I don't really know you, do I? she thought. she thought.

"You look strange, Briony. What's wrong?"

The question was asked in a loving tone, but there was no light in the young man's eyes. They looked like black holes in a mask. She thought about a few things she should have thought about much sooner: "You've just arrived from some exotic shore, have you?"

"From London only, I'm afraid. Are you staying with friends?"

Just arrived from London.

With an antique Breguet watch, just like the one Mildred Durant's husband used to wear. And what had Brocius said, about some scars?

"Parents, both deceased, looks like a car crash in Bilbao when he was ten. He was okay but got some burns on his back, which were repaired by cosmetic surgery when he was sixteen. Can't see his back from the shots you sent, so be sure to check, will you?" He was okay but got some burns on his back, which were repaired by cosmetic surgery when he was sixteen. Can't see his back from the shots you sent, so be sure to check, will you?"

She knew this man's back very well. It was as strong and smooth as a horse's neck. And it had never been scarred.

"You know," she said, "I think I need to pee. And I think we're going to be up for a while. Would you put on some coffee?"

"Do you still want me to leave tomorrow morning?"

The question was asked in a soft tone, a gentle pleading note in it, but there was nothing in his face that looked anything like softness. He looked like a gundog her father used to have, taut, primed, trembling, waiting for a grouse to explode out of a hedge. She shook her head.

"No, I don't."

Duhamel softened visibly, seemed to come off point.

"You're sure?"

She gave him her bravest smile.

"I'm sure. Maybe I'm just being . . . dramatic. I . . . just want to have some coffee. Talk a bit. Get my mind clear. Maybe there's some way out of this I haven't thought of. That we we haven't thought of. Maybe there's a movie on cable, or we can watch a DVD. We can figure out what to do about all this in the evening, okay?" haven't thought of. Maybe there's a movie on cable, or we can watch a DVD. We can figure out what to do about all this in the evening, okay?"

"Yes, that would be fine."

"I need to freshen up. Will you go see what's on?"

He smiled at her then, and it was one of his best smiles, like the one that had pulled her in and held her in Savannah. Hank's words played in the back of her mind as she smiled sweetly at him.

"You still got that little Sig P-230 around?"

"Yes, I keep it close." I keep it close."

"Good. Keep it real real close. Nothing settles a lover's quarrel faster than a coupla Black Talons in the chitlins close. Nothing settles a lover's quarrel faster than a coupla Black Talons in the chitlins."

"Yes," he said, "maybe one of those old black-and-white films?"

Gaslight.

She thought of it immediately but could not say why.

She turned and left the kitchen then, more in a glide than a walk. She felt his eyes on her until she reached the corner and melted into the winter shadows of the old stone house.

Duhamel stared at the black rectangle of the door for a time, his expression unreadable. Then he walked across to the wall phone. It had a caller-list screen. He keyed up the last call: 443-479-9560.

The area code for Garrison, and for West Point, across the river, where Briony said the call had come from, it was 845. In another part of his mind, he was thinking about the compact seven-round Sig Sauer pistol that he had come across in Briony's night-table drawer a few days back. Since moving it would have been hard to explain, he had left it in place. With a thick wad of tinfoil rammed up the muzzle, the plug shoved well out of sight with a pencil. If she fired it now, the weapon would take her hand off.

He himself had brought no guns to America.

Why would he?

He was in a kitchen right now, with the all tools of his trade laid out in front of him. He slid open one of the drawers and considered the array of knives. They were very fine knives, all of them, and well maintained. They shone in their blue velvet coffins like quicksilver. He felt a soft, burring sensation in the pocket of his robe, reached in and extracted his cell phone. He had a text message: cq.

He stared down at the letters, his vision blurring briefly, trying to take in the implications. The code was childish for a reason: complex codes announced themselves to the NSA computers.

He hit reply and typed in: ?ru.

The answer came back at once: ?ur+3n-c cqcq.

Three miles north of where you are. In a car. Emergency.

Anton was here here, in Garrison.

Their protocol for a flash meet such as this was to text back a specific time and then make a reconnaissance run forty minutes before the time set. In this case, Anton was likely in a car three miles north on the parkway. If there was no tell tell in the area-a chalk mark at the location, a cat's-eye marker stuck into the ditch nearby-then the actual meet would take place ninety minutes in the area-a chalk mark at the location, a cat's-eye marker stuck into the ditch nearby-then the actual meet would take place ninety minutes after after the announced time. If there the announced time. If there was was a tell, the meet would take place in the nearest church at eleven the next day. But why? Why was Anton a tell, the meet would take place in the nearest church at eleven the next day. But why? Why was Anton here here?

