Persuader

I inched the zipper down a little more until I saw the same mutilation I had seen ten years previously. Then I stopped. Turned my head into the rain and closed my eyes. The water on my face felt like tears.

"Let's get on with it," Harley said.

I opened my eyes. Stared at the waves. Pulled the zipper back up without looking anymore. Stood slowly and stepped around to the foot of the bag. Harley waited. Then we each grasped our corners and lifted. Carried the burden over the rocks. He led me south and east, way out to a place on the shore where two granite shelves met. There was a steep V-shaped cleft between them. It was half-full of moving water.

"Wait until after the next big wave," Harley said.

It came booming in and we both ducked our heads away from the spray. The cleft filled to the top and the tide ran up over the rocks and almost reached our shoes. Then it pulled away again and the cleft emptied out. Gravel rattled and drained. The surface of the sea was laced with dull gray foam and pitted by the rain.

"OK, put it down," Harley said. He was out of breath. "Hold your end."

We laid the bag down so the head end was hanging out over the granite shelf and into the cleft. The zipper faced upward. The body was on its back. I held both corners at the foot. The rain plastered my hair to my head and ran into my eyes. It stung. Harley squatted and straddled the bag and humped the head end farther out into space. I went with him, inch by inch, small steps on the slippery rocks. The next wave came in and eddied under the bag. It floated it up a little. Harley used the temporary buoyancy to slide it a little farther into the sea. I moved with it. The wave receded. The cleft drained again. The bag drooped down. The rain thrashed against the stiff rubber. It battered our backs. It was deathly cold.

Harley used the next five waves to ease the bag out more and more until it was hanging right down into the cleft. I was left holding empty rubber. Gravity had jammed the body tight up against the top of the bag. Harley waited and looked out to sea and then ducked low and pulled the zipper all the way down. Scrambled back fast and took a corner from me. Held tight. The seventh wave came booming in. We were soaked with its spray. The cleft filled and the bag filled and then the big wave receded and sucked the body right out of the bag. It floated motionless for a split second and then the undertow caught it and took it away. It went straight down, into the depths. I saw long fair hair streaming in the water and pale skin flashing green and gray and then it was gone. The cleft foamed red as it drained.

"Hell of a riptide here," Harley said.

I said nothing.

"The undertow takes them right out," he said. "We never had one come back, anyways. It pulls them a mile or two, going down all the way. Then there's sharks out there, I guess. They cruise the coast here. Plus all kinds of other creatures. You know, crabs, suckerfish, things like that."

I said nothing.

"Never had one come back," he said again.

I glanced at him and he smiled at me. His mouth was like a caved-in hole above the goatee. He had rotten yellow stumps for teeth. I glanced away again. The next wave came in. It was only a small one, but when it receded the cleft was washed clean. It was like nothing had happened. Like nothing had ever been there. Harley stood up awkwardly and zipped the empty bag. Pink water sluiced out of it and ran over the rocks. He started rolling it up. I glanced back at the house. Beck was standing in the kitchen doorway, alone, watching us.

We went back toward the house, soaked with rain and salt water. Beck ducked back into the kitchen. We followed him in. Harley hung around on the edge of the room, like he felt he shouldn't be there.

"She was a federal agent?" I said.

"No question," Beck said.

His sports bag was on the table, in the center, prominent, like a prosecution exhibit in a courtroom. He zipped it open and rummaged inside.

"Check this out," he said.

He lifted a bundle onto the table. Something wrapped in a damp dirty oil-stained rag the size of a hand towel. He unfolded it and took out Duffy's Glock 19.

"This all was hidden in the car we let her use," he said.

"The Saab?" I said, because I had to say something.

He nodded. "In the well where the spare tire is. Under the trunk floor." He laid the Glock on the table. Took the two spare magazines out of the rag and laid them next to the gun. Then he put the bent bradawl next to them, and the sharpened chisel. And Angel Doll's keyring.

I couldn't breathe.

"The bradawl is a lock pick, I guess," Beck said.

"How does this prove she was federal?" I asked.

He picked up the Glock again and turned it around and pointed to the right-hand side of the slide.

"Serial number," he said. "We checked with Glock in Austria. By computer. We have access to that kind of thing. This particular gun was sold to the United States government about a year ago. Part of a big order for the law enforcement agencies, 17s for the male agents and 19s for the women. So that's how we know she was federal."

I stared at the serial number. "Did she deny it?"

He nodded. "Of course she did. She said she just found it. Gave us a big song and dance. She blamed you, actually. Said it was your stuff. But then, they always deny it, don't they? They're trained to, I guess."

I looked away. Stared through the window at the sea. Why had she picked it all up? Why hadn't she just left it there? Was it some kind of a housekeeping instinct? She didn't want it to get wet? Or what?

"You look upset," Beck said.

And how did she even find it? Why would she even be looking?

"You look upset," he said again.

I was beyond upset. She had died in agony. And I had done it to her. She probably thought she was doing me a favor. By keeping my stuff dry. By keeping it from rusting. She was just a dumb naive kid from Ireland, trying to help me out. And I had killed her, as surely as if I had stood there and butchered her myself.

"I'm responsible for security," I said. "I should have suspected her."

"You're responsible only since last night," Beck said. "So don't beat yourself up over it. You haven't even got your feet under the table yet. It was Duke who should have made her."

"But I never would have suspected her," I said. "I thought she was just the maid."

"Hey, me too," he said. "Duke, also."

I looked away again. Stared at the sea. It was gray and heaving. I didn't really understand. She found it. But why would she hide it so well?

"This is the clincher," Beck said.

I looked back in time to see him lifting a pair of shoes out of the bag. They were big square clunky items, black, the shoes she had been wearing every single time I had seen her.

"Look at this," he said.

