But Miriam had betrayed him in her confusion, and accepted the package, acknowledging his presence.

Helman drew careful aim, letting his years of experience with weapons compensate for the blanket's awkwardness.

He held his breath, braced himself for the explosion to follow, and squeezed off the first shot.

The package flew off the log, and fell lightly in the snow.

He fired four more times. Scattering half the package in sprays of tattered paper. Nothing.

Helman exhaled. At least it was not a bomb.

He walked back out to the package and inspected the snow around it. There was no evidence of chemical venting.

No aerosol device had been triggered by the violence of the bullets.

He knelt beside the package and in the deep shadows of the sunset carefully unwrapped what was left.

The contents were quite simple, quite direct, quite terrifying.

The first was a newspaper clipping. Half of it, with a headline, had been shredded by a bullet's impact, but enough of it was left for him to see what it was about: Roselynne Delvecchio's murder.

The second was a small piece of electronic circuitry. It was the scrambling device he had placed in the kitchen phone.

The third was a panel cut from a carton of milk. The brand and size were the same as the carton he had injected.

All thought left him. His insides rippled like water. His dreams were threatened with collapse.

Granger Helman, the professional who had covered himself and his actions with a genius and perfection no one had ever seen through, had been completely and totally uncovered.

His world stood on the edge of destruction. He would do anything to ensure his life would not be next. He stared at the package's contents until the sun had set and there was no light left to see them.

He heard Miriam call him, a dark silhouette against the warm glow of the open back door.

There was a phone call. For him. The person no one knew was there.

Thoughts and emotions tumbling and warring within him, Helman entered the house, took the receiver, and heard the voice.

It was deep, sibilant, and had a suggestion for him.

Five.

Dr. Robert Massoud misjudged the distance in the darkness of his bedroom. The phone receiver crashed into the bedside table and slid off, taking the rest of the phone with it to clatter on the uncarpeted floor.

Beside him on the bed, his wife was finally awakened. She had stirred from time to time, trying to ignore her husband's early morning conversation, but the crash of the phone had finally done it. She reached out for him and asked what had happened.

"The fucking rats died."

It was four o'clock in the morning. As far as she knew, her husband's rats were always dying of one thing or another. She was confused.

"Which rats, dear?"

"My fucking rats back in Berkeley. The fucking computer fried them."

Stockholm, January 15 Erica Massoud pulled herself up so she was sitting against the bed's headboard, and reached out one hand to rub her husband's shoulder.

"Could you try that one more time? I don't know what you're talking about."

Robert sighed and stretched for the phone. A recorded Swedish voice was telling him to hang up and try his call again.

"That was Frank," he explained, "at Berkeley. He went into the isolation lab this morning and all the rats, the inoculated group, the infected group, and the two control groups were dead. Every single fucking one. Two years down the tube."

Erica was still confused. She didn't understand her husband's work. Sometimes he was happy when his rats died.

"I always thought that if they died it meant that you had isolated something; proved it was dangerous." Robert lay back on the bed.

"Usually it does. But this time the rats didn't die of cancer. The computer made an error in regulating the temperature of the isolation cages. It boosted it to over a hundred and twenty. The rats fucking cooked."

"How does a computer make a mistake like that?" "I don't know. Frank doesn't know. I didn't even know the temperature control was hooked into the lab's computer. I thought it was just a thermostat control."

Erica thought her husband might be in danger of crying. She had to talk him out of it. The other doctors at the Institute might mistake red eyes as a sign of too much drinking the night before. That could be a setback in her husband's incredibly fast-rising career.

"Won't Major Weston look after it? Get it all straightened out? He did promise you he'd see that the experiment was finished so you could take the appointment at Haaberling."

Robert threw his hands up. "Oh Christ, I don't know. He said a lot of things that haven't come through."

Erica stroked her husband's chest, trying to distract him.

"The appointment at the Haaberling Institute came through, didn't it?"

Robert thought back on it: the first meeting with Major Weston; the incredible honour of being offered a position at the renowned Haaberling Institute while in one's twenties was unheard of. Still he was reluctant to leave his experiments at Berkeley. He felt that after two years he was finally close to the breakthrough he needed to isolate the mechanism by which certain cancers appear to simultaneously invade the body at several sites rather than developing within it at one location, then spreading. But Weston was insistent. It was good for the country to have an American at Haaberling, and when his appointment was finished at Stockholm Robert could expect an immediate offer from the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta and work on anything he wanted.

Besides, Weston had promised that he would look after the experiment being left behind, personally.

With a little misgiving, but enormous excitement, Robert had accepted. And now the rats were fried by a computer that shouldn't even have had control over the temperature.

"I suppose so," he sighed finally. "But Weston seemed to be spending a lot of time in Washington. He's a pretty busy guy to be looking after my rats."

Erica giggled. "I know how to look after your rats," she said, and began whispering into her husband's ear.

He laughed and rolled on top of her, kissing her. But afterward, as she slept again, he stared at the ceiling trying to figure it all out.

"Dammit," he said to the darkness. "I was so close. I know I was."

When the bedside alarm went off two hours later, he was still thinking. But he never once thought that it was anything other than an accident.

Six.

The flickering darkness Granger Helman stared up at disappeared in a wash of light as the Greyhound bus he rode drove into the tunnel.

