Persuader

I came around to the front of the house and faced west and stood in the lashing rain and stared at the high stone wall. Right at that moment I came as close as I ever got to bailing out. It would have been easy. The gate was wide open. I guessed the maid had left it that way. She had gotten out in the rain to open it and she hadn't wanted to get out again to close it. Paulie wasn't there to do it for her. He was out, driving the Cadillac. So the gate was open. And unguarded. The first time I had ever seen it that way. I could have slipped straight through it. But I didn't. I stayed.

Time was part of the reason. Beyond the gate was at least twelve miles of empty road before the first significant turning. Twelve miles. And there were no cars to use. The Becks were out in the Cadillac and the maid was out in the Saab. We had abandoned the Lincoln in Connecticut. So I would be on foot. Three hours' fast walk. I didn't have three hours. Almost certainly the Cadillac would return within three hours. And there was nowhere to hide on the road. The shoulders were bare and rocky. It was an exposed situation. Beck would pass me head-on. I would be walking. He would be in a car. And he had a gun. And Paulie. I had nothing.

Therefore strategy was part of the reason, too. To be caught in the act of walking away would confirm whatever Beck might think he knew, assuming it was Beck who had discovered the stash. But if I stayed I had some kind of a chance. Staying would imply innocence. I could deflect suspicion onto Duke. I could say it must have been Duke's stash. Beck might find that plausible. Maybe. Duke had enjoyed the freedom to go wherever he wanted, any time of night or day. I had been locked up and supervised the whole time. And Duke wasn't around anymore to deny anything. But I would be right there in Beck's face, talking loud and fast and persuasive. He might buy it.

Hope was part of the reason, too. Maybe it wasn't Beck who had found the stash. Maybe it was Richard, walking the shoreline. His reaction would be unpredictable. I figured it at fifty-fifty whether he would approach me or his father first. Or maybe it was Elizabeth who had found it. She was familiar with the rocks out there. She knew them well. Knew their secrets. I guessed she had spent plenty of time on them, for one reason or another. And her reaction would favor me. Probably.

The rain was part of the reason for staying, too. It was cold and hard and relentless. I was too tired to road march three hours in the rain. I knew it was just weakness. But I couldn't move my feet. I wanted to go back inside the house. I wanted to get warm and eat again and rest.

Fear of failure was part of the reason, too. If I walked away now I would never come back. I knew that. And I had invested two weeks. I had made good progress. People were depending on me. I had been beaten many times. But I had never just quit. Not once. Not ever. If I quit now, it would eat me up the rest of my days. Jack Reacher, quitter. Walked away when the going got tough.

I stood there with the rain driving against my back. Time, strategy, hope, the weather, fear of failure. All parts of the reason for staying. All right there on the list.

But top of the list was a woman.

Not Susan Duffy, not Teresa Daniel. A woman from long ago, from another life. She was called Dominique Kohl. I was a captain in the army when I met her. I was one year away from my final promotion to major. I got to my office early one morning and found the usual stack of paperwork on my desk. Most of it was junk. But among it was a copy of an order assigning an E-7 Sergeant First Class Kohl, D.E. to my unit. Back then we were in a phase where all written references to personnel had to be gender-neutral. The name Kohl sounded German to me and I pictured some big ugly guy from Texas or Minnesota. Big red hands, big red face, older than me, maybe thirty-five, with a whitewall haircut. Later in the morning the clerk buzzed through to say the guy was reporting for duty. I made him wait ten minutes just for the fun of it and then called him in. But the him was a her and she wasn't big and ugly. She was wearing a skirt. She was about twenty-nine years old. She wasn't tall, but she was too athletic to be called petite. And she was too pretty to be called athletic. It was like she had been exquisitely molded from the stuff they make the inside of tennis balls out of. There was an elasticity about her. A firmness and a softness, all at the same time. She looked sculpted, but she had no hard edges. She stood rigidly at attention in front of my desk and snapped a smart salute. I didn't return it, which was rude of me. I just stared at her for five whole seconds.

"At ease, Sergeant," I said.

She handed me her copy of her orders and her personnel file. We called them service jackets. They contained everything anybody needed to know. I left her standing easy in front of me while I read hers through, which was rude of me too, but there was no other option. I didn't have a visitor's chair. Back then the army didn't provide them below the rank of full colonel. She stood completely still, hands clasped behind her back, staring at a point in the air exactly a foot above my head.

Her jacket was impressive. She had done a little of everything and succeeded at it all in spectacular fashion. Expert marksman, specialist in a number of skills, tremendous arrest record, excellent clear-up percentage. She was a good leader and had been promoted fast. She had killed two people, one with a firearm, one unarmed, both incidents rated righteous by the subsequent investigating panels. She was a rising star. That was clear. I realized that her transfer represented a substantial compliment to me, in some superior's mind.

