          Twenty-One

      Friday Ist April. 4.35 p.m.
      Pthein-Main Air Base, Frankfurt

      Colonel Irwin Roche eased his Opel Vectra forward. He'd got used
      to a manual shift since being in Europe and liked it. He was even
      considering giving up on automatics when he returned to Milwaukee.
       The line of cars leaving the base seemed slow today, or maybe his
       wish to get home was stronger than usual. Not that he wasn't
       always happy to see Nancy and the twins, but tonight they were
       expecting a new arrival.
       The woman from CareNet had called that morning to say they'd be
       arriving late. Very late, probably. Lorna Sorensen, that was the
       name she'd given. Didn't know when they'd get here, but he'd
       looked up the map and Ancona was a hell of a long way south.
       The queue of automobiles surged a little. He waved to the duty
       man at the guard post, and then he was through to the public
       highway. He took the slip road down onto the Autobahn and eased
       into the slow-moving traffic. Always solid at this time of day,
       and in the mornings. Fortunately the next junction was his
       turn-off, so he never had more than a few minutes of it to put up
       with.
       The village of Pfefferheim had hardly existed twenty years ago.
       Built as an overflow for Frankfurt, there were two other USAF
       families renting houses there. Wellbuilt, spacious homes with a
       basement and a good-sized yard, it suited them well. And Nancy
       liked living 'on the economy' instead of in family accommodation
       at the Air

                    262
 Base. She saw enough of the place as it was, working there part time in
 the welfare office.
  It was the arrival of Nataga in their household a year ago that had
  transformed Nancy's life. A twenty-oneyear-old refugee from Mostar, she
  was just one of hundreds of thousands of Bosnians taking refuge in
  Germany until peace let them return to their homes.
  The Roche family fed and housed her, and in return she drove the kids to
  school, picked them up again, and helped with their care. Nancy had
  relished the chance it had given her to work again. And the Colonel
  enjoyed having a pretty young woman around the place.
  Irwin Roche was a self-confessed computer-freak. He used a Unix system
  on the base to plan loads for the giant C-5 Galaxies that tramped back
  and forth across the Atlantic. But in his own home it was his Compaq PC
  that occupied much of his time. While Nancy and the kids watched TV in
  the evenings, he plugged into the Internet, communicating with cyberspace
  addicts all over the world.
  Most of the Newsgroups he subscribed to were trivial, but he'd stumbled
  across <alt.childadopt.agency> one day, while scanning a Usenet
  directory. Fascinated to see how the communications highway was being
  used, he read e-mail from agencies seeking American homes for the victims
  of war and disaster in Africa, and what used to be Russia. It had set him
  thinking.
  The Roche family had had it good. Better than they were entitled to
  expect perhaps, looking at all the misery in the world. One night in bed,
  he told Nancy what he'd been thinking. Shouldn't thg be offering the
  comfort of their home, and the security and warmth of their family, to
  a child whose life could be transformed by it?
  Nancy had responded with silence at first. She was just getting some of
  her own life back, now the twins were ten and Nataga was here to help.
  But then she'd begun to look at the TY news in a different light. All
  those

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 suffering kids - she'd felt so helpless about them before. Maybe the two of
 them could do something. Maybe they should.
  Then just at the beginning of this week, Irwin had seen the computer
  message about Vildana. The girl needed Can angel' the e-mail had said. He'd
  pulled Nancy away from the TV and showed her the screen of the Compaq.
  Within minutes they'd decided. Minutes later he'd emailed an offer to the
  agency.
  Things had moved fast. It turned out that CareNet had contacts at
  Rhein-Main, and the next day he and Nancy were given a grilling from a
  fellow colonel. They must have passed, because two days later they'd been
  signed up.
  The twins were pretty stunned at their decision. Bound to be when their
  even, predictable young lives were about to face the unknown.
 Nataga had wept for a day. They weren't too sure why.
  Roche eased the Vectra into the garage. Scott and Ella came running round
  from the yard.
 'When's she coming, have you heard?' they yelled.
  'Late. Real late. But in time for breakfast tomorrow, I guess.'

 Lansbruck, Austria 5 p.m.

 It was crazy to do the drive to Frankfurt in one day. Innsbruck was only
 half way and they'd been on the road since 8 a.m. Lorna was exhausted. She'd
 hoped doing the journey in one burst would be the best way to minimize its
 effect on the kid. Vildana had slept for much of the journey, so perhaps
 she'd been right.

               264
  She'd had to letJosip share the driving; on motorways he was less of a
  liability, with no narrow gaps and mountain tracks to negotiate. It had
  given her time to think.
  About Alex. She missed him desperately. Wanted to run back to Split and
  tell him she hadn't meant to brush him off, that she'd just needed to
  hurt him a little, to show him he couldn't remain unpunished for what
  he'd done all those years ago.
  The next step was up to him. She'd shown him he couldn'tjust snap his
  fingers for her to come running, but she'd also given him a way to
  contact her if he wanted to.
  The Battle of the Sexes business - it was a game she'd never been good
  at. Never known how far to go, when to resist, when to give in. She
  pushed her fingers through her hair and kneaded the tension from the back
  of her neck, terrified she'd got it wrong.
  Passing Vildana off as her own daughter had worked well at the frontiers.
  Their passports had merited just a cursory glance, and at Split, the
  stamp that Alex had created had passed unnoticed.
  It was illegal what she was doing, of course, but it would be for the
  Roche family to sort matters out with the authorities later. She was just
  the delivery girl.
  They'd stopped for lunch on the Autostrada near Verona, Vildana's pate
  face blank-eyed with bewilderment. She had hardly eaten anything. Lorna
  could imagine the terrors the child must be going through, travelling
  halFway across a continent to live with strangers.
  At Innsbruck they'd taken another short break, and Lorna telephoned CNN.
  It was lunchtime in Atlanta: the girl on the newsdesk had been expecting
  her call.
  'Great!' she'd said. 'You're happy we run the story in the next World
  News in a couple of hours?'
 'Sure. We'll be in G ermany by then.'
 Lorna would have liked to see the programme, but

               265
 there woWd be no chance of that with another six hours of driving ahead of
 them.
  The next stretch of road cut northeast through the Tyrol to the German
  border. Josip was at the wheel. Lorna looked out at the hills in the fading
  light. Still plenty of snow on the upper slopes. She used to ski most
  winters. Last time had been with Rees in Colorado. They'd left Julie in the
  care of her sister Annie for a couple of weeks.
  Sometimes she envied Annie. Not often, but at times like this, when life
  became so convoluted.
  Annie had met Joe at College, a good, Irish boy. They'd married soon after
  graduating, and produced five kids. just like that, with no doubts raised,
  questions asked, or mind-shaking problems presenting themselves. Joe and
  Annie had never faced a crisis in their lives, as far as Lorna could see.
  Not a single one! Yet for her, crises were like milestones, popping up with
  alarming regularity.
 And now she was in the midst ofone called 'Alex'.

 Franlkfurt International Airport 6.20 p.m.

 Standing by the carousel, Alex gathered up his bags from the Croatian
 Airlines flight, found a trolley and passed through into the terminal
 building.
  Two hours wait in Frankfurt before the British Airways connection to
  London, which he wasn't planning to take. He could think of only one reason
  for returning to Britain just now - Kirsty. If things had changed and she
  needed him, he would go back. For a while anyway.
 Leaving Bosnia had turned his thoughts once more to

               266
 the place and the people that had been 'home' for twenty years. He still had
 obligations there which he couldn't ignore. Had to find out if the woman he
 was married to wanted him back.
  He wheeled the trolley to a bank, changed a 20 Deutsche mark note into
  coins, and found a telephone.
  He rang East Lothian and spoke to Kirsty's brother, who'd just got home
  from work.
  'Och, it's good to hear your voice Alex,' he said. 'And so close, you could
  be in the next room.'
 'How's Kirsty?' Alex's throat was dry.
  'Och, about the same. Not been able to pull herself together much. The
  doctor's still giving her tablets.'
 J see. Does she ever talk about me?'
 He heard a sigh at the other end of the line.
  'No. She does not.' Another sigh, then, 'I could tell her you rang, but it
  may be better not to, frankly. But what of yourselP They had pictures of
  you on the television earlier in the week. You were refusing to answer
  questions about that monster from Edinburgh. Must ha' been awful. We felt
  so sorry for you getting mixed up in such a thing.'
  'Aye, well it's all over,' he said, slipping back into his lowlands accent.
  'I'm in Frankfurt now and don't expect to be going back to Bosnia. I'll be
  here a few days. Maybe ring you again in another week or so?'
 'Grand if you would.'
  He rang off. Fifteen Deutsche marks left. Should be enough for his next
  call. He fumbled in his pocket for Lorna's card. It was well past lunchtime
  in Boston.
  'CareNet, Bella speaking.' A nasal voice, a slight echo on the line.
  'Hello. I'm calling from Frankfurt, Germany,' he said hurriedly, watching
  the phone counter tick away the Pfennigs. 'I need to get in touch with one
  of your people over here, Lorna Sorensen? She should be arriving in
  Frankfurt today or tomorrow, but I don't know where

               267
 she's staying.'
 'Oh, let me just check ... Who is this?'
  'My name's Alex Crawford. I'm an old friend. I've just been with her in
  Bosiiia.'
  'Sure, hold the line please, Mr Crawford.'There was a click and the sound
  of Vivaldi. Ten Deutsche marks gone already.
  'I'm sorry, sir,' Bella said, back on the line, 'we don't know where she's
  staying in Frankfurt. She hasn't told us
 yet.'
  'What about the address of the family who are taking the child? Vildana,
  you know?'
  'Oh that's confidential information, Mr Crawford. We can't give that out t6
  anybody,' she replied stiffly. 'I tell you what. I could e-mail her if you
  wish.'
 'E-mail? Send her a message, you mean?'
 'Uh-huh.'
  'Okay then ... just say Alex is in Frankfurt and has to see her ... I'll
  ring again tomorrow to see if she's told you where I can contact her.'
 'That's a] P just - Alex is in Frankfurt?'
  'Yes. No! No, one other thing. Write ... write this: Alex says he
  lovesyou.'
 'Oh, that's cute! You want me to e-mail thaff
 'Sure. I'll ring again tomorrow.'
 The phone cut. His money was out.

 Bavaria 7.10 p.m.

 At the border post between Austria and Germany, the Bundesgrenzschutzpolizei
 received a daily update of names. Some belonged to undesirables to be denied

               268
 entry to the Bundesrepublik, others were of felons to be arrested.
  New that morning was the name of Milan Pravic of Bosnian or Croat
  nationality, wanted for questioning on suspicion of having committed
  crimes against humanity.
  The cream Mercedes with the Berlin plates slowed to a halt. Two passports
  were held out for inspection. Two passports were returned, and the car
  accelerated away again.
  With his fair hair, Pravic passed easily as a Pole. His photograph had
  been inserted expertly into Marek Gruszka's passport, stolen in Berlin.
  They'd left Zagreb in the early afternoon, the journey broken by a brief
  diversion to a forest, where Konrad burned the contaminated tissues he'd
  brought from the Hotel Martinova. Then he'd dug a small, deep hole and
  buried the spray equipment. The jar containing the remains of the lethal,
  brown liquid stayed in his blue sports bag in the boot of the car.
  Konrad wasn't sure why he had kept the anthrax bacilli, but something in
  the back of his mind was telling him the stuff might be of further use
  to him before long.
  It was getting late and he had done enough driving for one day. Anyway,
  he was hungry. He saw a sign for a motel and swung the Mercedes off the
  Autobalm.
  Pravic had slept for long stretches of the drive north. It had helped him
  avoid conversation with the German. Dunkel was not a man he'd ever liked
  or trusted.
  The motel was a shabby, single-storey construction, but it would do. It
  was on the edge of a small town where there would be places to eat.
  Konrad parked out of sight of the lobby. He sent Pravic to check in
  first, so they'd not be seen together. The rooms they were allocated were
  next to each other, however.
 Pravic threw his bag on the bed and, out of habit,

               269
 switched on the television. A few minutes later Konrad tapped at his door.
  'I'm going to find somewhere to eat,' he announced. 'You want to come?,
 Pravic avoided his eyes and shook his head.
  'Not hungry.' He'd seen a machine that dispensed sandwiches and beers in
  reception.
  Konrad shrugged and drove off, glad his invitation had been declined.
  The Bosnian lay on the bed and jabbed at the remote control. He flicked
  through a dozen cable channels but nothing held his attention. Eventually
  he left it tuned to the leather-clad dancers on M`FV.
  What he was looking for was news. Any channel that might tell him whether
  the world cared enough about the Tulici massacre to come looking for him.
  He knew there'd been questions asked by the UN in Vitez. He knew the
  politicians of America and Europe kept mouthing off about war crimes. He
  knew too that one Muslim girl had survived the attack and could probably
  identify him. What he didn't know was whether legal wheels were turning,
  whether there were people out there who were planning to send him to
  prison.
  His stomach rumbled. Time for some food. He locked the door behind him
  and walked round to the lobby. The receptionist changed his note for
  coins.
  He selected a Schinkenbrot and three bottles of Pilsner. He also bought
  a newspaper which listed the television programmes.
  The ham was good and smoky, and the beer nicely chilled. Some things they
  did well in Germany.
  He took off his shoes and trousers and stretched out on the bed, his back
  propped against pillows. He flipped through the TV listings. There was
  News at Nine on a German satellite channel; he checked his watch. Half
  an hour to go. He flicked to a game show.
 They made him smile, these stupid programmes.

               270
 Greed so coyly concealed. Reminded him of the nervous punters who paid
 Gisela 300 DMs an hour to whip and humiliate them.
  He became engrossed and remained so for the next half-hour, switching
  over too late to see the start of the news. He swore at himself for
  missing the headlines. The first items bored him - German politics. News
  about Bosnia came ten minutes into the programme. He moved to the edge
  of' the bed to see the screen more clearly.
  The Serbs were shelling the mostly Muslim enclave of Gorazde.
  It was a part of Bosnia that didn't interest him. No Croats there. But
  the fact that it was Muslims getting pounded gave him some pleasure. The
  pictures showed Serb guns, Serb tanks thumping their ordnance into the
  houses spread out in the valley below. His main interest was to see what
  weapons they were using.
  He felt in his bag for the pullover in which he'd wrapped his Crvena
  Zastrava M70 9mm pistol. He extracted it, unclipped the eight round
  magazine, slid back the slider and checked the barrel was clear.
  The presenter reappeared in vision, saying parliamentarians were
  complaining about the cost to German taxpayers of supporting so many
  Bosnian refugees. There'd been a debate in the Bundestag. A picture of
  the chamber appeared behind her.
  Then the background changed. A photomontage of a girl, her hands covering
  her mouth - and a computer screen.
  'ne American CNN TV reports that the computer network "Internet" is now
  being used to find homes for Bosnian war orphans.'
  The screen switched to CNN's video report, dubbed with a commentary in
  German.
  , 7-his girl is called Fildana. She's being caredfor by American aid
  worker Loma Sorensen and is the sole survivor of the horrific

               271
 massacre at Tulici three weeks ago in which joryt:four Muslim women and
 children died'
 Pravic caught his breath. He cocked the empty pistol.
  'Vildana witnessed her ownfamiyl bem'g murdered, but miraculously managed
  to conceal herseyfrom the killers. The United Nations War 0imes Tiibunal in
  the Hague plans to use her evidence to convict the men responsible - if thg
  canfind them.
  'Loma Sorensen used the latest computer technologv to link up directfrom
  Bosnia to a child adoption servw'e run by the American Caralket ageng on
  the Internet communications hz~hwqy. As a result, withinjust a couple of
  days Fildana has beenjound a new home 'in Germany. The identity and
  locatw'n of herfosterfamiyl are being kept secret, for her own safety.
 'Nowfootball ....
  Milan Pravic stared motionless at the screen. Then a low growl shook the
  bottom of his chest and percolated upwards until it erupted from his lips.
  He pointed the empty pistol at the screen and pressed the trigger.
  One little girl! One miserable child standing between him and freedom. And
  she was here in Germany.
  He tossed the weapon on the bed, leapt to his feet and paced the room,
  angry and afraid.

 Half an hour later, Konrad returned from the restaurant, went straight to
 his room and began to undress. He was in his underwear when Pravic knocked
 at his door.
 'Who is it?' he shouted.
 'Milan.'
 'What do you want?'
 'Left something in the car. I need the keys.'
  Konrad hesitated, suspecting for a second that Pravic might drive off in
  it. He contemplated getting dressed again to go out to the car with him.
  What the hell. He opened the door a crack and passed out the keys.
  Pravic walked out to the car. In his left hand he held two screw-top
  bottles of fruitjuice he'd bought from the

               272
 machine in reception. He put them on the ground and opened the trunk of
 the Mercedes. Tucked at the back, wedged "in place by a tool box to stop
 it falling on its side was Dunkel's blue sports bag. He undid the zip,
 reached in his hand and pulled out the jar of lethal brown liquid.
  He emptied one of the fruit-juice bottles onto the ground, then, covering
  his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, he unscrewed the top of Dunkel's
  jar and decanted its contents into his bottle. Finally he filled the jar
  with juice from the other container, screwed the cap back on and replaced
  it in the bag.

 Saturday 2nd April, 1.35 a.m.
 Pfefferheim near Frankffirt

 Nancy Roche had made fresh cinnamon bread, thinking that something warm
 and sweet to eat and drink would be a good way to welcome Vildana to her
 new home. The CareNet woman had rung again to say they'd be arriving after
 one o'clock.
  All afternoon she'd been re-organizing the house - the twins were having
  to share again for the time being. She'd set up a cot for Ms Sorensen in
  Nataga's room and another in the living room for her translator. They'd
  asked to stay until Vildana had settled in.
  For the past twenty minutes they'd been sitting around the kitchen table
  fidgeting, the twins refusing to go to bed. Then they saw headlights
  outside.
  They opened the front door and gathered excitedly round the Land Cruiser,
  their eager stares answered by three, blank, exhausted faces.
  Lorna twisted her mouth into a smile and got out of the car.

               273
  'Hi, I'm Lorna,' she said wearily. 'And this is Vildana.' She helped the
  girl from the back seat and stood with her arm round her.
  'Hi, Vildana. Welcome to our family,' said Colonel Roche, shaking her hand.
  'Does she speak any English at all?' he asked, turning to Lorna.
 'Well no, but ... Vildana? D'you remember?'
  The girl could hardly keep her eyes open. josip prompted her gently.
 'I am vair 'appy . . .' she whispered.
 'Hey! That's great!' Nancy declared, giving her a hug.
  'I taught her that on the way here,' Lorna confided. 'Boy, that was a drive
  and a halfl'
  'You must be wrecked. Let's get you and your stuff inside,' Roche said.
  'Scott and Ella can give a hand.'
  Nancy settled Vildana on a stool at the kitchen breakfast bar and
  confronted her with a plateful of food. Vildana latched onto Nataga as soon
  as she discovered she was from Bosnia.
 Lorna carried her laptop into the house.
  'If you want to go on line, I've got everything you need in my den,' Roche
  told her.
  She thought for a moment. She should e-mail that they'd arrived safely, and
  pick up her messages ... Too tired, though. Leave it until the morning.
  She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Vildana slowly warming to the
  attention she was getting. It brought a lump to her throat. In the past few
  days the girl had begun to feel like a daughter. Now she was handing her
  over to someone else ...
 Still, she thought, at least she'll be safe here.

 274
            Twenty-two

 Saturday 2nd April, late afternoon Berlin

 Although Gisela Pocklewicz earned her living by inflicting pain on others,
 she knew it was she who was the real victim. The child of a prostitute,
 there had never been any equality of the sexes in her world. Experience
 showed women were born so they could be used by men. No point in fighting
 it.
  Her personal relationships had done nothing to change that outlook. She saw
  them as barter deals - she gave sex, the man gave protection.
  Milan Pravic had been generous with the security side of things during the
  two years they'd lived together and he had demanded little in return. The
  relationship with him was the closest she'd ever come to loving a man. A
  strange, damaged creature who seldom looked her in the eye, she'd caught
  glimpses of the fire that burned inside him. It had drawn her, but she
  suspected that if she tried to discover what fuelled it, she could be
  fatally burned.
  Excitement at the thought of his return to Berlin had switched to anxiety
  in the last few days. He had told her he was coming here to hide, but had
  refused to say why.
  She had her suspicions, knowing the hatred that smouldered in his soul and
  the violence he was capable of. She'd watched the TV pictures of Bosnian
  atrocities, fearing he could be involved. In the jungle she inhabited, men
  killing each other was fair enough, but if Milan had murdered women and
  children ...
 She had missed the small, inside-page paragraphs of

               275
 the newspapers reporting that the UN War Crimes Tribunal wanted to question
 him about the massacre at Tulici.
  It would be evening soon, and this being Saturday, she would be busy. The
  apartment where the clients came was two blocks away from the one where she
  lived. Paying two rent bills was hard, but it preserved her sanity. The fee
  Dunkel had given her would ease things for a while.

 Konrad dropped Milan Pravic at Alexanderplatz in the centre of Berlin. His
 contract with the Bosnian now complete, he headed with relief to the
 apartment in Lichtenberg where his wife would prepare him dinner.
 Pravic found a phone that took coins and rang Gisela.
  'Schdtzchen!' she shrieked. 'You're in Berlin? Why not here? I was
  expecting you. Are you coming?'
 'Have the police been?' he asked gruffly.
  'Police? No. Why?' Her suspicions and her fears deepened.
  'Never mind. Meet me in the Caf6 Luxembourg in fifteen minutes.'
 'But. . .'
  just do it!' He banged the receiver down. She wouldn't defy him.
  He ducked from under the hood of the booth. It was still daylight in the
  huge, bleak square where winds, deflected by the tall 1960s slabs, eddied
  round small groups of refugees wrapped against the unseasonable cold.
  He plunged into the dank warmth of the U-Bahn station. It was two stops to
  Rosenthaler Platz, the train crowded with the last of the afternoon
  shoppers.
  Strange to be back. Such orderliness after the devastation of Bosnia.
 He heard his own language. There were tens of

               276
 thousands of Bosnians in Berlin. Muslims mostly. Odd to think that in the
 La9va valley he'd have shot them full of holes.
  Gisela was at the bar, waiting, dressed in black as always. Short skirt,
  pullover and a little jacket. Cropped black hair, black eyelashes caked
  with mascara.
  Gisela was frightened by now. She'd planned to greet him with a kiss and
  a hug but when he walked through the door, she changed her mind. The
  expressionless look, the close-clipped hair and glasses, the cold eyes
  nervously checking every face in view - this wasn't the man she
  remembered. There'd been a sea change in him.
  Without a word, he gripped her elbow and hustled her to a table in a dark
  corner.
 'What's up? What's the matter?' she protested.
 'I want a beer.'
  Gisela gestured to the waitress. When the order was taken and the girl
  moved away, she slipped her hand over Milan's.
 'Aren't you even going to say hullo to me?'
  Pravic ignored her, pulled away his hand and downed half the glass.
  Once or twice befibre she'd known him like this, caged by some obsession,
  unable to relate to her or to anyone.
  'Why did you ask if the police had been round?' She was desperate to
  know.
  His scowl convinced her it had been a mistake to ask. For two full
  minutes he said nothing.
  'You know someone who has computer?' he asked suddenly, eyes boring into
  her.
 'Why? You want to buy one?'
  'No. I need someone who use computer to read messages.
 'What for?' she asked.
  He grabbed her hand and crushed it until her eyes watered.

