it seems.

"I don't believe it." Xenos sounded almost sorry for the old man. "Who's the message from? He sat down beside him."

"Don't really know," myself. But it comes from so high, I get nosebleeds just thinking about it. The briefest of pauses. "If I allowed myself to think about it, that is."

Xenos had never seen the man look anything but confident. And he didn't look unconfident now. Just less confident. It was an impressive sight. As if Mount Rushmore had suddenly grown a new head.

"What's the message?

"Son, you're in it deep this time," Herb said in a cautionary tone. "You're shaking someone's tree hard enough for them to worry about all-ever falling out." He took out the cigar and gestured at the forest of government buildings around them. "Look around, Jerry. What do you see? What do you smell?"

Xenos just stared blankly at the man, wondering vacantly if the shot would come from the tourists taking pictures on his left or the teens making out on his right.

"What you smell," the old cold warrior continued slowly, "is fear. This city was founded on it. Fear of offending the wrong person, or of not puckering properly to another. Fear of being pa.s.sed over, fear of being singled out." He leaned in so close Xenos could smell the sausages he used to share with the man every Thursday afternoon. "Fear of being discovered."

"You used to preach fear," Xenos whispered. "Used to call it the great safety."

"Not this kind of fear. What we're talking about here, Jerry, is stupid fear. The kind that makes otherwise sane people do crazy things. Things they'll regret later, make private grievings over, but finite, permanent things." He shrugged. "No one is safe when that kind of fear starts going around. It's like an airborne virus pa.s.sed from a man on the street, to another on a telephone, to a man in a tiny office. Eventually working its way up the line until even the eunuchs in their corner suites have caught the contagion." The briefest, most spasmodic frown. "And when they catch it, son, the only cure is kill."

For the first time, Xenos saw something else in his old boss's eyes. Something he would have bet his life (and had many times) could never exist within this man.

Doubt.

"That your message?"

Herb gestured with his cigar, and a black town car rolled silently up. "No," he said simply. He stood up, looking down at the one man he'd thought he'd never lose, then lost. "My message is far simpler."

He put the cigar away, pulling a plane ticket out of the same pocket. "Your flight leaves in two hours, nonstop to Athens." He turned and walked over to the open car door. "Don't miss it."

When the car door didn't close, Xenos got up and walked over. "And?"

"What did you do in New York?"

"You tell me."

"I wish I could." He was silent for a minute. "Care to tell me what you told Hard-a.s.s Alvarez just now?"

Xenos remained silent.

Herb shook his head, closed the door, but lowered the window. "Don't ever change." He laughed lightly. "Stay pure forever, son. It's what you do best."

Xenos handed the ticket back to the old man. "Message rejected."

The old man took the ticket and put it away. "You still don't get it." The engine started. "The message was in a 9mm that I never ordered to fire." The car started to pull away. "The ticket was from me."

As he listened to the whines and whistles of the electronically swept line, the man entered the access code he needed. But before hitting the enter key, he carefully looked around the empty office-the office he'd ordered emptied immediately after getting a report on the encounter outside the Capitol.

As satisfied as the paranoid man ever was, he took a deep breath, then pressed a key.

"Canvas," came the static-filled answer after two minutes.

"This is Apple Blossom, the man whispered through a haze of confusion."

"Clarify."

The man spoke in a shouting whisper. "I say again, this is Apple Blossom, Apple, copy?"

"Line clear. Go ahead," was the emotionless response.

"Apple Blossom reporting, latest results are insufficient, insufficient, copy?" the man said, remembering Canvas's open distrust for anything but the most general comments over even secured lines.

"I warned you about going official."

"I don't need recriminations, I need solutions."

A silence on the other end of the line.

"We'll bring in Hyacinth for another talk. We could use the updates anyway."

The man looked doubtful. "And the other thing?"

"Yeah, well." An unexpectedly long pause. "He'll be extra."

"Whatever you say."

Light, somehow malevolent laughter drifted across the clean line. "Of course, darling. That goes without saying, now doesn't it?"

Four.