"Glad to have you aboard," I said.

"Sir, thank you, sir," she said, with her eyes fixed in space.

"I don't do all that shit," I said. "I'm not afraid I'm going to vaporize if you look at me and I don't really like one sir in a sentence, let alone two, OK?"

"OK," she said. She caught on fast. She never called me sir again, the whole rest of her life.

"Want to jump right in at the deep end?" I said.

She nodded. "Sure."

I rattled open a drawer and slid a slim file out and passed it across to her. She didn't look at it. Just held it one-handed down by her side and looked at me.

"Aberdeen, Maryland," I said. "At the proving grounds. There's a weapons designer acting weird. Confidential tip from a buddy who's worried about espionage. But I think it's more likely blackmail. Could be a long and sensitive investigation."

"No problem," she said.

She was the reason I didn't walk out through the open and unguarded gate.

I went inside instead and took a long hot shower. Nobody likes to risk confrontation when they're wet and naked, but I was way past caring. I guess I was feeling fatalistic. Whatever, bring it on. Then I wrapped up in a towel and went down a flight and found Duke's room. Stole another set of his clothes. I dressed in them and put my own shoes and jacket and coat on. Went back to the kitchen to wait. It was warm in there. The way the sea was pounding and the rain was beating on the windows made it feel warmer still. It was like a sanctuary. The cook was in there, doing something with a chicken.

"Got coffee?" I asked her.

She shook her head.

"Why not?"

"Caffeine," she said.

I looked at the back of her head.

"Caffeine is the whole point of coffee," I said. "Anyway, tea's got caffeine, and I've seen you make that."

"Tea has tannin," she said.

"And caffeine," I said.

"So drink tea instead," she said.

I looked around the room. There was a wooden block standing vertically on a counter with black knife handles protruding at angles. There were bottles and glasses. I guessed under the sink there might be ammonia sprays. Maybe some chlorine bleach. Enough improvised weapons for a close-quarters fight. If Beck was even a little inhibited about shooting in a crowded room, I might be OK. I might be able to take him before he took me. All I would need was half a second.

"You want coffee?" the cook asked. "Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes," I said. "It is."

"All you have to do is ask."

"I did ask."

"No, you asked if there was any," she said. "Not the same thing."

"So will you make me some? Please?"

"What happened to Mr. Duke?"

I paused. Maybe she was planning on marrying him, like in old movies where the cook marries the butler and they retire and live happily ever after.

"He was killed," I said.

"Last night?"

I nodded. "In an ambush."

"Where?"

"In Connecticut."

"OK," she said. "I'll make you some coffee."

She set the machine going. I watched where she got everything from. The filter papers were stored in a cupboard next to the paper napkins. The coffee itself was in the freezer. The machine was old and slow. It made a loud ponderous gulping sound. Combined with the rain lashing on the windows and the waves pounding on the rocks it meant I didn't hear the Cadillac come back. First I knew, the back door was thrown open and Elizabeth Beck burst in with Richard crowding after her and Beck himself bringing up the rear. They were moving with the kind of exhilarated breathless urgency people show after a short fast dash through heavy rain.

"Hello," Elizabeth said to me.

I nodded. Said nothing.

"Coffee," Richard said. "Great."

"We went out for breakfast," Elizabeth said. "Old Orchard Beach. There's a little diner there we like."

"Paulie figured we shouldn't wake you," Beck said. "He figured you looked pretty tired last night. So he offered to drive us instead."

"OK," I said. Thought: Did Paulie find my stash? Did he tell them yet?

"You want coffee?" Richard asked me. He was over by the machine, rattling cups in his hand.

"Black," I said. "Thanks."

He brought me a cup. Beck was peeling off his coat and shaking water off it onto the floor.

"Bring it through," he called. "We need to talk."

He headed out to the hallway and looked back like he expected me to follow him. I took my coffee with me. It was hot and steaming. I could toss it in his face if I had to. He led me toward the square paneled room we had used before. I was carrying my cup, which slowed me down a little. He got there well ahead of me. When I entered he was already all the way over by one of the windows with his back to me, looking out at the rain. When he turned around he had a gun in his hand. I just stood still. I was too far away to use the coffee. Maybe fourteen feet. It would have looped up and curled and dispersed in the air and probably missed him altogether.