Duhamel looked out through the doorway into the shadows of the old house. He had not heard the upstairs toilet flush. You could always hear it, or at least hear the water rushing in the ancient pipes.

The silence felt wrong wrong.

The whole house felt wrong wrong.

And where was Briony?

ISTANBUL.

NORTHBOUND THROUGH THE BOSPHORUS.

They had rounded the high, tree-covered northern cape of Sultanhamet, with Hagia Sofia and the Topkapi Palace glowing in the slanting light of a setting winter sun, and now they were cruising northwest into the windswept channel of the straits, heading back to cengelkoy.

Waiting for them there, at this very moment, was Mandy Pownall, fresh from a nap, a long, luxurious bubble bath, a thorough full-body massage from a green-eyed Turkish girl-who had, in the final six minutes of the massage, earned every Turkish lira of her tip-and then a mad round of spending Micah Dalton's money in the hotel's wonderful shops. Mandy was now gracefully arrayed by a table on the marble wharf in front of the Sumahan Hotel, at one with her world, an icy G and T in one hand and a gold-tipped black Balkan Sobranie cigarette in the other, her fine-boned face turned just so to catch the fleeting warmth of the winter sun on her cheek. Service to country had its consolations, she felt, however fleeting they were.

The Subito Subito was just now coming level with the Maiden's Tower, a small island in the channel on their starboard side a few hundred yards off the Asian shore, with nothing on it but an ancient stone temple with a tall, turretlike tower. On their port side, a quarter mile up, was the long, neogothic facade of Dolmabahce Palace, sitting right on the waterline and looking very much like the Houses of Parliament in London without Big Ben. was just now coming level with the Maiden's Tower, a small island in the channel on their starboard side a few hundred yards off the Asian shore, with nothing on it but an ancient stone temple with a tall, turretlike tower. On their port side, a quarter mile up, was the long, neogothic facade of Dolmabahce Palace, sitting right on the waterline and looking very much like the Houses of Parliament in London without Big Ben.

The cruiser was burbling smoothly along at five knots, cresting the swell and gliding like a white heron through the shipping along the way, the hazy air filled with the muttering and snarling and popping of boat engines, small planes buzzing overhead, tugs and rusted freighters growling along, big props chopping up blue-black water into dirty yellow foam. Crowded and dilapidated ferries, their hulls streaked with rust and river grime, butted their way from the Asian side to the European side and back again, like loom shuttles weaving both halves of Istanbul together.

Flotillas of pug-ugly grain and oil tankers steamed north, heading for the ports of Georgia and the Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, passing their heavy-laden sister ships coming back down the waterway. And from the far shore, the tape-recorded chant of the Muslim call to prayer, blaring out from every minaret along the channel. And, under that call, like the half-heard roar of a great ocean, was the sound of the city of Istanbul itself, filling the sky and echoing back from the hills all around.

Packing the slopes on either side were the crowded warrens of red-roofed apartment blocks, narrow switchback alleys, side streets and dead ends, unexpected leafy little squares, squalid factory blocks with plumes of black smoke rising up, and here and there, in the northern distance, tall blue-glass office towers set out on the hilltops-the tallest, the Diamond of Istanbul, a towering arrowhead glittering in the last of the sunlight.

Covering the slopes in between, like tumbled clay bricks, were miles and miles of tightly compressed houses and flats and shops, pressed into every nook, and all crammed tight together under the palms and fig trees, then pinned in place by the black hairnet tangle of overhead power lines.

If not for the spearheads of the sultan's towers and the needle-sharp minarets that pierced the skyline everywhere you looked, and the romantic veil of coal smoke and sea fog that lay over it all as the day ended, Istanbul might have been any one of a hundred overcrowded Third World hellholes like Kowloon or Port Said or Valparaiso.

Levka, at the helm of the Subito, Subito, was enjoying the kaleidoscopic panoramas of Istanbul immensely, sitting at ease inside the lemon-oil-scented cabin. With all this shimmering mahogany and highly polished brass, the cabin reminded him of the mandolin his mother used to play for him back in Legrad. was enjoying the kaleidoscopic panoramas of Istanbul immensely, sitting at ease inside the lemon-oil-scented cabin. With all this shimmering mahogany and highly polished brass, the cabin reminded him of the mandolin his mother used to play for him back in Legrad.