Xenos fumed during the entire flight back to New York. The more he got into this favor, the worse it got. And the meeting with his former boss had only confirmed his worst suspicions.

Herb Stone was a man who never owed anyone favors; who instead acquired them like a housewife does coupons. He was the epitome of the old-line intelligence bosses: a man with few if any morals; no emotional attachments to anything; and no restraints of any kind on what he might do or whom he would do it to.

So it was soul-shocking to see him forced into a position he clearly detested. That of hired gun for an unknown boss. But it was typical of the man to disobey-no, that was wrong-misinterpret orders he disagreed with.

He would've killed Xenos for many reasons, could probably have listed half a dozen or so instantly if asked.

But he would never do it just to "follow orders."

Xenos only hoped, without really knowing why, that the old man wouldn't be killed for his momentary bout of ethics.

Which led directly to the problem at hand.

The tap Xenos had placed behind Alvarez's diploma had revealed that a half hour after he'd left her, she'd received a call from her tormentors. Although he'd only heard her side of the conversation, it was enough. Her hurried orders to her staff immediately afterward were clear enough.

She was headed back to New York, most probably to another meeting with the men from Flushing. And she would most likely be carrying some cla.s.sified papers with her. She'd called "the committee repository" to request access to "Bureau updates," before catching her flight.

She'd added one other piece to the puzzle as well.

On the plane, Xenos played back that part of the tape.

ALVAREZ: "When was the last time you talked with that boy from Columbia?"

KRUSIEC: "Which boy?"

ALVAREZ: "Paul Satordi. The one who was doing the IRT research for us."

KRUSIEC: "I don't know. Couple of weeks ago, I guess. Why?"

ALVAREZ: "When, exactly?" Her voice had gone low and cautious.

KRUSIEC: "Uh, I guess it was around the time you spoke at the Ellen's Fund banquet." ALVAREZ: "He was there?"

KRUSIEC: "Don't you remember? He worked at the hotel where we were staying?"

Alvarez's voice had almost been indecipherable; it had gone so sad and mournful. "Oh G.o.d."

As he considered this newest piece, viewed in context with the rest of the continually bizarre tableau, Xenos decided what to do.

As soon as he got off the jet shuttle, he placed a cell call. An hour later his corsican contact in New York arrived at the airport.

They wandered among the kiosk food stands and souvenir shops, weaving their way through the sporadic crowds that surged through the plush terminal. The big man talked, the little man listened. For the better part of an hour Xenos reported what he knew, what he thought, drew the connections wherever and however he thought they lay.

Quattro Cani made few comments, asked fewer questions. Merely listened, nodded, and shook his head.

"When I leave this airport," Xenos finally said, "finito. Capito?"

"Lui' e morto?"

"Sconosciuto," Xenos said unemotionally. "But whether he's dead or not, he ain't a runner. I'm sure of at least that much."

"That will please his brother. A pause. "And frighten him.

"I understand."

"And this Alvarez, she is definitely involved?"

Xenos hesitated. "S. Non disposto, mal disposto. But, yeah. They turned off into a relatively empty alcove where they could talk more freely, away from the deplaning tourists and businessmen they'd wandered into."

"Willing or not, she must be made to cooperate, the Corsican said offhandedly."

"None of my business."

A broad, charming smile, so similar to Franco's that for the briefest moment Xenos wondered if it was taught to all members of the Brotherhood.

"Would you be willing to, uh, facilitare her cooperation? For appropriate remuneration, of course."

But Xenos had already turned his back and was starting to walk away.

"Just keep your end of the deal, he called over his shoulder as he mixed with the crowds."

"We have already broken ground on the new ward, Durete," Quattro Cani called after him. Then, looking around to be sure he hadn't been spotted-his death warrant if seen by the wrong eyes-he wandered away in the opposite direction.

To make his calls and set his plans.

Plans-more or less venomous depending on how the game was going-were also being laid in the den of a quiet home in Georgetown.

Senator Rod Buckley carefully lined up his next shot while waiting for his two guests to finish pouring their drinks. "Three in the corner," he said as he concentrated.