The gun was a Beretta M9 Special Edition, which was a civilian Beretta 92FS all dressed up to look exactly like a standard military-issue M9. It used nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition. It had a fifteen-round magazine and military dot-and-post sights. I remembered with bizarre clarity that the retail price had been $861. I had carried an M9 for thirteen years. I had fired many thousands of practice rounds with it and more than a few for real. Most of them had hit their targets, because it's an accurate weapon. Most of the targets had been destroyed, because it's a powerful weapon. It had served me well. I even remembered the original sales pitch from the ordnance people: It's got manageable recoil and it's easy to strip in the field. They had repeated it like a mantra. Over and over again. I guess there were contracts at stake. There was some controversy. Navy SEALs hated it. They claimed they'd had dozens blow up in their faces. They even made up a cadence song about it: No way are you a Navy Seal, until you eat some Italian steel. But the M9 always served me well. It was a fine weapon, in my opinion. Beck's example looked like a brand-new gun. The finish was immaculate. Dewy with oil. There was luminescent paint on the sights. It glowed softly in the gloom.

I waited.

Beck just stood there, holding the gun. Then he moved. He slapped the barrel into his left palm and took his right hand away. Leaned over the oak table and held the thing out to me, butt-first, left-handed, politely, like he was a clerk in a store.

"Hope you like it," he said. "I thought you might feel at home with it. Duke was into the exotics, like that Steyr he had. But I figured you'd be more comfortable with the Beretta, you know, given your background."

I stepped forward. Put my coffee on the table. Took the gun from him. Ejected the magazine, checked the chamber, worked the action, looked down the barrel. It wasn't spiked. It wasn't a trick. It was a working piece. The Parabellums were real. It was brand new. It had never been fired. I slapped it back together and just held it for a moment. It was like shaking hands with an old friend. Then I cocked it and locked it and put it in my pocket.

"Thanks," I said.

He put his hand in his own pocket and came out with two spare magazines.

"Take these," he said.

He passed them across. I took them.

"I'll get you more later," he said.

"OK," I said.

"You ever tried laser sights?"

I shook my head.

"There's a company called Laser Devices," he said. "They do a universal handgun sight that mounts under the barrel. Plus a little flashlight that clips under the sight. Very cool device."

"Gives a little red spot?"

He nodded. Smiled. "Nobody likes to get lit up with that little red spot, that's for sure."

"Expensive?"

"Not really," he said. "Couple hundred bucks."

"How much weight does it add?"

"Four and a half ounces," he said.

"All at the front?"

"It helps, actually," he said. "Stops the muzzle kicking upward when you fire. It adds about thirteen percent of the weight of the gun. More with the flashlight, of course. Maybe forty, forty-five ounces total. Still way less than those Anacondas you were using. What were they, fifty-nine ounces?"

"Unloaded," I said. "More with six shells in them. Am I ever going to get them back?"

"I put them away somewhere," he said. "I'll get them for you later."

"Thanks," I said again.

"You want to try the laser?"

"I'm happy without it," I said.

He nodded again. "Your choice. But I want the best protection I can get."

"Don't worry," I said.

"I've got to go out now," he said. "Alone. I've got an appointment."

"You don't want me to drive you?"

"This sort of appointment, I have to do them alone. You stay here. We'll talk later. Move into Duke's room, OK? I like my security closer to where I sleep."

I put the spare magazines in my other pocket.

"OK," I said.

He walked past me into the hallway, back toward the kitchen.

It was the kind of mental somersault that can slow you down. Extreme tension, and then extreme puzzlement. I walked to the front of the house and watched from a hallway window. Saw the Cadillac sweep around the carriage circle in the rain and head for the gate. It paused in front of it and Paulie came out of the gatehouse. They must have dropped him there on their way back from breakfast. Beck must have driven the final length of the driveway himself. Or Richard, or Elizabeth. Paulie opened the gate. The Cadillac drove through it and away into the rain and the mist. Paulie closed the gate. He was wearing a slicker the size of a circus tent.

I shook myself and turned back and went to find Richard. He had the kind of guileless eyes that hide nothing. He was still in the kitchen, drinking his coffee.

"You walk the shoreline this morning?" I asked him.

I asked it innocently and amiably, like I was just making conversation. If he had anything to hide, I would know. He would go red, look away, stammer, shuffle his feet. But he did none of those things. He was completely relaxed. He looked straight at me.

"Are you kidding?" he said. "Seen the weather?"

I nodded.

"Pretty bad," I said.

"I'm quitting college," he said.

"Why?"

"Because of last night," he said. "The ambush. Those Connecticut guys are still on the loose. Not safe to go back. I'm staying right here for a spell."

"You OK with that?"

He nodded. "It was mostly a waste of time."

I looked away. The law of unintended consequences. I had just short-circuited a kid's education. Maybe ruined his life. But then, I was about to send his father to jail. Or waste him altogether. So I guessed a BA didn't matter very much, compared to that.

I went to find Elizabeth Beck. She would be harder to read. I debated my approach and couldn't come up with anything guaranteed to work. I found her in a parlor tucked into the northwest corner of the house. She was in an armchair. She had a book open on her lap. It was Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. Paperback. I had seen the movie. I remembered Julie Christie, and the music. "Lara's Theme." Train journeys. And a lot of snow. Some girl had made me go.