               277
  'Don't ask things. . .' he growled. just tell me! You know someone?'
  She kneaded her knuckles. She'd never known him this manic, this dangerous.
  'I don't know,' she sniffed. 'I'll have to ask around in some of the other
  places. Not this bar. Don't know anybody who comes in here.'
  She guessed Milan had chosen Caf6 Luxembourg so that no one would recognize
  them.
  'You must find person tonight. Someone who can do Internet,' he demanded.
  'Internet? What's that? Anyway I can't do anything tonight, love, I'm
  working,' she protested, heedlessly.
  He leaned forward, gripping her hand again. Gisela saw the flames; knew
  they'd consume her if she wasn't very, very careful.
  'Tonight, you work for me,' he breathed. 'You want ... I pay.' He pulled a
  wad of notes from his trouser pocket.
  'You don't need that, Milanchen,' she soothed, trying to calm him. 'I'll
  sort something out. Somehow.'
  She'd got clients booked, but there'd be gaps when she could slip out to
  the bars and look around. There were people who did computer stuff. Con-men
  and fraudsters. just a question of finding them.
  'You coming home with me?' she queried, eager to get on with it. 'You can
  watch the television and I'll ring you there when I've found someone.'
 He shook his head and tapped the table.
  'No. You come here when you find.' He looked at his watch. It was still
  early, Berlin's nightlife only just starting. 'At eleven I come back to
  Caf6 Luxembourg and wait.'
  'Aren't you staying with me tonight, then?' she pouted, feigning
  unhappiness. Privately she didn't want him in his present state.
 'No.'

               278
 'Where, then? Where will you sleep?'
  Another woman? Not likely. Milan had shown little interest in sex in the
  two years they'd been together.
  'I find some place. Then I come here and wait. But, Gisie ... you must
  find me someone with computer Internet. Understand must?'
 She understood. She left her drink half-finished.

 8.25 p.m. Frankfiwt

 Alex climbed the stairs to his second-floor room in the dingy hotel,
 feeling he'd wasted a day.
  The previous evening he'd taken the S-Bahn from the airport to the
  Central Station, found a cheap bed, then got drunk in one ofthe smoky,
  apple wine taverns in Sachsenhausen.
  This morning he'd spent nursing his head. Hadn't had a hangover that bad
  for years.
  With the transatlantic time difference, there'd been no point in phoning
  Boston again until mid-afternoon, but the wait had been like watching
  paint dry.
  He'd phoned at three-thirty, not knowing if the CareNet office would be
  manned on a Saturday. Bella had answered again. Sorry, she'd said. No
  e-mail from Lorna yet.
  He'd called again at half-past-eight. Still nothing, but Bella offered
  to message Lorna with his hotel phone number. She sounded sorry for him,
  which made him suspect he was making a fool of himself after all.
  He'd bought some German newspapers, then sat in a Macdonald's picking at
  the text with his school German and a pocket dictionary. In the
  Frankfurte Allgemeine a

               279
 headline had caught his eye. Selbstmord in Leipz~a - Suicide in Leipzig.
  Siegfried Kernmer, a microbiologist in Leipzig University's Department of
  Veterinary Medicine had hanged himself, it said. University authorities
  blamed depression at his being made redundant, but his daughter claimed
  there were other reasons outlined in a suicide note she'd not been allowed
  to see. The police spokesman denied there'd ever been such a note.
  Kernmer, the paper reported, had worked on dangerous pathogens, including
  Milzbrand. Alex thumbed the dictionary.
 Milzbrand m. (med.vet) - Anthrax.
  The stuff of germ warfare. He remembered that experiments with it in the
  fiffies or sixties on some Scottish island had made the place uninhabitable
  for decades.
  Odd to put the story on the front page like that. It was almost as if the
  paper sensed it was on the trail of some huge scandal.
  Inside he'd found Bosnian news. Rumblings in the Bonn parliament - fears
  that with over 200,000 Bosnian refugees in the country, the war might come
  to Germany. Uproar that in a few days' time Bosnian Muslims were holding a
  political rally in Munich, to be addressed by militants from Iran and
  Lebanon.
  Not surprised they're worried, he thought. Europe's worst nightmare was the
  prospect of the Bosnian war spreading.
  He'd hurried back to the hotel after his meal - in case Lorna rang.

 The Roche household slept until mid-morning that Saturday. After a huge
 brunch, Lorna sat in the big kitchen watching Vildana learn to make
 brownies. She

               280
 had to hand it to Nancy Roche; the woman had handled the kid with panache.
 Welcoming without being overpowering, motherly but without smothering her.
  The Roche twins were finding it less easy to adjust to the newcomer in
  the nest. Vildana was a couple of years older, and they seemed to suspect
  the girl's arrival might downgrade their own position in the family.
  Nancy had begged Lorna to stay the weekend - to provide continuity, she'd
  said - and since Lorna's own plans were vague, she'd agreed.
  Larry Machin, her boss at GareNet had telephoned at 2.00 a.m. He'd
  forgotten the time difference and wanted to check she'd arrived safely.
  He told her the agency had no plans for another run into Bosnia for
  several weeks, so she could stand the operation down and come home.
  Josip appeared at her elbow, his suitcase packed and his anorak over his
  arm. Time to take him to the airport for his early afternoon flight back
  to Zagreb.
  In the noisy drop-off zone on the departure level, she thanked him
  profusely for all his work and for his sweetness to Vildana. He insisted
  on a farewell kiss. It turned out to be rather more than a peck on the
  cheek, but she was content to indulge him for once.
  'Bye, Josip. We'll give you a call when we go back to Bosnia, okay,' she
  waved, climbing into the Toyota. It wouldn't be her going back there,
  she'd decided, whatever Larry Machin said.
  On the drive back to Pfefferheim all she could think about was Alex. She
  now had a real fear that she had driven him away.
  Later that afternoon, Irwin Roche felt a little surplus to requirements,
  the task of settling Vildana in having been taken over by the women in
  his household. Fidgeting, he watched from a distance as the girl was
  shown the family photo albums to give her an idea of what life would be
  like in America. He retreated to his

               281
 den. Then around five, he emerged again and sought out Lorna.
  'Sure I can't interest you in using my computer,' he grinned. 'Check your
  e-mail, maybe?'
 'Hey thanks, I forgot! I'll never get the habit.'
  He led her into his small study and confused her with talk about
  megabytes and baud rates. He sat her in front of the keyboard, then
  backed out of the room.
 'I'll leave you to it. Give a shout if you need help.'
  It was the same Windows system she was used to, so she was soon through
  to her mailbox on the Internet. Two messages, the screen said.

   Saturday morning.
   Loma. Somebody dropped inyour letter today with thefilin.
 Great! Larg'll be orbital when he hears. He thinks the CNN report was
 great. Not seen any checksyet, though! Getting the shots printed today,
 then Pll deliver the rest to Annie personally. The guy who calledyesterday
 has called again. Sounds real
 sweet. Hopeyou got the last message I sentyou. Does he have a chance???
 He's calling tonight too, so I could pass a message i you want. In
 strictest confidence, of course!
   Bella.

  Lorna's pulse quickened. What last message? She hit the return key.

   Friday nite.
   Loma. Some guy calledfrom Frankfurt, saying he's got to see
 you. Said his name was Alex. He's in Frankfurt and wants to
  know where you are? He said he LOVESyou! Let me know
  what to say to the poor maml
   Bella (a.k.a. Cupid)

               282
  Lorna stared at the screen in disbelief She read it again. And again.
  Alex had followed her to Frankfurt! Her face twitched into a grin.
  She began to type a reply. Bella should still be in the office at this
  time. Then she stopped herself
  Hang on, kid, she told herself. You're doing it again. Running, the
  minute he snaps his fingers.
  She dropped her hands to her knees. He'd come this far, she calculated,
  he'd not give up that easy. Let him sweat just a little longer.
 She clicked on the mouse and logged off.

 Iran

 Dr Hamid Akhavi had felt the first shivers last night when he'd reported
 back to the Minister for Energy in Tehran. He'd put it down to lack of
 sleep and the long flight to and from Zagreb.
  Back home now in the secret desert compound near Yazd, his wife had put
  him to bed. This evening his symptoms had worsened. Soaring temperature,
  pains in the chest and a cough that racked his body. His wife wanted to
  call the doctor, even if it was the middle of the night, but Harnid
  persuaded her to wait to see if he was better in the morning.

 Nizhnaya-Tura, Russia

 Colonel Pavel Kulikov felt on top of the world. The down payment he'd
 brought back fi-om Zagreb meant he

               283
 could begin distributing the hard currency that was the life-blood of his
 illegal activities.
  At the Strategic Rocket Forces weapons dismantling site east of the Urals,
  work had ground to a halt in recent days because of equipment breakdowns.
  Lack of spare parts was rapidly reducing the whole process to chaos, a
  situation that he could only welcome. Chaos gave corruption more to feed
  on.
  Removal of plutonium from the plant would have to be a gradual business, to
  prevent its absence being noticed. Could be months before he'd have enough
  for the first shipment across the Caspian Sea to Iran.
  His journey back from Zagreb had been painfully tedious - air eight-hour
  delay in his connecting flight from Moscow to Sverdlovsk. At one point as
  he'd sat waiting for the flight, a tickle at the back of the throat made
  him wonder if he was getting a cold. But it went away as it usually did.
  He didn't often get ill. Not surprising, considering all the vaccinations
  he'd had as an officer responsible for the security of dangerous weapons.

 Berlin, after xnidnight

 Pravic had been drinking schnapps with beer chasers. He'd found a cheap room
 to stay in and had returned to the Caf6 Luxembourg by eleven. It was a dull
 place with prints of old Berlin on the walls, trying to be respectable in an
 area of sleaze. There was only one other customer and the manager wanted to
 close for the night.

               284
  The wait for Gisela and the alcohol on an empty stomach had turned his
  anxiety to anger. If the barman tried to throw him out he would take him by
  the throat.
  At twenty minutes past the hour Gisela pushed through the door, flustered
  and short of breath. Pravic tried to read her face through the blur.
  'Quick,' she whispered loudly. 'The man's waiting up for you.'
  Pravic abandoned the rest of his beer. The manager hurried over with his
  purse. Pravic peeled a couple of notes from the wad and pulled Gisela to
  the door.
  'It's in Wedding. You'll need a taxi,' she told him when they were outside
  in the street. She handed him a note with the name and address. 'A bloke I
  know rang him from the bar and asked him to help. Said he owed him a
  favour.'
  ,This man can do Internet?' Pravic growled. His voice was slurred.
  'That's what he said. Look, there's a cab over there.' She waved and the
  Mercedes turned towards them. 'Will you ring me tomorrow?'
 'What you mean? You come with me!'
 'I can't, Milan.'
 'Yes. You come.' He gripped her arm.
  'Milan . . .'she protested. 'I told you. The bloke in the bar fixed this up
  as a favour.'
 Pravic hadn't understood what she meant.
  'A favour ... it means I've got to do hu'n one in return. . .'
  He let go of her arm and ducked into the car. Gisela watched it speed away,
  terrified something monstrous was fermenting in the mind of her one-time
  lover.
  The taxi turned up Ghausseestrasse. At each set of red traffic lights, the
  driver thumbed through his street plan trying to locate the address.
  Fifteen minutes after being picked up, Pravic was deposited outside a small
  apartment house with plaster flaking from the walls. The panel of
  bell-pushes hung

               285
 loose, but when he pressed the button next to the name he'd been given,
 there was a quick response.
 'Yes?'
  'You are expecting me,' Pravic said, anxious not to give a name. 'For the
  computer.'
 'Yes, yes. Third floor.'
 The door buzzed and Pravic pushed it open.
  The man was wearing a dressing gown. From the small hallway Pravic caught
  a glimpse through a gap in a doorway. Satin sheets and the leg of a female.
  'Aber, mach's schnell, Heini.' The woman's voice was a whine. The man
  closed the bedroom door and led Pravic into a living room cluttered with
  cardboard boxes. On a table next to a reading lamp was a computer.
  'So what's this about? What do you want?' the man asked, irritated. 'Let's
  be quick. I've got things to do.'
  'You can do Internet?' Pravic asked, looking down at the floor.
  'Go on-line? Of course. But what do you want?' He switched on the
  equipment, glancing curiously at his weird visitor.
  'You see, I am from Bosnia,' Pravic began, trying to look sincere. 'My
  family all killed.just one survive. A girl. MY sister's child. Some people
  bring her to Germanyjust now because they think she has no family. They use
  Internet to find new home for her. Because they think there is no person of
  her own family to look after her. But they wrong. She has me. Now I must
  find her. Her name Vildana.'

 Pfefferheim

 Lorna couldn't sleep for thinking that Alex was nearby. She just wasn't made
 for the games she was putting herself through.

               286
  The house was quiet, the Roche family and Vildana all sound asleep. She
  tiptoed into the Colonel's den and powered up his Compaq. He wouldn't mind,
  she,told herself
  She'd worked out what to say in the message to Bella, intending to type it
  quickly and send it. But the 'mail' message flashed, telling her there was
  something new for her.
 Bella again.

   Saturday nite.
   Hi Lornal Listen. You've got to do something about this guy Alex. Put him
   out of hi's mise7y. He called again and left aphone
 number. Sounds so cute. ffyou don't want him, FIl have him.1

  Lorna wrote down the number, her heart thumping. She'd ring him first thing
  in the morning.

 287
           Twenty-three

 Sunday 3rd April, 10.15 a.m.
 Frankfurt

 'Hotel Sommer. Guten Tag.'
  'Good morning, room 313 please.' Lorna hoped the tremble in her voice
  wasn't too noticeable.
 'Zimmer drethundert dreizehn. Ein Moment bitte.'
  Not five star, she deduced from the telephonist's lack of English.
 'Hello?' Alex's voice.
 'Is that Alex?' she asked, unnecessarily.
 'Lorna?'
  'Sure. I got a message from Bella. What've you been saying to her? She
  sounds real turned on!'
  'I was beginning to think she was keeping it to herself,' he laughed
  nervously.
  'Hmm ... So what are you doing here, truly?' she asked, still playing dumb.
 'Truly - I've come to see you. Where are you?'
  'It's a place called Pfefferheim. It's where Vildana's new family live.'
 'Is she okay? Does she look happy?'
  'Everything's great so far. She can say "more please" in fluent English!'
 Alex laughed.
 'So, shall I come out there?'
  'No . . .' she answered hesitantly. 'But I tell you what. I've a couple of
  hours free today. Why don't I come downtown. Leave these good people on
  their own for a while. Name a restaurant and you can buy me lunch.'

               288
  She heard a clonking of the phone at the other end while he wrestled with
  something.
  just looking in the guide book. There's a place here that sounds okay. It's
  called Bistro Tagtraum which means "daydream". Sound suitable?'
 'Do they do vegetarian?'
 'Potato and ginger soup.'
  'Okay. Give me the address and I'll see you there at 12.30.'

 11.35 a.m.
 Autobalm A4 - the road from Berlin to Frankfin-t

 They'd been on the road since eight. The five-year-old VW Polo was Gisela's
 car, and she was driving, because Milan had never learned how.
  He had told her nothing about his meeting with the computer man. just
  telephoned her at four in the morning to insist she drive him to Frankfurt.
  She had protested, but hadn't refused. She knew what he was capable of,
  remembering what he'd done to clients who'd got rough with her in the old
  days.
  He'd hardly spoken on the journey. just sat there beside her, staring at
  the road ahead, holding onto the handles of a sports bag wedged between his
  feet. They'd stopped once for petrol and to use the toilets, but that was
  all. Questions about why they were going to Frankfurt had been answered
  with silence.
  He'd taken her hostage. Not with chains ' but with the unspoken threat of
  violence if she refused to do what he said.
 She was an emotional hostage too. Despite his weird

               289
 behaviour since returning to Germany, she felt strangely sorry for someone
 so clearly in torment.

 41ran

 Hamid Akhavi was lifted from the ambulance onto a stretcher trolley and
 wheeled into the small, two-ward hospital. The physician who'd ordered him
 to be brought there from his home was a worried man. His medical facilities
 at the desert site were minimal. Above all, he had no pathology laboratory.
 A sample of Akhavi's blood was already on its way to the hospital at Yazd,
 to be cultured overnight. Perhaps then he might have some idea what this
 illness was that had struck down one of the most important scientists in
 Iran.
  Overnight Akhavi's cough had worsened further. By first light there were
  specks of blood in his sputum. His last words to his wife before the
  ambulance arrived had been to beg her to contact his sister in Tehran to
  tell her what was happening to him.
  They were cut off from the outside world at the desert site. No personal
  phone calls permitted. To ring her sister-in-law, she woidd have to arrange
  to be driven to the PIT in Yazd. She didn't quite trust Hamid's sister,
  always suspecting she was more political than was good for her. Political
  in that she had contacts with Iranians abroad, Iranians who called
  themselves the Resistance.

 Ealing, West London

 Martin Sanders lived alone in an immaculately decorated, two-bedroomed,
 Victorian terrace cottage within a stone's throw of Ealing Green and the
 Underground station.

               290
  His well-travelled looks ensured he was never short of female company when
  he wanted it. But having any of the delightful creatures actually living in
  and interfering with the way he did things was out of the question and
  always would be.
  The phone call from Rudi Katzfuss had been unexpected and had interrupted
  the preparation of the entrec9te au beurre d'olives that he'd decided to
  cook for lunch. They'd never had to summon an emergency meeting of the
  Ramblers before.
  The BND man hadn't said over the phone what it was about of course, but
  insisted they assemble on Monday evening in Munich. Couldn't be sooner
  because of the time it would take Jack Kapinsky to get over from
  Washington.
  Before he went, Sanders would check with the photographic branch and get
  some copies of the photos he'd brought back from Zagreb. Might be useful-
  
 Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen

 Alex had telephoned the restaurant to book a table, and arrived to claim it
 ten minutes early. He ordered a little jug of Mosel. By the time Lorna
 joined him ten minutes late, he'd ordered another.
  'Sorry,' she breathed, allowing him to kiss her on the cheek, 'couldn't
  find anywhere to park.'
  She was wearing fawn chinos and a white shirt, covered by a knitted
  waistcoat in olive-green. Round her neck was a long, thin gold chain. The
  waiter brought Mosel for her too.
  'This looks nice,' she offered, looking round at the simple decor, and the
  menu chalked on a board. The

               291
 trouble was she doubted she'd be able to eat, the way her stomach wa5
 churning.
  'You look nice too,' Alex bubbled. 'In fact you look just as fantastic
  as the first time we met.' Nerves always made him go big on compliments.
  'Maybe you should get your eyes checked,' she smiled, putting her hands
  up to cover the lines on her face. She kept glancing away, not trusting
  herself to look into the bottomless darkness of his eyes.
  'Did ... did your office pass on my message?' Alex asked. 'All of it, I
  mean.'
  'I don't know what all of it was,' she shrugged, feigning ignorance.
 'The bit that said "I love you"?'
  'Oh, that old thing,' she joked. There was an edge to her voice. 'Sure.
  But don't worry, I didn't take it seriously. I try not to fall for the
  same trick twice.'
  Alex felt his face redden. Maybe it was still war and she had come here
  to twist the knife.
  'Why doi i't we order some food,' he suggested quickly. 'Then we can
  start this conversation all over again.'
  Lorna dabbed at her hair with her finger tips as she looked up at the
  blackboard. She was still at war, but the battle was inside her own head.
  She chose the soul) and a spinach and goat's cheese lasagna. Alex went
  for the same. The waiter moved off.
  ,So. ..' Alex said, fumbling for a place to begin. He pulled out his
  cigarettes, then remembered he'd reserved a rion-smoking table for her
  sake. He put them back in his pocket.
 , So... ?,
 He took a deep breath.
  'Would it help if I said "sorry" for what happened in Belfast? Like an
  official apology?'
  She chewed her lip. She felt as if she were caught in quicksand.

               292
  'I don't know whether it'll help. But I guess it's nice to hear you say
  it. If you mean it,' she added a little too pathetically.
  She'd been through a lot, he could see it clearly sitting across the
  table from her like this. She wore the vulnerability of someone not sure
  where the next punch was coming from.
  'Tell you what,' he suggested, 'why don't we pretend we've never met
  before?'
 Her look said 'you have to be kidding'.
  'Hi. My name's Alex Crawfbrd,' he began, smiling theatrically.
  There was a gleam in his eye which made Lorna suspect this was a game she
  was not going to enjoy.
  'I'm aged ... oh, somewhere in the middle of life,' he continued. 'I was
  born AlexJarvis, but it's been Crawford for twenty years, for reasons
  beyond my control. I've been married for eighteen of those years. We've
  lived in Scotland.'
  At the revelation of a wife her eyelids flickered. A good sign, he
  decided.
  'Her name is Kirsty. She was a widow when I met her. She'd been married
  for just three years to her first husband, then he died in a climbing
  accident.'
 He took a deep breath.
 'Now it's your turn.'
  'I'm not sure I'm up to truth games,' she told him huskily. 'If that's
  what this is?'
  'If you refuse to play, it means I have the right to ask you questions,'
  he pressed.
 The waiter thumped soup bowls in front of them.
  'Okay. So what d'you want me to say?' she boxed, desperate for him to
  reveal more than she did.
 'Tell me about Mister Sorensen.'
  'Oh, that. Well ... after I got back from Belfast twenty years ago, I
  found there were some nasty men who wanted to kill me? You know the sort
  of guys I mean?

               293
 Well, they got paid some money to lay off, but I had to go hide someplace,
 like you. You may remember I was a qualified attorney already, and somebody
 fixed me a job at a practice in a small New England town called Shelburne
 Falls.'
  Alex saw anger flicker in her eyes. He guessed why. 'Somebody' would have
  been her father, the man whose influence she'd spent much of her life
  trying to escape.
  'And there I met a guy called Rees Sorensen, who was one of the partners in
  the firm where I worked. We got married. We lived in a white-painted,
  clapboard house with maple trees in the yard, and I had a daughter called
  Julie. Now you,' she concluded. 'Your turn again.'
 Too brief for him. Too sanitized.
 'Is Rees still around?'
  'No,' she said flatly. 'Leastways, not around me. And that was cheating.'
  He smiled, but only for an instant. The hard part lay ahead. It felt like
  walking into a tunnel not knowing what time the next train was due.
  'Well ... what else shall I tell you?' he swallowed. 'Um ... Kirsty, she
  had a child, by her first husband. A boy ... calledJodie. And I helped her
  bring him up. He was a lovely lad. I thought of him as my son.
  Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, he was killed ... There was an accident
  -his first parachute jump. His mother believed it was my fault for letting
  him do it, so she turned her back on me
 . Which is one reason I ended up in Bosma.'
  Lorna swallowed. She could see it was no trick this time. The pain in his
  eyes reached out like floodwater.
 'I'm so sorry,' she heard herself say.
  She'd wanted him to be punished, and now she knew he had been, but in a way
  more devastating than she could ever have wished.
 'Now you,' he insisted. He wanted to know everything,

               294
 to lay the whole past out in the open, so they could put it behind them.
 She dipped into her soup, not ready to say more.
 'You still love Kirsty?' she pressed.
  'Now who's cheating.. .'He took a deep breath.'The answer's yes, but
  there's love and love, isn't there. Kirsty and I just happened to need
  what each other could give ... at the time we met.'
  It had sounded callous, but he could see she knew only too well what he
  meant.
  'Tell me about Julie.' He saw a cloud pass over her eyes.
  Lorna felt she was fighting for breath. In the past she'd blamed him for
  all the disasters in her life, but she couldn't any more. Not now she
  knew what he himself had been through. She bit her lip and steeled
  herself
  Julie's thirteen. She's autistic - can't relate to anybody. I gave up my
  job to look after her and managed it until the beginning of last year,
  but it was real hard. She was like a ... some sort of porcelain figure
  under a glass dome, you know? I could look at her, I could touch the
  glass, but I couldn't reach her.'
 She chewed her lip again.
  Julie never learned to talk. A couple of years back she began to develop,
  physically. All the same feelings as a non-nal kid in puberty, but didn't
  know what to do with them. She got so moody and hollered all the time,
  I couldn't handle it any more. Rees - he wasn'tJulie's real father, but
  that didn't matter to him -- well, he decided to put her in a home for
  the handicapped.'
 She grimaced, close to tears.
 'It broke me up. It broke us up too. Rees and I split.'
  Alex expelled the breath he'd been holding. Strange parallels in their
  lives.
 'That's terrible. I'm so sorry. She's still in the home?'
 'Oh yes. As happy as she'll ever be.' Her fingers

               295
 twisted and untwisted the gold chain round her neck. J always carry around
 with me a few things that were hers. Like this chain. And her passport.
 That's why I had it with me in Bosnia.'
 'I wondered.'
 Suddenly she sat up straight and folded her arms.
  'You know something?' she remarked. 'This is a pretty heavy conversation
  for people who've onlyjust met, You treat all your women like this?'
 'No. Only the vegetarians.'
 She laughed. Inside, she was smiling.

