"I didnt see anybody. Neither did Ed or-"

"Its okay, Jack," interrupted Holcroft. "Forget it. The night I left we had a party. One or two stayed over." It was all Noel could think of to say.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not looked in his bedroom. He went there now, his hand reaching for the light switch on the wall.

He expected it, but it was still a shock. The disorientation was now somehow complete.

Again, each piece of furniture had been moved to a different position. The bed was the first thing that struck his eye; it was oddly frightening. No part of it touched the wall. Instead, it was in the center of the room, isolated. His bureau stood in front of a window; a small writing desk was dwarfed against the expanse of the right wall. As had happened minutes ago, when first hed seen the living room, the images of what his bedroom looked like three days ago kept flashing before him, replaced by the strangeness of what he now observed.

Then he saw it and gasped. Hanging down from the ceiling, strapped together with dull black tape, was his second telephone, the extension cord snaking up the wall and across the ceiling to the hook that held it.

It was spinning slowly.

The pain shifted from his stomach to his chest; his eyes were transfixed on the sight, on the suspended instrument revolving slowly in midair. He was afraid to look beyond, but he knew he had to; he had to understand.

And when he did, his breath came back to him. The phone was in the direct path of his bathroom door and the door was open. He saw the curtains billowing in the window above the basin. The steady stream of cold wind was making the telephone spin.

He walked quickly into the bathroom to shut the window. As he was about to pull the curtains, he saw a brief flash of illumination outside; a match had been struck in another window across the courtyard, the flare startling in the darkness. He looked out.

There was the woman again! The blond-haired woman, her upper body silhouetted beyond another set of sheer curtains. He stared at the figure, mesmerized by it.

She turned as she had turned before, and walked away as she had walked away minutes ago. Out of sight. And the dim light in the window went out.

What was happening? What did it mean? Things were being orchestrated to frighten him. But by whom and for what purpose? And what had happened to Peter Baldwin, Esq., he of the intense voice and the command to cancel Geneva? Was Baldwin a part of the terror, or was he a victim of it?

Victim ... victim? It was an odd word to use, he thought. Why should there be any victims? And what did Baldwin mean when he said he had "spent twenty years with MI Six"?

MI Six? A branch of British intelligence. If he remembered correctly, MI Five was the section that dealt with domestic matters; Six concerned itself with problems outside the country. The English CIA, as it were.

Good God! Did the British know about the Geneva document? Was British intelligence aware of the massive theft of thirty years ago? On the surface, it would appear so.... Yet that was not what Peter Baldwin had implied.

You have no idea what youre doing. No one does but me.

And then there was silence, and the line went dead.

Holcroft walked out of the bathroom and paused beneath the suspended telephone; it was barely moving now, but it had not stopped. It was an ugly sight, made macabre by the profusion of dull black tape that held the instrument together. As if the phone had been mummified, never to be used again.

He continued toward the bedroom door, then instinctively stopped and turned. Something had caught his eye, something he had not noticed before. The center drawer of the small writing desk was open. He looked closer. Inside the drawer was a sheet of paper.

His breathing stopped as he stared at the page below.

It couldnt be. It was insane. The single sheet of paper was brownish yellow. With age. It was identical to the page that had been kept in a vault in Geneva for thirty years. The letter filled with threats written by fanatics who revered a martyr named Heinrich Clausen. The writing was the same; the odd Germanic printing of English words, the ink that was faded but still legible.

And what was legible was astonishing. For it had been written more than thirty years ago.

NOEL CLAUSEN-HOLCROFT NOTHING IS AS IT WAS FOR YOU. NOTHING CAN EVER BE THE SAME....

Before he read further, Noel picked up an edge of the page. It crumbled under his touch.

Oh, God! It was written thirty years ago!

And that fact made the remainder of the message frightening.

THE PAST WAS PREPARATION, THE FUTURE IS COMMITTED TO THE MEMORY OF A MAN AND HIS DREAM. HIS WAS AN ACT OF DARING AND BRILLIANCE IN A WORLD GONE MAD. NOTHING MUST STAND IN THE WAY OF THAT DREAMS FULFILLMENT.

WE ARE THE SURVIVORS OF WOLFSSCHANZE. THOSE OF US WHO LIVE WILL DEDICATE OUR LIVES AND BODIES TO THE PROTECTION OF THAT MANS DREAM. IT WILL BE FULFILLED, FOR IT IS ALL THAT IS LEFT. AN ACT OF MERCY THAT WELL SHOW THE WORLD THAT WE WERE BETRAYED, THAT WE WERE NOT AS THE WORLD BELIEVED US TO BE.

WE, THE MEN OF WOLFSSCHANZE, KNOW WHAT THE BEST OF US WERE. AS HEINRICH CLAUSEN KNEW.