"It's not you," she said.

"What's not me?"

"You're not the government spy."

I breathed out. She wouldn't say that if she'd found my stash.

"Exactly," I said. "Your husband just gave me a gun."

"You're not smart enough to be a government spy."

"Aren't I?"

She shook her head. "Richard was desperate for a cup of coffee just now. When we came in."

"So?"

"Do you think he would have been if we'd really been out for breakfast? He could have had all the coffee he wanted."

"So where did you go?"

"We were called to a meeting."

"With who?"

She just shook her head, like she couldn't speak the name.

"Paulie didn't offer to drive us," she said. "He summoned us. Richard had to wait in the car."

"But you went in?"

She nodded. "They've got a guy called Troy."

"Silly name," I said.

"But a very smart guy," she said. "He's young, and he's very good with computers. I guess he's what they call a hacker."

"And?"

"He just got partial access to one of the government systems in Washington. He found out they put a federal agent in here. Undercover. At first they assumed it was you. Then they checked a little further and found out it was a woman and she's actually been here for weeks."

I stared at her, not understanding. Teresa Daniel was off the books. The government computers knew nothing about her. Then I remembered Duffy's laptop, with the Justice Department logo as the screensaver. I remembered the modem wire, trailing across the desk, going through the complex adapter, going into the wall, hooking up with all the other computers in the world. Had Duffy been compiling private reports? For her own use? For postaction justification?

"I hate to think what they're going to do," Elizabeth said. "To a woman."

She shuddered visibly and looked away. I made it as far as the hallway. Then I stopped dead. There were no cars. And twelve miles of road before I would even begin to get anywhere. Three hours' fast walk. Two hours, running.

"Forget it," Elizabeth called. "Nothing to do with you."

I turned around and stared in at her.

"Forget it," she said again. "They'll be doing it right now. It'll be all over soon."

The second time I ever saw Sergeant First Class Dominique Kohl was the third day she worked for me. She was wearing green battledress pants and a khaki T-shirt. It was very hot. I remember that. We were having some kind of a major heat wave. Her arms were tanned. She had the kind of skin that looks dusty in the heat. She wasn't sweating. The T-shirt was great. She had her tapes on it, Kohl on the right and US Army on the left, both of them kicked up just a little by the curve of her breasts. She was carrying the file I had given her. It had gotten a little thicker, padded out with her notes.

"I'm going to need a partner," she said to me. I felt a little guilty. Her third day, and I hadn't even partnered her up. I wondered whether I'd given her a desk. Or a locker, or a room to sleep in.

"You met a guy called Frasconi yet?" I said.

"Tony? I met him yesterday. But he's a lieutenant."

I shrugged. "I don't mind commissioned and noncommissioned working together. There's no regulation against it. If there was, I'd ignore it anyway. You got a problem with it?"

She shook her head. "But maybe he does."

"Frasconi? He won't have a problem."

"So will you tell him?"

"Sure," I said. I made a note for myself, on a slip of blank paper, Frasconi, Kohl, partners. I underlined it twice, so I would remember. Then I pointed at the file she was carrying. "What have you got?"

"Good news and bad news," she said. "Bad news is their system for signing out eyes-only paper is all shot to hell. Could be routine inefficiency, but more likely it's been deliberately compromised to conceal stuff that shouldn't be happening."

"Who's the guy in question?"

"A pointy-head called Gorowski. Uncle Sam recruited him right out of MIT. A nice guy, by all accounts. Supposed to be very smart."

"Is he Russian?"

She shook her head. "Polish, from a million years ago. No hint of any ideology."

"Was he a Red Sox fan up at MIT?"

"Why?"

"They're all weird," I said. "Check it."

"It's probably blackmail," she said.

"So what's the good news?"

She opened her file. "This thing they're working on is a kind of small missile, basically."

"Who are they working with?"

"Honeywell and the General Defense Corporation."

"And?"

"This missile needs to be slim. So it's going to be subcaliber. The tanks use hundred and twenty millimeter cannons, but the thing is going to be smaller than that."

"By how much?"

"Nobody knows yet. But they're working on the sabot design right now. The sabot is a kind of sleeve that surrounds the thing to make it up to the right diameter."

"I know what a sabot is," I said.

She ignored me. "It's going to be a discarding sabot, which means it comes apart and falls away immediately after the thing leaves the gun muzzle. They're trying to figure whether it has to be a metal sabot, or whether it could be plastic. Sabot means boot. From the French. It's like the missile starts out wearing a little boot."

"I know that," I said. "I speak French. My mother was French."

"Like sabotage," she said. "From old French labor disputes. Originally it meant to smash new industrial equipment by kicking it."