 2.05 p.m.
 South of Frankfixrt

 Milan Pravic had the map spread across his knees and told Gisela to take
 the next turning from the Autobahn. Pfefferheirn was just a few kilometres
 away.
  'What do we do when we get there, Milanchen?' Gisela asked for the third
  time. 'I'm really tired, I tell you.'
 Still no answer. He was looking for signposts.
  Gisela was certain of one thing -- whatever Pravic had in mind to do in
  Pfefferheim it was evil. Somebody was going to get hurt.
  For the last two hours it had been raining. Pools of water lay in the
  uneven side road as they drove through pinewoods towards the village.
  'Stop! Stop here,' Pravic barked suddenly. He pointed to the right, where
  a muddy track led to a clearing in the trees. Gisela swung the wheel and
  they bounced to a halt.
  'Why're we stopping?' she asked, irrationally fearing he'd decided to
  kill her.

               296
  'Further a little. Away from the road. . .' he gestured. Her fears grew.
 'Why, Milan? What for?' she wailed.
 'Here. Here is okay.'
  Gisela looked over her shoulder. They were invisible from the road. Pravic
  got out and walked to a point where the ground was particularly soft. He
  dug his fingers into the earth and returned with a handful of dirt. Then he
  crouched down at the front of the car, smeared some onto the number plate,
  then took the rest to the rear to repeat the process.
  He stood back and inspected his work. Satisfied, he wiped his hands on the
  grass, and got back into the car.
  A few minutes later they passed the sign marking the village boundary.
  'Miih1weg,' Pavic announced. 'Ask someone where it is.,
  'Going to see someone there?' Gisela pressed. 'Some friend of yours?' She
  felt close to hysteria.
 Again, no answer.
  They were entering the centre of the village - halftimbered houses, a
  church, a small shop selling bread and groceries, and a telephone kiosk.
  'Stop,' he growled, pointing to the right. He'd spotted a map of the
  village mounted in a timber-framed glass case beside the church.
 He got out and studied it.
  A voice niggled inside Gisela's head, a voice urging her to run, to jam her
  foot down and drive off, leaving him there without the sports bag which
  he'd nursed throughout the journey as if his life depended on it.
  She depressed the clutch and engaged first gear. Pravic heard the crunch
  and looked round with stiletto eyes. She slipped it back into neutral.
  Couldn't do it. Hadn't the guts. If she left him now, he'd chase her to the
  end of the earth to get his revenge.

               297
  Revenge. That was the fire that burned inside him, the fire she'd never
  dared probe.
 He got back in and closed the door.
  'Two turnings on the right,' he told her, and waved his hand to show they
  should move on.
 'Second on the right?' she checked.
 'Mmm.'
  There was nobody about. Never was on a Sunday afternoon in these dormitory
  villages. All at home watching television or sleeping off their lunch.
  Gisela turned the car where Milan had said. New houses here, VWs and Opels
  parked on driveways.
 ,Left here.'
  She obeyed, driving slowly. Two children on bicycles careered past on the
  pavement, wrapped up in anoraks against the rain.
 'Now right.'
 Miihlweg. She read the sign on a post at the junction.
 'What number?' she asked.
 'Just drive. I look.'
  The road sloped upwards. About a dozen houses, then it curved to the right.
  Larger homes now, with garages. She motored slowly past them. Pravic
  suddenly craned his head round. The house he was looking at had its garage
  door open and a Vectra parked inside.
  The road brought them round in a circle, back to the junction with the
  sign.
 'And now?' she asked.
 'Again up the road, but not far. I tell you when.'
  Up the gentle rise, the curve to the right and the bigger homes ...
 'Here. Stop. Switch off engine.'
  She did as she was told. They'd parked beside a plot that had not been
  built on yet. She looked up the road ahead. Three houses down was the one
  with its garage door open.

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 3.46 p.m. Pfefferheim

 Lorna turned the Land Cruiser into M(Ihlweg and as she rounded the bend
 at the top of the slope pulled out to avoid a VW parked by the curb. Alex
 noticed it was a woman behind the wheel of the Polo.
 He felt wrung out after the catharsis of their lunch.
  'Nice houses around here,' Lorna remarked. 'Similar to what Americans
  have at home. I guess that's why they're popular with USAF families. Say,
  I wonder if Vildana'11 be surprised to see you? Or maybe she thinks we're
  all part of her new, extended family.'
 'It'll be great to see her again. She's a sweet kid.'
  It had been Lorna's idea that he should come out to meet the Roches. He
  was delighted, particularly since it meant they would be together.
  'Here we are.' She stopped the Toyota on the drive in front of the garage
  doors.
 Irwin Roche appeared in the porch, grinning.
  'Hi. You're back. And it's stopped raining. Oh, hi to you too, sir,' he
  added, seeing Alex for the first time.
  'This is Alex Crawford,' Lorna announced. 'He's the guy who smuggled
  Vildana out of Bosnia in the back of his truck. You remember I told you?'
  'I certainly do. Let me shake your hand, sir. That must've been some
  hair-raising drive.'He looked at Alex with something like awe. 'So, I
  guess it's you I have to thank for our beautiful new daughter. . .' he
  added, laughing.
 'How's she doing?' Alex asked.
  'Great. just great. Ella's going to take her for a bike ride when the
  rain stops - which I do believe it has!' He held his hand out flat, then
  turned back into the house, shouting for his daughter to come out with
  Vildana.
 'Nice guy,' Alex whispered to Lorna.

               299
 'Nicefamiyl,' she replied.
  Within seconds they'd all bustled out of the house into the front yard,
  with Irwin pulling his wife by the arm so he could introduce her to Alex.
  'Hey, Vildana,' Lorna shouted, as she ran past with the twins, chased by
  Nataga. The girl stopped at the sound of her name and looked back. All
  self-consciousness about the strawberry mark on her face had evaporated.
 'Look who's here!'
  Fifty metres down the road the engine started in the Volkswagen. In the
  hubbub of bicycles being retrieved from the garage, no one heard it.
 'It's Alex!'
  A smile spread shyly across Vildana's face as she recognized him. Alex gave
  her a hug.
 'Good to see you,' he grinned. Nataga translated.
  Vi1dana grabbed hold of a pair of handlebars that had been thrust at her,
  then she and Ella wheeled their bicycles out to the road.
 'Watch out for that car,' Nancy shouted.
  Alex glanced up. A muddy, white Polo creeping towards them.-Just a car, yet
  something about its slowness made it menacing.
  Suddenly bells rang in his head. The woman driver was dithering like a
  kerb-crawler - why? Her male passenger stared like a snake at the girls
  wobbling on their saddles - why?
  His limbs tensed. The man's eyes - the eyes of a killer ...
  He leapt forward, but too late. A fist snaked from the car window like a
  cobra's head, gripping a cold, grey automatic.
  Two sharp cracks. The weapon kicked twice. Vildana's bicycle clattered to
  the tarmac. Alex ran towards the car, which tore off with a squeal of
  tyres. For a micro-second the gunman's eyes met Alex's. Then the

               300
 car was gone. As it turned the corner of the road, a woman's scream
 shrilled through the open window. Alex stopped.

 Gisela heard the scream, unaware it was from her own throat.
  'Go! Quick, quick!' Pravic yelled, yanking the handle to close the
  window. 'And shut up woman!' He hit her on the shoulder with the pistol.
  Shaking with shock, Gisela accelerated out of Mohlweg, back through the
  centre of the village.
  'You ... you.. .' she babbled, sobbing, 'Milan, you shot a girl! That
  girl on the bike ... Why? What you do that for, eh? Tell me! Tell me!'
  'Shut upF He scrabbled with the map, trying to work out the way back to
  Frankfurt as his mind played back what he'd seen. He'd hit her. Yes.
  Killed her? Didn't know. Aimed for the heart, but the girl had turned.
 'Why?' she screamed at him. 'Tell me why!'

 Irwin Roche sprinted to where Vildana had fallen. The girl's legs were
 twitching with shock.
  'Vildana! Oh my God, what's happened?' Lorna hollered, The twins began
  to scream.
  'She's been shot,'Alex mouthed. 'They've bloody well shot her!'
  'No . . .' moaned Nancy Roche, arms hanging limply by her sides.
  Roche knelt on the ground, pressing on Vildana's shoulder.
  'Scott!' he ordered calnily, 'get that T-shirt off and bring it here
  fast.' The child began to obey.
  Alex dropped down beside him. Vildana whimpered like a wounded animal.

               301
  Jesus!' he gasped, seeing the blood oozing from under Roche's fingers.
 'Somebody call an ambulance,' the colonel shouted.
  His wife dived back into the house. Nataga began to cry.
  'Hit in the pectoral,' Roche said to Alex out of the side of his mouth.
  'I wasn't watching. I thought it was a backfire. Where's that T-shirt
  son?'
  The boy dropped it in front of him then backed away, colour draining from
  his face at the sight of all the blood.
  'You've got to fold that into a dressing, right?' Roche told Alex. 'Then
  press it onto the wound. Can you do that?'
  'Sure,' he answered, grateful that Roche had taken charge.
 'We've got to stop the haemorrhage, so press hard.'
 The girl moaned with pain.
  'Sorry,' Alex winced, fearful of pressing too hard. 'Feels like
  something's broken in there.'
  Trobably a rib. But keep pressing while I see if she's hit anywhere
  else.'
  Alex felt the girl's body quiver, saw her eyelids flutter as she teetered
  on the edge of unconsciousness. Behind him he heard Ella and the Bosnian
  girl comforting each other.
  Roche gently probed Vildana's chest and stomach, then ran his hands down
  her legs.
  'Seems okay,' he said half to himself. 'Nataga!' he called. 'Get over
  here and talk to her, will you? Tell her she's going to be okay.'
 Nataga didn't move.
 'Nataga? Come on, honey,' he repeated soothingly.
  The girl kneeled beside them, but turned her head away.
  'She'll be okay, I mean A,' Roche said, touching her on the knee. 'It's
  just a flesh wound. So quit that crying,

               302
 for her sake, okay? You have to calm her. And somebody go in the house and
 get Nancy to find a blanket.'
  Lorna hurried inside and reappeared with the one she'd used on the sofa
  last night.
  '.Alex,' she murmured breathlessly, her lips close to his ear, 'do you
  think that was. .
 'Pravic?' he breathed. 'Can't be. Not here. You think?'
 'But who else for Pete's sake?'
  'You two know something?' Roche demanded. 'Hey, don't let up the pressure
  on that dressing,' he added.
 Alex pushed down again.
  'It's the reason we got her out of Bosnia. . .' Lorna gulped. 'Because
  some guy wanted to kill her. And now this happens! I can't believe ifl'
  'Did he follow you here, or what? And who the hell is the guy?' he asked
  angrily.
  'He's called Milan Pravic. He's the man who led the Tulici massacre,'
  Alex answered flatly. 'They call him the Scorpion.'
 'Scorpion?'
  'Yes. Apparently he got the nickname when he was a kid.'
  'But if it's him, what's he doing here in Germany?' Lorna demanded. 'And
  how did he know where to find Vadana?'
 'You tell me,' Alex replied.

 Milan Pravic told Gisela to take the airport turning. And to wipe her
 face. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara.
  She pulled a fistful of tissues from the box on the parcel shelf.
  It was his silence that terrified her. The calculating silence on the
  drive from Berlin, when he'd been planning the death of' a child. The
  sullen silence when she'd demanded to know the reasons why. The cold

               303
 silence now as he worked out what to do next. What to do with her.
  'Drive into the car park,' he ordered as they crossed the airport
  perimeter.
 He'd bunied the gun under some clothes in his bag.
  She pulled a ticket from the entry gate and the barrier lifted. He told
  her to drive to a floor where there were empty spaces and few people
  about.
  She knew then that he was going to kill her. Knew it with a terror and
  a certainty that clenched her stomach into a ball and made her gag. She
  thought of stopping the car near some businessmen loading luggage into
  their sleek BMWs. She thought of getting out and running. But she knew
  it would be too late. Knew that at the first tiny sign of her doing
  something to cross him, that gun would be out of the bag and the bullets
  hammering into her back.
 All she could do was grovel, beg him to spare her life.
  'Here,' he pointed at a row of empty spaces. Nobody near. No witnesses.
  She stopped the engine. He lifted the sports bag onto his knees.
 'Milanchen, sweetie . . .' she began, desperately.
  'Listen! You ... you don't understand, Gisie. . .' He fumbled for the
  words. 'Nobody in Germany ... nobody in world understand why I must kill!
  In my country we fight for life - Christian peoples fight Muslim peoples.
  Muslim men I must kill, because they think they can fuck arse of Croat
  peoples!' He jerked his middle finger upwards. 'Muslim women why kill?
  Because they make sons who fuck arse! They Turks!'
  A mad ramble that made little sense to her, she let him bleed the poison
  from his soul.
 'And if they in Germany, I kill also.'
  'But that was only a girl?' Gisela whined. 'Couldn't have been more than
  twelve. Why her?'

                304   -  ' Tulici,' he murmured. 'Muslim girl. From Tulia.' He fell silent, as if no
  other explanation were needed.
  Tuhn. Gisela knew well the significance of that name. Knew the crime she'd
  just helped him commit was nothing to what he'd already done. The nightmare
  was true; the man she'd almost loved was a monster, a practitioner of
  genocide.
  He pulled open the zip of his bag and gripped the gun. Gisela gulped.
 'If you talk to police, I kill you too,' he growled.
  'No, no,'she babbled. 'I'm your friend, you know that. I'm not talking to
  the police. I promise you, I don't want to tell anyone about today. I
  wasn't hcre, even.'
 'That's right. You were not here.'
  He nodded repeatedly to reinforce the point. The hammer clicked as he
  fingered the pistol.
  'Now I go. You make car clean again. Then you drive to Berlin and find
  friend who will say you were with him last night and today.'
 'But what if the police stop me?'
  "Fake the Bundesstrasse. The police will look on the Autobahn.'
 'And you? Where are you going? Back to Bosiiia?'
  Silence again. Shouldn't have asked. He still had his hand on that gun.
  He pushed open the door and got out. Then, clutching his bag, he Icaned
  back in.
 'Remember, Gisie. If you my enemy, I kill you.'
  He'd stated it as a matter of fact. He closed the door and she watched him
  walk towards the exit.

 The police sealed off the road and pavement around the house in Mahlweg with
 striped yellow tape to keep the press out. Both the newspapers and the local
 TY had been tipped off about the shooting.
 In the road just metres from where Vildana had been

               305
 gunned down, detectives recovered two 9mm cartridge cases.
  Nancy Roche and Nataga had gone with Vildana in the ambulance. The
  paramedic had congratulated the colonel on his first aid. Probably saved
  her life, she said.
  The Hessen State Police, who'd answered the I 10 call that Nancy had put
  in, decided to call in help from the Bundeskriminalamt. The shooting of a
  Bosnian was political and needed the Federal specialists from Wiesbaden.
  A Kommissar was on his way, but it would be an hour before he arrived. In
  the meantime, patrol cars were searching for a muddy, white, VW Polo,
  possibly driven by a woman, registration number unknown. Unfortunately, the
  police pointed out, the Polo was one of Germany's most popular cars, and
  white one of the most popular colours.
  While the police went from house to house, seeking witnesses, Irwin Roche
  despatched the twins to watch TV, then hustled Alex and Lorna indoors and
  sat them at the kitchen table, so they could tell him exactly what all this
  was about.
  'Oh God ... what have we done?' Lorna sighed, cupping her head in her
  hands. 'I brought Vildana halfways across Europe, just so she could be shot
  at.'
  Alex clasped and unclasped his fingers, kneading his knuckles. By now he
  was convinced the gunman must have been Pravic. So close, just metres from
  the man the world was hunting, the man he'd been hunting, and not known it.
  In his mind he kcpt trying to improve on the meagre description he'd given
  the police - cropped fair hair, male, in his thirties, grim, grey-blue eyes
  - it wasn't much.
  'I still don't understand how Pravic knew where to find her,' he murmured.
 Suddenly Roche blushed scarlet.

               306
  '0 ... h, oh boy,' he said, getting up from the table and heading for his
  den.
  'The Internet,' Lorna moaned. 'Must've put his address on an open message
  on the bulletin board. You're not supposed to do that. Anything
  confidential should go e-mail direct to CareNet.'
  They followed Roche into the den. The modem bleeped as it made the
  connection. A few keystrokes and he was into <alt.childadopt.agency> on the
  Usenet. He selected the 'Children available' item from the menu. The most
  recent messages came up first. Some of them offensive, some from cranks,
  some saying that adoption on the Internet was God's gift to child-abusers.
  He kept typing 'back' until he came to the response he'd lodged to Lorna's
  request for an 'angel' six days ago.
 'Oh my! Look at that,' he sighed.
  There at the top of his offer of help was his home address, street number
  and everything, instantly readable by any of the Net's thirty million
  subscribers.
  'How could I be so stupid?' He thumped the screen with his fist.
  Alex led Lorna back to the kitchen, while Roche logged off.
  'I still don't get it,' he murmured, 'I mean, how would Pravic know about
  the Internet?'
  'CNN. They filmed a report on us,' Lorna answered, her voice heavy. 'My
  God, Alex, what have we done? Notyou, but me, Larry Machin, CareNet. So
  busy being clever, instead of saving Vildana's life we may have lost it!'

 Milan Pravic found a (lank stairway which took him two levels down in the
 airport car park - the floor where the rental agencies kept their vehicles.
 He walked past a small office and a line of sparkling

               307
 automobiles. Must be a toilet here somewhere for the staff.
  He found the door and pushed inside. It smelled of urine, as if drunks had
  given up their search for porcelain and used the walls. He tried the taps
  on the washbasin. They worked. Hot water too.
  He unzipped the sports bag and pulled out a towel and a sachet of hair
  colourant shampoo. Dark chestnut.
  He draped the towel round his shoulders to protect his clothes, then wet
  his hair. He rubbed in the shampoo and rinsed his hands. A quick look in
  the mirror, then he picked up his bag and retreated to one of the cubicles.
  The instructions said wait ten minutes before rinsing.

 Two floors up, Gisela washed clean the number plates of her car, using water
 from a bottle she always carried in the boot. Then she re-parked it near the
 exit and behind a pillar, so that if Milan came back to check on her, he
 would think she had gone.
  She walked as casually as she could down the long passage to the terminal
  and located a phone booth.
  Her fingers hovered over the dial pad. 110 would get her the police. An
  anonymous message perhaps, to tell them he was at the airport?
  She dismissed the thought. Not on. Not if she wanted to live a little
  longer.
  She pulled an address book from her handbag. Time to find a friend she
  could trust. It wouldn't be easy. Loyalty was a rare commodity in the
  circles she moved in.

 Kommissar Gunther Linz had intended to spend the afternoon watching
 athletics on television with his wife who was a gymnastics teacher, but the
 weekend duty man at the Wiesbaden HQ had gone sick, so when the

               308
 alert came from the Hessische Landeskriminalamt they'd telephoned Linz at
 home.
  The word 'Bosnia' linked with crime in Germany made him shudder. With
  hundreds of thousands of refugees here from all the Yugoslav ethnic groups
  it wouldn't take much to spark civil war on German streets.
  And now the attempted murder of a child. Bad news. Very bad.
  As he took the Pfefferheirn turning off the Autobahn, he jabbed at the
  radio button to catch the six o'clock bulletin. Wanted to see what the
  media had dug up on that Leipzig can of worms.
  The way he'd heard it from the police rumour network, the suicide note left
  by the microbiologist had been dynamite. The Leipzig police had passed it
  straight to the intelligence agencies who'd slapped a national security
  classification on it and demanded sealed lips. Now the BND were claiming
  they'd 'lost' the letter.
  The 'pips' of the time signal. He turned up the volume.

 '. . . Frau Erika Schmidt, the daughter of the dead scientu't, claims
 i . n an interview in tomorrow's Bild Zeltung that herfather told her
 some of the old Stasi securio police were stillfunctioning, and that
 he'd been ordered against his will to produce dangerous bacteritifor
 them. . . .'

  The Stasi still functioning? No chance. Impossible after the way it had
  been taken apart after unification. A judicial Commission was still sifting
  the files looking for people to prosecute on human rights charges.
  If there were Stasi men still operating, they were freelancers. But
  freelancers using anthrax? He shuddered again. And working for whom? The
  BND? Not their

               309
 style ... On the other hand, they had gone out on a limb with that plutonium
 business.
 He pushed the 'ofF button.
  A uniformed officer stopped him at the turning into Muhlweg. He showed his
  pass and was waved through. Locals clustered in groups of two or three on
  the pavements, watching the comings and goings. Must have shaken up a dull
  Sunday, Linz thought.
  Relieved to see him, his opposite number from the Hessen police shook him
  warmly by the hand.
  'The hospital say the girl will live. The buflet missed her heart by this
  much.' The Inspector held his finger and thumb so they almost touched. 'By
  the way, they're all foreigners here. Americans and British. Not much
  German between them.'
 'Then I can practise my English a little,' Linz replied.
  Alex stood up to greet the tall, limping newcomer with the pepper-coloured
  hair. The wariness in the policeman's close-set eyes told him this was a
  man who preferred facts and certainties to supposition.
  Irwin Roche had summoned the help of an interpreter from the Rhine-Main Air
  Base, a bespectacled schoolteacher.
  Helped by a large pot of fresh-brewed coffee, they explained the background
  to the shooting that afternoon. Linz listened, interjecting sometimes in
  English, sometimes in German.
  Lorna spelled out how CareNet used the Internet as an adoption agency, then
  Roche took Linz into his den to demonstrate.
  'So, any person who has a computer can connect to this?' he asked,
  intrigued.
  'All you need is a modem and a subscription to an Internet server.'
  'So, anyone who saw the report on the news could have had the idea to
  connect to this Internet and could

               310
 find out that Vildana was staying in your house?' he pressed.
 Roche blushed again.
  'It was incredibly stupid to put my address, I know that. . . .'
  ja, but my point is that anybody could do this. Any crazy person with a
  computer. . .'
  'And a gun,'Alex added. Linz seemed to be questioning Pravic's
  involvement.
  'Of course. But I must look at all possibilities,' he said dismissively.
  'Tell me, does the computer make a record of the people who have
  connected up and read these messages?'
  'Unfortunately not,' Roche replied. 'There's no control over the "net".'
 'That is a pity.'
 Back in the kitchen, Linz began to make notes.
  'It was you who brought the girl into Germany illegally, Frau Sorensen?'
  he asked without looking up.
 Lorna glanced in alarm at Alex. He shook his head.
 'I'm not prepared to comment on that.'
 Linz took her answer as an admission.
  'Vildana's a persecuted person and could apply for asylum here,' she
  added simply.
  Linz didn't react. It wasn't a point worth pursuing. Any foreigner
  entering Germany legally or illegally, had a right to stay while an
  asylum application was processed.
  'Milan Pravic lived in Germany for several years,' Alex said. 'His
  brother told me it was Berlin. Wouldn't there be some record of him
  there? A photograph maybe?'
  'It's possible. The Landeskriminalpolizei in Berlin can check that. Today
  of course is Sunday, so they cannot get at the Municipal register until
  tomorrow. We have access to the Bundesverwaltungsamt computer in K61n -
  where the records of "black sheep" are kept, guest workers who

               311
 will not get their visa renewed because they've broken the law. But they
 have nothing on Milan Pravic. I have already checked.'
 He frowned.
 'What do you know about this person?' Linz asked.
  'He's a mass murderer and maybe a rapist, Herr Kommissar,' Alex snapped.
  'Comes from a small village in Bosnia. His brother's a priest. Not much
  love between him and Milan. The man's a psychopath.'
  'But perhaps has not used computers much . . .' said Linz frostily. He
  suspected the Englishman was something of an amateur psychologist, a
  species he disliked.
 Alex ground his teeth.
  'You understand, Herr Crawford, that there is not much evidence yet,'
  Linz continued. 'Maybe the ballistics department will get some
  information from the bullets. Or maybe the girl saw the face of the man
  who shot her.'
  'All Vildana saw was the front wheel of her bike,' Lorna replied. J was
  watching her.'
  'I don't think you've quite understood about Pravic, Herr Kommissar,'
  Alex continued. 'Let me tell you what his own brother said about him. He
  said killing's like a drug to Milan. Particularly when his victims are
  Muslim. He'll kill anybody who gets in his way. And given the means,
  he'll commit murder on a scale that'll make the Tulici massacre look like
  a minor road accident!'
 Linz blinked at the intensity of Alex's words.
  ,Then we must pray for some luck in finding him,' he added calnily. 'I
  would like to know where to contact you if I need to talk to you again.'
 Alex gave him the number of the Hotel Sommer.
 'And you, Frau Sorensen? Where will I find you?'
  Alex's and Lorna's eyes met for no more than a second, but it was long
  enough.
 'I'll be with him,' she said.