IT IS NOW UP TO YOU, NOEL CLAUSEN-HOLCROFT, TO COMPLETE WHAT YOUR FATHER BEGAN. YOU ARE THE WAY. YOUR FATHER WISHED IT SO.

MANY WILL TRY TO STOP YOU. TO THROW OPEN THE FLOODGATES AND DESTROY THE DREAM. BUT THE MEN OF WOLFSSCHANZE DO SURVIVE. YOU HAVE OUR WORD THAT ALL THOSE WHO INTERFERE WILL BE STOPPED THEMSELVES.

ANY WHO STAND IN YOUR WAY, WHO TRY TO DISSUADE YOU, WHO TRY TO DECEIVE YOU WTTH LIES, WILL BE ELIMINATED.

AS YOU AND YOURS WILL BE SHOULD YOU HESITATE. OR FAIL.

THIS IS OUR OATH TO YOU.

Noel grabbed the paper out of the drawer; it fell apart in his hand. He let the fragments fall to the floor.

"Goddamned maniacs!" He slammed the drawer shut and ran out of the bedroom. Where was the telephone? Where the hell was the goddamned telephone? By the window-that was it; it was on the kitchen table by the fucking window!

"Maniacs!" he screamed again at no one. But not really at no one: at a man in Geneva who had been on a train bound for Zurich. Maniacs might have written that page of garbage thirty years ago, but now, thirty years later, other maniacs had delivered it! They had broken into his home, invaded his privacy, touched his belongings.... God knows what else, he thought, thinking of Peter Baldwin, Esq. A man who had traveled thousands of miles to see him, and talk with him ... silence, a click, a dead telephone line.

He looked at his watch. It was almost one oclock in the morning. What was it in Zurich? Six? Seven? The banks in Switzerland opened at eight. La Grande Banque de Geneve had a branch in Zurich; Manfredi would be there.

The window. He was standing in front of the window where he had stood only minutes ago, waiting for Baldwin to come back on the phone. The window. Across the courtyard in the opposite apartment. The three brief flares of a match ... the blond-haired woman in the window!

Holcroft put his hand in his pocket to make sure he had his keys. He did. He ran to the door, let himself out, raced for the elevator, and pushed the button. The indicator showed that the car was on the tenth floor; the arrow did not move.

God damn it!

He ran to the staircase and started down, taking the steps two at a time. He reached the ground floor and dashed out into the lobby.

"Jesus, Mr. Holcroft!" Jack stared at him. "You scared the shit out of me!"

"Do you know the doorman in the next building?" shouted Noel.

"Which one?"

"Christ! That one!" Holcroft gestured to the right.

"Thats three-eighty. Yeah, sure."

"Come on with me!"

"Hey, wait a minute, Mr. Holcroft. I cant leave here."

"Well only be a minute. Theres twenty dollars in it for you."

"Only a minute...."

The doorman at three-eighty greeted them, understanding quickly that he was to give accurate information to Jacks friend.

"Im sorry, sir, but theres no one in that apartment. Hasnt been for almost three weeks. But Im afraid its been rented; the new tenants will be coming in...."

"There is someone there!" said Noel, trying to control himself. "A blond-haired woman. Ive got to find out who she is."

"A blond-haired woman? Kind of medium height, sort of good-looking, smokes a lot?"

"Yes, thats the one! Who is she?"

"You live in your place long, mister?"

"What?"

"I mean, have you been there a long time?"

"Whats that got to do with anything?"

"I think maybe youve been drinking...."

"What the hell are you talking about?! Who is that woman?"

"Not is, mister. Was. The blond woman youre talking about was Mrs. Palatyne. She died a month ago."

Noel sat in the chair in front of the window, staring across the courtyard. Someone was trying to drive him crazy. But why? It did not make sense! Fanatics, maniacs from thirty years ago, had sprung across three decades, commanding younger, unknown troops thirty years later. Again, why?

He had called the St. Regis. Room four-elevens telephone was working, but it was continuously busy. And a woman he had seen clearly did not exist. But she did exist! And she was a part of it; he knew it.

He got out of the chair, walked to the strangely placed bar, and poured himself a drink. He looked at his watch; it was one-fifty. He had ten minutes to wait before the overseas operator would call him back; the bank could be reached at two A.M., New York time. He carried his glass back to the chair in front of the window. On the way, he passed his FM radio. It was not where it usually was of course; that was why he noticed it. Absently, he turned it on. He liked music; it soothed him.

But it was words, not music, that he heard. The rat-tat-tatting beneath an announcers voice indicated one of those "all-news" stations. The dial had been changed. He should have known. Nothing is as it was for you....