He turned the right shoe over and pulled a pin out of the heel with his fingernails. Then he swiveled the heel rubber like a little door and turned the shoe the right way up. He shook it. A small black plastic rectangle clattered out on the table. It landed facedown. He turned it over.

It was a wireless e-mail device, exactly identical to my own.

He passed me the shoe. I took it. Stared at it, blankly. It was a woman's size six. Made for a small foot. But it had a wide bulbous toe, and therefore a wide thick heel to balance it visually. Some kind of a clumsy fashion statement. The heel had a rectangular cavity carved out of it. Identical to mine. It had been done neatly. It had been done with patience. But not by a machine. It showed the same faint tool marks that mine did. I pictured some guy in a lab somewhere, a line of shoes on a bench in front of him, the smell of new leather, a small arc of woodcarving tools laid out in front of him, curls and slivers of rubber accumulating on the floor around him as he labored. Most government work is surprisingly low-tech. It's not all exploding ballpoint pens and cameras built into watches. A trip to the mall to buy a commercial e-mail device and a pair of plain shoes is about as cutting-edge as most of it gets.

"What are you thinking?" Beck asked.

I was thinking about how I was feeling. I was on a roller-coaster. She was still dead, but I hadn't killed her anymore. The government computers had killed her again. So I was relieved, personally. But I was more than a little angry, too. Like, what the hell was Duffy doing? What the hell was she playing at? It was an absolute rule of procedure that you never put two or more people undercover in the same location unless they're aware of each other. That was absolutely basic. She had told me about Teresa Daniel. So why the hell hadn't she told me about this other woman?

"Unbelievable," I said.

"The battery is dead," he said. He was holding the device in both hands. Using both thumbs on it, like a video game. "It doesn't work, anyway."

He passed it to me. I put the shoe down and took it from him. Pressed the familiar power button. But the screen stayed dead.

"How long was she here?" I asked.

"Eight weeks," Beck said. "It's hard for us to keep domestic staff. It's lonely here. And there's Paulie, you know. And Duke wasn't a very hospitable guy, either."

"I guess eight weeks would be a long time for a battery to last."

"What would be their procedure now?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I was never federal."

"In general," he said. "You must have seen stuff like this."

I shrugged.

"I guess they'd have expected it," I said. "Communications are always the first things to get screwed up. She drops off the radar, they wouldn't worry right away. They'd have no choice but to leave her in the field. I mean, they can't contact her to order her home, can they? So I guess they would trust her to get the battery charged up again, as soon as she could." I turned the unit on its edge and pointed to the little socket on the bottom. "Looks like it needs a cell phone charger, something like that."

"Would they send people after her?"

"Eventually," I said. "I guess."

"When?"

"I don't know. Not yet, anyway."

"We plan to deny she was ever here. Deny we ever saw her. There's no evidence she was ever here."

"You better clean her room real good," I said. "There'll be fingerprints and hair and DNA all over the place."

"She was recommended to us," he said. "We don't advertise in the paper or anything. Some guys we know in Boston put her in touch."

He glanced at me. I thought: Some guys in Boston begging for a plea bargain, helping the government any which way they could. I nodded.

"Tricky," I said. "Because what does that say about them?"

He nodded back sourly. He agreed with me. He knew what I was saying. He picked up the big bunch of keys from where they were lying next to the chisel.

"I think these are Angel Doll's," he said.

I said nothing.

"So it's a three-way nightmare," he said. "We can tie Doll to the Hartford crew, and we can tie our Boston friends to the feds. Now we can tie Doll to the feds, too. Because he gave his keys to the undercover bitch. Which means the Hartford crew must be in bed with the feds as well. Doll's dead, thanks to Duke, but I've still got Hartford, Boston, and the government on my back. I'm going to need you, Reacher."

I glanced at Harley. He was looking out the window at the rain.

"Was it just Doll?" I asked.

Beck nodded. "I've been through all of that. I'm satisfied. It was just Doll. The rest are solid. They're still with me. They were very apologetic about Doll."

"OK," I said.

There was silence for a long moment. Then Beck rewrapped my stash in its rag and dumped it back in his bag. He threw the dead e-mail device in after it and piled the maid's shoes on top. They looked sad and empty and forlorn.

"I've learned one thing," he said. "I'm going to start searching people's shoes, that's for damn sure. You can bet your life on that."

I bet my life on it right there and then. I kept my own shoes on. I got back up to Duke's room and checked his closet. There were four pairs in there. Nothing I would have picked out for myself in a store, but they looked reasonable and they were close to the right size. But I left them there. To show up so soon in different shoes would raise a red flag. And if I was going to ditch mine, I was going to ditch them properly. No point leaving them in my room for casual inspection. I would have to get them out of the house. And there was no easy way of doing that right then. Not after the scene in the kitchen. I couldn't just walk downstairs with them in my hands. What was I supposed to say? What, these? Oh, they're the shoes I was wearing when I arrived. I'm just going out to throw them in the ocean. Like I was suddenly bored with them? So I kept them on.

And I still needed them, anyway. I was tempted, but I wasn't ready to cut Duffy out. Not just yet. I locked myself in Duke's bathroom and took the e-mail device out. It was an eerie feeling. I hit power and the screen came up with a message: We need to meet. I hit reply and sent: You bet your ass we do. Then I turned the unit off and nailed it back into my heel and went down to the kitchen again.

"Go with Harley," Beck told me. "You need to bring the Saab back."

The cook wasn't there. The counters were neat and clean. They had been scrubbed. The stove was cold. It felt like there should be a Closed sign hanging on the door.

"What about lunch?" I said.

"You hungry?"

I thought back to the way the sea had swelled the bag and claimed the body. Saw the hair under the water, fluid and infinitely fine. Saw the blood rinsing away, pink and diluted. I wasn't hungry.

"Starving," I said.