               312
 They spoke little on the drive into Frankfurt, Lorna's hands gripping the
 wheel for support as much as to steer the car. Personal decisions were
 beyond her now. The puppet-master Fate had taken control again.
  Her mind gyrated, sifting and sorting the words and happenings of this
  long day, but they were as hard to hold onto as leaves in the wind. The
  baring of souls in the bistro had opened old wounds then seared them.
  Now, the sharp crack of the gunshots, the clatter of handlebars on
  concrete, the sight of the blood-soaked rag pressed to Vildana's chest
  - all snapshot ima.,ues clicking round in an endless loop in her brain.
  Alex took in little as they drove into town, his mind filled by the eyes
  at the window of the white Polo. The cold, blue-grey eyes of a man who'd
  assigned himself the right to snuff out the life of another human being.
  Any man who had such arrogance over life and death would try again, once
  he learned Vildana was still alive. They'd need a new hiding place for
  the girl when she was released from hospital. Above all, Pravic had to
  be found. He had to be stopped.
  ng would need a new hiding place? Who? Whose responsibility was Vildana
  now? The Roches', Germany's - or Lorna's?
  He turned his head to look at her. Lorna's chin jutted in concentration
  as she drove, her blonde hair short and wavy like a Pharaoh's. Now that
  he knew what she'd been through in those lost years, he could read it in
  the hollowness of her cheeks, in the lines round her mouth.
  She sensed him looking at her and flashed a smile that peeked from her
  face as nervously as a kitten sniffing the air.
  Their eyes locked for little more than a second, just long enough to
  confirm agreement as to what would happen next.
  Words weren't needed. They'd be superfluous, dangerous even. Words
  analysed things too much. If

               313
 the two of them were to talk about the pact their eyes had just made they'd
 find a reason for setting it aside. They'd have to conclude that on a day of
 such shocking, murderous events, it would be wrong to pursue pleasure.
  She parked the Land Cruiser in a imilti-storey. He took Lorna's small
  suitcase from the back seat and carried it two blocks to the Hotel Sommer.
  The desk clerk handed him the room key without comment. Then when the
  couple disappeared into the elevator, he changed the figure 'one' in the
  occupancy column of the register to 'two'.
  They stood close together in the lift, their bodies touching, but not their
  hands. Slowly he bent his head and their lips brushed with the lightness of
  feathers.
  The elevator stopped and the doors opened, but for a moment their eyes
  stayed on each other, neither wanting to break the spell.
  His hand shook as he fumbled with the key. Like a cat, she rubbed her face
  against his shoulder, her breath halting and uneven.
  Inside the room, he dropped the suitcase beside the wardrobe, then held her
  by the waist. She slipped her arms round his neck, threading her fingers
  through his hair.
  His mouth crushed against hers, their lips and tongues re-discovering the
  taste and territory they'd once known well.
  She pulled back from him, her eyes wild and hungry. She stroked his beard,
  trying to familiarize her hands with the unfamiliar.
 'Maybe. . .' she breathed, 'maybe that'll have to go.'
 'What, now?' he asked.
  'No.' Her mouth widened into a smile. 'Not now. Later. A lot later.'
  She slipped off her knitted waistcoat then crossed her arms, taking hold of
  the hem of her shirt and pulling it

               314
 over her head. Alex did the same with his pullover. They dropped the
 clothes on the floor.
  He kissed her bare neck and shoulders, his hands tingling at the feel of
  her smooth, soft skin, the soapy perfume of her flesh borne upwards by
  her body heat. She was so thin, he could feel her ribs. He ran his
  fingers down the ridges of her spine, remembering their geography. Then
  with a little twist he unclipped the strap of her bra and slipped it
  forward.
  Lorna tossed back her head and closed her eyes to heighten the sensations
  shooting through her body. His tongue's caress hardened her nipples. She
  breathed in sharply, clasping his head as if it were the most precious
  thing on earth and ran her fingers up the soft, sensitive skin behind his
  ears.
 She felt his hands start to work on the belt of herjeans.
 'Hang on,' she panted, 'you've still got your shirt on.'
  She tugged and pulled at the buttons, breaking one of them, then pushed
  the shirt back over his shoulders.
  She rubbed her body against the thick mat of hair on his chest,
  remembering. Remembering how fine-tuned his flesh had been when they'd
  met that second time in Belfast, how addicted she'd become to what he did
  with it.
  He had the belt undone and slipped his hands under her knickers, cupping
  her small buttocks, his fingertips reaching to feel the hot moistness
  underneath.
 They pulled apart to throw off the rest of their clothes.
  Lorna threw the duvet onto the floor and lay down on the smooth white
  sheets. She covered her breasts with her hands, conscious that they
  weren't as firm and shapely as when he'd last seen them. But then, he
  wasn't the same shape either, she realized, seeing the slight bulge of
  his stomach when he knelt beside her on the mattress. She looked up at
  his beaming face as his hand caressed her stomach and teased through the
  tufts of her bush.

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  'You're as gorgeous as ever, Lorna,' he breathed. 'D'you know thaff
 A silly grin spread across her face.
 'So are you,' she purred.
  She took hold of him and pulled him down on top of her.

 316
           Twenty-four

 Monday 4th April, 10.30 a.m.
 Boston, Massachusetts

 Annie Lowefl, n6e Donohue, slit open the hand-delivered letter and pulled
 out a pack of photographs. She frowned. For her? Some mistake, perhaps. Then
 she unfolded the single sheet of writing paper accompanying them and
 recognized the writing of her younger sister.
  'Hey, it's from Lorna,' she smiled, realizing then that the scenes in the
  shots were Bosnia.
  Always close, she and her sister. Two years between them in age, but as
  children they'd been like Siamese twins when it came to coping with the
  tyranny of their father.
  It was a brilliant spring morning in New England, maples and birches
  exploding with yellow-green life. The Lowell children were back at school
  after a few days at home because of bad colds. Annie had the house and the
  day to herself
  An uncontrolled appetite for muffins and donuts had left her with hips and
  thighs that were painful to joke about, but she had a ready Irish smile,
  lively brown eyes and tawny hair almost down to her shoulders.
  She took the letter back to the kitchen and poured herself some of the
  coffee she'd left to brew. Then she sat down and read.

 Dearest Annie,
 You will NE VER guess who the guy with the beard is, standing

               317
 next to me in a couple of these photos! His name begins Un'th the letter
 'A I.T
 Seeyou soon. Loma.

  What was she on about? Never got sensible letters from her any more.
  She riffled through the prints until she found two that showed a bearded
  man standing uneasily next to Lorna. Certainly didn't recognize him.
 She read the letter again.
 His name begins un . th the letter 1AI.T
 'Oh my Goff she shrieked. 'That's not possible.'
  She looked again at the pictures, then stomped to her husband's den and
  pulled a box file from the bookshelf. She returned to the kitchen and
  opened the lid. Inside were hundreds of photographs, dating back years,
  all the prints that had never merited being pasted into albums.
  Her heart was thumping so much she feared a coronary. She dug deep in the
  box, guessing anything from so long ago should be at the bottom. She
  stirred the prints like a cake-mix, but didn't find what she was looking
  for.
  'Come on, Annie, you're being stupid,' she scolded herself. 'Go
  systematic.'
  She began again, removing each print individually, checking and stacking
  them into piles. Eventually she found it.
  Hands trembling, she held the print taken in Belfast in 1973 next to the
  new ones.
 'Oh my Goff she howled.
  The beard had fooled her. Older now, jowlier, bigger gut, but the same
  man.
 'A for Alex!' she hissed.
  She took the new pictures to the window and held them to the light,
  looking for signs on Lorna's face of the bitterness she'd harboured for
  the Englishman for so

               318
 many years. Lorna certainly didn't look happy in the photograph. The smile
 looked fixed.
  The two sisters had always confided in each other. She remembered Lorna
  crying over the stocky, unsophisticated boy she'd fallen for in a London
  pub in the nineteen-sixties. She had been broken-hearted at having to leave
  him and return to college in America.
  She remembered too the ecstatic phone call from Belfast ten years later,
  announcing they'd met again. Then, just a week or two after that, the
  betrayal.
  Annie had never shared Lorna's belief in fate; when she learned Alex was
  spying for the British, it hadn't been hard to conclude that he had
  engineered the meeting to make use of her.
  Was he doing it again? What use could she be to him this time? Lorna wasn't
  involved in anything sensitive these days. No longer had anything to do
  with the Cause.
  Annie read the letter once more. No clue from Lorna as to what she felt. No
  reason given for sending the photos. Just those ambiguous exclamation
  points. It was almost as if after twenty years of pledging to get her own
  back on Alex, Lorna couldn't decide what to do, now she had the chance. As
  ifshe was asking for help ...
  Mister Alex Jarvis. Annie knew what she would do to him. Cut his balls off.
  But it wasn't down to her. Not down to Lorna, even. When revenge was
  personal it was almost always wrong. There were bigger issues to be
  considered. This was one for the organization, for the boys with long
  memories who would've given their right arms during the last twenty years
  to know the tout's whereabouts.
  She picked up the telephone and dialled her husband's number.Joe had sat on
  the Irish Republican fundraising committee for over fifteen years. They'd
  both of them been involved since soon after the British troops went in.
  Campaigning, lobbying. Joe would know what to do.

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 He'd have a feeling fDr the mood amongst the Provisionals now there was a
 cease-fire on the way.
  Joe was in a marketing meeting, but his secretary pulled him out. He
  listened silently as she explained, then gave his answer in a couple of
  sentences.
  She padded back into the den, took an envelope and writing paper from Joe's
  desk and returned to the kitchen. She slipped one of the photos inside the
  envelope, keeping the other back for herself. For at least ten minutes she
  just sat, wondering whether she'd done the right thing after all, talking
  to Joe.
  It was she who'd encouraged her sister to get involved in the Gause. Her
  thoughts drifted back to 1973 when Lorna had fled from Belfast like a
  wraith. After the boys in Boston put a contract out, the creature had
  hidden in cupboards, terrified a knock on the door would be followed by a
  bullet.
  Above all, Annie remembered how Lorna's spirit had been broken by that
  bastard's betrayal, by the shock that someone she'd loved and trusted could
  do that to her. Annie had told her sister to forget him, but she never
  could. Never got him out of her system. Lorna, she guessed, was one of
  those benighted women who only loved the men that abused them.
  Annie picked up the picture again and peered into her sister's eyes. What
  did she see there? Anger? Hate? Oh, no ... Not the other thing for heaven's
  sake ...
  'Lorna, sweetie, don't do it.Just don't do what I think you're goin' to
  do,'she said to the picture. 'He'll fuck you up again, sure as God made
  little green apples.'
  She began to writ(-. just a few sentences. Just enough to let the boys know
  what was what. LikeJoe said. Then it was up to them what they did about it.

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 12 noon
 Universititsklinik Sembach - Frankfurt m Main

 The gun attack on a Bosnian girl in a quiet residential street had made
 front page news. Armed police guarded her ward in the recently-built
 hospital and the media were beating a path to her door. The TV had portrayed
 Vildana as a tragic war victim, gunned down by the man she was trying to
 bring to justice for the murder of her family. The story had touched hearts
 around the world.
  The Universitatsklinik was the accident and emergency hospital for a swathe
  of semi-urban landscape south of Frankfurt. A white-painted, five-storey
  block, extending each side of a central entrance that served ambulances and
  visitors.
  Alex and Lorna asked at the main desk for directions to ward 4F. The
  receptionist assumed they were journalists and told them coldly they'd need
  to speak first to the hospital administrator.
  'And he's not let anyone see her all morning,' she added briskly.
  'We're not press, we're family,' Alex answered in German.
  'Really?' She'd heard the same story four times that morning. 'The police
  won't let you in.'
  Alex took Lorna's arm. 'Come on, we're wasting our time.' He led her to the
  elevators.
  As the doors opened on the fourth floor, they almost collided with
  photographers being nudged away by a police officer. Along the corridor two
  more uniformed men from the Kriminalpolizel stood guard outside room F.
  Alex struggled with his school German to explain who they were. One officer
  went inside and reappeared with Nancy Roche.

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  'Hey, it's good to see you guys!' she exclaimed. Her tanned skin looked
  grey and pinched with exhaustion. She led them into the four-bed ward and
  closed the door again. Vildana was dozing in the far corner. Two other beds
  were occupied by children, one alone, the other with a mother in
  attendance.
  'She's sleeping, thank the Lord,' Nancy whispered. 'It was a terrible
  night. She was in a lot of pain when the anaesthetic wore off. Nobody got
  any sleep. Nataga is totally washed out; I sent her home at eight this
  morning, after a nurse came on who's from Yugoslavia. She looks in once in
  a while. Say, have they caught the man yet?'
  'Not that we've heard,' Alex answered. Xommissar Linz hasn't rung us.'
 Anyway they'd been too pre-occupied to enquire.
  'Vildana's scared out of her wits. Thinks he'll chase and chase until he
  finds her.'
  'She's probably right,' Lorna agreed. 'The man's a monster.'
  They looked across at the sleeping child. She had one hand up to her mouth,
  half obscuring her birthmark, the thumb resting on her lips.
  'She's a sweet kid,' Nancy murmured, shaking her head. 'So young, and
  suffered so much already. Now look, are you guys going to be here a while?
  Gan you give me a couple of hours to flop, to go home and take a shower?'
  Lorna and Alex looked at one another and nodded. 'Sure, why not.'
  'That's swell of you. One thing, some Bosnian refugee centre has been in
  touch, just making sure someone's taking responsibility fDr Vildana. The
  police say they're bona fide, but I'm a little anxious. Scared they'll take
  her away from me I guess,' she grimaced nervously.
  'And you don't want that... ?'Lorna asked, checking. The woman could have
  had no idea what she was letting herself in for when she agreed to take
  Vildana.

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  'No way,' Nancy replied, startled at the question. 'She's my girl now.
  Leastways, so long as that's what she wants,' she added. 'See you in a
  couple of hours then?'
  'Sure. Take your time,' Lorna said, squeezing her arm.
  She and Alex sat down beside the bed, watching the rise and fall of
  Vildana's breathing. Her right breast was covered by a thick, white
  dressing.
  Such tiny breasts, Lorna thought, little more than buds. And now there'd be
  a scar, another physical one to go with those that they couldn't see, in
  her mind.
  Half an hour later, with Vildana still sleeping, Alex descended to the
  lobby telling Lorna he'd find them some sandwiches. His main aim however
  was to telephone M15.
  'What are you doing in Frankfurt, dear boy?' Chadwick's voice, suspicious.
  just checking you'd read your papers this morning. .
  'And the rest . . . TV, radio, the story's getting a huge play over here.
  But ... were you there when it happened?'
 'Well yes . . .'
 'Why? How?'
  'I helped smuggle the girl out of Bosnia. Came here to see how she was
  settling in with her new family...'
  'Good heavens! You're a canny bastard. Didn't mention any of that when you
  rang from Split.'
 'It was still rather sensitive, then.'
  'Well, tell me something. That Lorna somebody-orother mentioned in the
  7-imes - she's not Loma... ?'
  'Good Lord, no,' Alex lied. 'Sorensen's her name. Nordic background, I
  think.'
  'Mmm . . .' Chadwick was unconvinced. He'd seen a photo of her in the
  paper. 'You're sure it wa~ Milan Pravic who shot the girl?'
  'Can't think who else would do it. Certainly fitted the description.'

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 'I see. Who's handling it for the Germans?'
  'A Kommissar called Linz. From the Bundeskriminalamt.'
  'Oh I know Linz. Met him not so long ago at an Interpol bash. Maybe I'll
  give him a ring. I'll tell him you're a friend of mine. . .'
  Alex rang off then bought cheese rolls and mineral water from the stall
  in the lobby. He also picked up the Frankfurte AlIgmeine and Bild
  Zeitung.
  Back in the ward he scanned the stories that had been written about
  Vildana.
  'It says here she was smuggled into Germany in the trunk of a car
  belonging to an American adoption agency,' he translated. 'Says it's
  thought the killer tailed them all the way to Frankfurt.'
 'God! Who gives them this stuff?'
 'Better that than the truth,' he commented wryly.
 'Do they name him?' Lorna asked.
  'Not directly. There's a lot about Tulici. Mentions the UN asking
  European police forces to hold Pravic if they find him. Oh, Kommissar
  Linz is quoted. Says he has no idea who the gunman was. Appealing for
  more witnesses - all that crap.'
  Vildana stirred. She saw Lorna, made an attempt at a smile, then winced
  with pain. Lorna fussed with the pillows and the girl closed her eyes
  once more.
  It stirred memories for Alex, sitting by a child's hospital bed. Jodie.
  He'd broken an arm once, riding his bike into a wall. Only ten at the
  time.
  Alex turned back to the papers. Leipzig again - the mystery suicide. A
  new twist ... A Zagreb woman was critically ill with pulmonary anthrax.
  The hotel where she worked as a cleaner had been closed to be disin-
  fected.
 'Extraordinary story, this,' Alex muttered.
 'Now what are they sayiing?'
 'It's not about Vildana, this one. It's about a scientist

               324
 in Leipzig University, who committed suicide last week. The official line is
 that he was depressed at being made redundant. You know, a man whose work
 meant everything to him? Well, his daughter tells a dffrerent story. She
 said her father had hinted about being forced to hand over supplies of
 lethal bacteria to some thug from the Stasi, you know - the old East German
 secret police?'
 'Really?'
  'The papers have been nibbling at it for days. They're saying the bacteria
  could've been anthrax, and now there's a girl dying from the disease in
  Zagreb.'
 'Zagreb! For Pete's sake, why Zagreb?'
  'Dunno. But anthrax isn't exactly as common as 'flu, so there's some
  suspicion it came from the lab in Leipzig. And now, the papers say there's
  a cover-up going on. They claim the German intelligence agencies know all
  about it, but aren't saying.'
 'Wow! That's some story!'
  Voices in the corridor outside, then Kommissar Linz walked in, dressed in
  his green raincoat and carrying a slim briefcase.
  He limped across to the corner bed and shook their hands formally.
  'Guten Tag, Herr Crawford. Frau Sorensen. Your hotel said you were out, so
  I hoped you would be here.'
 'You have news about Pravic?' Alex asked.
  'Yes and no.' He rested the briefcase on a chair, opened it, and pulled out
  a photograph about seven inches by five. 'They wired this from Berlin this
  morning.'
  Alex took it from him, a blow-up of a passport photo, blurry
  black-and-white. Man in late twenties. Thick, fair hair, pale eyes. A
  sullen, brooding face. No trace of a smile.
  'Well? Have you seen this man before?' Linz asked neutrally.
 'Is it him?' asked Alex.

               325
 Linz shrugged, saying nothing.
 Alex held it out so Lorna could see too.
  'I never saw the guy's face, that's the trouble,' she said, exasperated.
 'You?' Linz asked again, turning back to Alex.
  'I don't know. I remember the man as older. His hair was trimmed short,
  I think. When was this picture taken?'
 'Maybe six years ago.'
  'Mmm. The eyes look similar. Not quite what I remember, but similar. But
  then I don't suppose he was about to try to murder someone when this
  picture was taken.'
 Linz took the photo back.
  'You told me the car was driven by a woman,'he went on. 'You heard her
  scream. Did you see her face? You think you'd recognize her?'
 Alex looked pained and shook his head.
  'When we drove into the road, the car was parked there and I think I saw
  dark hair through the driver's window. But that's all. Why? You've found
  the car.'
  'The police in Berlin have found a woman that Pravic used to live with.
  And it happens that she owns a white Volkswagen Polo.'
 'Aha. Fantastic!'Alex smiled.
  'But she claims she has not seen Pravic since he went back to Bosnia two
  years ago. She also has two witnesses who say she was with them for the
  whole weekend, and another who says the car has not been away from its
  parking place for days.'
 'Oh. Not so good.'
  'But since the woman is a prostitute and her friends have convictions for
  fraud and drug dealing, we're not necessarily convinced by her story,'
  he concluded.
 This man can be quite droll, Alex thought.
  'So, Herr Crawford, I would like your help in putting her to the test.
  She is being brought to Frankfurt this

               326
 afternoon. I will arrange an identity parade at the police headquarters this
 evening. At about seven? You could be there?'
 'Surely. But as I said, I didn't see her face.'
  'Maybe there will be something you can recognize. We will try. It's the
  best chance.'
  He was on the point of replacing the photo in his briefcase, when he
  noticed that Vildana was awake and watching them. He smiled at her, and
  hesitated.
 Lorna guessed what he was about to do.
  'Please don't show her that . . .' she interjected. 'Not just now.'
  Linz nodded. She was right. There was no need. Not yet.

