"Are you going to open it?"

She didn't answer. Unmarked envelopes from foreign places with unrecognizable handwriting and no return address triggered her professional caution, especially in light of what had happened to Millie Durant in London. She set it down on the counter, walked over to the kitchen drawer, and, to Duhamel's surprise, took out a small digital camera, came back over, and took several shots of the envelope, front and back, turning it each time not with her hand but with the blade of the K-Bar knife. Duhamel, watching her, realized she might not be as easy to deal with as Mildred Durant had been.

"You are nervous . . . about this letter?"

She smiled, waved it away as nothing, but continued dealing with the envelope as if it might contain an explosive.

"The Unabomber, I guess," she said by way of explanation, which for Duhamel explained nothing. Still, he nodded, looked grave.

"Do you want me to open it for you?"

She looked at him, frowning, laughed shortly, and handed him the knife. "Yes, you open it. If it blows your hand off, I'll have film."

She was smiling but serious. Using the tip of the blade, she edged the envelope across the countertop toward him and stepped back a few paces.

"What if I am killed?" he asked, smiling at her.

"I'll have my favorite bits pickled and bury the rest of you in the garden. You did love the view across the river. Go on."

She raised the digital camera, pressed MPEG, and waited.

"You are not a good person," said Duhamel, still smiling.

"You should hear what my ex-husband thinks."

Duhamel took a fork out of the silverware drawer, pinned the envelope to the counter with it, and carefully inserted the sharp tip of the K-Bar into the narrow opening at the end of the flap, thinking Anton, have you decided to punish me for what I did in London? Anton, have you decided to punish me for what I did in London?, which was not out of the question. He had, as he liked to think of it, exceeded his mandate somewhat.

He slipped the blade in and slowly drew it along the edge of the envelope. Nothing happened-no flash of white light, no rising cloud of white powder-nothing at all.

Sighing a little, he used the knife and the fork to tip the envelope up. A blank rectangle of white paper the size and shape of a business card slipped out onto the granite. Taped to the middle of the card was a small black plastic square, very thin. Along one edge of the square ran a row of tiny gold bars. It was a memory chip, with no maker's mark of any kind.

Briony kept the digital camera focused on him as he slipped the tip of the K-Bar under the chip, carefully pried it up, and held it out to the camera on the end of the knife. She clicked the button, then stopped filming and stepped in closer.

"It's a memory chip," he said, keeping his voice level.

"So it is," said Briony. "What do we do with it?"

"I have my laptop. It has a reader."

"What if the chip is full of viruses?"

"You didn't worry about that when I put my chip in your reader."

She looked at him, laughed, and let her breath out in a rush.

"Well, yours was a much bigger chip. Okay, let's go stick this in your machine and see what happens."

Duhamel's machine was in the great room, next to a large leather wingback chair that had become his by default. It was next to the fire, beneath a lovely old Art Nouveau lamp that Duhamel, with his thief 's eye, had pegged as an original Galle.

They flipped his laptop open, inserted the chip in the card-reader slot, and waited for the program to open it up. A few seconds later, the screen went black and then dark blue, and they were looking at a single string of numbers in red and a cursor icon blinking beside it.

408 508 091.

Briony stared at the numbers in silence, her expression closed and wary. Duhamel watched her for a while.

"Well," he said, "I have no idea. Is it a password?"

"No," said Briony with a chill, "it isn't."

"What is it, then?"

She was quiet for a while longer.

"Maybe I should take this into my office."

She was talking more to herself than to him.

"Why? How does that help?"

She looked at him steadily, working it through.

"Jules . . . I don't know what . . . to do with you."

"With me?"

"Yes. I don't really know you, do I?"

"I think we have known each other pretty well, no?"

His accent seemed to come back under stress. She felt a surge of affection for him-she could either shut him out or bring him in a little further. Hank Brocius had vetted him thoroughly, and Hank was one of the most untrusting men she knew. Yes, he was closed. But perhaps that just meant he was uncomplicated. He could be exactly what he seemed. And she wasn't ready to shut him out of her life yet. Besides, she had already let him see too much, he was already involved.

"These numbers, Jules, do they mean anything to you?"

Duhamel studied the screen.

"Are they a series perhaps?"

"They could be. But I don't think they are. I think this is just one number. That's the way these things are done."

A seam. A crack, an opening, after all this time.

"What . . . 'things,' Briony?"

She went inside herself then and stayed there for almost a full minute, clearly struggling with a difficult decision. Duhamel found that he was holding his breath-this single moment was the fulcrum upon which all their calculations turned. Which way would she lean? Inside her silence, she could not know that her life was also in play. If she chose wrongly, Duhamel had clear instructions on how to continue, and overwhelming brutality would only be the beginning. He himself did not know which outcome he was favoring. It didn't matter. In the end, she would be his.