Beck smiled sheepishly. "You're one cold son of a bitch, Reacher."

"I've seen dead people before. I expect to see them again."

He nodded. "The cook is off duty. Eat out, OK?"

"I don't have any money."

He put his hand in his pants pocket and came out with a wad of bills. Started to count them out and then just shrugged and gave it up and handed the whole lot to me. It must have been close to a thousand dollars.

"Walking-around money," he said. "We'll do the salary thing later."

I put the cash in my pocket.

"Harley is waiting in the car," he said.

I went outside and pulled my coat collar up. The wind was easing. The rain was reverting to vertical. The Lincoln was still there at the corner of the house. The trunk lid was closed. Harley was drumming his thumbs on the wheel. I slid into the passenger seat and buzzed it backward to get some legroom. He fired up the engine and set the wipers going and took off. We had to wait while Paulie unchained the gate. Harley fiddled with the heater and set it on high. Our clothes were wet and the windows were steaming up. Paulie was slow. Harley started drumming again.

"You two work for the same guy?" I asked him.

"Me and Paulie?" he said. "Sure."

"Who is he?"

"Beck didn't tell you?"

"No," I said.

"Then I won't either, I guess."

"Hard for me to do my job without information," I said.

"That's your problem," he said. "Not mine."

He gave me his yellow gappy smile again. I figured if I hit him hard enough my fist would take out all the little stumps and end up somewhere in the back of his scrawny throat. But I didn't hit him. Paulie got the chain loose and swung the gate back. Harley took off immediately and squeezed through with about an inch of clearance on each side. I settled back in my seat. Harley clicked the headlights on and accelerated hard and rooster tails of spray kicked up behind us. We drove west, because there was no choice for the first twelve miles. Then we turned north on Route One, away from where Elizabeth Beck had taken me, away from Old Orchard Beach and Saco, toward Portland. I had no view of anything because the weather was so dismal. I could barely see the tail lights on the traffic ahead of us. Harley didn't speak. Just rocked back and forth in the driver's seat and drummed his thumbs on the wheel and drove. He wasn't a smooth driver. He was always either on the gas or the brake. We sped up, slowed down, sped up, slowed down. It was a long twenty miles.

Then the road swerved hard to the west and I saw I-295 close by on our left. There was a narrow tongue of gray seawater beyond it and beyond that was the Portland airport. There was a plane taking off in a huge cloud of spray. It roared low over our heads and swung south over the Atlantic. Then there was a strip mall on our left with a long narrow parking lot out front. The mall had the sort of stores you expect to find in a low-rent place trapped between two roads near an airport. The parking lot held maybe twenty cars in a line, all of them head-in and square-on to the curb. The old Saab was fifth from the left. Harley pulled the Lincoln in and stopped directly behind it. Drummed his thumbs on the wheel.

"All yours," he said. "Key is in the door pocket."

I got out in the rain and he drove off as soon as I shut my door. But he didn't get back on Route One. At the end of the lot he made a left. Then an immediate right. I saw him ease the big car through an improvised exit made of lumpy poured concrete that led into the adjoining lot. I pulled my collar up again and watched as he drove slowly through it and then disappeared behind a set of brand-new buildings. They were long low sheds made of bright corrugated metal. Some kind of a business park. There was a network of narrow blacktop roads. They were wet and shiny with rain. They had high concrete curbs, smooth and new. I saw the Lincoln again, through a gap between buildings. It was moving slow and lazy, like it was looking to park somewhere. Then it slid behind another building and I didn't see it again.

I turned around. The Saab was nose-in to a discount liquor store. Next to the liquor store on one side was a place that sold car stereos and on the other side was a place with a window full of fake crystal chandeliers. I doubted if the maid had been sent out to buy a new ceiling fixture. Or to get a CD player installed in the Saab. So she must have been sent to the liquor store. And then she must have found a whole bunch of people waiting there for her. Four of them, maybe five. At least. After the first moment of surprise she would have changed from a bewildered maid to a trained agent fighting for her life. They would have anticipated that. They would have come mob-handed. I looked up and down the sidewalk. Then I looked at the liquor store. It had a window full of boxes. There was no real view out. But I went in anyway.

The store was full of boxes but empty of people. It felt like it spent most of its time that way. It was cold and dusty. The clerk behind the counter was a gray guy of about fifty. Gray hair, gray shirt, gray skin. He looked like he hadn't been outside in a decade. He had nothing I wanted to buy as an ice-breaker. So I just went right ahead and asked him my question.

"See that Saab out there?" I said.

He made a big show of lining up his view out front.

"I see it," he said.

"You see what happened to the driver?"

"No," he said.

People who say no right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying no, but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add sorry or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say Sorry, no, why, what happened? I put my hand in my pocket and peeled off a bill from Beck's wad purely by feel. Took it out. It was a hundred. I folded it in half and held it up between my finger and my thumb.

"Now did you see?" I said.

He glanced to his left. My right. Toward the business park beyond his walls. Just a fast glance, furtive, out and back.

"No," he said again.

"Black Town Car?" I said. "Drove off that way?"

"I didn't see," he said. "I was busy."

I nodded. "You're practically rushed off your feet in here. I can see that. It's a miracle one man can handle the pressure."

"I was in the back. On the phone, I guess."

I kept the hundred up there in my hand for another long moment. I guessed a hundred tax-free dollars would represent a healthy slice of his week's net take. But he looked away from it. That told me plenty, too.

"OK," I said. I put the money back in my pocket and walked out.

I drove the Saab two hundred yards south on Route One and stopped at the first gas station I saw. Went in and bought a bottle of spring water and two candy bars. I paid four times more for the water than I would have for gasoline, if you calculated it by the gallon. Then I came out and sheltered near the door and peeled a candy bar and started eating it. Used the time to look around. No surveillance. So I stepped over to the pay phones and used my change to call Duffy. I had memorized her motel number. I crouched under the plastic bubble and tried to stay dry. She answered on the second ring.