 6.25 p.m.
 Munich

 Martin Sanders took it taxi straight from Munich's Franz Josef StrauB
 Airport to the hotel near the Victualenmarkt. No special hired car this
 time. There'd be no ramble, no wine tasting. This was an emergency.
  He paid cash for the room as usual and went up to it to wait. Katzfuss had
  said he would make contact.
  The Leipzig business had been hot gossip at Vauxhall Cross before he left
  London. Snide little speculations about what their German counterparts in
  the BND had been up to. 'Wouldn't happen here, old boy. At least, if it
  did, we'd make damn sure nothing slipped out.'
 Little did they know, Sanders brooded.
  He sat on the austere easy-chair in the corner of his room, reading the
  William Boyd he'd bought at the

               327
 airport on the way out. Twenty minutes passed, then Katzfuss rang, giving
 the name of a restaurant five minutes walk away.
  When he reached it, Jack Kapinsky and Marcel Vaillon were already sitting
  with the German at a table in an alcove. Photos of old opera singers
  cluttered the walls of the place.
  'Bowoirl Martin,' the Frenchman said, extending a hand. Jack has just
  told us that Akhavi is on the way out, but there's no word on the Russian
  yet.'
  'Hmmm,' Sanders grunted, squeezing onto the bench next to him. Assisting
  in the probable death of two men had given him no pleasure.
  'Is this place clean?' Kapinsky asked petulantly. 'It's just I thought
  the Ramblers had rules not to meet near walls.'
  The American's nostrils twitched as if they'd detected an unpleasant
  smell. Getting ready to pass the buck, Sanders thought.
  'I think no one will hear us, gentlemen,' Katzfuss replied dismissively.
  'I am sorry to have to call this extra meeting, but there is a crisis.'
  'Your guy's fucked up, hasn't he,' Kapinsky snapped. 'Killed a Croatian
  chambermaiff
  The deep lines on Katzfuss's face gave him the appearance of an angry
  Boxer dog.
  'I believe you Americans have a phrase ... Collateral damage?' the German
  growled.
  'Come on boys and girls,' Sanders intervened. 'Let's tov to be grown up.
  We're all in it together.'
 'Get on with it, Rudi,'Vaillon said.
  A waiter hovered. They looked quickly at the menu, he memorized their
  choices and left them in peace.
  'All right. So ... When we met two weeks ago,' Katzfuss reminded them,
  'we decided the Russian and the Iranian should be eliminated by a
  freelance with

               328
 experience. We agreed this person could use whatever means. Yes?'
 They nodded. Even Kapinsky.
  'So ... we made conditions - that the uictims should die only after they
  return to their own countries. For this, the agent decide to use a
  biological weapon - anthrax. Unfortunately the man who supplied the
  bacteria was not reliable any more. He killed himself, leaving a letter
  telling what he had done. He told also that Herr Dunkel - that is the cover
  name of our agent - that Dunkel was previously with the Stasi.
  'The civil police in Leipzig read the letter. 7-hg pass it to internal
  security, BfV, who tell us at the BND. I tell them this is wery sensitive,
  and the letter must disappear, but already it is too late. The newspapers
  learn from the police what it said.
  'So ... now the newspapers and some Bundestag representatives ask what is
  the connection between the security services and Dunkel, and the death of
  Kemmer in Leipzig and the almost death of a woman in Zagreb.
  , Most of that you already know. But there is something else, gentlemen .
  . .' Katzftiss's face sagged like a deflated balloon. 'Yesterday I meet
  with the man we call Dunkel ... He told me that he had help in Zagreb.
  Maybe you two saw the other man?' he asked, glancing at Sanders and
  Vaillon.
  'Yes. But I don't know his name,' Sanders replied, reaching into his pocket
  for a small envelope.
  'That was a pity,' Katzfuss sighed. 'Dunkel brought this man back to
  Gen-nany. On the way, during the night at a motel, he stole from Dunkel's
  car the remains of the liquid containing the anthrax. . .
 'Wha-at?' Sanders erupted.
  'God almighty, Rudi!' Kapinsky exploded. 'I thought you said your guy was
  a pro . . .'
 Katzftiss's embarrassment was painful to see.
 ja, Dunkel was a pro,' he shrugged. 'Some years ago.

               329
 Too many years perhaps. But the worst thing is the name of the man who now
 has the anthrax. It is Milan Pravic . . .'
  'Bloody hellP Sanders spluttered. The other two frowned, trying to place
  it.
  'Responsible for the murder of more than forty women and children at
  Tulici in Bosnia last month,' Katzfuss continued. 'Wanted for the
  attempted murder yesterday, here in Germany, of Vildana Muminovic, the
  only witness to the massacre.'
  Silence at the table. No one breathed. The food arrived.
  'C'est incroyable! Vaillon hissed after the waiter had gone again.
  'Your oldpro hires a genocidal maniac to help out with the Zagreb job,
  and then lets him walk away with a bottle of anthrax?' Kapinsky howled.
  'My God, Rudi! What's going on here?'
  Sanders opened the envelope and pulled out the photograph he'd taken in
  Zagreb, showing Pravic and 'Dunkel' sitting in the big square near the
  Dubrovnik Hotel.
 'That's him,' he said dismally.
  'This, I didn't know you had it,' Katzfuss said, grabbing it from him.
  'Always take holiday snaps. Never know when they might come in handy.'
  'The police must have this. As soon as possible,' the German continued.
  'Give that to the cops, and they'll want to know where it came firom,'
  Kapinsky complained. 'Then they'll know the BND's involved.'
  Jack, the police must have this picture,' Katzfuss insisted. 'And they
  must be warned that Pravic could kill thousands of people with the
  anthrax!'
 'Are you crazy?' Kapinsky hissed. 'The Ramblers will

               330
 make headlines all over the world. just think what'll happen in each of our
 countries when people find out what we've been doing. Putting out contracts
 to assassinate people without the authority of our governments! Using b
 w*logw'al weapow. Do you know what Congress will do? I'll tell you. They'll
 have the excuse they've been looking for to close down the whole fucking
 Company. The CIA will be dead in the wateff
  'I have to agree with Jack, Rudl,' Sanders added quietly. 'The political
  repercussions don't bear thinking about.'
 'They are right,' Vaillon concurred.
  'But the risk of what could happen here in Germany? We cannot permit this.
  Pravic has killed who knows how many in Bosnia, for the reason that they
  are Muslims. Even if the Wictims have never been to a mosque in their
  lives, they must still be killed because of their culture -that is what he
  believes. In Germany we have hundreds of thousands of Bosnians. Many, many
  so-called Muslims.'
 He wiggled his fingers to indicate inverted commas.
  'My friends. The situation is most urgent. This week there is a target here
  in Germany that Mr Pravic might find too tempting to resist. On Wednesday
  - the day after tomorrow - in Munich, there is a Muslim political rally.
  More than one thousand Bosnians,Turks, Iranians, and Lebanese meet in a
  sports hall to listen to speeches from Islamic Fundamentalists. Already the
  police in Munich think neo-Nazis will try to break up the meeting. But if
  Pravic . . .'
 'You're right,' Sanders agreed. 'The risk is appalling.'
  'Suppose he can spray the bacteria in there? Five hundred dead? A thousand?
  Then the questions from the Bosnian Muslims in this country - you knew
  about this man, why didn't you stop him? Why you let him murder Muslims?
  You Germans are still Nazis, still with the

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 Croats, like in Third Reich... ~' It would be Bzirgerkrieg. A Bosnian civil
 war in Germany.'
  Marcel Vaillon nodded, reminded of France's own problems with Algeria.
  'You are right Rudi, but so are we,' he insisted. 'Of course your police
  must have this picture and know the danger. But wejour must not be exposed.
  Maybe there is a way.'
 He turned to the SIS man.
  'Martin, in our last meeting you said the UN Tribunal asked for British
  help to find Pravic. So, now you have some success, don't you?' He tapped
  the photo. 'Send them this. Say it was taken by a British UN soldier. Tell
  the UN to give it to the German police immediately. They won't know where
  it comes from.'
  Like laundering money. Sanders picked up the print and studied it again.
  Easy enough to mask out Dunkel and the background.
  'Then Rudi, you must warn the police Pravic could have been in Zagreb when
  the hotel worker was infected. Say the man is a mass murderer and may have
  an anthrax weapon. If they ask how you know, you tell them you don't, but
  it is a guess.'
  'That's fine, but what about Dunkel?' Kapinsky intervened. 'He's the
  crucial figure that connects Pravic with Leipzig and with us. If the police
  identify Dunkel and he talks, then he could spill the whole bag of
  maggots.'
 The other three nodded.
  'Already I tell him he must eliminate everything that links him to Pravic
  and Zagreb,' Katzfuss replied, knowing that it wouldn't be enough.
  'What I'm saying Rudi,' Kapinsky stressed, 'is that Dunkel is the key to
  keeping us out of trouble. And he's your problem, Rudi. You have to get to
  him before the cops do. And you have to take him out.'

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 FrankfiiLrt 7.00 p.m.

 A uniformed woman officer led the way into a small, grey-painted, airless
 office at the headquarters of the Kriminalpolizei. Irwin and Nancy Roche
 were already there, looking anxious and drawn. So was Nataga. One wall was
 made of glass. Beyond it Alex saw another room, furnitureless and empty.
  'In a minute you will see six women through the glass. They cannot see you.
  Each woman will carry a card with a number,' Kommissar Linz explained. 'Do
  not talk to each other about what you see. If you think one of them is the
  person who was driving the Polo yesterday, write down her number and give
  it to me.' He handed each of them a notepad and pen. 'Are you all ready?'
 They concurred.
  'Anfangen bittef he said into a microphone projecting from the wall. He
  dimmed the lights.
 'Not too close to the glass,' he cautioned.
  A few seconds later the women filed in. All had short, dark hair, some
  black, some brown. Three were in short miniskirts, three in trousers.
 'Tough looking bunch,' Alex commented.
 'Please! No talking,' Linz repeated.
  Alex looked at each face in turn, hoping some detail might jog his memory
  - the cut of the hair or the line of the jaw. The trouble was they were
  standing face on. When he'd seen the woman's profile yesterday, he'd been
  looking down at the Polo from the high-up passenger seat in the Land
  Cruiser.
  'Can you get them to sit on the floor and face to the left?' he whispered.
  Linz nodded. He pushed the button on the microphone again.
 'Bitte, setzen Sie sich auf dein Boden und nach links gucken!

               333
  Reluctantly the women complied, the ones in the miniskirts objecting
  strongly.
  'Now let's see,' Alex breathed. There were only two possibles, numbers
  four and six. Couldn't be sure about either of them. Both had hair that
  was almost black, both were heavy in the chest and fat in the thigh. He
  wrote both numbers on the paper.
  'She could be one of these two,' he whispered handing Linz the note.
 'But you are not sure?' he checked.
 'Impossible. I didn't see her full face in the car.'
  Linz grimaced. Without a positive identification they were sunk. The
  Roches shook their heads, as did Lorna.
 'Danke schdrLl' Linz shouted into the box.
 He accompanied them back to the main entrance.
  'Sorry that wasn't much help,' Alex said. 'The woman's still denying
  everything, I suppose?'
  'Such women are in the habit of telling lies to the police. It is easy
  for her. But she is frightened, that's for sure. Of Pravic probably. What
  woman would not be? But without evidence we cannot hold her for long. We
  will ask her some more questions this evening, then tomorrow she must go
  free.'
 'Which one was she, by the way?'
  Linz turned to look at him. He knew he shouldn't answer, but an idea had
  just come into his head.
 'Number four.'
 Alex faltered.
 'Damn! If only I'd been sure..
  'There may be something more you can do . . .' Linz said, stoppingjust
  short of the swing doors. He took Alex and Lorna to one side, while the
  Roches waited. 'I would like to talk with you on the telephone tonight,
  after I have spoken with Fraulein Pocklewicz. You'll be at the Hotel
  Sommer? At about eleven o'clock?'
 'Certainly.'

               334
  They shook hands, then Linz disappeared back into the building.
 On the steps outside, the Roches turned to Lorna.
  'We have to have a talk,' Irwin told her. 'You and 1, we've got some hard
  thinking to do. We have to decide what's best for the kid, I mean.'
  Lorna could see some embarrassment in Roche's eyes, signs of a weakening
  resolve.
  'Beginning to change your minds about Vildana?' she asked bluntly.
  'No ... but we want to know a little better what we're letting ourselves in
  for,' he explained. 'I mean we have two kids of our own, and we're surely
  not going to do anything that'll screw up their lives.'
  'No. No, of course you can't. I understand. But why not wait and see how
  things pan out in the next few days, huh? Vildana will have to stay in
  hospital for a while yet.'
  'Sure, sure,' Roche concurred. just wanted you to understand where we're
  coming frorn.'
 Nancy Roche looked pale and awkward.
  'Don't get us wrong,' she stressed. 'As I told you in the hospital, she's
  my girl so long as she wants it and ... and as long as my family do too.'
  She pulled her mouth into a thin smile, but it did nothing to dilute the
  anguish in her eyes. 'Anyway, I'm going back there now. So's Nataga. We'll
  stay the night again if she needs us to.'
 Lorna gave her a huge hug.
 'Don't worry. I understand,' she whispered.

 11.05 p.m. Hotel Sommer

 For a long time after making love, Alex and Lorna lay

               335
 side by side, their bodies just touching. They were conscious of each
 other's breathing but said nothing, each pre-occupied with their own
 thoughts. In the background the soft strains of a Mozart piano concerto
 tinkled from the radio.
  Lorna turned on her side, tucking her cheek into the dip of his shoulder
  and resting her hand on his stomach. It felt so strange lying there with
  him. Strange, because it was hard not to believe that she had vaulted
  back in time, wiping out the years of pain and anger.
 'You know something, mister?' she said, throatily.
 'What's that?' he breathed.
  'You're kind of good at this. In fact if there was an Oscar for screwing,
  you'd get my nomination.'
 'Well thank you! You're not bad either..
 She gave a little snort of laughter.
  'On second thoughts, the nomination depends on you shaving that beard off
 'There's always a catch. .
  'Hey, you remember the first time we did it?' she asked meanly. 'On my
  Morri's carpeff
  'Eighteen and overexcited,' he replied. All over within seconds, as he
  recalled.
  'You were so embarrassed,' she giggled. 'And you remember what we used
  to talk about in those days?'
 'Not really. I was only after your body.'
  'Oh sure. You remember all that teenage stuff. Why are we here? The world
  stinks but you can't change it, so let's drop out, get stoned and watch
  it all go by? We used to sit out on Hampstead Heath in the moonlight and
  talk about this life and the afterlife, about God and ghosts. And fate.'
  'Fate I remember,' he conceded. 'Your whole life written down beforehand
  in some doomy book. You still believe that?'
 She was silent for a moment.

               336
  'Maybe. Maybe not. What d'you think's written in Vildana's book?'
 ,A lot more misery..
 'Don't say that. You think the Roches will adopt her?'
  He thought about it. The odds were about evens, he reckoned.
  'If the police catch Pravic quickly, then it might work out. If he stays on
  the loose and the Roches have to live with the knowledge that he's out
  there, then I'm not sure they could handle that.'
 The telephone rang, startling them.
  'God, what now?' Lorna gulped, picking up the receiver. 'Hullo?'
 'Mrs Sorensen?'
 She recognized the voice of Kommissar Linz.
  'Yes, hi there. You want to speak to Alex?' She suspected the policeman was
  more comfortable talking to a man. She passed the phone over.
  'Good evening, Kommissar,' Alex answered. 'Has the Berlin woman told you
  anything?'
  'Nothing. Nothing. Tomorrow morning at nine I must release her, but I have
  an idea. Will you help me?'
 'Of course, if I can.'
  'Then would you and Frau Sorensen be here tomorrow morning? I wantyou to
  speak to Frdulein Pocklewicz after she leaves. She inay talk to you if you
  say you're not the police. Tell her you recognize her from the car, but
  won't tell the police it'she agrees to help you. Maybe take her to the
  hospital to see Vildana - she is a woman. Use tricks if you think it will
  persuade her to reveal to you where Pravic is now.'
 'A long shot, isn't iff
  '_7a, but it is the onty shot we have. Except one. A new photograph. I will
  show you in the morning. You can be here at eight-thirty?'
 'No problem.'

               337
  'Oh, and by the way, Herr Chadwick in London sends a big hello.'
 'Oh yes. Yes, thanks.'
  He leaned across Lorna's warm body to replace the phone on its rest.
  'What was that all about?' she asked, running her fingers down the hard
  muscles of his back.
 'He's fixed us a date,' he replied. 'With a prostitute.'

 3.35 a.m. the same night Berlin

 Karina closed the door to her room in the brothel and locked it. It had
 been raining all evening. Bad for trade. Only three punters since seven
 o'clock. Not even enough to pay the rent.
  She'd changed from her working clothes into trainers, black ski-pants and
  a large purple sweater. Out in the street, she held a plastic bag above
  her head as protection against the downpour and began to run. It wasn't
  far to the cosy little flat with the large bed that she shared with
  another girl in the same profession.
  Dieter Konrad hardly recognized her through the rain-smeared window of
  the stolen Audi. But the doll-like hair and the look of her backside as
  she ran convinced him. He drew alongside, then wound down the passenger
  window.
  'Frdulein Kaiina-l' he shouted. She stopped and bent down to peer inside.
 'Oh, it's you. What do you want?'
 'I want to do business,' he replied, trying to smile.
  'What, another sodding passport? Piss off She walked on, feeling the cold
  rain soak through her sweater.

               338
 Konrad eased the car forward, keeping pace.
  'Look, I said no!' she shouted, halting for a second time.
 'Not a passport. Business. You know.'
 'What? Sex?' she began to laugh. 'You?'
 ja/ And this time I won't argue about the price!'
  'Switch the light on.' She stuck her head through the window to get a
  better look at him. 'What are you up to?'
 'You know.'
  She saw his cheek twitch and mistook it for lust. She remembered he'd been
  wanting it when he came to the apartment the other day.
  'Why didn't you come into the house?' she demanded, shivering as the rain
  drenched her back.
  'I get embarrassed,' he replied glancing down. 'Didn't want that old madame
  to see me. Anyway, get in out of the rain while we talk about it.'
  Karina was wary about cars. If this was someone she'd never seen before,
  she wouldn't get in. But it was cold, she was getting wetter by the second,
  he'd said he wouldn't haggle over the price and it had been a slow night.
  'Okay, but don't put it into gear.' She got in, leaving the door slightly
  open. 'All right. So what did you have in mind?'
 'Straight sex,' he shrugged awkwardly.
  'Not without a condom, and I'm not carrying any around with me.'
  'But I have some.' Konrad pulled from his pocket the packet he'd got from
  a machine in a bar round the corner.
  'Oooh, proper little boy scout!' she said, huskily. 'Where then, if you
  don't want to trick in the apartment?' She glanced over her shoulder. The
  car was a hatchback. He'd folded the rear seats down and covered the floor
  space with a yellow tartan blanket. 'Thought of everything, haven't you?'

               339
  Now, she decided, let's see whether he's serious about not haggling.
  'It'll cost you two hundred,' she announced coldly, opening the door
  wider as if to get out.
 Konrad winced.
  'I know I said I won't argue,' he whined, 'but that's taking advantage.
  And if you're fair with me, I might come back and see you again. It could
  be good business for you.'
 'Are you married?' she asked out of the blue.
 Ja.'
 'But she doesn't like doing it any more?'
  'Menopause, you know?' he answered, turning away from her. He saw two
  people walking towards them on the opposite side of the road. Better be
  quick.
 'So?' he asked.
 'One hundred then. In my hand, now.'
 'All right, but close the door. It's cold.'
  He slipped the car into gear and drove off, juggling his wallet against
  the steering wheel. He passed her the I 00DM note.
  'The Tiergarten, right?' she insisted. There'd be other hookers around
  there. Safety in numbers.
  Konrad headed down FriedrichstraBe trying to control the sickness in his
  stomach, ticking off the preparations he'd made, wondering if he could
  go through with it when the moment came.
  'Have you done this sort of business before, handsome?' Karina asked,
  resting her hand on his crotch. He brushed her away.
  'No. Haven't needed to,' he replied brusquely. There was double meaning
  in what he'd said.
  He turned off Unter den Linden, round the back of the Reichstag, and
  headed into the broad, tree-lined avenue that crossed the unlit park of
  the Tiergarten.
 One kilometre away, the distant, floodlit erection

               340
 commemorating Prussian wars formed a priapic background for the whores at
 work in the vehicles parked in pools of darkness between the street lamps.
  Konrad halted the car in a free space, a hundred metres from the nearest
  stationary vehicle.
  Karina unzipped his trousers and slipped her hand inside.
  'You'll have to do better than this,' she smiled, feeling the flaccidity
  of his organ.
  'I think it will be easier if we get in the back,' he explained, removing
  her hand from his underpants. He took off his jacket, then they opened
  the doors, turned their backs to the wind and rain, and climbed into the
  rear.
  'Fucking cold out there,' Karina shivered. 'Some poor sods will be out
  in the bushes.'
  She looked at him. He seemed awkward. Perhaps it really was his first
  time with a whore.
  'What now?' she asked, hugging herself 'You're the customer. You have to
  say what you want.'
 'Take your clothes off, then.'
  She pulled down the side zip of her ski-pants, then removed them together
  with her knickers. She lifted her sweater up under her chin then lay back
  on the blanket exposing her breasts.
 'Take your sweater right off,' Konrad insisted.
  'Aw, come on. It's too bloody cold. Get your pants off and let's get on
  with it.'
  Konrad loosened the belt of the trousers and eased down the zip again.
  Then he half-slid, half-rolled until he lay on top of her.
  'Oof,' she gasped as his weight drove the air from her lungs. She reached
  down with her right hand. He pulled it away again.
  'Not just yet,' he said, unable to stop the shake in his voice. 'I like
  to take my time.'
 He stretched her left arm out to the side.

               341
  'What's going on?' she asked, as she felt him slip a band over her wrist.
  'Don't worry,' he soothed, pressing together the Velcro straps he'd
  attached to the seat belt mount earlier. 'It's just my little game.'
  Suddenly she began to kick. She was a lot shorter than him and powerless
  tinder the bulk of his spread-eagled legs.
  'No fucking game-s! Get off me you bastard!' Her left handjerked and
  pulled, but the strap held it. 'Help! Help somebody!'
  With his right hand Konrad peeled a pre-cut length of adhesive carpet
  tape from the back of the front seat and slapped it across her mouth.
  With his left hand he fended off the nails clawing at his eyes.
  Using both hands now, he pinioned her right arm with a second Velcro
  strap, Karina's eyes almost bursting from their sockets. Her lips and
  tongue pushed and twisted to dislodge the tape muffling her screams.
  Konrad ripped off the tape, stuffed a ball of paper into her mouth,
  shoved a hand under her chin and slapped the tape back in place.
  Karina's head shook in a frenzy, her panicky breath sawing through flared
  nostrils. Then, with a fresh length of tape he pinched them closed.
  'I'm sorry,' Konrad whispered, his fingers feeling on each side of her
  neck for the throb of the carotid artery. Sensing the pulse through his
  thumbs, he pressed with all his strength.
  'Believe me, I did not want this . . .'he added through clenched teeth.
  Her nut-brown eyes stayed locked on his until her lids began to flicker
  and she blacked out. Slowly her face turned a purpley blue.

               342
            Twenty-five

 Tuesday 5th April, 7.20 a.m.
 London-Heathrow Airport

 The BA 214 from Boston landed ahead of schedule. Chauffeurs and minicab
 drivers on the early shift hovered outside the arrivals hall holding name
 cards. Amongst them was a short man with a florid complexion, wearing a
 grey suit, white shirt and dark, nondescript tie.
  Inside the hall, Liam Doyle carried his shoulder bag through immigration
  and customs in a daze. He'd done the sensible thing on the flight across
  the Atlantic, turning down all offers of alcohol, but despite that he had
  a thick head this morning and eyeballs that felt as if they'd been
  smeared with Vaseline. He wore a light trench coat over a midweight,
  brown suit. His curly, grey hair was brushed across the top of his head
  to cover a bald patch.
  Things had happened so fast yesterday afternoon, he'd hardly had time to
  think. The letter delivered to the Committee office by the older Donohue
  sister, the phone call to Belfast to tell them about the photograph, and
  the plea from Nolan that it be brought across overnight by hand.
  He emerged from the baggage hall and followed other passengers past the
  waiting faces. Then he paused to read the name boards held by the
  drivers.
  'That's me,' he announced, approaching the short man with the florid
  face.
  'Mr Doyle of Emerald Finance?' His accent was from south of Dublin.