She looked up at him, as if trying to read his mind, and then sighed.

"Look . . . Jules . . . if I wanted to send you something in a strongbox and I didn't want anyone to know that we knew each other and I didn't want anyone to be able to open it, how would I do that?"

"You would lock the box."

"When you got the box, you would have to unlock it. How?"

"We would have the same key maybe?"

"Then at some point, I would either have to send you the key or have someone else give you a copy. Either way, our connection is open to exposure, right?"

"Yes. If you insist we have no contact, then there can be no key exchange. I don't see how this can be done without a key to open the box, do you?"

"Yes. There is a way to lock the box without exchanging keys. I send you the box with my lock on it and then you put your lock on it and send it back to me. On both trips, no one can open the box because it has two locks on it. Not even me when it gets to me, because you have put your own lock on it next to mine and I don't have that key."

"Yes," said Duhamel, seeing it at once. "And then all you have to do is to take off your your lock-" lock-"

"Leaving yours in place-"

"And when I get the box back, I take off my lock and the box is open. Brilliant, except for all the going back and forth with the box."

"Not a problem, if the box is really just a string of electrons."

"A 'string of electrons'? You mean a coded message?"

"Yes."

Duhamel considered her for a while.

"Briony, in Savannah, Tally said you did something-"

Very clever for the government. "Yes."

"Are you a spy after all?"

"No, I'm not."

"But you are not a librarian either, are you?"

"No. I can't say any more, and don't ask me. But I know about things like this, and the fact that someone has sent this chip to me . . . is a problem. I should take this in to my employers and let them deal with it."

Anton had seen this moment coming. They had discussed the psychology of the subject, what they knew of her character. In the end, they had formulated this reply: "I agree! Completely. Whoever they are-and I do not want to know-give this to them, and you and I can go back to being . . . quiet. I like this time with you, and I don't like to see this worry in your face."

She reached out and touched his hand, but her mind was elsewhere.

Crete, she was thinking, she was thinking, Morgan is on Crete Morgan is on Crete. And he has not contacted me in more than thirty days. What if there's something in here that has to do with Morgan. If I give this to Hank Brocius, who will he take care of first? Morgan or the NSA? And he has not contacted me in more than thirty days. What if there's something in here that has to do with Morgan. If I give this to Hank Brocius, who will he take care of first? Morgan or the NSA? She knew the answer as well as she knew Hank Brocius. She knew the answer as well as she knew Hank Brocius.

"What are you thinking, Briony?"

"I think . . . I need some practical advice."

"Off the record?" he said with a disarming smile, softening her resistance to him. She poured out another glass of wine for herself and one for him, sipped it, thinking hard.

"Yes," she said with a note of decision in her voice. "Look, my son Morgan, I told you he was in the military?"

"Yes. But you did not know where."

"I was being careful. America is at war and . . ."

" 'Loose lips sink ships'?"

"Morgan is in the Navy. And I am am a little worried about him." a little worried about him."

"Of course, that is only natural for a mother in war-"

"No, it's more than that. He's always been great about staying in touch-phone calls, e-mails, sometimes a postcard . . ."

"But he is at sea, is he not?"

His accent was all the way back, she noted, and forgot it at once.

"No, he's actually on a land base. He's stationed at a Naval Air Station. It's called Souda, and Souda is-"

"On Crete," said Duhamel, his expression altering.

"Yes, on Crete. My worry is-"

"That he is in trouble of some sort. And if that trouble has to do with this chip, and you take it to your boss, then what happens to your son will be out of your hands, yes?"

"Yes. I just want to . . . know. I have to take this to . . . my boss, anyway. But I want to know first."

"Briony, is your . . . boss . . . in your government?"

"Yes," she said after a struggle.

"Okay, I must now speak as stranger. Briony, I am here on a visa, I am a French national, and if there should be problems with your government connected to this . . . whatever it is . . . I run a greater risk than you think. I do not wish to appear craven, but if you are concerned about this package and what it contains, I would not wish to complicate your life by forcing you to explain a foreign national."

"My boss is not a fool . . . but . . . I don't know what to do."

"I do. You must take this to him now. Without touching this thing anymore. Your son is a grown man. If he is in trouble, he should face it. If you try to protect him, you might destroy yourself. Then what can you do for your son? For that matter, you do not really know that this involves your son in any way. You are making a nervous conjecture based on facts that could be . . . totally unrelated, yes?"

She looked miserable.

Duhamel tried to imagine what she must be feeling. He knew it as a concept, but misery as a feeling feeling? He had been cold, sick, angry, sometimes worried. But misery? He did not know it. He kept his face in order and hoped that his tactic worked.