"With your boots," I said.

She nodded. "Right."

"So what's the good news again?"

"The sabot design isn't going to tell anybody anything," she said. "Nothing important, anyway. It's just a sabot. So we've got plenty of time."

"OK," I said. "But make it a priority. With Frasconi. You'll like him."

"You want to get a beer later?"

"Me?"

She looked right at me. "If all ranks can work together, they should be able to have a beer together, right?"

"OK," I said.

Dominique Kohl looked nothing at all like the photographs I had seen of Teresa Daniel, but it was a blend of both their faces I saw in my head. I left Elizabeth Beck with her book and headed up to my original room. I felt more isolated up there. Safer. I locked myself in the bathroom and took my shoe off. Opened the heel and fired up the e-mail device. There was a message from Duffy waiting: No activity at warehouse. What are they doing?

I ignored it and hit new message and typed: We lost Teresa Daniel.

Four words, eighteen letters, three spaces. I stared at them for a long time. Put my finger on the send button. But I didn't press it. I went to backspace instead and erased the message. It disappeared from right to left. The little cursor ate it up. I figured I would send it only when I had to. When I knew for sure.

I sent: Possibility your computer is penetrated.

There was a long delay. Much longer than the usual ninety seconds. I thought she wasn't going to answer. I thought she must be ripping her wires out of the wall. But maybe she was just getting out of the shower or something because about four minutes later she came back with a simple: Why?

I sent: Talk of a hacker with partial access to government systems.

She sent: Mainframes or LANs?

I had no idea what she meant. I sent: Don't know.

She asked: Details?

I sent: Just talk. Are you keeping a log on your laptop?

She sent: Hell no!

I sent: Anywhere?

She sent: Hell no!!

I sent: Eliot?

There was another four-minute delay. Then she came back with: Don't think so.

I asked: Think or know?

She sent: Think.

I stared at the tiled wall in front of me. Breathed out. Eliot had killed Teresa Daniel. It was the only explanation. Then I breathed in. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe he hadn't. I sent: Are these e-mails vulnerable?

We had been e-mailing back and forth furiously for more than sixty hours. She had asked for news of her agent. I had asked for her agent's real name. And I had asked in a way that definitely wasn't gender-neutral. Maybe I had killed Teresa Daniel.

I held my breath until Duffy came back with: Our e-mail is encrypted. Technically might be visible as code but no way is it readable.

I breathed out and sent: Sure?

She sent: Totally.

I sent: Coded how?

She sent: NSA billion-dollar project.

That cheered me up, but only a little. Some of NSA's billion-dollar projects are in the Washington Post before they're even finished. And communications snafus screw more things up than any other reason in the world.

I sent: Check with Eliot immediately about computer logs.

She sent: Will do. Progress?

I typed: None.

Then I deleted it and sent: Soon. I thought it might make her feel better.

I went all the way down to the ground-floor hallway. The door to Elizabeth's parlor was standing open. She was still in the armchair. Doctor Zhivago was facedown in her lap and she was staring out the window at the rain. I opened the front door and stepped outside. The metal detector squawked at the Beretta in my pocket. I closed the door behind me and headed straight across the carriage circle and down the driveway. The rain was hard on my back. It ran down my neck. But the wind helped me. It blew me west, straight toward the gatehouse. I felt light on my feet. Coming back again was going to be harder. I would be walking directly into the wind. Assuming I was still walking at all.

Paulie saw me coming. He must have spent his whole time crouched inside the tiny building, prowling from the front windows to the back windows, watching, like a restless animal in its lair. He came out, in his slicker. He had to duck his head and turn sideways to get through the door. He stood with his back against the wall of his house, where the eaves were low. But the eaves didn't help him. The rain drove horizontally under them. I could hear it lashing against the slicker, hard and loud and brittle. It drove against his face and ran down it like torrents of sweat. He had no hat. His hair was plastered against his forehead. It was dark with water.

I had both hands in my pockets with my shoulders hunched forward and my face ducked into my collar. My right hand was tight around the Beretta. The safety was off. But I didn't want to use it. Using it would require complicated explanations. And he would only be replaced. I didn't want to have him replaced until I was ready to have him replaced. So I didn't want to use the Beretta. But I was prepared to.

I stopped six feet from him. Out of his reach.

"We need to talk," I said.

"I don't want to talk," he said.

"You want to arm wrestle instead?"

His eyes were pale blue and his pupils were tiny. I guessed his breakfast had been taken entirely in the form of capsules and powder.

"Talk about what?" he said.

"New situation," I said.

He said nothing.

"What's your MOS?" I asked.