               343
 'That's right.'
  The driver offered to take his bag, but Doyle refused. They walked to the
  car park and were soon on their way round the perimeter road to the north
  side of the airport.
  'It's another hour before your man gets in from Belfast,' the driver
  explained. 'I'll bring him to you at the hotel.'
  'I guess that gives me time for a shower,' Doyle remarked in his softly
  sterile New England voice.
  The Post House was one of the older Heathrow Hotels. Not as plush as
  some, but cheaper than most and reassuringly anonymous. The driver
  hovered by the desk while Doyle checked in, waiting to learn his room
  number.
  'Nine-two-three,' the man from Boston announced. 'You'll bring him
  straight up?'
 just as soon as his plane lands.'

 The Belfast flight was twenty minutes late, due to a glitch in the
 security checks when they were loading the luggage.
  Tommy Nolan felt as tense as a brick, but forced his face to relax as
  they filed past the Special Branch men who watched all arrivals from
  Ulster. He avoided eye contact and passed without trouble.
  Deadly job. The Met bastards couldn't hope to remember any but the most
  current of mugshots.
  Nolan's involvement with the Provos had declined since the 1970s when
  he'd been a company commander in the Whiterock area of Belfast. The
  breakup of the structure into cells had left him on the sidelines.
  Nolan wore a dull, tweed jacket and baggy, bottlegreen cords. He had
  crinkly, black hair which always looked greasy, and a broad, stress-worn
  face with watery brown eyes that made him look older than his forty-four
  years.

               344
  By day he drove a taxi, by night he hogged a seat in Dunphy's Bar, talking
  about the old days. Talking too, often as not, about his younger brother
  Kieran, shot dead by the RUC during the failed Long Keshjail break in 1973.
  More than twenty years ago, but after a fewjars it still felt like
  yesterday.
  In Republican Belfast, Tommy Nolan was known as the man who'd pledged to
  'top'the tout who'd put his kid brother in Milltown cemetery, but in twenty
  years had failed to find him.
  Last night's transatlantic phone call had been pure adrenalin. The man he'd
  sworn to kill had finally broken covenjust in the nick of time before they
  called an end to hostilities.
  The man in the chauffeur's grey suit had no need of a name card this time.
  Nolan was his cousin.
  At the Post House Hotel, Nolan went alone to Doyle's room. Had to hammer at
  the door because the American had fallen asleep.
  'You Tommy?' Doyle asked bleary-eyed, opening it on the chain.
  'That's right.' Nolan replied in his tortured Belfast brogue.
  'Sorry, sorry,' Doyle yawned. He slipped the chain and pulled the door
  wide. 'I guess I just passed out. I'm flying back this afternoon, so I'm
  staying with Boston time. And according to my brain, that means I should
  still be asleep.'
  Nolan's head hurt from the Bushmills he'd drunk to steady his nerves last
  night. He didn't want conversation, just the picture.
  'This is the shot,' Doyle announced, handing him the photograph taken on
  Lorna's Nikon. 'Pretty good, huh?'
 'Tommy Nolan held it in his shaking hands. Hard to reconcile this
 middle-aged, bearded figure with the lanky twenty-eight-year-old whose
 picture he'd kept in the tin box under his bed.

               345
 'Is that her with him?' he growled.
  'It certainly is. But she wasn't involved, right? She was betrayed by him
  just as much as you were.'
  'So what's she doin' with him here then?' he demanded, smacking the print
  with the back of his right hand.
  'Posing for a picture, that's all. She was the one who sent it to us, don't
  forget ... just like she did with the last photo, the one from 1973. She's
  not to be touched, okay?'
  Nolan reined in his feelings. He'd always reckoned the Donohue woman just
  as much to blame for his brother's death as the manjarvis.
  'And this was in Bosnia, you said?' Nolan asked. 'There's no ways I'd go
  there to look for him.'
  'You don't have to. As I told you yesterday, he's in Frankfurt, Germany.
  Annie Donohue made some check calls with Lorna's office. The guy's been
  leaving messages for her. Here's the name of his hotel and the phone
  number.'
 He handed Nolan a page from a notebook.
  'Can't say for surc he's still there, but you can easily check.'
  Nolan felt a nervous bubbling in his guts. The trail that chilled so many
  years ago was hot again. The blood throbbed painfully in his temples.

 Half-an-hour later, the Irish driver parked outside a terraced house in the
 West London district of Chiswick and rang the doorbell of a ground floor
 flat. A man in his mid-twenties with dark hair and designer stubble let them
 in. The driver made the introductions.
 'Michael McCarthy - Tommy Nolan.'
 'Hello.'
 'Are youse Michael or Mickey?' Nolan asked matily.

               346
 He wasn't at ease with the new generation of hard young
 men who ran the " operation on the mainland.
  'Michael's my name,' McCarthy replied coldly. He led them into a
  cluttered back room adjoining the kitchen.
  'A quick cup of tea, Michael, and I'll be out of your hair,' the driver
  muttered, gravitating towards the stove.
  'Fix it for all of us, will you?' McCarthy pulled chairs from under a
  dining table that had been picked up cheap at an auction.
  'We'll talk the business after he's gone,' he whispered, jerking a thumb
  towards the kitchen. 'How was your flight? No bother?'
  'Och, none at all.' Nolan looked round the room. A clothes airer propped
  against the radiator had a woman's underwear hung out to dry. 'Nice
  place. Youse got a wife, then?'
  The younger man looked away and ground his teeth. They'd no idea of
  security these old boys. Didn't understand the rules of war.
  Usten Tommy, all you need to know about me is my name. Right?'
  Nolan felt bruised. just trying to be friendly. He shrugged.
 'As you like.'
  They sat in silence until the tea came. Then for the five minutes it took
  the driver to drink it, they nattered about horse racing and football.
  When the latch closed behind him and they'd heard the car rev away, Nolan
  pulled the photograph of Alex from his jacket pocket. McCarthy gave it
  a cursory glance, then spread open a road atlas of Europe.

               347
 Frankfurt 8.30 a.m.

 Kommissar Linz looked as if he'd slept little, his top shirt button undone
 and his bow tie crooked. Lorna wanted to straighten it, but restrained,
 herself. He'd taken them to an interview room on the ground floor of the
 police headquarters.
  'At nine o'clock, Fraulein Pocklewicz will walk out of here,' he explained
  edgily. 'I will come to the door with her. Then it is up to you. We have
  given her a train ticket to Berlin. She may go direct to the station, so
  you have not much time.'
 'And she's still admitting nothing?' Alex queried.
 'She has not said one word since yesterday afternoon.'
 'Then I doubt she'll speak to us.'
  Linz opened a folder, preoccupied. 'Does this picture help?' he asked. He
  produced a computer print of two identical faces, one wearing spectacles,
  the other not.
  'That's him!' Alex exclaimed. 'Without the glasses.' The cold, hard eyes
  left him in no doubt. 'He's the man who shot Vildana. This is Pravic? Where
  did the picture come from?'
  'The United Nations, so they tell me.' Linz looked sceptical. 'Our computer
  experts removed his spectacles for him.'
 'But where was it taken?'
  'They will not say. But ... but I can tell you that since last night the
  interest in Herr Pravic has grown,' he added enigmatically.
 'Really? Why?'
  'New information. From the intelligence agencies. They think he will try to
  attack Muslims in Germany ... maybe with some chemical weapon,' he
  explained vaguely.
 'Miat? Bloody hell!'

               348
  'ya. It is not easy to believe. But this morning I must go to Munchen.'
 'He's been seen there or whaff
  'No. But tomorrow one thousand Muslim Fundamentalists meet in that city.
  It could be the perfect target for him. Now I must show Fraulein
  Pocklewicz to the door. I give you my mobile number to call if she tells
  you something.'
 He handed Alex a card.
  Rain was pelting down outside on the broad pavement. Alex wore his
  Barbour and tweed cap, Lorna the anorak she'd used in Bosnia. They looked
  like hillwalkers who'd wandered into the city by mistake.
  'This is crazy,' Lorna complained, as the rain soaked her sneakers.
  'She'll tell us to get lost.'
  Linz appeared at the door of the monolithic police station. Alex
  recognized the woman from the identity parade. Linz reached out his hand,
  but she turned her back on him.
 'What are you going to say to her?' Lorna hissed.
  'Whatever I can find the words for, in German Alex muttered.
  As Gisela tottered away on her high heels, shoulders hunched against the
  rain, Alex fell in beside her, Lorna at his shoulder.
  'Frdulein Pocklet6cZ?' he began, touching her on the elbow. 'Ein Moment,
  bitte! Darf Ich mit Anen sprechen?
 She stopped, startled.
  'Now what?' She looked them up and down. 'The Kommissar's let me go.'
  'Ali, but we're not the police,' Alex explained in German. 'You know
  Vildana? The girl who was shot? We are the people who got her out of
  Bosnia. We thought we were bringing her to safety, then this happened.
  The thing is, we're scared that Milan, your friend, will try again to
  kill her.'

               349
  J don't know anyone called Milan,' she replied doggedly. She pulled her arm
  free. 'Piss off.'
  She stomped away, terror growing. Too many people after her. Pravic, the
  police - and worst of all, Dunkel. She'd heard that a man of his
  description had hung around her house most of Sunday. And now these two
  weirdos, clinging like leeches.
  'Look I know you were there ... I saw you,' Alex snapped. 'You were sitting
  in the car, down the road from the house. Before the shooting.' He spat out
  the words in chunks ignoring the complexities of grammar. 'You had those
  earrings on.'
  It was a guess, but he seemed to recollect the Indianlooking bangles. With
  luck she wouldn't remember anyway.
  She faltered, putting a hand to her ear, then marched on again.
  'Don't know what you're on about,' she muttered, looking round for a taxi.
 'You want the girl to be killed?' Alex shouted.
 Gisela ignored him.
  'That's what'll happen unless Milan is stopped.' He got her by the arm
  again. 'You may be the only person who can save her life, do you know thaff
  'Fuck offl I can't even save my own life, let alone anybody else's.'
 She looked petrified, vulnerable.
 'Is that it? You're scared he'll kill you if you talk?'
 She didn't answer.
  'Don't you see? If you help us get him locked up, you'll be safe.'
  'Look, do something useful, will you?' she answered eventually. 'Tell me
  where the sodding station is.' They'd reached a crossroads, that was devoid
  of signposts.
 'We'll take you there. In a taxi,' Alex answered.
  Lorna had understood nothing except that the woman wasn't co-operating.

               350
  'We need a cab, quick,' Alex muttered to her out of the side of his mouth.
 'Look, I've told you . .
  Lorna hailed a cream Mercedes and it pulled into the kerb.
  Alex put his arm round Gisela's shoulders. He could see her resolve was
  weakening.
 'Come on. You're soaked.'
  The rain had turned her hair into a mop of black string. Grudgingly she let
  herself be nudged into the car.
 'Zum Hauptbahnhof, bitte!'
  They slid onto the back seat, the hooker wedged in the middle.
 'Who are you?' she demanded.
  'As I said, we were in Bosnia,' he whispered, suspecting the driver might
  be Yugoslav. 'I met Milan's brother there. He is a priest, did you know
  that?'
 'He never talked about his family . . .'
 Progress. At least she was admitting she knew him.
 'You remember the Tulici massacre?'
  Oh yes, she remembered. And how Pravic had used Tulici as an excuse for
  shooting the girl. She nodded.
  'Milan did it. Killed all those women and kids. That's what his brother
  thinks. The UN wants to put him on trial. You know that? We work for the UN
  . ..' Alex added quickly. 'Not for the police, you understand. Whatever you
  tell us, we won't pass it on to the police, I promise.'
 He saw her suck her lower lip to stop it trembling.
 'But I don't know where he is. . .'she said plaintively.
  'Okay, but we'll talk, yes? At the station. A cup of coffee?'
 Na, wenn Sie wollen,'she shrugged.
 Alex nodded to Lorna. They were getting somewhere.
  Three minutes later the taxi pulled up by the main entrance. They'd been
  almost within walking distance.
 They sat on high stools, their coffee cups perched on a

               351
 little shelf Gisela's hands shook. Normally she carried speed in her bag,
 but she'd dumped the tablets down the toilet when the police came for her
 yesterday morning.
 'Where did you last see him?' Alex asked.
  She held the cup of sour liquid in both hands and sipped. Her head was like
  spaghetti. Couldn't think straight any more.
  'Frankfurt Airport,' she replied. 'He could be anywhere by now. Maybe back
  in Bosnia even.'
  'Did he say anything about wanting to ... to kill more Muslims?' he probed.
  'He's at war with them. That's what he said. Even here in Germany.'
 Alex translated this to Lorna.
  'So Kommissar Linz may be right about Munich!' she exclaimed in dismay.
  Alex wasn't so sure. There was something about the effort Pravic had made
  to find Vildana ... The man must be obsessed with the need to kill her. A
  fixation that would still be there, once he realized the girl wasn't dead.
  He turned back to Gisela. 'By now, Milan must know that Vildana's still
  alive,' he suggested in German. 'What do you think he'll do about it?'
  In her mind, Gisela heard the shots again, felt the back-blast, remembered
  the certainty that he would kill her too if his survival depended on it.
  'He won't forget her. He'll be back for the girl, wherever she is,' she
  said chillingly.
  'So we've got to stop him, right?' Alex implored. 'You nuist help us.'
  'But what can I do?' she snivelled. 'I tell you I don't know where he is!'
  'No. Okay. I understand.' Then he remembered what Linz had said. 'Tell me,
  does Milan just have the gun, or ... or something else perhaps? Some
  chemical, poison maybe?'

               352
  Poison? The word shot through her like a glass-sliver. Her pencilled
  eyebrows bunched in consternation.
  Last night in the isolation of the detention cell, kept awake by the
  wailings of drunks, dark, disjointed thoughts had marshalled in her mind,
  linked by some invisible thread. The thoughts were to do with Dunkel,
  with the Stasi, with Leipzig, with Zagreb and with what she'd read in the
  papers about the scientist Kernmer who'd killed himself.
 'What d'you mean, poison?' she queried.
  J don't know. Something that could kill hundreds of people at once.'
 The spectre in Gisela's mind took on flesh.
  'Why? Why do you ask about thaff she asked querulously.
  Alex hesitated. Had Linz told him about it in confidence? Too late now.
  'The police think Milan has some biological weapon and he'll use it in
  Munich. There's a big meeting of Muslims there tomorrow.
  Fundamentalists.' He said the last word in English, not knowing the
  German.
  Gisela stared at the wall. The thread in her head tugged itself from the
  tangle and formed into a word.
 'Milzbrand!
 'What?' Alex gaped.
  'What's she saying for God's sake?' Lorna nudged. 'Can't you translate?'
  'Anthrax! She's talking about anthrax,' he whispered. 'You remember the
  story in the paper yesterday?'
  He turned to Gisela again, incredulous. Travic? He has something to do
  with that anthrax business?'
  Gisela nodded dumbly, then corrected herself by shaking her head.
 'I don't know. But I think it's possible.'
  'How? What's the link between him and the Leipzig man?'

               353
 She turned her head to face him.
  'Herr Dunkel - he's the link. Don't know his real name, but he came to
  see me two weeks ago. I've known him many years. Used to be Stasi. Used
  to pay me to find people who would steal things, people who would kill,
  if the money was right. This time he asked me to find Milan. Needed him
  for some job in Zagreb; wouldn't tell me what. When he came again a few
  days later, he'd driven up to Berlin from Leipzig.' Gisela covered her
  mouth with a hand. 'I shouldn't be telling you this.'
 'Go on. I won't tell the police - unless you want me to.'
  'The papers say the man in Leipzig was forced to make anthrax for some
  old Stan people ... Dunkel was Stasi. Last week he met Milan in Zagreb.
  Now the papers say there's a girl dying from anthrax there.'
  Gisela shivered with fear. Dunkel had fouled up, that was clear. Now he
  wanted to silence anyone who could give him away. That's why he'd been
  looking for her on Sunday.
  'What's she saying for Christ's sake?' Lorna demanded.
 Alex translated.
  'But anthrax is lethal!' she exclaimed. 'It's the stuff they thought
  Saddam Hussein would use in the Gulf War!'
  'And it's what Linz must have been talking about.' He turned back to the
  hooker. 'Milan never said anything about anthrax?'
 Gisela snorted.
  'He told me nothing. When he got to Berlin, he was crazy. Not like when
  I knew him before. just wanting to 10.1
  'But my God! With anthrax he could kill a thousand people at once! A
  thousand Muslims. Gisela, you've got to tell this to the police.'
 She shuddered.

               354
  'You don't understand. Look, these people have long memories and long arms.
  I'll never be safe if I grass.'
 Alex rubbed his eyes.
  'So, let's just go back over this.' Had to get his mind straight. 'If
  you're right about the anthrax, then that Muslim rally in Munich is the
  sort of target Pravic would go for, yes?'
  'How should I know?' she shrugged. 'Maybe if it was to do with Tulici . .
  .'
 'Why do you say thaff he growled.
  'Tulici's what matters to Milan. He seems possessed by what he did there,
  don't know why. It's almost as if he was relieved by all the killings he'd
  done.'
 'And ... ?' Alex sensed some fog beginning to clear.
  'I'm saying the idea of killing the girl made him crazy. Like as if her
  death was the final bit of something. Something he can't be free of until
  she's dead.'
  Agitated, Alex grabbed Lorna's arm. 'Vildana ... She thinks he'll go for
  Vildana again.'
  'But surely she'll be safe in the hospital with the police there . .'
  He nodded. Then a cold hand gripped him. Safe? What were they saying? A
  gunman might be stopped by police barriers, but bacteria wouldn't!
 'Lorna . . .'
 'I know. I just thought of it too.'
  Alex touched Gisela's still damp shoulder. 'We must go to the hospital.
  You'll come with us?'
 'What hospital?' She stared at him wide-eyed.
  'The Universitatsklinik at Sembach on the south side of Frankfurt.'
 She gasped.
 'It's a new hospital, yes? Maybe three years old?'
 'Could be. Why?'
 The blood drained from her face.
  'That was his last job. Before he went back to Bosnia to fight. Milan
  helped install the ventilation in that placeP

               355
 Alex pounded through the entrance lobby and hammered on the 'up' button of
 the elevator, Lorna a few seconds behind. No police in sight, and only one
 of their vans parked outside. Had the lawmen stopped worrying about the
 hospital because of Munich?
  Gisela had refused to come. If Pravic was here, and he saw her, she'd be
  dead.
  'Come on, come on!' Alex thundered at the slowness of the lift.
 'Let's take the stairs,' Lorna suggested.
 'Maybe ... hang on though. Here it is.'
 The doors closed behind them.
  'There must be a thousand people in this hospital,' Alex panted. 'Patients,
  staff, visitors. My God, it's terrifying. He could be pumping the stuff in
  this very minute.' He glanced up nervously at the ventilation grill on the
  roof of the lift.
  'Shouldn't we call Linz? You've got his mobile number,' she said.
 'Better to talk to the police here first.'
  On the fourth floor they pelted down the corridor towards ward F. As they
  approached Vildana's room, a green-uniformed officer got up from a chair,
  unbuttoning the flap of his pistol holster.
  Alex slowed to a walk. A different face from yesterday, young, suspicious,
  hostile.
  He explained first who they were, then mentioned Kommissar Linz, Pravic and
  anthrax in a jumble of semi-comprehensible German.
  A second officer emerged from the room. These men were sentries, unversed
  in the complexities of the case. They stared at Alex as if he'd landed from
  Mars.
 'Who did you say you are?' one of them asked.
  'The name's Crawford. We rescued her from Bosnia, the girl in there.
  Colonel Roche ... is his wife here? She'll tell you who we are.'

               356
  He made to push open the door, but his way was barred.
 'Your I.D. please . .
  'Look, for heavens' sake, this is terribly urgent. You must search the
  hospitalP
  The second officer held up a radio and mouthed into it, while the first
  studied Alex's passport.
  Xommissar Linz knows me. He knows what I'm talking about,' Alex insisted.
  'Can you call him on that radio?'
 'Linz? Linz?' They shook their heads.
 'From Wiesbaden. The Bundeskriminalamt.'
 'Ah. We are from Hessen. We have no connection.'
 'The card!' Lorna whispered. 'In your pocket.'
  Alex pulled it out. 'This is the number of his mobile. He's on the way
  to Munich.'
  'Yes, but for a telephone you must go downstairs. In the main entrance.'
  Alex grabbed Lorna's arm and hustled her back to the lift.
  'I don't believe this,' he hissed. 'Whatever happened to ruthless German
  efficiency?'
  'Come on, they're only rookies,' Lorna soothed. 'Call Linz, then we'll
  talk to the administrator.'
  Downstairs they discovered the phones took cards, not cash. Lorna
  scuttled to the newspaper stand to buy one.
 After a minute she came running back.
 'We can only buy cards at a post office!' she howled.
 'Come on!' He led her towards the reception desk.
  just then two more policemen marched through the revolving doors. He
  guessed the officers on the fourth floor had become suspicious and called
  them in to see what he was up to,
 Alex stopped in his tracks.
  'Time to split up,' he breathed. 'Get hold of the administrator. Tell him
  what's happening. Use the phone to call Linz. Get the official wheels
  moving.'

               357
 'And you?' Lorna asked.
 'I'm going to look for Pravic!'
 'For God's sake be careful!'
  He turned her towards the rapidly approaching policemen, then slipped
  through a doorway to the emergency stairs.
  'Excuse me,' Lorna shouted, blocking the path of the officers, 'do either
  of you gentlemen speak English?'

 Alex ran up two floors, then entered a wide corridor identical to the level
 where Vildana lay. A strong smell of disinfectant. He walked briskly to the
 far end. More stairs. He was aiming for the roof. No clear plan, but that's
 where the air-conditioning must be.
  Crazy to be searching for Pravic on his own. What would he do if he found
  him?
  He reached the top floor, then a spur of stairs took him to a fire exit on
  the roof. A push on the bar and he was out onto flat asphalt, edged with a
  low wall.
  He was at one end of the hospital now. Looking back towards the middle of
  the building he saw a square brick construction that he guessed must house
  the winding gear for the lifts. Next to it were the ventilation fans.
  His heart pounded from the exertion of running up the stairs - and with
  fear. He stood there bemused, half expecting to see the killer doing
  something with the machinery, though he had no idea what.
  Anthrax. Was it a liquid? A gas? A box full of microbes? He'd assumed it
  would have to be fed into the air supply, but he didn't know. Guessing. In
  the same way he was guessing Pravic would be here and not Munich.
  Overhead a 747 climbed noisily out of Rhein-Main, heading east. From
  somewhere below, the siren of an arriving ambulance. Alex felt ridiculous
  suddenly. Here he was playing the sleuth without even the humblest
  qualification for the job.

               358
  'It's only in the movies that they end with a roof chase ... he reminded
  himself.
  Now what? Better check since he was here. Awkwardly, feeling as if some
  hidden eye were watching him, he began to walk towards the fans.
  He felt absurdly exposed. If Pravic was here, and he still had his gun,
  there'd be nowhere to hide.

 The technical manager at the Universitatsklinik Sembach had his office on
 the ground floor. It was an untidy room cluttered with filing cabinets,
 and on the wall behind his desk was a board from which hung the keys to
 all the maintenance spaces in the building.
  He stared quizzically at the man hovering near the door, whose blue
  overalls were so crisp they could have been bought that morning. The
  surprise visitor carried a toolbag, seemed to be sweating a lot, and had
  just announced that he'd come to test the fire dampers.
  Milan Pravic had never been good at bluff, but this time it had to work.
  The last thing he wanted was to have to use the gun and alert the whole
  place to his presence. The man behind the desk was the same technician
  who'd organized the handover when the constructors finished building the
  hospital twenty-six months before.
  The manager tapped a pen on the desk. He'd not been expecting this visit,
  but it was perfectly normal to have random checks on the system that
  closed the ventilation in the event of a fire. And even though the man
  claimed to have left his I.D. card at home, he distinctly remembered his
  face.
  He plucked a bunch of keys from the panel behind him and held them out.
  Pravic grabbed them, grunted his thanks, then walked briskly back to the
  main entrance lobby.
 Lucky so far.
 Now he had to find the girl. The TV and the papers

               359
 hadn't revealed which ward she was in, and it wasn't a question he could
 easily ask.
  Using the main stairs by the lift lobby, he ascended floor by floor,
  peering into each main corridor looking for signs. On the fourth he found
  them. Two policemen, chatting. Outside a ward.
  His neck prickled at the thought of being so close, the same way it had
  in Pfefferheim. She was the last. The end of the line. With Vildana
  Muminovic dead, Tulici could breed no more monsters to torment him.
  His nights were still haunted by his childhood terror of that place.
  Living half a Hometre away on the same side of the valley, he'd walked
  through Tulici every day to reach his school. An undersized runt of a
  boy, a misfit even amongst his own, he'd been picked on by the youngsters
  there. Frail for a teenager, he'd been mocked for his weediness and
  skulking ways. Once, three boys and three girls had taken him to a cow
  barn, stripped him, rolled his hairless body in slurry, mocked his
  immature genitalia and urinated on his face.
  One final score to settle and Tulici would have paid the price.

