"You could say that." I fell back onto the pillow.

"You probably need food. I'll order up some dinner when we're done."

"The Last Supper?"

"The Last Supper," he echoed. "Funny. Is that a Judas joke?"

"If the shoe fits ..."

"You gotta have some faith in me, Jack."

"Faith?!" I laughed. "For Christ's sake, Sam. I've been bitten, punched, tackled, arrested, shot at, drugged, double-crossed, and hung out to dry thanks to you."

"That's why you need faith."

"Excuse me if I say 'f.u.c.k you' instead."

"Suit yourself," he shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes. "Smoke?"

I was dying for one, and he knew I would be, but I hesitated. "Help yourself," he insisted, flipping the lid open and offering them. I relented, propped myself up on one elbow, and tried to take one. I couldn't get it out.

"Let me show you," he said with a smile, removing a false top that had the tips of nineteen cigarettes attached to it. Underneath was a small barrel, the diameter of the missing Lucky, protruding from a metal box.

"It's triggered here," he said, indicating the side of the pack, "by this b.u.t.ton underneath the wrapping. You have to give it a good push with your thumb. They didn't want it to be too sensitive, for obvious reasons." He held the pack in his hand, demonstrated how to fire it. "The tech boys say it's accurate up to twenty feet, but I'd be skeptical about that. You want to be close in, I'd say, point-blank if you can." He twisted the bottom of the pack open to reveal three pointed pellets-small, probably six-millimeter-stowed in a thin piece of Styrofoam. "They're hollowed out," he said, "and filled with hydrogen cyanide. It's not pretty, but it's quick. Five to twenty seconds, depending where you get your target. The closer you are to a major artery, the faster it'll be. There's one in the chamber already, so you've got four shots to work with. To reload you just drop one down the barrel." He replaced the top and handed me the pack. "That's it," he said.

"What the h.e.l.l's going on, Sam?"

"Like I said, I know what's supposed to happen tomorrow, but I don't have a clue where or how."

"And since I'm the fall guy, I have to be there, so I can use this to stop it...."

"That's the idea," he said.

"Well, it's a f.u.c.ked-up idea, Sam. Significantly f.u.c.ked up."

"You got a better one?"

"Yeah! How about we use these pellets on the a.s.sholes who thought this thing up! That's who you're waiting for, isn't it?"

"Some of them."

I paused, took a deep breath. "Just how big is this thing, Sam?"

"I'm not even sure myself," he sighed. "But it seems to go in every which way. Including up."

"How high?"

"I can only guess."

"Christ, Sam. How'd you get mixed up in it?"

He exhaled, and sat down beside me on the bed. "Somebody in special ops came to me a few months ago, felt me out about servicing an outside client. I knew it was iffy, but I went along to see where it was going. I didn't find out who the target was until about two weeks ago and then I realized how big the setup was. To tell you the truth, I didn't really think it would come off until you came back with the information from the Colonel."

I turned the cigarette gun over in my hand. It looked real enough. I put my thumb on the trigger, got the feel of it. "How do you know I'll be close enough?"

"That's one thing I do know. Iceberg's my operation." I gave him a look but he shrugged it off. "As you know, we're providing the cover story, which includes you. You'll be on-site, in the same general vicinity as the shooter. Johnson and Chase will be a.s.signed to you, and a Secret Service agent who's in on it will be close by. As soon as the president's a confirmed kill, they set you loose and shoot you on the run. The Secret Service guy gets to be the hero."

"When the president's a confirmed kill? Jesus, Sam."

"Well?"

"Johnson, Chase, and the Secret Service guy. What about the shooter-is there just the one?"

"Three," he said.

"It gets better all the time."

"They'll be in separate locations. But if you get one, they'll abort."

"And if I do manage to pull it off? What about next time?"

"It'll buy me some time. Maybe I can figure out who's behind it before they put it together again."

"Four bullets, four guys," I said. "Not great odds, are they?" I dropped the pack onto one of the bedside tables.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I haven't got anything else up my sleeve."

I took a deep breath.

"You figure the world's worth saving, Sam?"

"I dunno," he said. "It's f.u.c.ked up, all right. But it's the only one we've got."

NINETEEN.

The last of three cars pulled up outside the house. "That's it," Sam said, turning away from the window. "Everybody's here." I was lying back on the bed, smoking one of Melik's Turkish blends, trying to convince myself that I had a chance of surviving the next twenty-four hours. Sam had told me that these guys were coming to give the final thumbs-up (or down) on the operation, but he wouldn't say who they were no matter how hard I pressed him. So I was surprised when he threw me my jacket. pulled up outside the house. "That's it," Sam said, turning away from the window. "Everybody's here." I was lying back on the bed, smoking one of Melik's Turkish blends, trying to convince myself that I had a chance of surviving the next twenty-four hours. Sam had told me that these guys were coming to give the final thumbs-up (or down) on the operation, but he wouldn't say who they were no matter how hard I pressed him. So I was surprised when he threw me my jacket.

"Let's go," he said.

"Where?"

"You're on."

"On?"

"It's showtime."

"n.o.body knocked on my door and said, 'Five minutes, Mr. Teller.'"

"Put the jacket on, Jack."

I crushed the cigarette in the ashtray I had balanced on my chest, rolled off the bed, and slipped the jacket on over my T-shirt. "I guess they wanna see who you got for the Kovinski role," I said.

"That's the idea."

"I should feel honored."

"Just don't f.u.c.k up." Sam was uncharacteristically edgy, which didn't do a lot for my nerves.

"How the h.e.l.l am I gonna f.u.c.k up, Sam?"

"If they decide to abort this thing, you won't be getting that last meal I promised you. So be cooperative."

"Cooperative is my middle name," I said, and Sam opened the door.