MOS is an army acronym. The army loves acronyms. It stands for Military Occupational Specialty. And I used the present tense. What is, not what was. I wanted to put him right back there. Being ex-military is like being a lapsed Catholic. Even though they're way in the back of your mind, the old rituals still exert a powerful pull. Old rituals like obeying an officer.

"Eleven bang bang," he said, and smiled.

Not a great answer. Eleven bang bang was grunt slang for 11B, which meant 11-Bravo, Infantry, which meant Combat Arms. Next time I face a four-hundred-pound giant with veins full of meth and steroids I would prefer it if his MOS had been mechanical maintenance, or typewriting. Not combat arms. Especially a four-hundred-pound giant who doesn't like officers and who had served eight years in Fort Leavenworth for beating up on one.

"Let's go inside," I said. "It's wet out here."

I said it with the kind of tone you develop when you get promoted past captain. It's a reasonable tone, almost conversational. It's not the sort of tone you use as a lieutenant. It's a suggestion, but it's an order, too. It's heavy with inclusion. It says: Hey, we're just a couple of guys here. We don't need to let formalities like rank get in our way, do we?

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he turned and slid sideways through his door. Ducked his chin to his chest so he could get through. Inside, the ceiling was about seven feet high. It felt low to me. His head was almost touching it. I kept my hands in my pockets. Water from his slicker was pooling on the floor.

The house stank with a sharp acrid animal smell. Like a mink. And it was filthy. There was a small living room that opened to a kitchen area. Beyond the kitchen was a short hallway with a bathroom off it and a bedroom at the end. That was all. It was smaller than a city apartment, but it was all dressed up to look like a miniature stand-alone house. There was mess everywhere. Unwashed dishes in the sink. Used plates and cups and articles of athletic clothing all over the living room. There was an old sofa opposite a new television set. The sofa had been crushed by his bulk. There were pill bottles on shelves, on tables, everywhere. Some of them were vitamins. But not many of them.

There was a machine gun in the room. The old Soviet NSV. It belonged on a tank turret. Paulie had it suspended from a chain in the middle of the room. It hung there like a macabre sculpture. Like the Alexander Calder thing they put in every new airport terminal. He could stand behind it and swing it through a complete circle. He could fire it through the front window or the back window, like they were gunports. Limited field of fire, but he could cover forty yards of the road to the west, and forty yards of the driveway to the east. It was fed by a belt that came up out of an open ammunition case placed on the floor. There were maybe twenty more cases stacked against the wall. The cases were dull olive, all covered with Cyrillic letters and red stars.

The gun was so big I had to back up against the wall to get around it. I saw two telephones. One was probably an outside line. The other was probably an internal phone that reached the house. There were alarm boxes on the wall. One would be for the sensors out in no-man's-land. The other would be for the motion detector on the gate itself. There was a video monitor, showing a milky monochrome picture from the gatepost camera.

"You kicked me," he said.

I said nothing.

"Then you tried to run me over," he said.

"Warning shots," I said.

"About what?"

"Duke's gone," I said.

He nodded. "I heard."

"So it's me now," I said. "You've got the gate, I've got the house."

He nodded again. Said nothing.

"I look after the Becks now," I said. "I'm responsible for their security. Mr. Beck trusts me. He trusts me so much he gave me a weapon."

I was giving him a stare the whole time I was talking. The kind of stare that feels like pressure between the eyes. This would be the moment when the meth and the steroids should kick in and make him grin like an idiot and say, Well he ain't going to trust you anymore when I tell him what I found out there on the rocks, is he? When I tell him you already had a weapon. He would shuffle and grin and use a singsong voice. But he said nothing. Did nothing. Didn't react at all, beyond a slight defocus in his eyes, like he was having trouble computing the implications.

"Understand?" I said.

"It used to be Duke and now it's you," he said neutrally.

It wasn't him who had found my stash.

"I'm looking out for their welfare," I said. "Including Mrs. Beck's. That game is over now, OK?"

He said nothing. I was getting a sore neck from looking up into his eyes. My vertebrae are much more accustomed to looking downward at people.

"OK?" I said again.

"Or?"

"Or you and I will have to go around and around."

"I'd like that."

I shook my head.

"You wouldn't like it," I said. "Not one little bit. I'd take you apart, piece by piece."

"You think?"

"You ever hit an MP?" I asked. "Back in the service?"

He didn't answer. Just looked away and stayed quiet. He was probably remembering his arrest. He probably resisted a little, and needed to be subdued. So consequently he probably tripped down some stairs somewhere and suffered a fair amount of damage. Somewhere between the scene of the crime and the holding cell, probably. Purely by accident. That kind of thing happens, in certain circumstances. But then, the arresting officer probably sent six guys to pick him up. I would have sent eight.

"And then I'd fire you," I said.

His eyes came back, slow and lazy.

"You can't fire me," he said. "I don't work for you. Or Beck."