 The chief administrator of the Universitatsklinik was in his thirties,
 chubby-f'aced, wearing a shiny, grey suit and spectacles with fashionable,
 bright-red frames. He listened to Lorna with an expression of growing
 disbelief One of the police officers stood watchfully by the door.
  'My English is not so good,' he responded when she'd finished. 'You tell
  me the name Kommissar Linz. He I know. So you telephone him, and then I
  will speak.' He pushed a phone across the desk.
 'Good,' Lorna sighed. Sense at last.
  She dialled the number. Linz replied within seconds from his car on the
  autobalm heading south. Lorna

               360
 talked for two minutes, listened for less, then handed the phone back to
 the man with red spectacles.
  Linz had heard her story without comment. He'd told her he would call the
  Hessen police for reinforcements and head for the hospital himself Lorna
  almost wept that he'd taken her so seriously.
  The administrator's cheeks seemed to sag as he listened to Linz's voice.
  He pulled off his glasses and wiped sweat from his eyes with a
  handkerchief
  Ja, ist gut, Herr Kommissar. Machen wir.' He put the phone down. 'He say
  we must search the hospital,' he explained.
  The policeman by the door told him they'd have a hard job, with only f~ur
  officers on duty. The administrator scratched his head, grabbed the phone
  again and dialled an internal number.
  'K'dnnien Sie bitte sofort hierherkommen?' he asked. He listened for the
  acknowledgement, then replaced the receiver. 'The technical manager,' he
  explained sombrely. 'He will come.'
  He flopped back in his chair and puffed out his cheeks. His carefully
  brushed hair looked ruffled.
  'This cannot be true,' he gabbled. 'I have threehundred-and-eighty ill
  peoples here.'

 Up on the roof, Alex stepped warily behind the whirring fans. Nobody here
 and no sign of anything being tampered with. Daft. He'd been jumping to
 conclusions. The wrong ones. He began to suspect Pravic was miles away.
  Hang on ... If fresh air was sucked in here it had to be pumped to the
  wards through ducts, which probably passed into the building via the lift
  shaft, judging by the location of the fans. Better head down again. There
  was more to check if he was to be sure.
 A fire door identical to the one at the far end of the

               361
 roof opened when he pulled it. Back on the main staircase, he descended to
 the fourth floor. Vildana's floor.
  He emerged into the lift lobby, from which the ward corridors stretched in
  two directions. Beside him were the double doors of the elevators. His eye
  was caught momentarily by a maintenance man in blue overalls opening what
  looked like a broom cupboard on the far side of the lobby. At his feet was
  a tool bag. Alex looked away, stepping forward to see along the corridor to
  ward 4F. Still there, the two policemen. Looking bored.
  Maintenance man?Jesus! He was a couple of steps from the cupboard. The man
  had opened the door and was disappearing into it.
 Couldn't be Pravic, though. This man had dark hair.
 Then the man turned to check no one was watching

  Their eyes met, this time. And locked. The killer's eyes. Fear washed over
  him, such as he'd never felt before.
 The cold, pale eyes of the Scorpion.
  Pravic froze. The face opposite was familiar. Dangerously so. Images of the
  Pfefferheim pavement forty-eight hours before. A man with a beard, running
  after the car. He recognized him.
  In a second he propelled himself from the doorway, just as Alex turned to
  shout the alarm, jerked the pistol from his overalls and pressed its barrel
  into Alex's chest, throwing a hand over his mouth.
  Womm mitf he growled, wrestling him towards the maintenance room. Alex
  struggled, but a sharp prod from the barrel quietened him. Pravic shoved
  him inside, followed, then pulled the door shut.
  'Du sags n1X1 Du machs nix! The voice hoarse, the gun barrel jabbing. He
  pointed to the ground and told him to sit.
 Pravic stared hard at the hunched figure on the floor,

               362
 as if the intensity of his look might penetrate the man's mind. Mo was he?
 My was he here? Was he the man who had adopted the girl?
  What to do with him, that was the question ... Couldn't let him live. But
  a gunshot would give him away ... Best to beat his head to pulp, maybe.
  He turned the pistol in his hand ...
  Alex felt the bare concrete cold beneath his backside', his heart
  thudding, his head slumped. Avoid fye contact. The words a mantra, like
  at the ambush in the canyon. Nothing else to cling to. But he sensed
  Pravic's intentions, cringed in anticipation of the blow.
  He waited. Then he inched his stare up from the floor. Saw the grubby
  black combat boots beneath the blue trouser legs. Took in the tight
  confines of the maintenance space, two metres wide and a metre deep.
  Blinked in the glare from the bare bulb in the ceiling.
  Pravic relented. There'd be noise if he beat the man. He'd keep him
  cowed. Less of a risk.
  He transferred the gun to his left hand, backing away as far as space
  would allow. No time to lose. He reached into his bag and grabbed a
  rechargeable electric drill. Had to press on. Nothing, nothing must
  prevent him from doing what he had to do.
  Behind him a square sheet-metal duct passed from ceiling to floor - the
  down pipe from the fans on the roof High up, an extension branched at
  right-angles - the air supply to the wards.
  Alex saw the black power tool. For a moment he thought Pravic was going
  to use it on him, to puncture his brain. In the tight, claustrophobic
  box, with the ventilation roaring in the ducts, his mind and his guts
  turned to treacle.
  Had to do something. Not just his own life at stake. Hundreds would die
  if the madman wasn't stopped.
 Run for help? No chance. Pravic would cut him down.
 Grab the gun? Crazy even to think of it.

               363
  Pravic kicked against a stack of bricks cemented to the floor as a mi
  ounting block. Still with an eye on Alex, he stepped up to reach the
  high, horizontal duct. He glanced away just long enough to locate the
  drill bit against the panel, then began to cut a hole in its side.
  His ears just centimetres from the air pipes, the noise thundered like
  the fire that had scorched through the homes of his tormentors in Tulici
  three weeks ago. At the time of the attack, he'd imagined those flames,
  the executions and the bitter-sweet defilement of the young woman would
  be enough to erase the taunting memories, and stop the mocking voices in
  his head. But it hadn't been. Silencing them needed one last act.
  The hole finished, he stuffed the drill back in the bag, then reached
  further in, feeling for soft rubber.
  Alex saw the gas mask and gulped. An object turned by history into the
  definitive badge of evil. The moment had come. Pravic was about to commit
  a monstrous, silent massacre - unless Alex could stop him.
  'Mach's nichif he croaked, lamely. 'Don't do it. Think of all the
  innocent . . .'
  'Halt's Maul! Pravic snapped, pulling the mask over his head.
  Alex looked into the goggled eyes, watched Pravic crouch by the bag. Saw
  the paint-sprayer - and the deadly brown liquid that swirled inside its
  clear, plastic reservoir.
  He held his breath, as if the very nearness of the anthrax spores meant
  death. He had to stop him. Had to! He tensed his legs.
  Pravic stood up, his overalls glued to his sweaty back. He remounted the
  bricks and aligned the sprayer with the hole. Alex's movement caught his
  eye. He clicked back the pistol hammer. If it was the only way to ensure
  he could complete his task, he'd shoot.
 Then suddenly, with a moan like an exhausted beast,

               364
 the ventilator fans died. Silence, total silence that rang in their ears.
  Pravic remained on the mounting block, frozen in disbelief, finger on the
  trigger of the spray, its nozzle pressed to the useless duct.
  Then he cursed, long and low, the guttural SerboCroat muffled by the
  rubber of the mask.

 With the fans safely shut down, the technical manager led the two nervous
 policemen to the fourth floor. He knew exactly where Pravic would have
 gone.
  A radio check had revealed that the Landespolizei reinforcements were
  still five minutes away, but they couldn't wait for them.
  He'd identified Pravic from the photo they'd shown him. Pity he hadn't
  seen it earlier. Nobody had thought to tell him there was a maniac on the
  loose.

 Lorna shivered uncontrollably now she knew the killer was in the building.
 Pravic was up there somewhere -and so was Alex.
  The police cluck-clucked when she told them about him. Interfering
  civilians. A foreigner at that.
  They asked her to wait with the administrator in his office. She gave
  them a minute's head start. Then, making the excuse of needing the
  toilet, she rushed from the room and headed for the stairs.

 The technician and the two policemen were silent with fear as the elevator
 carried them to the fourth floor.
  The doors slid open. Two figures crossing the lobby, heading forward F.
  Pravic pushing Alex in front of him, the gun at his back.

               365
 A nod from the manager. The police drew their guns.

 Alex heard the clunk of the lift doors but dared not turn to look. His hands
 were bound behind his back with adhesive tape. Pravic was a hair's breadth
 behind him. And the pistol bruised his ribs.
  'Halt!'A policeman's shout. The hollow bark of a man whose only authority
  was his uniform.
  Pravic hooked an arm around Alex's neck, and spun him as a shield towards
  the voice, levelled his automatic and fired. One policeman buckled,
  clutching his chest. The other stumbled back into the lift where the
  hospital technician had already sought cover.
  Alex strained against the choking arm, ears whistling. The shot shook him,
  hammered home the danger he was in. Pravic jerked him sideways into the
  ward F corridor. Police outside the ward. Police in the lift lobby. More on
  the way. They'd nerer let this madman through. They'd gun him down for
  sure. Shoot them both if they had to

  He heard rough shouts - warnings to staff to stay in their wards.
  Milan Pravic stared left and right. Out of sight of the lobby, now. There'd
  been two police in the corridor. Gone. Ducked into door-ways. A gun, an arm
  and half a face was all he saw of either of them. His heart thumped.
  He knew he was cornered. But not finished. He had the gun. He had his
  shield. And above all, he had his need.
  His ears still rang from the crack of the shot. In his head the ringing
  turned to voices, girls' voices from inside ward F. Had to get in there to
  stop them. To silence their derision. There must be no more snickering from
  Tulici, ever again.

 Lorna panted up the last flight and pushed open the

               366
 glass-panelled door to the fourth floor. She'd heard the shot, feared the
 worst. Hand to her mouth, she saw the sprawled policeman, gasped at the
 pool of red spreading from his chest.
  Footsteps on the stairs behind her. A nurse pushed past and ripped open
  a sterile dressing to press on the policeman's wound,
  'Alex?' Lorna called. Half shout, half whisper. Bewildered.
  Hearing her, the technical manager rushed from the lift, and hustled her
  back to the stairs. She twisted from his grip. He gave up, scrambling
  through the doors to save himself
  The second policeman growled into his radio, ignoring her. He checked his
  wounded colleague was in good hands, then edged up to the corner of the
  corridor, gun arm extended.
  Lorna took in the scene and understood. Pravic must be metres away. Down
  the corridor which led to Vildana's ward. And for the police to be so
  cautious, there must be someone with him ...
 Alex.
  Full of dread, she stepped round the nurse and the body on the floor.
  Heedless of the risk, she edged forward.
  She glimpsed Pravic. Saw his arm tight under the chin of a hostage. Saw
  who the hostage was. Saw the gun at his temple ...
  'Ale . . .' she screamed. The cry died in her throat as the policeman
  barged her back out of sight.
  'Zuriickl Sind Sie veryi~ckt?' he hissed, shoving her through the doors
  to the stairs, then returning to his watch.

 Alex felt the gun hot against his jawbone.
  He'd caught a glimpse of Lorna. Why had they let her through?

               367
  She mustn't see him die. Mind spinning. Stupid thoughts suddenly important.
  The end. For him the pain might be quick. For her it would linger.
  In his ear, the Bosnian's breath in jerky spasms. He sensed Pravic's nerve
  go.
  'Drop the guns or I kill hirn!' Pravic screamed. Fear in his voice. No wish
  to be a martyr.
 Me neither, Alex thought.

 Inside ward F, Vildana stared at the door, transfixed by the shout in the
 corridor outside. The same voice she'd heard on that day of death, cowering
 in her hidey-hole behind a cupboard. The shouts, the laughter, the gurgle of
 the madman who'd ripped open her mother's belly with a hunting knife branded
 on her memory. The Scorpion. He had come for her, like she always knew he
 would.
  Nancy Roche kneeled on the floor beside Vildana's bed, clutching the girl's
  hand. Two other children in the ward, both crying. Between the metal bed
  legs Nancy watched the police officer braced by the door, his right arm
  extended into the corridor. At that moment she trusted his invincibility in
  the way a child trusts its father. Had to.
  But if he failed? Ifthe crazy Bosnian blazed his way into the ward? What if
  she was the last barrier between Vildana and death? Would she sacrifice her
  own life if she had to? Would Irwin want that? Scott and Ella?
  She sank closer to the floor, checking how much room there was under the
  bed.

 The young policeman pressed his forehead to the door jamb, eye in line with
 the Heckler und Koch that had become an extension of his arm. Poised to kill
 a man for

               368
 the first time in his life. He remembered the certificate on the bedroom
 wall at home. Top of his year for marksmanship. But paper targets were
 different from an armed man.
  He saw the gunman edge closer, his back to the corridor wall, hugging the
  Englishman like a security blanket. A clear sight of Pravic's head, for
  just two seconds, that's all he wanted. All it would take to snuff him
  out, to pop the balloon with a bullet, just like the display shoots on
  open day at the police college.

 Alex heard his own breath rasp, felt the tape sear his wrists as he
 struggled to loosen his hands. Could be dead within seconds unless he did
 something. Powerless though. Tipped back on his heels. Unable to use
 weight and strength.
 just needed one chance. One chink of an opportunity

  A moment's glance from the police marksman to his companion in the
  doorway opposite. A nod of agreement. Beyond Pravic at the corner to the
  lift lobby he saw that the third man was ready too.
 Deep breath.
 'L,zs' ihn los! Let him go! Let him go now!' he yelled.
  Pravic started. He jerked on his hostage's neck. Alex gagged. Pravic
  swung the gun left and blasted plaster from the wall by the door to ward
  F. The marksman ducked inside.
  'He7T Pran'd Drop the weapon!' From the lift lobby now.
  He7r )"ravic, Alex seethed. Why so bloody formal? Why not arsehole? He
  wrenched his head to the right. Ten metres away, a face and a gun edging
  round the wall.
  He understood. Saw their tactic. To prod and confuse like picadors in a
  bullring, twisting Pravic one way, then

               369
 the other, in the hope he'd expose enough of himself for a hit.
 A dangerous tactic, that could kill him in the process.
  So, Pravic was to be stopped at any price. Never to be let into that ward.
  Even if the hostage died in the process ... Alex had nothing to lose.
 The gun muzzle crushed the lobe of his ear.
  'Let him go, Herr Pravic!'The voice from the left. The word. 'Let the
  hostage go!'
 'Herr Pravic!'
  From the right, now. The lift lobby. 'Throw down the gun!'
  Pravic trembled, blinded by flashing images from the past. Taunts. Prods
  with sticks. The stones flicked in his face as he ran to school.
  'Let him go!' The lobby end again. 'Have sense! You're surrounded. No way
  out, Pravid'
  Oh yes there was! He'd learned to fight back. Learned that if you asked for
  mercy, they pissed on you.
 He aimed the Zastrava at the lobby corner.
  Alex felt Pravic tense to absorb the kick of the gun. He tensed too. Ready.
  The shot cracked and ricocheted off the walls. A splitsecond only in which
  to act.
  Alex reached back with his trussed hands and grabbed for the soft,
  sensitive offal of the gunman's genitals.
 Pravic buckled instinctively, grunting with surprise.
  With the sudden weight-shift, Alex had leverage. He locked his chin onto
  Pravic's arm and buckled his knees. As he fell forward, with Pravic hooked
  to his neck, he jinked, turning the Bosnian's back towards ward F.
 Marksman of the year for 1992 saw his chance.
  Four shots. Four shuddering jerks to the Bosnian's body. Then Alex felt a
  stabbing pain in his spine. He crumpled to the floor, with Pravic's
  twitching bulk on top of him.

               370
 Lorna banged open the doors to the lobby and sprinted after the policeman as
 he thundered down the corridor.
  Bodies on the floor. Uniforms clustered round. A policeman's boot stamped
  down hard. Crushed by its heavy sole, a hand clutching a gun.
 She couldn't speak. Didn't dare ask.

 Face pressed to the shiny floor by Pravic's body, Alex tasted blood. Wetness
 trickled to his mouth from the back of his head.
  Words in gruff German, then Pravic was pulled off him. Alex rolled onto one
  side, wincing at the pain in his back. One look at the dark red dribble
  from Pravic's mouth told him the blood he'd tasted had not been his
 OVM.
 'Alex!'
  He looked up - Lorna was kneeling beside him. He smiled up at her,
  seizing her hand, and holding on to it as if it were life itself.

 371
            Twenty-Six

 9.45 p.m. Frankfurt Airport

 On the long, hard drive from Calais Michael McCarthy had stayed at the wheel
 of the British-registered Mondeo. Didn't trust the moody, hungover Nolan.
  They'd found beds at one of the new, plastic hotels that did cheap rooms
  near an autobalm junction west of Frankfurt. He'd dropped Nolan there, then
  driven to the airport and left the Mondec, in the long-term car park.
  At the arrivals terminal, he rented a VW Golf using a stolen driving
  licence, paid cash for three days' rental, then took the car for a short
  familiarization spin before returning to the hotel.
  He knocked on Nolan's room. Heavy feet, then the door wrenched open.
  'Will you fockin' look at this, Michael,' Nolan howled, heading back into
  the room and pointing to the television.
 'What, then?'
 'Youse can get Sky,News here, that's fockin' what!'
 'So?'
  'So your man's only on the fockin' news!' Nolan was apoplectic.
  'What you on about, Tommy?' He grabbed his arm. 'Count to five. Then tell
  me.'
  'It was himselfl Your man Jarvis, only his name's Crawford now. It was
  shown on Sky Netvs, but it happened here. In Frankfurt. At some hospital.
  He stopped some madman murdering hundreds of people

               372
 with anthrax. They's calling the bastard a hero!'
 'When did you see this? Are you certain about iff
  just a few minutes ago. And of course I'm fockin' certain. It'll be on
  again in a wee while. You'll see.'
  McCarthy perched his backside on the dressing-table unit. Didn't change
  anything.
 'Did they say where this hospital was?'
  'I don't know. I didn't get it anyways. You'll see for yourself in a
  minute.'
  Nolan sat on the edge of the bed, crumpled and out of his depth. He'd
  only once been out of the British Isles before, a fortnight inTenerife
  one year when he'd won a bit on the pools.
 'Not getting cold feet, are you Tommy?'
 'What? Not on your life.'
  Not convincing. McCarthy could see he'd have to put some bottle in him.
  Hadn't brought him all this way just to have him cop out at the last
  minute.
 'What's he done?'
 'Eh?' Nolan looked up, confused.
  'What's he done to you this fellow, that you've wanted to kill him for
  the last twenty years?'
  'He's a tout. You knows that. He put my brother Kieran under the earth.'
  'Exactly. I know that. You know that. So don't you forget it tomorrow
  when you've got the nine millimetre pointed at his head.'

 Belsize Park, north London

 In the comfort of his suburban home, Roger Chadwick watched Navs at Ten
 with deepening unease. It was all

               373
 there. The bloodstained hospital corridor, the press conference with Alex
 and Lorna. Big close-ups, their names broadcast for everyone to hear.
  'Oh God,' he breathed. The IRA cease-fire was certainly expected, but it
  wasn't yet in place.
  'Something the matter, dear?' his wife asked, glancing up from her
  crossword.
 'Yes. I think there might be.'
  He got up from the soft armchair, crossed the hall from the living room
  to his study and picked up the phone. Better have a minder or two on the
  first plane to Frankfurt in the morning.
  Lorna Donohue! It was her, after all. Why the hell had Alex lied to him?
  Not hard to guess.
  After his call to Thames House he stared up at his well-filled bookshelf,
  thinking. By the time his men got to Germany and found their way around,
  it would be midmorning. The thought made him uncomfortable. A vital few
  hours left uncovered.
  He tried another call, to the German Bundeskriminalamt in Wiesbaden.
  No reply to Kommissar Linz's direct line and he had no other number.
  Better get Thames House to pass a message through the BKA duty officer.
  Alex was the person he most needed to contact, but the idiot hadn't told
  him where he was staying.

 Harz Mountains

 Dieter Konrad sat alone in front of a fire of crackling spruce. Normally
 he loved the quiet of his isolated retreat in the Harz. Trees all around,
 nearest neighbour half a

               374
 kilometre away. But tonight the silence deepened his fear.
  The man he knew as 'Schiller' had ordered him here this morning.
  Telephoned him at the Berlin apartment, breaking the agreement not to
  contact him there. His wife had asked questions.
  The mystery murder of Karina the prostitute had been on the morning radio
  news. There'd need to be two more deaths before he felt safe. Gisela
  Pocklewicz and most important of all, Milan Pravic.
  It was after midnight, but there was no point in trying to sleep. Not
  while his mind still saw the disbelief in the whore's bulbous eyes as
  he'd choked her to death.
  Strange that with a handful of murders to his credit, this one should
  affect him so deeply. The difference was it had been personal this time.
  Had to kill Karina with his own hands, to save his own skin. And worse,
  much worse, she was somebody he had desired.
  The ring of the telephone made him half leap from the chair.

 Rudiger Katzfuss and Martin Sanders weaved through the forest on the
 deserted 'B' road, headlamps bouncing off the light bark of silver
 birches. Sanders at the wheel of the big BMW, Katzfuss on the phone.
  'Schiller here,' said Katzfuss. 'We're on our way to see you. Can you
  pack a bag with enough things for a week?'
 'Why? What's the matter?'
  'We've got wind that the press are on to you. We've decided you'd be
  safer, and so would we, if you were in one of our houses. Pick you up in
  about ten minutes?'
  Konrad grunted an acknowledgement and rang off. Katzfuss held the phone
  out so he could see the dialpad in the light of the reading lamp. He
  pressed the 'secrecy' button. The line would stay connected, but silent.

               375
 Konrad stood by the phone staring at it. Why? Why at this time of night?
 How could the press be on to him, unless the BND themselves had tipped
 them off. No one else knew that Herr Konrad and Herr Dunkel were the same
 person. Not even his wife.
  Perhaps the press had been on to her. He picked up the receiver again.
  She'd be asleep at the flat in BerlinLichtenberg, but never mind. He had
  to know.
  No dialling tone.just a hum and a crackle. He pressed down on the rest,
  then up again. Dead.
 'Ach, Du Liebe,' he gasped. 'Neiml'
  He flung open the front door and stumbled towards the Mercedes, guided
  by light spilling from the house. He felt with a finger for the
  escutcheon and inserted the key. Stupid habit keeping it locked. No need
  to out here.
 Ignition on. Wait for the diesel light. Come on!
  A flick of the key and the engine rumbled. He stabbed at the light
  switch, crunched into first and accelerated down the hundred metres of
  narrow gravel towards the road.
 Headlights! Turning in towards him.
 'Gott o Gott!'
  Full beam. Dazzling. No room to pass. Trees either side. He stamped on
  the brake.
  Sanders braked first, then sprung from the door running into the
  darkness, reaching into his shoulder holster for the pistol.
  Katzfuss, heart pounding, walked slowly to the driver's door of the
  Mercedes.
  'Weren't you going to wait for us, Herr Konrad?' he asked when the window
  was down. Konrad looked old and very, very scared.
 'Something happened to my telephone he
 explained lamely. 'I don't know what's going on.'
  'Not working? Never mind. There's one in the house we're going to. It's
  not far from here. Bag packed?'