Something being said on the radio caught his attention. He turned quickly in the chair, part of his drink spilling onto his trousers.

"... police have cordoned off the hotels entrances. Our reporter, Richard Dunlop, is on the scene, calling in from our mobile unit. Come in, Richard. What have you learned?"

There was a burst of static followed by the voice of an excited newscaster.

"The mans name was Peter Baldwin, John. He was an Englishman. Arrived yesterday, or at least thats when he registered at the St. Regis; the police are contacting the airlines for further information. As far as can be determined, he was over here on vacation. There was no listing of a company on the hotel registry card."

"When did they discover the body?"

"About a half hour ago. A maintenance man went up to the room to check the telephone and found Mr. Baldwin sprawled out on the bed. The rumors here are wild and you dont know what to believe, but the thing thats stressed is the method of killing. Apparently, it was vicious, brutal. Baldwin was garroted, they said. A wire pulled through his throat. An hysterical maid from the fourth floor was heard screaming to the police that the room vas drenched with-"

"Was robbery the motive?" interrupted the anchorman, in the interests of taste.

"We havent been able to establish that. The police arent talking. I gather theyre waiting for someone from the British consulate to arrive."

"Thank you, Richard Dunlop. Well stay in touch.... That was Richard Dunlop at the St. Regis Hotel, on Fifty-fifth Street in Manhattan. To repeat, a brutal murder took place at one of New Yorks most fashionable hotels this morning. An Englishman named Peter Baldwin ..."

Holcroft shot out of the chair, lurched at the radio, and turned it off. He stood above it, breathing rapidly. He did not want to admit to himself that he had heard what he had just heard. It was not anything he had really considered; it simply was not possible.

But it was possible. It was real; it had happened. It was death. The maniacs from thirty years ago were not caricatures, not figures from some melodrama. They were vicious killers. And they were deadly serious.

Peter Baldwin, Esq., had told him to cancel Geneva. Baldwin had interfered with the dream, with the covenant. And now he was dead, brutally killed with a wire through his throat.

With difficulty, Noel walked back to the chair and sat down. He raised his glass to his lips and drank several long swallows of whiskey; the scotch did nothing for him. The pounding in his chest only accelerated.

A flare of a match! Across the courtyard, in the window! There she was! Silhouetted beyond the sheer curtains in a wash of dim light stood the blond-haired woman. She was staring across the way, staring at him! He got out of the chair, drawn hypnotically to the window, his face inches from the panes of glass. The woman nodded her head; she was slowly nodding her head! She was telling him something. She was telling him that what he perceived was the truth!

... The blond woman youre talking about was Mrs. Palatyne, She died a month ago.

A dead woman stood silhouetted in a window across the darkness and was sending him a terrible message. Oh, Christ, he was going insane!

The telephone rang; the bell terrified him. He held his breath and lunged at the phone; he could not let it ring again. It did awful things to the silence.

"Mr. Holcroft, this is the overseas operator. I have your call to Zurich...."

Noel listened in disbelief at the somber, accented voice from Switzerland. The man on the line was the manager of the Zurich branch of La Grande Banque de Geneve. A directeur, he said twice, emphasizing his position.

"We mourn profoundly, Mr. Holcroft. We knew Herr Manfredi was not well, but we had no idea his illness had progressed so."

"What are you talking about? What happened?"

"A terminal disease affects individuals differently. Our colleague was a vital man, an energetic man, and when such men cannot function in their normal fashions, it often leads to despondency and great depression."

"What happened?"

"It was suicide, Mr. Holcroft. Herr Manfredi could not tolerate his incapacities."

"Suicide?"

"Theres no point in speaking other than the truth. Ernst threw himself out of his hotel window. It was mercifully quick. At ten oclock, La Grande Banque will suspend all business for one minute of mourning and reflection."

"Oh, my God...."

"However," concluded the voice in Zurich, "all of Herr Manfredis accounts to which he gave his personal attention will be assumed by equally capable hands. We fully expect-"

Noel hung up the phone, cutting off the mans words. Accounts ... will be assumed by equally capable hands. Business as usual; a man was killed, but the affairs of Swiss finance were not to be interrupted. And he was killed.

Ernst Manfredi did not throw himself out of a hotel in Zurich. He was thrown out. Murdered by the men of Wolfsschanze.

For Gods sake, why? Then Holcroft remembered. Manfredi had dismissed the men of Wolfsschanze. He had told Noel the macabre threats were meaningless, the anguish of sick old men seeking atonement.

That had been Manfredis error. He had undoubtedly told his associates, the other directors of La Grande Banque, about the strange letter that had been delivered with the wax seals unbroken. Perhaps, in their presence, he had laughed at the men of Wolfsschanze.