"Drive north to Saco," I said. "Right now. Meet me in the big brick mall on the river island in a coffee shop called Cafe Cafe. Last one there buys."

I finished my candy bar as I drove south. The Saab rode hard and it was noisy compared to Beck's Cadillac or Harley's Lincoln. It was old and worn. The carpets were thin and loose. It had six figures on the clock. But it got the job done. It had decent tires and the wipers worked. It made it through the rain OK. And it had nice big mirrors. I watched them all the way. Nobody came after me. I got to the coffee shop first. Ordered a tall espresso to wash the taste of chocolate out of my mouth.

Duffy showed up six minutes later. She paused in the doorway and looked around and then headed over toward me and smiled. She was in fresh jeans and another cotton shirt, but it was blue, not white. Over that was her leather jacket and over that was a battered old raincoat that was way too big for her. Maybe it was the old guy's. Maybe she had borrowed it from him. It wasn't Eliot's. That was clear. He was smaller than she was. She must have come north not expecting bad weather.

"Is this place safe?" she said.

I didn't answer.

"What?" she said.

"You're buying," I said. "You got here second. I'll have another espresso. And you owe me for the first one."

She looked at me blankly and then went to the counter and came back with an espresso for me and a cappuccino for herself. Her hair was a little wet. She had combed it with her fingers. She must have parked her car on the street and walked in through the rain and checked her reflection in a store window. She counted her change in silence and dealt me bills and coins equal to the price of my first cup. Coffee was another thing way more expensive than gasoline, up here in Maine. But I guessed it was the same everywhere.

"What's up?" she said.

I didn't answer.

"Reacher, what's the matter?"

"You put another agent in eight weeks ago," I said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What?"

"What I said."

"What agent?"

"She died this morning. She underwent a radical double mastectomy without the benefit of anesthetic."

She stared at me. "Teresa?"

I shook my head.

"Not Teresa," I said. "The other one."

"What other one?"

"Don't bullshit me," I said.

"What other one?"

I stared at her. Hard. Then softer. There was something about the light in that coffee shop. Maybe it was the way it came off all the blond wood and the brushed metal and the glass and the chrome. It was like X-ray light. Like a truth serum. It had shown me Elizabeth Beck's genuine uncontrollable blush. Now I was expecting it to show me the exact same thing from Duffy. I was expecting it to show me a deep red blush of shame and embarrassment, because I had found her out. But it showed me total surprise instead. It was right there in her face. She had gone very pale. She had gone stark white with shock. It was like the blood had drained right out of her. And nobody can do that on command, any more than they can blush.

"What other one?" she said again. "There was only Teresa. What? Are you telling me she's dead?"

"Not Teresa," I said again. "There was another one. Another woman. She got hired on as a kitchen maid."

"No," she said. "There's only Teresa."

I shook my head again. "I saw the body. It wasn't Teresa."

"A kitchen maid?"

"She had an e-mail thing in her shoe," I said. "Exactly the same as mine. The heel was scooped out by the same guy. I recognized the handiwork."

"That's not possible," she said.

I looked straight at her.

"I would have told you," she said. "Of course I would have told you. And I wouldn't have needed you if I had another agent in there. Don't you see that?"

I looked away. Looked back. Now I was embarrassed.

"So who the hell was she?" I asked.

She didn't answer. Just started nudging her cup around and around on her saucer, prodding at the handle with her forefinger, turning it ten degrees at a time. The heavy foam and the chocolate dust stayed still while the cup rotated. She was thinking like crazy.

"Eight weeks ago?" she said.

I nodded.

"What alerted them?" she asked.

"They got into your computer," I said. "This morning, or maybe last night."

She looked up from her cup. "That's what you were asking me about?"

I nodded. Said nothing.

"Teresa isn't in the computer," she said. "She's off the books."

"Did you check with Eliot?"

"I did better than check," she said. "I searched the whole of his hard drive. And all of his files on the main server back in D.C. I've got total access everywhere. I looked for Teresa, Daniel, Justice, Beck, Maine, and undercover. And he didn't write any of those words anywhere."

I said nothing.

"How did it go down?" she asked.

"I'm not really sure," I said. "I guess at first the computer told them you had somebody in there, and then it told them it was a woman. No name, no details. So they looked for her. And I think it was partly my fault they found her."

"How?"

"I had a stash," I said. "Your Glock, and the ammo, and a few other things. She found them. She hid them in the car she was using."

Duffy was quiet for a second.

"OK," she said. "And you're thinking they searched the car and your stuff made her look bad, right?"

"I guess so."

"But maybe they searched her first and found the shoe."

I looked away. "I sincerely hope so."

"Don't beat up on yourself. It's not your fault. As soon as they got into the computer it was only a matter of time for the first one they looked at. They both fit the bill. I mean, how many women were there to choose from? Presumably just her and Teresa. They couldn't miss."

I nodded. There was Elizabeth, too. And there was the cook. But neither one of them would figure very high on a list of suspicious persons. Elizabeth was the guy's wife. And the cook had probably been there twenty years.

"But who was she?" I said.

She played with her cup until it was back in its starting position. The unglazed rim on the bottom made a tiny grinding sound.

"It's obvious, I'm afraid," she said. "Think of the time line here. Count backward from today. Eleven weeks ago I screwed up with the surveillance photographs. Ten weeks ago they pulled me off the case. But because Beck is a big fish I couldn't give it up and so nine weeks ago I put Teresa in without their knowledge. But also because Beck is a big fish, and without my knowledge, they must have reassigned the case to someone else and eight weeks ago that someone else put this maid person in, right on top of Teresa. Teresa didn't know the maid was coming and the maid didn't know Teresa was already there."