"So who do you work for?"

"Somebody."

"This somebody got a name?"

He shook his head.

"No dice," he said.

I kept my hands in my pockets and eased my way around the machine gun. Headed for the door.

"We straight now?" I said.

He looked at me. Said nothing. But he was calm. His morning dosages must have been well balanced.

"Mrs. Beck is off-limits, right?" I said.

"While you're here," he said. "You won't be here forever."

I hope not, I thought. His telephone rang. The outside line, I guessed. I doubted if Elizabeth or Richard would be calling him from the house. The ring was loud in the silence. He picked it up and said his name. Then he just listened. I heard a trace of a voice in the earpiece, distant and indistinct with plastic peaks and resonances that obscured what was being said. The voice spoke for less than a minute. Then the call was over. He put the phone down and moved his hand quite delicately and used the flat of his palm to set the machine gun swinging gently on its chain. I realized it was a conscious imitation of the thing I had done with the heavy bag down in the gym on our first morning together. He grinned at me.

"I'm watching you," he said. "I'll always be watching you."

I ignored him and opened the door and stepped outside. The rain hit me like a fire hose. I leaned forward and walked straight into it. Held my breath and had a very bad feeling in the small of my back until I was all the way through the forty-yard arc the back window could cover. Then I breathed out.

Not Beck, not Elizabeth, not Richard. Not Paulie.

No dice.

Dominique Kohl said no DICE to me the night we had our beer. Something unexpected had come up and I had to rain-check the first evening and then she rain-checked my makeup date, so it was about a week before we got together. Maybe eight days. Sergeants drinking with captains was difficult on-post back then because the clubs were rigorously separate, so we went out to a bar in town. It was the usual kind of place, long and low, eight pool tables, plenty of people, plenty of neon, plenty of jukebox noise, plenty of smoke. It was still very hot. The air conditioners were running flat out and getting nowhere. I was wearing fatigue pants and an old T-shirt, because I didn't own any personal clothes. Kohl arrived wearing a dress. It was a simple A-line, no sleeves, knee-length, black, with little white dots on it. Very small dots. Not like big polka dots or anything. A very subtle pattern.

"How's Frasconi working out?" I asked her.

"Tony?" she said. "He's a nice guy."

She didn't say anything more about him. We ordered Rolling Rocks, which suited me because it was my favorite drink that summer. She had to lean very close to talk, because of the noise. I enjoyed the proximity. But I wasn't fooling myself. It was the decibel level making her do it, nothing else. And I wasn't going to try anything with her. No formal reason not to. There were rules back then, I guess, but there were no regulations yet. The notion of sexual harassment was slow coming to the army. But I was already aware of the potential unfairness. Not that there was any way I could help or hurt her career. Her jacket made it plain she was going to make master sergeant and then first sergeant like night follows day. It was only a matter of time. Then came the leap up to E-9 status, sergeant major. That was hers for the taking, too. After that, she would have a problem. After sergeant major came command sergeant major, and there's only one of those in each regiment. After that came sergeant major of the army, and there's only one of those, period. So she would rise and then stop, whatever I said about it.

"We have a tactical problem," she said. "Or strategic, maybe."

"Why?"

"The pointy-head, Gorowski? We don't think it's blackmail in the sense that he's got some terrible secret or anything. Looks to us more like straightforward threats against his family. Coercion, rather than blackmail."

"How can you tell?"

"His file is clean as a whistle. He's been background-checked to hell and back. That's why they do it. They're trying to avoid the possibility of blackmail."

"Was he a Red Sox fan?"

She shook her head. "Yankees. He's from the Bronx. Went to the High School of Science there."

"OK," I said. "I like him already."

"But the book says we should bust him right now."

"What's he doing?"

"We've seen him taking papers out of the lab."

"Are they still doing the sabot?"

She nodded. "But they could publish the sabot design in Stars and Stripes and it wouldn't tell anybody anything. So the situation isn't critical yet."

"What does he do with the papers?"

"He dead-drops them in Baltimore."

"Have you seen who picks them up?"

She shook her head.

"No dice," she said.

"What are you thinking about the pointy-head?"

"I don't want to bust him. I think we should get whoever it is off his back and leave him be. He's got two baby girls."

"What does Frasconi think?"

"He agrees."

"Does he?"

She smiled.

"Well, he will," she said. "But the book says different."

"Forget the book," I said.

"Really?"

"Direct order from me," I said. "I'll put it in writing, if you want. Go with your instinct. Trace the chain the whole way to the other end. If we can, we'll keep this Gorowski guy out of trouble. That's my usual approach, with Yankees fans. But don't let it get away from you."

"I won't," she said.

"Wrap it up before they get done with the sabot," I said. "Or we'll have to think of another approach."

