"Definitely Briess," he said, staring at Benita. "Part of the Morse Cabal. Benita, when did you hear he was bothering your kids?"

"Friday, when I spoke to Angelica on the phone, she said my son had been paid to get caller ID to trace where I am when I call them."

"That won't do them any good, will it?" the First Lady asked Chad.

"No. Caller ID won't help him. But if they've talked to her son, they might try something more sophisticated from that end, with or without his help."

"Can you prevent that?"

"We can play games. Escalate the complications. No barrier is ever unbreakable, but we can keep them off for a while."

"Make them think I'm in Denver," murmured Benita. "That's the impression I've been giving them."

The SOS set down her glass and wiped her lips, making a strange face. "You know, in recent years I've dealt with people who live in very different worlds from the one I'm familiar with. Some cultures are more foreign to me than the Pistachi In Iran or Arabia or Afghanistan, you'd swear there were no women in the society. They are as invisible as ghosts and have approximately the same status as cows. In parts of Latin America, family pride is so delicately balanced you have to watch every word. I try to see their point of view, of course, but the dissonance often gives me a feeling of unreality. Their societies haven't changed fundamentally for . . . centuries.

"During that first Cabinet meeting when the president showed us the cube, I saw it as fiction. It wasn't until Jerusalem disappeared that I grasped the fact it was reality. The envoys are real. They are going to drag us, kicking and screaming, into a new age."

Benita murmured, "I honestly think they want to minimize the kicking and screaming."

The FL turned the talk to other things, they chatted for a time, then bade their farewells. Chad spirited Benita down the back stairs and out once more, to pick up another car and return home by another route. The trip was a long, twisty one, as he made sure they weren't followed.

"Who's supposed to be following us?" she asked, when they turned at the same corner for the fifth time.

"The same bunch," he offered. "The cabal."

"Why is there a cabal?"

"Oh, there are always sore losers who hate the president, any president. It's a kind of syndrome. They give money or effort to a campaign, their guy gets beaten, they take it personally. They figure they were right to support who they did, so the election must have been fixed or the public was bamboozled, or something. They usually don't examine the real cause of their hatred. Morse probably hates the president because of his wife."

"Morse's wife?"

"No. The First Lady. Morse made a rather crude pass at the lady years ago, long before her husband ran for president. Morse was drunk, at a public event, and it's unlikely he even knew who she was. She let him have it loudly enough that everyone heard it. I think the words 'lecherous sot' entered into her commentary. There was a minor furor, and it took him a while to live it down. He's been heard referring to her as a 'mouthy bitch.' With him it's simple revenge, though that's not what he says in public."

"Who else?"

"Oh, there are Pentagon guys who wouldn't mind starting a war if it would keep their budgets up.

There are always people over at State who depend on crisis to advance their careers. And we know, but can't prove, there's a handful of congressmen and senators who get soft money campaign funds from nameless but probably drug-related sources south of the border. Add to that the handful of old warriors who've got their thumbs deep in the traditional values pie."

"Meaning what? What are their values?"

"Oh, guts and glory, defined as unquestioning patriotism. Marital fidelity, defined as discretion in extramarital affairs. Traditional' gender roles, that is, excusing rape and abuse by blaming the victim."

"But they're hunting for me," Benita said. "Why would they be interested in me?"

"Not they, I don't imagine. Him. Morse. He wants to use you to smear the president. If you turned out to be a mistress, he'd love it. Or a spy. Or a tool of the possibly communist Pistach." He turned a corner. "You can sit up now. There's nobody behind us."

"Why are we in a different car?"

"Just in case somebody saw you arrive and bugged that car figuring you'd go home the same way."

"If it were me, I'd bug them all," she said, rearranging herself.

"We thought of that. This one was with somebody we trust, several blocks away." He spoke cheerfully, examining her face in the mirror. "What's wrong?"

"It isn't a game," she cried. "I mean, I'm not a game piece. What do they intend to do with me if they find me?"