"Why would she have nosed into my stuff?"

"I guess she wanted to control the situation. Standard procedure. As far as she was concerned, you weren't anybody kosher. You were just a loose cannon. Some kind of troublemaker. You were a cop-killer, and you were hiding weapons. Maybe she thought you were from a rival operation. She was probably thinking of selling you out to Beck. It would have enhanced her credibility with him. And she needed you out of the way, because she didn't need extra complications. If she didn't sell you out to Beck, she would have turned you in to us, as a cop-killer. I'm surprised she didn't already."

"Her battery was dead."

She nodded. "Eight weeks. I guess kitchen maids don't have good access to cell phone chargers."

"Beck said she was out of Boston."

"Makes sense," she said. "They probably farmed it out to the Boston field office. That would work, geographically. And it would explain why we didn't pick up any kind of water-cooler whispers in D.C."

"He said she was recommended by some friends of his."

"Plea-bargainers, for sure. We use them all the time. They set each other up quite happily. No code of silence with these people."

Then I remembered something else Beck had said.

"How was Teresa communicating?" I asked.

"She had an e-mail thing, like yours."

"In her shoe?"

Duffy nodded. Said nothing. I heard Beck's voice, loud in my head: I'm going to start searching people's shoes, that's for damn sure. You can bet your life on that.

"When did you last hear from her?"

"She fell off the air the second day."

She went quiet.

"Where was she living?" I asked.

"In Portland. We put her in an apartment. She was an office clerk, not a kitchen maid."

"You been to the apartment?"

She nodded. "Nobody's seen her there since the second day."

"You check her closet?"

"Why?"

"We need to know what shoes she was wearing when she was captured."

Duffy went pale again.

"Shit," she said.

"Right," I said. "What shoes were left in her closet?"

"The wrong ones."

"Would she think to ditch the e-mail thing?"

"Wouldn't help her. She'd have to ditch the shoes, too. The hole in the heel would tell the story, wouldn't it?"

"We need to find her," I said.

"We sure do," she said. Then she paused a beat. "She was very lucky today. They went looking for a woman, and they happened to look at the maid first. We can't count on her staying that lucky much longer."

I said nothing. Very lucky for Teresa, very unlucky for the maid. Every silver lining has a cloud. Duffy sipped her coffee. Grimaced slightly like the taste was off and put the cup back down again.

"But what gave her away?" she said. "In the first place? That's what I want to know. I mean, she only lasted two days. And that was nine whole weeks before they broke into the computer."

"What background story did you give her?"

"The usual, for this kind of work. Unmarried, unattached, no family, no roots. Like you, except you didn't have to fake it."

I nodded slowly. A good-looking thirty-year-old woman who would never be missed. A huge temptation for guys like Paulie or Angel Doll. Maybe irresistible. A fun thing to have around. And the rest of their crew might be even worse. Like Harley, for instance. He didn't strike me as much of an advertisement for the benefits of civilization.

"Maybe nothing gave her away," I said. "Maybe she just went missing, you know, like women do. Lots of women go missing. Young women especially. Single, unattached women. Happens all the time. Thousands a year."

"But you found the room they were keeping her in."

"All those missing women have to be somewhere. They're only missing as far as the rest of us are concerned. They know where they are, and the men who took them know where they are."

She looked at me. "You think it's like that?"

"Could be."

"Will she be OK?"

"I don't know," I said. "I hope so."

"Will they keep her alive?"

"I think they want to keep her alive. Because they don't know she's a federal agent. They think she's just a woman."

A fun thing to have around.

"Can you find her before they check her shoes?"

"They might never check them," I said. "You know, if they're seeing her in one particular light, as it were, it would be a leap to start seeing her as something else."

She looked away. Went quiet.

"One particular light," she repeated. "Why don't we just say what we mean?"

"Because we don't want to," I said.

She stayed quiet. One minute. Two. Then she looked straight back at me. A brand-new thought.

"What about your shoes?" she said.

I shook my head.

"Same thing," I said. "They're getting used to me. It would be a leap to start seeing me as something else."

"It's still a big risk."

I shrugged.

"Beck gave me a Beretta M9," I said. "So I'll wait and see. If he bends down to take a look I'll shoot him through the middle of the forehead."

"But he's just a businessman, right? Basically? Would he really do bad stuff to Teresa without knowing she was a threat to his business?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Did he kill the maid?"

I shook my head. "Quinn did."

"Were you a witness?"

"No."

"So how do you know?"

I looked away.

"I recognized the handiwork," I said.

The fourth time I ever saw Sergeant First Class Dominique Kohl was a week after the night we spent in the bar. The weather was still hot. There was talk of a tropical storm blowing in from the direction of Bermuda. I had a million files on my desk. We had rapes, homicides, suicides, weapons thefts, assaults, and there had been a riot the night before because the refrigeration had broken down in the enlisted mess kitchens and the ice cream had turned to water. I had just gotten off the phone with a buddy at Fort Irwin in California who told me it was the same over there whenever the desert winds were blowing.

Kohl came in wearing shorts and a tank top shirt. She still wasn't sweating. Her skin was still dusty. She was carrying her file, which was then about eight times as thick as when I had first given it to her.

"The sabot has got to be metal," she said. "That's their final conclusion."

"Is it?" I said.

"They'd have preferred plastic, but I think that's just showboating."

"OK," I said.

"I'm trying to tell you they've finished with the sabot design. They're ready to move on with the important stuff now."

"You still feel all warm and fuzzy about this Gorowski guy?"

She nodded. "It would be a tragedy to bust him. He's a nice guy and an innocent victim. And the bottom line is he's good at his job and useful to the army."

"So what do you want to do?"