If he were a man given to reflection, which he was not, he might have stopped to ponder the capricious currents of life that could take you in just twenty-four hours from the brink of a grubby little death, in pee-soaked pants on a hotel balcony in Santorini, to sitting here with a glass of tea in one hand and the wheel of a million-euro yacht in the other.

Although for Dobri Levka life was sweet, for Kissmyass and his one surviving colleague, whom Levka had christened Numbnuts, life was considerably less so.

The third man, Vladimir Krikotas, according to the ID they found on his body, had succumbed to his severe cranial fracture and its consequent massive subdural hematoma, slipping into a stertorous coma and later being consigned, not quite dead, to the loving embrace of the Sea of Marmara, slipping quietly over the starboard side with a short quote from Dalton about "the sea giving up her dead" and the ship's spare Danforth to see him quickly to the bottom of the bay.

Levka had, a while ago, tuned the radio in to a local station that specialized in a kind of "techno-arabesk" music, a sinuous North African threnody, accompanied by driving djembe djembe drumming and the tinkling clash of finger cymbals. This music served two purposes: it nicely caught the exotic flavor of this contradictory town, part Asian hellhole and part hashish-induced illusion, and it helped drown out the sounds Levka was expecting shortly from the galley, where Dalton was about to begin what Levka, based on his brief but compelling experience with the man, was reasonably certain would be an aggressive and bloody interrogation. drumming and the tinkling clash of finger cymbals. This music served two purposes: it nicely caught the exotic flavor of this contradictory town, part Asian hellhole and part hashish-induced illusion, and it helped drown out the sounds Levka was expecting shortly from the galley, where Dalton was about to begin what Levka, based on his brief but compelling experience with the man, was reasonably certain would be an aggressive and bloody interrogation.

Down in the galley, Dalton, fresh from his shower, shaved, and, wearing a navy blue V-neck sweater he had found in the closet off the forward stateroom that went very well with his navy pin-striped pants, had both men, trussed and naked, sitting side by side on a section of the plastic sheeting they had used to cover the Subito Subito back at the Atakoy Marina. back at the Atakoy Marina.

Neither man looked very happy about this, but neither was saying much about it, Kissmyass because he was a snake-mean bastard and Numbnuts because he had a mouthful of bloody teeth.

Dalton, sipping carefully at his cup of steaming black coffee, had gone through all the items Levka had taken from the men and had learned a few useful things, starting with the fact that Kissmyass was not actually Kissmyass's real name, although he would forever be Kissmyass to Micah Dalton. His real name was Anatoly Viktor Bakunin, and, according to his international driver's license, he was born in Krasnodar, Russia, in 1962. His profession was listed as "shipping facilitator."

He had a bank card issued by Credit Suisse, and a credit card from there, and five hundred odd in greasy euros. In his back pocket, Levka had found a wad of crumpled receipts from various bars and hotels in and around Aksaray, Istanbul's red-light district, and one for a bar called the Double Eagle, in the Ukrainian port town of Kerch. The other man, the younger one, had an ID in the name of Vassily Kishmayev.

Kerch, Dalton recalled, was where Dobri Levka and his late uncle Gavel Kuldic had first been approached by the Gray Man. Therefore, Dalton surmised, being a highly trained CIA officer, that this receipt was a clue clue. To exactly what, he wasn't sure.

He looked over at Kissmyass, who was watching Dalton go through his things with a level of adrenalized resentment so extreme that Dalton feared for the poor man's endocrine system.

"Hey, Kissmyass, says here you were at a bar in Kerch on the nineteenth of December. Place called the Double Eagle. What were you doing there? I mean, aside from getting utterly gored on vodka gimlets?"

Kissmyass said something in Russian that cannot be accurately translated into English, Russian colloquialisms being a bountiful trove indeed for the dedicated cultural etymologist. Dalton, not being a dedicated cultural etymologist, stood up and dumped his entire cup of steaming hot coffee on Kissmyass's genitalia, with gratifying results. Next to him, Numbnuts writhed away from the splatter, his brown eyes bugged out, and so much raw horror in his young face that Dalton actually felt a twinge of pity for him. Up in the pilothouse, Levka, wincing, turned the volume up another notch on his techno-arabesk.