               376
 'No. I...'
  'Better be quick. These journalists work through the night. Back the car
  up. You'll come with us in ours.'
 'Us?'
  'Yes. I have a friend with me. There's another colleague at the safe
  house. We'll all be staying there tonight. A little cramped, but we'll
  manage. Gemitlich! Here, I'll help you reverse.'
  He walked to the rear of the Mercedes, took out a flashlight and guided
  Konrad back up the drive. Sanders slipped behind the wheel of the BMW and
  followed closely.

 Ten minutes later they headed north on the Bundesstrasse. Sanders gripped
 the wheel of the BMW in total concentration. He knew what he had to do,
 knew it was something he'd never done before, knew if he allowed himself
 to think too much, his nerve would crack.
  In the back, Konrad sat beside Katzfuss, gripping the sides of the small
  case perched on his knees. They drove for less than fifteen minutes, then
  turned onto a mud track. Konrad knew these woods. The way led to a lake
  where he'd fished for pike.
 No houses here. He was sure of it.
  'So,' said Katzfuss, struggling to sound calm, 'we're here. just a little
  walk.'
  'There are no houses here,' Konrad croaked, frozen to the seat.
  'It's a fishing cabin. You haven't noticed it before? Well that shows
  what a good safe house it is. Come along. It's three minutes.'
  Katzfuss got out of the car. Sanders hovered in the darkness, shining a
  torch on the ground.
  'What are you waiting for Herr Konrad? Someone to carry your bag? It's
  not that sort of place,' Katzfuss laughed hollowly. So did Sanders.

               377
  Konrad opened the door. Legs like lead, throat desertdry. Someivhere in
  this murk death lurked. He could smell his own fear. Should he run?
  They'd shoot him for sure. Maybe if he played along with them there was
  a chance. just a chance . .
  Katzfuss led the way, flashlight lighting up the mud of a path. Konrad
  next, then Sanders, shining his torch forward.
  The smell of decaying weed told Konrad they were within metres of the
  water.
  When he'd fished for that pike here, months ago, he'd identified with it
  - a predator in a pool of torpidity. Sensed that one day he too would
  swallow a hook disguised as bait, because like the fish, decades of
  trickery had not equipped him to avoid the trickery of others.
  As they squelched deeper into the blackness he knew the end had come. He
  tasted the salt of tears. His eyes began to blur. All he'd wanted was to
  live out his days in the peace of the forest, doing no one harm any more.
  His wife would be asleep in their warm, soft bed, knowing nothing about
  what he'd done in the past. He prayed she never learned the truth.
  'Shh!' Katzftiss held up a hand for them to stop. Pitch black all around,
  he shielded the beam of his torch. 'Something's wrong. There should be
  lights in the house.'
 They listened for a moment, none of them breathing.
  'Wait here a minute,' he said. 'I'll go on alone.' He trotted forward out
  of sight.
  Sanders raised the beam of his torch. It caught Konrad's head as he
  turned his fearful face towards him. He fired the bullet smack into the
  Stasi man's temple.

               378
           Twenty-seven

 Wednesday 6 April, a.m.
 Frankfitrt

 Alex and Lorna stepped out of the Hotel Sommer at eleven minutes to ten.
 The media had been phoning non-stop that morning. Time to check out.
  The press conference had alarmed him. All those close-ups - no question
  now that his cover had been finally blown. just had to pray the IRA were
  watching football instead of the news.
  Alex carried their two bags, and Lorna their coats. A watery sun shone
  that morning, but rain was forecast.

 Opposite the hotel, the VW Golf had been parked on a meter for more than
 two hours. McCarthy sat with his gloved hands on the wheel, Nolan
 fidgeting beside him.
  When he recognized the man he'd come to kill, Nolan gulped. Never seen
  him in the flesh before. Under the coat folded on his lap was the heavy
  Springfield pistol McCarthy had retrieved from beneath the floorboards
  of the house in Chiswick.
  'I'll not do it here,' Nolan declared, nervously. 'Not with all these
  people about.'
 'Course you bloody won't,' McCarthy snapped.
  There was no way he was going to let this old man cock things up and get
  them jailed just as peace was breaking out in the six counties.
 'We'll follow them.'

               379
  He started the engine, slipped out of the parking bay and crawled along
  the kerb.

 Lorna took the road south, towards the airport.
  'How's your back?' she asked, looking at Alex with concern.
  The muscle he'd pulled yesterday when falling to the floor of the
  hospital with Pravic on top of him was still painful.
  'Not too bad. I get a twinge when I move.' He pushed the switch on the
  dashboard radio. 'Let's see if there's any news of Mr Pravic.'
  He already knew that surgeons had spent much of yesterday afternoon
  removing the police bullets from his back. They'd given his chances of
  survival as fifty-fifty.
  Alex turned the volume up high. The news in German was always read too
  fast for him. Loudness helped him pick out the words.
  The economy and European Union were back on top of the agenda. The fate
  of the Bosnian Croat who'd nearly committed mass murder in a Frankfurt
  hospital was the third story.
  'Still alive,' Alex translated. 'They use the word best&* which I think
  means stable.'
  'Pity,' Lorna remarked. 'They don't have the chair in Germany, do they?'
  'No. He'll probably end up in some asylum with nurses fussing round him.'
  They were heading for Pfefferheim. for what they intended to be the last
  time. Vildana was being let out of hospital that morning and Lorna wanted
  to check the Roches were still committed to her, before she pulled out
  and left them to it.
  Last night, after the police had finished their questions, after the
  journalists had completed their interviews and

               380
 after Alex had told the hotel desk not to put calls through to their room,
 he and Lorna had talked.
  Not about the future. They'd leave that to fate. They'd talked about the
  missing years, realizing how little they knew about each other now, how
  little they'd known before, even when they'd been together.
  Last night they'd begun to build the framework of something, without yet
  knowing what it was. In the days ahead they planned to add shape and
  texture until it took a forrn they could understand.
  They didn't talk much more on the way to Pfefferheim.
 They didn't notice they were being followed.

 Frankfurt Airport

 Martin Sanders bought a fistful of German newspapers from the bookstall
 in the Duty Free area then sat down to drink a cup of strong coffee. He
 flicked through the pages to ensure there wer(- no alarming headlines. He
 felt uneasy, sickened by what he and Katzfuss had been forced to do to
 protect the secrecy of the Ramblers.
  In his head he had the draft of a letter to his SIS Chief, resigning from
  the group. In it there'd be a recommendation that the concept of 'black'
  multinational security operations be abandoned. Too much risk of soured
  relations when things went wrong.
  The lake was ten inetres deep where they'd dumped Konrad's body. They'd
  towed it out behind an inflatable which they'd stashed there earlier,
  then sunk it with iron weights. With luck It would never be found in such
  murky water.
 The word Milzbrand featured in the headline in the

               381
 Frankfurte Allgemeine. Kommissar Linz from the Bundeskriminalamt was quoted
 saying he had no idea where Pravic had got the anthrax bacillus, and would
 question him closely if he survived his wounds.
  The journalists could speculate as much as they liked that it was from the
  Leipzig Veterinary Laboratory, but with both Kernmer and Konrad/Dunkel out
  of circulation, they'd find it hard to prove the connection. And the media
  were getting nowhere with the death of the chambermaid in Zagreb. The
  Croatian authorities were refusing to reveal who'd been booked in the hotel
  at the time and had even begun to deny it was anthrax that killed her.
  Sanders put down the paper. The concourse bustled with business people
  rushing for their flights. Men and women for whom Bosnia, plutonium
  smuggling and anthrax were of little more than passing interest. Best to
  keep it that way.
 And they would, unless Pravic talked.

 Pfefferheim

 Nancy Roche couldn't hold back her tears. Everything had been too much in
 the last few days. Lorna hugged her and found her own eyes moistening.
  Vildana sat in a chair by the kitchen table, her face pale, her dark eyes
  blank, her right arm in a sling. The twins and Nataga sat with her, gently
  easing her back into the world of a family.
  Irwin and Nancy led Lorna and Alex to the living room.
  'We just want you guys to know that the Roche family's in this for the
  duration,' Irwin announced

               382
 formally. 'Nancy and I talked it over with the kids last night. Whatever
 it takes, Vildana has a home with us for as long as she likes.'
 'That's just great,' Lorna grinned, clasping his hands.
  'And something else you need to know,' he went on, 'I've put in for an
  early transfer to the States. We thought it best to move Vildana back
  home just as soon as we possibly can.'
 'That's a swell idea. Couldn't be better.'
 'What's the hospital saying aboutVildana?' Alex said.
  'Has to go back in a week to have the sutures out,) Nancy explained. 'But
  otherwise she should be okay. Shoulder will be sore for a while, and it
  could be months before she gets any strength back on that side. But the
  long-term looks good.'
  'And when we get home we'll see what can be done about that birthmark,'
  Roche added.
  'Sure. She's real keen on that,' Lorna confirmed. 'Say, could I ask you
  for one last favour?'
 'Anything.'
  just to use your computer. It'll save me setting up my own. If I can
  e-mail all this to CareNet, then I can sign off the case!'
 'Come on. I'll set it up for you.'
  Nancy turned towards Alex when her husband and Lorna had left the room.
  'What are your plans? You're going back to Bosma?' she asked.
  'No. I doubt that,' he replied. 'No, Lorna and I plan to go off for a few
  days. We're going to dump the Land Cruiser at the US Air Base, rent
  something cheap at the airport, then drive up the Mosel and find a pretty
  village to stay in.'
  'Gr ... reat!' Then she tilted her head in curiosity. She'd never quite
  worked out their relationship. 'You two, you've known each other for some
  while?'
 'You could say that. On and off'

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 Wiesbaden

 Kommissar Gunther Linz was late into his office that morning. Hadn't got
 to bed before two last night. He'd asked for the witness statements from
 the hospital and Pravic's charge sheets to be ready on his desk by noon,
 so he could approve them before they were presented to the magistrate. At
 eleven-thirty when he arrived, the documents were already there.
  The message sheet from the overnight duty officer had been buried
  underneath them. When he discovered it, he blanched.
  A fax from M15 in London telling him the Englishman Crawford was on an
  IRA death list ... Unbelievable! Two agents were on their way to
  Frankfurt.
  He looked at his watch. The British Security Service people would be
  landing at the air-port any minute. He had nothing for them. Didn't even
  know where Crawford was. And the crucial time gap that had worried Herr
  Chadwick - he'd done nothing about it.
  He rang the Hotel Sommer. Crawford had checked out. He rang the Roche
  house in Pfefferheim. Crawford had been there. But he'd left with the
  Sorensen woman just two minutes ago. Heading for the airport, according
  to Frau Roche.
  He picked up the internal phone. Better get a car from the anti-terrorist
  team to intercept the Land Cruiser at the Rhein-Main base.

 'Here we go!'
  McCarthy prodded Tommy Nolan in the ribs. The white Toyota
  four-wheel-drive was on its way towards them down Muhlweg.
  'You okay?' he checked. For the past couple of hours Nolan had been
  sighing and sweating like an old sow.

               384
 Nolan grunted.
 'Does that mean you're ready, then?'
  'I'm ready,' Nolan croaked, unconvincingly. He wished he'd had a drink
  to make it easier. Only done this once before. A soldier, off-duty in a
  pub, twenty-two years ago. On his conscience ever since. Sick with fear
  then. Sick with fear now.
  McCarthy slipped the car into gear and cruised slowly out of the village,
  watching in his rear-view mirror as the target came up behind them. He'd
  spotted the ideal place on the way in. An opening in the pinewoods, with
  a muddy track leading into a clearing. Drive in there and they'd not be
  visible from the road.
  They'd do it quick. Take the tout a few yards into the forest. If anyone
  heard, they'd think it was someone shooting pigeons. He glanced at Nolan.
  White as a sheet.
  'You're not goin' to throw up are youse?' he hissed, fearful that Nolan
  would bungle it and get them caught. just remember your wee brother! A
  wee kid. And what the fucker did to him!'
 'Oh aye,' Nolan growled. 'Don't worry. Don't worry.'
  He was close to wetting himself with nerves. Getting even with the
  bastard had been easy enough when it was just words over a pint in
  Dunphy's. But in the cold, sober daylight of a bewilderingly foreign
  land, knowing whether he was doing right wasn't so simple any more.

 Lorna pulled out to overtake. The Golf dawdled annoyingly in front of
 them. She was impatient to put Pfefferheirn into the past.
  'Shit!' she hissed, as the VW began to accelerate, swerving to the middle
  of the road to block her. J hate guys like that. Some creep with a small
  prick trying to show he's tough.'
  Alex put a hand against the dashboard to steady himself.

               385
  'Keep cool. Don't let him get to you,' he soothed. 'We've got all the
  time in the world.'
  But the sudden acid burn in his stomach told him different. The
  tightening of the chest, the pounding pulse - that terrible clamminess
  was back. Like the day Jodie died, the certainty something was
  desperately wrong.
  A kilometre from the village already. No more houses. just trees.
 'What's the bastard doing?' Lorna cried, scared now.
  The VW slowed, hogging the line in the middle of the empty road.
 'Alex! What do I do?'
  He stared mesmerized as the Golf eased further out then slipped back, its
  rear overlapping the front of the Toyota. Two men in it.
 'Shit! We'll be off the road!' Lorna screamed.
  Brake lights dazzled. The Golf just inches in front. Lorna stamped the
  pedal and wrenched the wheel to the right. A gap in the trees. A muddy
  track as an escape lane.
  The Land Cruiser jolted over the rough ground, halting twenty metres from
  the road. In the mirror she saw the Golf stop and reverse in behind them.
 'Alex! For Christ's sake - who are these people?'
  He turned. Both men piling out of the VW, heads in thick, woollen sock
  masks, hands gripping guns.
  Lorna's door burst open. A fist reached in and dragged her to the ground.
  She screamed.
  'Oh God, no,' Alex gulped. The masked face at the window stared
  unblinking. A gloved finger beckoned. 'Not now. Not after all this.'
 The gunman pulled open the door.
  'Time's up, Mister Jarvis!' he growled, the Ulster twang unmistakable.
  He pointed deeper into the woods where Lorna was being frogmarched by the
  older man, his gun pressed to her spine.
 Alex stumbled from the car. Stupid, stupid! Dropped

               386
 his guard. After all those years ... All those little tricks, those
 superstitions he'd believed would keep him alive

  Now he was like the stag in the Highlands, the beast that thought itself
  invincible. One moment's inattention, then caught by the cross-hairs of
  the gun.
  They were herded into a circle of pine trees, two people swept up years
  ago in a struggle they'd never really understood, called to account for
  their deeds twenty years on.
  'You's the bastard ... what touted ... on my brother!' The older man
  panting between the words, ignoring Lorna, concentrating on Alex. Nolan,
  circling like a hyena, jabbing at the air with his Springfield, not too
  close, not quite looking him in the eye.
  McCarthy backed away, watching the road. The score to be settled here was
  a personal one. Had to be done by the man with the gricvance.
  'What are you on abouff Alex croaked, playing for time.
  How had they found him? Not the TV, surely. Too soon, too quick for that.
  'Don't gimme that, bastard! I knows who you are, Alex! For twenty fockin'
  years you's had it coming. An' now you's fockin' goin' to get ifl'
  He levelled the gun. Bloodshot eyes through the slits of the hood.
  Anger boiled in Alex's guts. Fear too. What to do? Confront or comply?
  Challenge - or beg for mercy?
  'No...o!' Lorna screamed, interposing herself, hands outstretched as if
  to stop the bullets. It can't happen, she thought. Not now ... Not after
  everything ...
  'And as for youse . . .' Nolan growled at her, 'come over here. Come on.
  Out the way!'
  He grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her round to face Alex.
 'Will you tell him or shall V

               387
 'What? What d'you mean?' she croaked.
  Alex gasped, a black, black thought erupting in his head. It was revenge
  they were after, sure enough. But whose revenge?
  'What d'you mean?' Lorna's voice, high-pitched, the squeak of a bat,
  'Your wee snap? He doesna know about iff Nolan goaded, plucking the photo
  from his coat pocket and letting it flutter onto the ground between them.
  'Annie!' she gasped. 'Oh my God! Annie, how could you?'
  She'd forgotten her sister's husband was still a firm supporter of the
  IRA. She turned to Nolan, eyes brimming with tears.
  'N-n-no!' she stammered. 'You're wrong, you're wrong! Ididn't ... You
  think I sentyou that picture? No. That wasn't for you! No, listen. It's
  over, all that. He's paid already. Been punished. Suffered ... just as
  much as you or I, or anybody!'
  'Shut your mouth!' Nolan's resolve was shaky enough as it was. He could
  do without her pleading.
  Alex had to know. Had to be sure this wasn't Lorna's doing. A tit-for-tat
  betrayal.
  'Why now, Tommy?' Alex's voice hard and crisp. The use of the name was
  a gamble. It was the one he'd heard the minders talk of 'What good will
  it do?'
  Nolan flinched. Anonymous he was an executioner carrying out orders. But
  'Tommy' was personal. One to one. Man to man.
  'Shut your mouth, youse! You's been sentenced. By the army council.
  Twenty fockin' years ago!'
 'Twenty years! A long time, Tommy.'
  Had Lorna set him up? Faked evegthing? Was she pretending still?
  'We's don't forget,' Nolan snapped. But he couldn't forget the weariness
  either. Weariness of war.

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  'That's your trouble, Tommy. But you'll have to learn how to if you want
  peace.'
  Alex shot a glance at Lorna. Deathly pale, mouth gaping. No fake. He was
  sure, almost. She looked destroyed by this.
  'How many hundreds have you boys killed in those twenty years?' Adrenalin
  pumping, now. Fighting for his life. 'Soldiers, police. Women out
  shopping. Schoolgirls.'
 He saw Nolan flinch.
  'Suppose every one of your victims had a big brother wanting to get even.
  There'd be nowhereyou could hide

  He saw the eyes blink, the weight shift from foot to foot.
  'What d'you mean schoolgirls?' Nolan spluttered. 'Those was accidents.
  A mistake. We admitted it.'
  'Oh yes. Like me and Lorna meeting in Belfast - that was an accident.
  Getting mixed up in your troubles - that was a mistake. I'll admit it
  too.'
  'Don't give me that! Youse were different!' But Nolan was rattled. A
  wedge was being driven between his bluster and his resolve.
  'There's a cease-fire coming. You know that?' Alex pressed.
  'Don't be so sure . . .'Nolan countered. He didn't like this. Wanted the
  man to shut up.
 'Killing me won't help.'
 Tockin' shut it!'
  'Not if the Provos want to be taken seriously. Not if you want to be
  political. KAI me and you could wreck everything . . .'
  Alex gulped. Maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe these two hoods had
  instructions from the hard men to wreck the peace process.
  Tuckin' get on with it, Tommy!' McCarthy's voice a growl from ten yards
  back. The swish of intermittent

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 traffic on the road. With every second the growing danger they'd be seen.
  Nolan raised the pistol level with Alex's mouth. First pressure on the
  trigger, sweat trickling into his eyes. Aim for the chest. It'd be easier
  to look at ...
  'Look me in the eye Tommy if you're going to do it.' Alex's throat bone
  dry. Heart galloping. 'And tell me why. Tell me what good it'll do. Tell me
  who'll thank you for it . . . '
  Nolan forced his gaze higherjust for a secondjust for long enough to
  register the face of the man they'd called a hero on TV. The man who'd
  helped save the life of a kid and hundreds more. Someone who'd suffered as
  much as any of them ... so the Donohue woman had said ... What had she
  meant? Too late to find out, now.
  'I've forgotten your brother's nameAlex's tone
 softer now.
 'Kieran . .
  'He wouldn't thank you. All that killing, all that hate -didn't get him
  anywhere, did it?'
 'Do it Tommy!'The yell from behind.
  Alex plundered his memory for everything the minders had told him about
  Tommy Nolan.
  'You don't have to, Tommy,' Alex whispered. 'Don't let him tell you what to
  do. He's only young. What does he know.. .'
  He saw the gun shake in Nolan's hand. Heard the wheeze of the breath.
  'You can forgive, you know,' Alex persisted. 'Like the mother of the
  soldier-boy you shot?' Gambling again. Gambling he'd remembered it right.
  'She forgave you didn't she? Said so on TV the day of the funeral . . .'
  Slowly, inch by inch, Nolan's arm dropped down. With his free hand he
  plucked the sock mask from his head, then used it to wipe the sweat from
  his face. He turned and looked at Lorna.
 'Stupid bitch!' The word flung at her like a gob of spit.

               390
  Nolan stumbled towards McCarthy, the Springfield hanging limply at his
  side.
  'Couldn't fockin' do it,' he spat. 'Couldn't pull the friggin' trigger.'
  Jesus fucking Christ!' McCarthy exploded. What a waste of time. Risking
  everything - and for what? He thought of stepping forward, doing the job
  himself But what would be the point? It had been Nolan's grudge.
 'Get in the shagging car!' he growled.
  McCarthy pulled his pocket knife out. He paused by the Land Cruiser,
  crouched by the nearside front wheel, then jabbed its spike into the tyre.
  The hiss of escaping airjerked Lorna from her trance. She turned to see the
  doors of the VW slam and the car speed away.
  Unsure of his legs, Alex stepped forward, bent down to the carpet of pine
  needles and picked up the snapshot McFee had taken in Bosnia.
  He held it in his shaking hand. His face and hers, smiling tensely, neither
  sure of the other one's thoughts.
 'Not bad . . .' he croaked. 'Considering.'
  Lorna flung her arms round his neck, quivering with relief.
  'I ... I never thought,' she stammered. 'Sent it to my sister with a note
  saying we'd met again. What I meant was - isn't that unbelievable! She must
  have imagined I meant something else.'
  'I guess she must have,' Alex replied, holding her loosely.
  For more than a minute they leaned against one another, each conscious of
  the other's breathing, thoughts circling like moths round an oil lamp.
 'Is . . . is that it, d'you think?' she asked suddenly.
  Alex looked up through the crowns of the pine trees. Flecks of blue visible
  through the grey of the sky.
 'I believe it may be . . .' he murmured.
 The poltergeists had been exorcized.

               391
 'Do you know what I'd like to do now?' she asked.
  Alex looked over at the stranded Land Cruiser, praying the spare wheel
  was inflated.
 'Vanish,'she said. 'With you.'

 392
             Epilogue

 Dr Hamid Akhavi died from pulmonary anthrax the following day, but the
 Iranian authorities never made it public.

 Colonel Pavel Kulikov's life was saved by the vaccine he'd been given in
 1991. Finding that his contact with Iran had been cut, he began to look
 for other markets for the stolen plutonium.

 Milan Pravic recovered from his wounds and was transferred to a remand
 prison to await trial for the attempted murder of Vildana Muminovic.
 Kommissar Gunther Linz continued to hope that before long he could
 persuade him to reveal where he'd obtained the anthrax bacillus. The
 United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague announced its intention
 to prosecute Pravic for the crime of genocide. Two days later he was
 stabbed to death in a knife fight with another Bosnian prisoner.

 The Ramblers were disbanded. There are no records to show that the group
 ever existed.

               393