"It's tricky," she said. "I guess what I want to do is bring him on board and get him to feed phony stuff to whoever it is who's got the hook in. That way we keep the investigation going without risking putting anything real out there."

"But?"

"The real thing looks phony in itself. It's a very weird device. It's like a big lawn dart. It has no explosive in it."

"So how does it work?"

"Kinetic energy, dense metals, depleted uranium, heat, all that kind of stuff. Were you a physics postgrad?"

"No."

"Then you won't understand it. But my feeling is if we screw with the designs the bad guy is going to know. It'll put Gorowski at risk. Or his baby girls, or whatever."

"So you want to let the real blueprints out there?"

"I think we have to."

"Big risk," I said.

"Your call," she said. "That's why you get the big bucks."

"I'm a captain," I said. "I'd be on food stamps if I ever got time to eat."

"Decision?"

"Got a line on the bad guy yet?"

"No."

"Feel confident you won't let it get away?"

"Totally," she said.

I smiled. Right then she looked like the most self-possessed human being I had ever seen. Shining eyes, serious expression, hair hooked behind her ears, short khaki shorts, tiny khaki shirt, socks and parachute boots, dark dusty skin everywhere.

"So go for it," I said.

"I never dance," she said.

"What?"

"It wasn't just you," she said. "In fact, I'd have liked to. I appreciated the invitation. But I never dance with anybody."

"Why not?"

"Just a thing," she said. "I feel self-conscious. I'm not very coordinated."

"Neither am I."

"Maybe we should practice in private," she said.

"Separately?"

"One-on-one mentoring helps," she said. "Like with alcoholism."

Then she winked and walked out and left a very faint trace of her perfume behind her in the hot heavy air.

Duffy and I finished our coffee in silence. Mine tasted thin and cold and bitter. I had no stomach for it. My right shoe pinched. It wasn't a perfect fit. And it was starting to feel like a ball and chain. It had felt ingenious at first. Smart, and cool, and clever. I remembered the first time I opened the heel, three days ago, soon after I first arrived at the house, soon after Duke locked the door to my room. I'm in. I had felt like a guy in a movie. Then I remembered the last time I opened it. Up in Duke's bathroom, an hour and a half ago. I had fired up the unit and Duffy's message had been waiting there for me: We need to meet.

"Why did you want to meet?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "Doesn't matter now. I'm revising the mission. I'm scrapping all our objectives except getting Teresa back. Just find her and get her out of there, OK?"

"What about Beck?"

"We're not going to get Beck. I screwed up again. This maid person was a legitimate agent and Teresa wasn't. Nor were you. And the maid died, so they're going to fire me for going off the books with Teresa and you, and they're going to abandon the case against Beck because I compromised procedure so badly they could never make it stand up in court anymore. So just get Teresa the hell out and we'll all go home."

"OK," I said.

"You'll have to forget about Quinn," she said. "Just let it go."

I said nothing.

"We failed anyway," she said. "You haven't found anything useful. Not a thing. No evidence at all. It's been a complete waste of time, beginning to end."

I said nothing.

"Like my career," she said.

"When are you going to tell the Justice Department?"

"About the maid?"

I nodded.

"Right away," she said. "Immediately. I'll have to. No choice. But I'll search the files first and find out who put her in there. Because I'd prefer to break the news face-to-face, I guess, at my own level. It'll give me a chance to apologize. Any other way all hell will break loose before I get the opportunity. All my access codes will be canceled and I'll be handed a cardboard box and told to clear my desk within thirty minutes."

"How long have you been there?"

"A long time. I thought I was going to be the first woman director."

I said nothing.

"I would have told you," she said. "I promise, if I'd had another agent in there I would have told you."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions."

"It's the stress," she said. "Undercover is tough."

I nodded. "It's like a hall of mirrors up there. One damn thing after another. Everything feels unreal."

We left our half-finished cups on the table and headed out, into the mall's interior sidewalks, and then outside into the rain. We had parked near each other. She kissed me on the cheek. Then she got into her Taurus and headed south and I got into the Saab and headed north.

Paulie took his own sweet time about opening the gate for me. He made me wait a couple of minutes before he even came lumbering out of his house. He still had his slicker on. Then he stood and stared for a minute before he went near the latch. But I didn't care. I was busy thinking. I was hearing Duffy's voice in my head: I'm revising the mission. Most of my military career a guy named Leon Garber was either directly or indirectly my boss. He explained everything to himself by making up little phrases or sayings. He had one for every occasion. He used to say: Revising objectives is smart because it stops you throwing good money after bad. He didn't mean money in any literal sense. He meant manpower, resources, time, will, effort, energy. He used to contradict himself, too. Just as often he would say: Never ever get distracted from the exact job in hand. Of course, proverbs are like that generally. Too many cooks spoil the broth, many hands make light work, great minds think alike, fools never differ. But overall, after you canceled out a few layers of contradiction, Leon approved of revision. He approved of it big time. Mainly because revision was about thinking, and he figured thinking never hurt anybody. So I was thinking, and thinking hard, because I was aware that something was slowly and imperceptibly creeping up on me, just outside of my conscious grasp. Something connected to something Duffy had said to me: You haven't found anything useful. Not a thing. No evidence at all.

I heard the gate swing back. Looked up to see Paulie waiting for me to drive through. The rain was beating on his slicker. He still had no hat. I exacted some petty revenge by waiting a minute myself. Duffy's revision suited me well enough. I didn't care much about Beck. I really didn't, either way. But I wanted Teresa. And I would get her. I wanted Quinn, too. And I would get him too, whatever Duffy said. The revision was only going to go so far.

I checked on Paulie again. He was still waiting. He was an idiot. He was out in the rain, I was in a car. I took my foot off the brake and rolled slowly through the gate. Then I accelerated hard and headed down to the house.