"OK," she said.

Then we talked about other things, and drank a couple more beers. After an hour there was something good on the jukebox and I asked her to dance. For the second time that night she told me No dice. I thought about that phrase later. Clearly it came from crapshooters' jargon. It must have originally meant foul, like a call, like the dice hadn't been properly rolled. No dice! Like a baseball umpire calling a grounder over the bag. Foul ball! Then much later it became just another negative, like no way, no how, no chance. But how far back in its etymology was she mining? Had she meant a plain no, or was she calling a foul? I wasn't sure.

I was completely soaked when I got back to the house so I went upstairs and took possession of Duke's room and toweled off and dressed in a fresh set of his clothes. The room was at the front of the house, more or less central. The window gave me a view west all the way along the driveway. The elevation meant I could see over the wall. I saw a Lincoln Town Car in the far distance. It was heading straight for us. It was black. It had its headlights on, because of the weather. Paulie came out in his slicker and opened the gate well ahead of time so it didn't have to slow down. It came straight through, moving fast. The windshield was wet and smeared and the wipers were beating back and forth. Paulie had been expecting it. He had been alerted by the phone call. I watched it approach until it was lost to sight below me. Then I turned away.

Duke's room was square and plain, like most of the rooms in the house. It had dark paneling and a big Oriental carpet. There was a television set and two telephones. External and internal, I guessed. The sheets were clean and there were no personal items anywhere, except for clothes in the closet. I guessed maybe early in the morning Beck had told the maid about the personnel change. I guessed he had told her to leave the clothes for me.

I went back to the window and about five minutes later I saw Beck coming back in the Cadillac. Paulie was ready for him, too. The big car barely had to slow. Paulie swung the gate shut after it. Then he chained it and locked it. The gate was a hundred yards from me, but I could make out what he was doing. The Cadillac disappeared from view beneath me and headed around to the garage block. I headed downstairs. I figured since Beck was back it might be time for lunch. I figured maybe Paulie had chained the gate because he was heading on down to join us.

But I was wrong.

I made it to the hallway and met Beck coming out of the kitchen. His coat was spotted with rain. He was looking for me. He had a sports bag in his hand. It was the same bag he had carried the guns to Connecticut in.

"Job to do," he said. "Right now. You need to catch the tide."

"Where?"

He moved away. Turned his head and called over his shoulder.

"The guy in the Lincoln will tell you," he said.

I went through the kitchen and outside. The metal detector beeped at me. I walked back into the rain and headed for the garage block. But the Lincoln was parked right there at the corner of the house. It had been turned and backed up so its trunk faced the sea. There was a guy in the driver's seat. He was sheltering from the rain, and he was impatient. He was tapping on the wheel with his thumbs. He saw me in the mirror and the trunk popped and he opened his door and slid out fast.

He looked like somebody had dragged him out of a trailer park and shoved him in a suit. He had a long graying goatee hiding a weak chin. He had a greasy pony tail held together by a pink rubber band. The band was speckled with glitter. It was the kind of thing you see on drugstore carousels, placed low down so little girls will choose them. He had old acne scars. He had prison tattoos on his neck. He was tall and very thin, like a regular person split lengthwise into two.

"You the new Duke?" he said to me.

"Yes," I said. "I'm the new Duke."

"I'm Harley," he said.

I didn't tell him my name.

"So let's do it," he said.

"Do what?"

He came around and raised the trunk lid all the way.

"Garbage disposal," he said.

There was a military-issue body bag in the trunk. Heavy black rubber, zipped all along its length. I could see by the way it was folded into the space that it held a small person. A woman, probably.

"Who is it?" I asked, although I already knew the answer.

"The government bitch," he said. "Took us long enough, but we got her in the end."

He leaned in and grabbed his end of the bag. Clamped both corners in his hands. Waited for me. I just stood there, feeling the rain against my neck, listening to it snapping and popping against the rubber.

"Got to catch the tide," he said. "It's going to turn."

I leaned down and took hold of the corners at my end. We glanced at each other to coordinate our efforts and heaved the bag up and out. It wasn't heavy, but it was awkward, and Harley was not strong. We carried it a few steps toward the shore.

"Put it down," I said.

"Why?"

"I want to see," I said.

Harley just stood there.

"I don't think you do," he said.

"Put it down," I said again.

He hesitated a second longer and then we squatted together and laid the bag on the rocks. The body settled inside with its back arched upward. I stayed squatted down and duck-walked around to the head. Found the zipper tag and pulled.

"Just look at the face," Harley said. "That part's not too bad."

I looked. It was very bad. She had died in extreme agony. That was clear. Her face was blasted with pain. It was still twisted into the shape of her final ghastly scream.

But it wasn't Teresa Daniel.

It was Beck's maid.