"The putative cabal? I'm not privy to their plans, Benita. Best thing is to keep you from being found."

"Do you know what's happening in Jerusalem? Besides what's on the news."

"The U.S. and NATO are providing aid to international relief organizations that are setting up tent cities for the people who've been displaced. Some of them are moving in with families in the suburbs or other cities. Everyone is very surprised that there hasn't been a wave of violence. The Saudis, by the way, are afraid either Mecca, or the Saudi women, or both may be next. They treat their women almost as badly as the Afghanis do. Women have been leaving Saudi Arabia ever since the ugly plague was reported."

"Going where?"

"About half the population belongs to the royal family, and most of them have other homes in other places. France. The U.S. Switzerland. Britain."

"If the envoys decide to make Arabian women ugly, or Iranian ones, it won't matter where they are,"

she said.

"Shall I quote you?" He laughed.

"Of course not."

"So far as we know, the media aren't looking for you except by putting Attention: Jane Doe ads in the personals. You haven't agreed to be on 20/20 have you? Or Date/me?"

"Is there such an ad?" she asked.

"There certainly is, are! People from the FBI have had several little chats with the news people," he said cheerily. "Here's your door. Let me pull right up beside it."

He asked if he could see the job his agency had done on the apartment, and she invited him up.

Sasquatch greeted him with a very threatening growl, but when Chad hunkered down, offered his hand and talked with Sasquatch as he scratched him behind the ears, the dog decided he was all right, gave him a good sniffing, and went back to sleep. The two of them had coffee and spent a pleasant quarter of an hour just chatting before he went home. It occurred to Benita that this was the first time in ... what?, eighteen, nineteen years?, that she had sat in a room alone with an intelligent man in pleasant conversation. Not counting men she worked for.

The phone by the bed made her think of Angelica, and after dithering about it for a few minutes, trying to remember if Angel was in the new apartment yet, and what she'd said about moving her phone, she dialed the same number and crossed her fingers.

Angelica's phone number hadn't changed, though her voice had. She answered with a crisp, "Yes."

"It's me, honey."

"Oh, Mom. I thought it was Dad again."

"Has he been bothering you?"

"Seems like every five minutes this evening. He got bailed out by that person who wants him to help find you. So now he's facing a trial and he's all up in the air. I think the guy who bailed him out may be connected to the guy that was hanging around here. According to Dad, his guy was bigger, taller, with gray hair. He gave Dad a card with the name Prentice Arthur, and there was an even bigger guy with him called Dink."

Score two for Chad. Both of them members of the cabal.

Benita asked, "So, are you moved in to your new place?"

"As of today. I brought the last stuff up this afternoon, and they just connected the phone an hour ago. The manager was really nice to let me skip on the lease of the other apartment."

"I didn't think it could work, your living with him."

"It didn't, Mom. I think he's moved in with the girlfriend. He's got a phone now. You can call him directly."

Benita's lips were pressed so tightly that it took her a moment to respond. "I won't, Angel. Since I know he's trying to make money out of doing something that may hurt me, he's . . . well, he's broken the tie. I've been thinking about mother bears a lot."

"Bears?"

"Like on the nature shows. Mother bear is very fierce, protecting the cubs. She risks her own life for them. She does everything she can to let them grow up safe, but a time comes when she turns on them and drives them away. She's done everything she can, and from then on, they're on their own.

"The only way I can handle this is to be like a mother bear. Let the cub be himself without anything from me, no complaint, no anger, no love, certainly no interference, and that means no nothing. See what he becomes. See what he can be, totally on his own. At best, he'll turn out great. At worst, he won't be able to blame me for anything past today."

There, she'd said it, realizing as she said it that it was totally true. She was not going to overlook it.

He had made his own choices, now he could stand by them.

"I can't prove he took money," Angelica cried.

"That's all right, dear. Knowing Carlos, I'm sure he did."

"How's the job?"

"I love it. Much nicer than my old one."

"I'm glad you're enjoying it. It makes me feel better about things."

"Me, too. Goodnight, Angel."