I put the Saab away in the slot I had once seen it in and walked out into the courtyard. The mechanic was still in the third garage. The empty one. I couldn't see what he was doing. Maybe he was just sheltering from the rain. I ran back to the house. Beck heard the metal detector announce my arrival and came into the kitchen to meet me. He pointed at his sports bag. It was still there on the table, right in the center.

"Get rid of this shit," he said. "Throw it in the ocean, OK?"

"OK," I said. He went back out to the hallway and I picked up the bag and turned around. Headed outside again and slipped down the ocean side of the garage block wall. I put my bundle right back in its hidden dip. Waste not, want not. And I wanted to be able to return Duffy's Glock to her. She was already in enough trouble without having to add the loss of her service piece to the list. Most agencies take that kind of a thing very seriously.

Then I walked on to the edge of the granite tables and swung the bag and hurled it far out to sea. It pinwheeled end over end in the air and the shoes and the e-mail unit were thrown clear. I saw the e-mail thing hit the water. It sank immediately. The left shoe hit toe-first and followed it. The bag parachuted a little and landed gently facedown and filled with water and turned over and slipped under. The right shoe floated for a moment, like a tiny black boat. It pitched and yawed and bobbed urgently like it was trying to escape to the east. It rode up over a peak and rode down on the far side of the crest. Then it started to list sideways. It floated maybe ten more seconds and then it filled with water and sank without a trace.

There was no activity in the house. The cook wasn't around. Richard was in the family dining room eating a sandwich he must have made for himself and staring out at the rain. Elizabeth was still in her parlor, still working on Doctor Zhivago. By a process of elimination I figured Beck must be in his den, maybe sitting in his red leather chair and looking at his machine gun collection. There was quiet everywhere. I didn't understand it. Duffy had said they had five containers in and Beck had said he had a big weekend coming up, but nobody was doing anything.

I went up to Duke's room. I didn't think of it as my room. I hoped I never would. I lay down on the bed and started thinking again. Tried to chase whatever it was hovering way in the back of my mind. It's easy, Leon Garber would have said. Work the clues. Go through everything you've seen, everything you've heard. So I went through it. But I kept coming back to Dominique Kohl. The fifth time I ever saw her, she drove me to Aberdeen, Maryland, in an olive-green Chevrolet. I was having second thoughts about letting genuine blueprints out into the world. It was a big risk. Not usually something I would worry about, but I needed more progress than we were making. Kohl had identified the dead-drop site, and the drop technique, and where and when and how Gorowski was letting his contact know that the delivery had been made. But she still hadn't seen the contact make the pickup. Still didn't know who he was.

Aberdeen was a small place twenty-some miles north and east of Baltimore. Gorowski's method was to drive down to the big city on a Sunday and make the drop in the Inner Harbor area. Back then the renovations were in full swing and it was a nice bright place to be but the public hadn't caught on all the way yet and it stayed pretty empty most of the time. Gorowski had a POV. It was a two-year-old Mazda Miata, bright red. It was a plausible car, all things considered. Not new, but not cheap either, because it was a popular model back then and nobody could get a discount off sticker, so used values held up well. And it was a two-seater, which was no good for his baby girls. So he had to have another car, too. We knew his wife wasn't rich. It might have worried me in someone else, but the guy was an engineer. It was a characteristic choice. He didn't smoke, didn't drink. Entirely plausible that he would hoard his spare dollars and spring for something with a sweet manual change and rear-wheel drive.

The Sunday we followed him he parked in a lot near one of the Baltimore marinas and went to sit on a bench. He was a squat hairy guy. Wide, but not tall. He had the Sunday newspaper with him. He spent some time gazing out at the sailboats. Then he closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sky. The weather was still wonderful. He spent maybe five minutes just soaking up the sun like a lizard. Then he opened his eyes and opened his paper and started to read it.

"This is his fifth time," Kohl whispered to me. "Third trip since they finished with the sabot stuff."

"Standard procedure so far?" I asked.

"Identical," she said.

He kept busy with the paper for about twenty minutes. I could tell he was actually reading it. He paid attention to all the sections, except for sports, which I thought was a little odd for a Yankees fan. But then, I guessed a Yankees fan wouldn't like the Orioles stuffed down his throat all the time.

"Here we go," Kohl whispered.

He glanced up and slipped a buff army envelope out of the newspaper. Snapped his left hand up and out to take a kink out of the section he was reading. And to distract, because at the exact same time his right hand dropped the envelope into the garbage can beside him at the end of the bench.

"Neat," I said.

"You bet," she said. "This boy is no dummy."

I nodded. He was pretty good. He didn't get up right away. He sat there for maybe ten more minutes, reading. Then he folded the paper slowly and carefully and stood up and walked to the edge of the water and looked out at the boats some more. Then he turned around and walked back toward his car, with the newspaper tucked up under his left arm.

"Now watch," Kohl said.

I saw him take a nub of chalk out of his pants pocket with his right hand. He scuffed against an iron lamp post and left a tick of chalk on it. It was the fifth mark on the post. Five weeks, five marks. The first four were fading away with age, in sequence. I stared at them through my field glasses while he walked on into the parking lot and got into his roadster and drove slowly away. I turned back and focused on the garbage can.

"Now what happens?" I said.

"Absolutely nothing," Kohl said. "I've done this twice before. Two whole Sundays. Nobody's going to come. Not today, not tonight."

"When is the trash emptied?"

"Tomorrow morning, first thing."

"Maybe the garbage man is a go-between."

She shook her head. "I checked. The truck compacts everything into a solid mass as it's loaded and then it goes straight into the incinerator."

"So our secret blueprints are getting burned up in a municipal incinerator?"

"That's safe enough."

"Maybe one of these sailboat guys is sneaking out in the middle of the night."

"Not unless the Invisible Man bought a sailboat."