An old grandfather clock was striking eleven as we entered the ground-floor library. It was a substantial room, with oak-paneled walls and a twenty-five-foot-high vaulted ceiling. A circular stairway led up to a book-lined gallery around the upper perimeter, interrupted only by a ma.s.sive stone chimney that was decorated with a variety of antique guns, knives, swords, and instruments of medieval torture.

Five leather armchairs were arranged by the fire at the far end of the room, three of them occupied-by a silver-haired gentleman with his back to me and, to his right, a fat guy with a pencil mustache, who I recognized as agency legend Harvey King. Sitting opposite him was a small, wiry fellow with a gray brush cut, thick gla.s.ses, a short-sleeved white shirt, and a red bow tie. He was drinking Pepsi out of a bottle.

"Sit down, Jack," the silver-haired man said. I knew the face, but I couldn't place it. Wide cheekbones and broad shoulders, strong, chiseled features, wavy hair, and full lips, he looked like an aging Roman G.o.d. Dressed impeccably from head to toe in oversize Italian eyegla.s.ses, a silk tie, blue blazer, and two-hundred-dollar shoes, he oozed money.

"Relax," he said smoothly in a slight accent. "Have a drink. I can recommend the cognac. It's one hundred years old."

"Bourbon," I said to a butler type who was hovering in a corner. Sam ordered scotch on the rocks and took the seat between the smooth talker and the Pepsi man. The empty chair with its back to the flames was reserved for me.

"A lot of men in your position would try to bulls.h.i.t their way out of it," the silver-haired man continued, "but I'm guessing that you're smart enough to know there is no way out. The question for you is not what what will happen, it's will happen, it's how how it will happen. I'd like to see you get through it with as much dignity and as little pain as possible." it will happen. I'd like to see you get through it with as much dignity and as little pain as possible."

"I'll go along with that," I said, accepting my drink. The man in the bow tie tapped his empty bottle with a fingernail by way of ordering a new one.

"Fine." The silver-haired man smiled warmly, then paused to look around at his colleagues. They showed no expression, which seemed to mean they were satisfied so far. His gaze landed back on me, and just then I realized why I knew the face.

Johnny Rosetti was a highly successful businessman in South Florida, with interests in numerous restaurants, nightclubs, and hotels. But those were just fronts, used to launder the money he made off gambling, prost.i.tution, drugs, extortion, murder ... that sort of thing. But as much as Rosetti and his pals pulled in, it didn't compare to what they lost when Castro tossed them out of Cuba. A hundred million a year was a conservative estimate-tax-free, of course. Naturally, they wanted it back and weren't too impressed with Kennedy's efforts in that department, so I wasn't exactly shocked to find him a member of our little group.

"Isn't it great?" I said, unable to help myself.

"What?" Rosetti smiled graciously.

"That a small-time pimp like yourself could rise out of the gutter to reach the very pinnacle of society. Imagine-one-hundred-year-old cognac. What a country, huh?"

The smile froze on Rosetti's face and his eyes went ice-cold. I wished I had the poison pellets because I would've been very pleased to put one in his eye then and there. But if anyone was gonna die in the next few seconds, it was me. Fortunately, Harvey King didn't give a s.h.i.t about Johnny Rosetti's wounded pride.

"Let's get to the f.u.c.king point," the big man said, shifting his considerable weight toward me. He had a funny, high-pitched voice that didn't fit his three-hundred-pound frame.

Harvey and I had crossed paths a couple of times in the lead-up to the invasion, but just in pa.s.sing. He kept a low profile around the agency, steering clear of anything that smacked of camaraderie. He was a hero to the cowboys he ran in and out of Cuba, who loved the fact that a hard-drinking, gun-toting, wh.o.r.e-chasing son of a b.i.t.c.h like Harvey could roam the halls of power, sticking it to the preppies who ran the place. The leadership, with their Ivy League cool, put up with him as a necessary, if unpleasant, character who was an acknowledged wizard when it came to black ops. Both factions were incensed when he got early retirement courtesy of Bobby Kennedy.

"Tell me about Zapata," he said, referring to the code name for the Bay of Pigs. "What happened with you and Fisher?"

"We didn't see eye to eye," I said, not sure where he was going with it.

"He arrested you, didn't he?"

"He locked me up."

"Why?"

"Like I said, I didn't agree with some of the stuff he was doing." He glared at me for a beat, snorted, then reached into his jacket, pulled out a handkerchief, and sneezed into it. I thought his eyes were gonna pop out of his head. "You were concerned about the Guantanamo operation," he said, wiping his nose.

"That's right."

"How did you know about it?

"Fisher told me."

"What did he tell you?"

"That a bunch of mercenaries dressed as Cuban regulars were going to attack American forces at the base in an effort to provoke the president into sending in the Marines."

"You thought that was wrong?"

"Yeah, I thought it was wrong."

"I want you to give me the names of everyone you discussed that operation with."

I saw what he was getting at now. Once I was a world-famous dead a.s.sa.s.sin, every hack in the country would be tracking down anybody I ever said h.e.l.lo to. Harvey wanted names so he could make them disappear before some reporter got to them. He was protecting his operation's integrity. (Their word, not mine.) "Go to h.e.l.l," I said. He smiled and nodded, looking unexpectedly pleased with my response.

"Did you report your concerns about the Guantanamo operation to anyone in the government?" he continued.

"Yes, I did."

"The name and agency of that person?"

"Sam Clay of Central Intelligence," I said. Harvey turned to Sam, who nodded.

"That's true," he said. "And I told him to forget about it."

Harvey rotated back toward me. "Did you take that advice, Jack? Did you keep your mouth shut?"

"Yes," I said.

"Would you tell me if you hadn't?"

"No."