Bert-MONDAY On Monday morning, Bert Shipton received a phone call. The speaker, who did not identify himself, offered Bert a large sum of money if he would come to Washington, D.C., and introduce the speaker to his wife.

"Benita?" blurted Bert.

"She is your wife?"

"Yeah. But, she's not in Washington. She's in Denver."

"No, sir. She is pretending to be in Denver, but we believe she is actually in Washington. We would like to be introduced to her, and you can do this for us. We will pay you ten thousand dollars for your time and trouble."

Ten thousand dollars! Bert's mouth began to water. Ten thousand dollars! The best he'd read of in the want ads wouldn't have netted him ten thousand in a year! Ten thousand would pay off the mortgage arrears. And ten thousand for doing almost nothing was a kick. He could buy into that.

"What d'you want me to do?"

"You will have yourself groomed. A barber shop? A shave and haircut? You will buy new clothing.

A suit. Shoes. Other garments as needed. Then go to the airport and fly to Washington today. We will meet you there."

Bert growled, "I don't have money for clothes . . ."

"Mr. Shipton. Listen carefully. There is an envelope in your mailbox with money in it. If you go to a bar, if you have even one drink, the deal is off! We will ask your son to introduce us to Benita. If you want the money, you must stay sober."

Bert grunted, almost dropping the phone in his eagerness to get to the mailbox. The envelope was there, a plain white one with his name on it, containing ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Enough to keep him floating for a long while. He wavered, shifting from foot to foot, thinking of excuses he might make, like he'd been robbed of the money, or lost it ...

"If you drink," said a voice at his ear, "the deal is off! And we're watching, so you can't lie to us."

Bert jumped and stared around himself, seeing nothing but heat haze, rising off the pavement in wavering lines. Like a mirage, he told himself sternly. Just a mirage. Looks like all kinds of things, but it's only a mirage.

He took the money, put it in his wallet, and went to the barber shop, where a few moments under a steaming towel made him feel slightly better. The steam gave him the idea of going to the baths, where a much younger Bert had occasionally sobered up. After that, he went to the men's store in the nearest mall, where he outfitted himself as inexpensively as possible, off the rack. Every dollar spent on clothes was a dollar not spent on something more fun.

The sight of himself in the mirror, shaved, shorn, and decently clad, came as a shock. He'd worn a suit when he and Benita had been married. He'd worn a suit to the kids' high school graduations, though he hadn't planned on being outdone by his own kids in the education department and was indignant about that. And he'd worn a suit to Benita's mother's funeral, though the last thing he'd wanted to do right then was spend an afternoon thinking about that old bitch. Wearing a suit meant trouble, so far as Bert was concerned. Not a good omen, not good at all.

He bought two extra shirts, plus underwear and socks. At the corner drugstore he added a razor and a toothbrush to the shopping bag. There was still a ticket to Washington to buy, and airfares weren't cheap, as Bert had found out last year when he'd priced roundtrips to California. Angelica had invited them to come, and he'd talked Benita out of it on the grounds they couldn't afford two tickets and he didn't want her traveling alone.

He found a taxi outside the nearest hotel and slumped in the seat, already exhausted, his hands shaking. "You all right?" asked the driver.

"Yeah," said Bert.

"You get to feelin' sick, you holler," the driver instructed, adjusting the rearview mirror so he could keep an eye on his passenger. The man looked sick. Sort of yellowish around the eyes.

At the airport, Bert went to the men's room and put cold water on his face. His insides seemed to be all up and down, like a roller coaster. When he opened his eyes, he stared at himself in the mirror, only to be reminded of Benita, the way she sometimes looked, when she didn't know he was watching her. This same sort of dazed expression. Sometimes she'd stand beside her spice rack, leaning against the wall with her nose over an open jar of anise or cinnamon sticks, her eyes shut, her forehead wrinkled. Once or twice he'd opened the jars and sniffed at them. The smell was nice, but that's all it was. It didn't make his mouth water. It didn't excite him any. He couldn't fathom why she stood there the way she did, sniffing at ... at what? It made him angry at her, but then, most things she did made him angry at her.