"So maybe there's no guy," I said. "Maybe the whole thing was set up way in advance and then the guy got arrested for something else. Or he got cold feet and left town. Or he got sick and died. Maybe it's a defunct scheme."

"You think?"

"Not really," I said.

"Are you going to pull the plug?" she said.

"I have to. I might be an idiot, but I'm not completely stupid. This is way out of hand now."

"Can I go to plan B?"

"Haul Gorowski in and threaten him with a firing squad. Then tell him if he plays ball and delivers phony plans we'll be nice to him."

"Tough to make them convincing."

"Tell him to draw them himself," I said. "It's his ass on the line."

"Or his children's."

"All part of being a parent," I said. "It'll concentrate his mind."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You want to go dancing?"

"Here?"

"We're a long way from home. Nobody knows us."

"OK," I said.

Then we figured it was too early for dancing, so we had a couple of beers and waited for evening. The bar we were in was small and dark. There was wood and brick. It was a nice place. It had a jukebox. We spent a long time leaning on it, side by side, trying to choose our debut number. We debated it with intensity. It began to assume enormous significance. I tried to interpret her suggestions by analyzing the tempos. Were we going to be holding on to each other? That sort of dancing? Or was it going to be the usual sort of separate-but-equal leaping about? In the end we would have needed a United Nations resolution, so we just put our quarter in the machine and closed our eyes and hit buttons at random. We got "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones. It was a great number. It always has been. She was actually a pretty good dancer. But I was terrible.

Afterward we were out of breath, so we sat down and ordered more beers. And I suddenly figured out what Gorowski had been up to.

"It's not the envelope," I said. "The envelope is empty. It's the newspaper. The blueprints are in the newspaper. In the sports section. He should have checked the box scores. The envelope is a diversion, in case of surveillance. He's been well rehearsed. He dumps the newspaper in another garbage can, later. After making his chalk mark. Probably on his way out of the lot."

"Shit," Kohl said. "I wasted five weeks."

"And somebody got three real blueprints."

"One of us," she said. "Military, or CIA, or FBI. A professional, to be that cute."

The newspaper, not the envelope. Ten years later I was lying on a bed in Maine thinking about Dominique Kohl dancing and a guy called Gorowski folding his newspaper, slowly and carefully, and staring out at a hundred sailboat masts on the water. The newspaper, not the envelope. It seemed to be still relevant, somehow. This, not that. Then I thought about the maid hiding my stash under the floor of the Saab's trunk. She couldn't have hidden anything else there, or Beck would have found it and added it to the prosecution exhibits on his kitchen table. But the Saab's carpets were old and loose. If I was the sort of person who hid a gun under a spare tire I might hide papers under a car's carpets. And I might be the sort of person who made notes and kept records.

I rolled off the bed and stepped to the window. The afternoon had already happened. Full dark was on its way. Day fourteen, a Friday, nearly over. I went downstairs, thinking about the Saab. Beck was walking through the hallway. He was in a hurry. Preoccupied. He went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Listened to it for a second and then held it out to me.

"The phones are all dead," he said.

I put the receiver to my ear and listened. There was nothing there. No dial tone, no scratchy hiss from open circuits. Just dull inert silence, and the sound of blood rushing in my head. Like a seashell.

"Go try yours," he said.

I went back upstairs to Duke's room. The internal phone worked OK. Paulie answered on the third ring. I hung up on him. But the outside line was stone dead. I held the receiver like it would make a difference and Beck appeared in the doorway.

"I can speak to the gate," I said.

He nodded.

"That's a completely separate circuit," he said. "We put it in ourselves. What about the outside line?"

"Dead," I said.

"Weird," he said.

I put the receiver down. Glanced at the window.

"Could be the weather," I said.

"No," he said. He held up his cell phone. It was a tiny silver Nokia. "This is out too."

He handed it to me. There was a tiny screen on the front. A bar chart on the right showed that the battery was fully charged. But the signal meter was all the way down. No service was displayed, big and black and obvious. I handed it back.

"I need to use the bathroom," I said. "I'll be right down."

I locked myself in. Pulled off my shoe. Opened the heel. Pressed power. The screen came up: No service. I turned it off and nailed it back in. Flushed the toilet for form's sake and sat there on the lid. I was no kind of a telecommunications expert. I knew phone lines came down, now and then. I knew cell phone technology was sometimes unreliable. But what were the chances that one location's land lines would fail at the exact same time its nearest cell tower went down? Pretty small, I guessed. Pretty damn small. So it had to be a deliberate outage. But who had requested it? Not the phone company. They wouldn't do disruptive maintenance at commuting time on a Friday. Early on a Sunday morning, maybe. And they wouldn't have the land lines down at the same time as the cell towers, anyway. They would stagger the two jobs, surely.

So who had organized it? A heavy-duty government agency, maybe. Like the DEA, perhaps. Maybe the DEA was coming for the maid. Maybe its SWAT team was rolling up the harbor operation first and it didn't want Beck to know before it was ready to come on out to the house.

But that was unlikely. The DEA would have more than one SWAT team available. It would go for simultaneous operations. And even if it didn't, it would be the easiest thing in the world to close the road between the house and the first turning. They could seal it forever. There was a twelve-mile stretch of unlimited opportunity. Beck was a sitting duck, phones or no phones.

So who?

Maybe Duffy, off the books. Duffy's status might just get her a major once-in-a-lifetime favor, one-on-one with a phone company manager. Especially a favor that was limited geographically. One minor land line spur. And one cell tower, probably somewhere out near I-95. It would give a thirty-mile dead spot for people to drive through, but she might have been able to swing it. Maybe. Especially if the favor was strictly limited in duration. Not open-ended. Four or five hours, say.

And why would Duffy suddenly be afraid of phones for four or five hours? Only one possible answer. She was afraid for me.

The bodyguards were loose.