Dalton walked back over to the stove, refilled his cup, sat down again, and looked over at his captives with a thoughtful expression on his rough-cut face, his lips thinned, a pale witch light in his almost colorless eyes.

"Know what I think, lads? I think I could spend all bloody day scalding your naughty bits and chopping off your extremities and all I'd get for my troubles would be a pair of perfectly good Allan Edmonds ruined and a galley covered in spit and spatter. You two are a pair of grunts, is what I think. I used to be a grunt, so I know whereof I speak. You're muscle-not very good muscle-and taking you down was like me winning the hundred-yard dash at the Special Olympics. Not much of a challenge, is what I'm trying to say. Anyway, grunts you are and grunts you shall remain. Question is, what do I do with you? Do I dump you into the Bosphorus, wrapped in heavy chains, like your friend Vladimir? Or do I ask you, as officers and gentlemen, to hand over your sabers and retire from the field of honor, swearing sacred oaths to fight no more forever? It's a quandary, isn't it? Kissmyass, you following any of this?"

Silence from Kissmyass.

He and Numbnuts exchanged a look.

Finally, Numbnuts spoke, apparently for both of them.

"Fuck you, Yank. You do what you have to do."

"So that's it? Death and glory, and let's hear it for Mother Russia?"

Both men shut their mouths, let their heads fall back against the cupboard, and closed their eyes. A little blood was running down Numbnuts's cheek, and although Dalton had reset and bandaged Kissmyass's fractured thumb, the fact remained that he was right now leaning back on it and it had to hurt like hell. They may not have been great contenders but they weren't whiners, not by a long shot. Tough little buggers.

Dalton was quiet for a while, considering the two men sitting on the floor. Dalton did not know it, since he had never seen it, but he was wearing his killing face. Most of those who had had seen it were dead. Mandy Pownall had glimpsed it only once and had never forgotten it. The simple truth was that Dalton was bone tired of killing second-stringers and hapless grunts. seen it were dead. Mandy Pownall had glimpsed it only once and had never forgotten it. The simple truth was that Dalton was bone tired of killing second-stringers and hapless grunts.

But there was no way he could just . . . release them.

He stood up, looked down at the two men, and pulled out his Beretta. Hearing him move, they opened their eyes, went a little pale but said nothing.

Dalton checked out the backstop behind their heads, not wanting to blow a round into a fuel line or out through the hull. He decided to put the round straight down through the tops of their heads, let the center mass take the freight. He moved over to Kissmyass, put the muzzle hard up against the dome of his skull.

"Hold on there, buttercup-"

He spun around on a heel and saw Porter Naumann lounging on the leather couch across from the galley counter looking quite pleased with himself. He was wearing blue jeans, deck shoes without socks, and a shell-pink crewneck cashmere sweater. At least, it looked like cashmere.

"What the hell are you doing here?" said Dalton, ignoring the stares of the two men on the galley floor. This was understandable, since, from their perspective, he was talking to a couch.

Naumann shrugged, offered a lopsided grin.

"Didn't I say I was going to run right along to the next time? Well, this is is the next time. Got here just in time too." the next time. Got here just in time too."

"Porter, I'm always delighted to see you, you know that-"

"Don't worry, I'm not staying. I just wanted to chat for a bit."

"You can see I'm sort of busy?"

Naumann leaned out and took a look at the men, shook his head.

"I see that. You planning to shoot them, are you?"

"I was toying with the idea."

"But you're not happy happy about it, are you?" about it, are you?"

"All due respect, Porter, this is not the time for some of your half-baked postmortem psychoanalytical heebie-jeebies. How about we-"

"I just don't think you should cap a guy if your heart isn't in it."

"You didn't say that in Venice, and I'd just capped five guys."

"Three. Zorin, you ripped his head off. And Galan popped Belajic."

"Okay, three-"

"Remember what Zorin said while you were doing it?"

"No, I was a little distracted at the time, what with trying to not get killed and all."

"He said, 'Aspetta, Krokodil 'Aspetta, Krokodil . . . . . . per Dio per Dio . . . A . . . Aspetta.'"

"Okay, maybe he did."

"That means 'Wait, Crocodile . . . for God's sake . . . Wait.' He was begging you not to kill him. Begging Begging. That didn't bother bother you? A teensy?" you? A teensy?"