Now he had that same expression on his face. So, what was he sniffing at? The possibility of going somewhere? Doing something? It had been a long time since he'd gone anywhere, done anything. He tried to think about the going, the doing, but it was hard. Thinking was hard, lately. Just lately, he assured himself. Just this last little while. It wasn't that he was stupid. Bert was absolutely one hundred percent not stupid. He was as smart as anybody, but just this last little while, it was hard to concentrate on anything. It could be the weed. When he was out of money, sometimes he moved a little weed for a friend of Larry's. Not usually, not enough to risk getting caught with it, but now and then it was okay, just so he didn't get in a pattern. Except, lately, he'd been using more of it himself, and maybe that was what made it hard to think.

After several vague moments spent standing, head down, not moving or thinking, he worked up the energy to go buy the ticket. Lucky him, the flight was leaving in twenty minutes. No baggage to check.

All he had was the shopping bag. The money was in his wallet and most of the clothes were on his back.

At the newsstand, he bought a canvas airline bag to put the extra shirts in, and a sports magazine, and some mints because his throat was so dry.

He only had a one-way ticket. Maybe he should have bought a roundtrip. Then again, there was no point in wasting the money. He'd have plenty of money when this was over. As he went down the concourse, he passed the first bar with only a slight swerve of footsteps in its direction. He hesitated at the next one, but the plane was leaving too soon for him to stop. As it was, he was the last person to board. The plane was half empty, so Bert had a window seat with an empty aisle seat next to him. The flight attendant came by and reminded him to put his seatbelt on. He fumbled with it, hands trembling again.

Then they made an announcement about beverage service, and his hands steadied, he licked his lips and tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. He couldn't wait for the flight attendant to get to him, and he shifted in the seat. His skin felt itchy. Like it had ants crawling on it.

A voice spoke from the empty aisle seat next to him. "Not one drink, Bert. Not one. Or we throw you out of the plane and watch you fly."

He couldn't see anything in the seat. His eyes confirmed vacancy, his hand, tentatively reached, encountered nothing. As frightened as he could ever remember being, he turned his eyes away, put his head back and, for the next several hours, pretended to be sleeping.

When he arrived in Washington, the voice guided him to a taxi, and the taxi to a hotel where Bert found a room awaiting him, all paid for. When he got into the room, he took his jacket off and stretched out on the bed, just for a moment, before going out on a foraging trip. The money he had left was burning a hole in his pocket. He thought about it. There was a bar downstairs. He'd seen it on the way in. He tasted the beer he was going to drink, feeling it sliding down his throat, feeling his body loosen and swim, all the tight muscles letting go ...

The being who had accompanied him from Albuquerque encouraged the vision, the feeling, the quiet. It left him sleeping. He would stay asleep until he was needed. The Fluiquosm were very good at keeping prey quiet and in good condition until needed.

Benita-TUESDAY NIGHT Tuesday morning, Benita woke up feeling like death warmed over. She went downstairs to work, but Simon sent her back upstairs, where she remained achy and fretful all day, feeling as though she was coming down with the flu or a rotten chest cold. She went to bed early with a glass of warm milk and one of her hoarded sleeping pills. She didn't take them often, keeping them for emergencies, when Bert was being impossible and she was too hurt or angry to sleep. She hadn't planned to need them in Washington, but she was thankful to have a few left.

Despite the pill, she couldn't settle. Sasquatch turned around and around on the foot of the bed until she yelled at him. He gave her an offended look, jumped off the bed, and curled up in his huge dog basket, though even there, he kept up a restless shifting and ear-pricking, as though something was bothering him. Finally, about midnight, she fell asleep with the light on, some time later rousing just enough to switch it off without interrupting the dream she was having about trekking through a jungle.

Sasquatch was with her, nervously alert, woofing low in his throat the way he did when he saw a skunk or a really big raccoon or Bert with the blind staggers.