The discontinuity gave him that vague sense of having forgotten what it was he had just been thinking. He settled back into his seat, trying to regain his body position of a few moments before to see if that would, by association, recapture his thoughts. It didn't. All he could think of now was that for the first time since he was a child, he was frightened. Not as in his closings, apprehensive or nervous about possibilities which he had anticipated and must avoid, but truly frightened.

New York, January 15 He remembered as a child, alone in the house, a ball he had been playing with rolled through the basement door, and down the wooden stairs. He had to get the ball, yet he was too small to reach the basement light switch. He had made it halfway down the stairs before his child's mind penetrated the darkness and saw what waited for him there.

They were grinning their idiotic grins, dim light from the kitchen behind him glinted off their spittle-flecked teeth, the oily fur and the eyes that always watched him through the floors. They had been waiting for him to come, just once, into the basement when he was alone and it was dark. He could feel the kitchen door slowly shutting behind him as the light faded and the darkness grew and the long grabbing things stretched silently through the wooden stairs for his feet. He had flown up those stairs in two jumps and slammed the door shut behind him. In the basement, he knew he had heard them exhale and settle back to begin their wait again.

A few days later his father found the ball wedged in behind the furnace. Granger knew it couldn't have rolled there on its own and never played with it again.

That's what it was to be frightened, and that's what Helman felt as the wash of light vanished and the bus rolled out of the Lincoln Tunnel onto the night streets of Manhattan.

The Port Authority Bus Terminal was fluorescent bright, crowded, and still under construction or renovation or just falling apart. Half the walls were covered with thick plastic sheeting or graffiti-covered plywood. The other half were covered with people, leaning and sitting, bus travellers, or pretending they were, waiting away from the snow and cold outside. Helman studied each face, peered through each wall of plastic. Somewhere, he knew, the caller was watching him. He had tried every switch and dodge he could think of in the past twenty hours, but he was certain they hadn't worked. Helman had lost control.

The voice on Miriam's phone had suggested Helman attend a meeting in Manhattan.

"When?" Helman had asked.

"Twenty-eight hours, Mr. Helman. Eleven. Tomorrow evening." Helman had never heard a voice like it. He assumed a masking device was distorting the speaker's normal voice. He couldn't be sure if it were a man or a woman.

"Where?" Helman knew he had no choice. He must agree with whatever the caller set forth. The threat of the evidence in the package ensured his compliance.

"Manhattan," said the voice.

"Where in Manhattan?" Helman protested. "A bar, hotel, address?"

"We know where you have been, we know where you are. We will meet you in Manhattan, by whichever routes you choose, at eleven, tomorrow evening. Yes?" The word was drawn out, like a hiss.

"Yes," said Helman, and the line went dead. The next morning, Helman drove his sister's Rabbit to the Budget lot in Concord. There he rented a Citation to be dropped off at LaGuardia that evening.

He drove south on 93, varying his speed, searching for following cars which matched his variations. None did.

He exited at Manchester and parked at the airport. At the American Airlines desk he bought a ticket for a LaGuardia flight in two hours and went into the Skyline bar to wait.

Thirty minutes later, he went into the men's room. When he came out, his brown hair was black, he had a moustache, and his cheeks were swollen with cotton batting, giving him the look of a man twenty pounds heavier. His L.L. Bean boots had been replaced with black broughams with two-inch thick metal inserts that wedged uncomfortably against his heels and arches, altering the way he walked. His jeans had become black pinstriped suit pants, and his blue parka, now folded and belted across his stomach to add to the illusion of his extra twenty pounds, had been switched with a black leather topcoat. Instead of the casual duffel bag he had started with, he carried a small, thin attache case. In his left hand he carried a brown paper bag, obviously holding a bottle of liquor which he grasped around its neck.

The liquor bag was the element of misdirection necessary to a successful disguise. Packages were always examined by people on surveillance duty. Packages were how weapons and cameras and stolen items were smuggled. They could not be ignored unless their contents could be identified after a few seconds inspection, as Helman's liquor would be.

Anyone who watched him could see the bottle top where Helman had carefully peeled back the bag. However, those few seconds of inspection diverted attention from the build and face of a subject. Those few seconds established the subject as existing background to the scene. The examination that followed was usually less critical, especially if a number of people requiring attention were also entering and exiting the surveillance area. It had worked for Helman before. He didn't know if it would work now, if indeed he was being watched, but he had to try.

As a commuting businessman, walking with slumped shoulders and a tired gait, seemingly eager to find the nearest Holiday Inn and settle down with his bottle, Helman walked over to the Eastern counter and bought a ticket for Newark. The flight left in twenty minutes.

There were only twelve people on board. He recognised them from the airport corridors or the bar. Either none of them was following him, or someone was better at disguise than Helman.

In Newark, Helman took the cotton out of his cheeks and sat in a bar. The Port Authority bus left the airport every twenty minutes. He waited until what he thought would be the last moment, and took the ten P.M. bus.

He was walking up the exit stairs to Eighth Avenue at twenty minutes to eleven. He was prepared to attend the meeting as scheduled. In his circles, few made threats they could not back up.

For no reason other than to keep himself moving, he began to walk toward Times Square. The shows were letting out and the side streets were jammed with taxis and limousines. Horns sounded in a continual undulation of impatience. Clumps of people walked briskly on the sidewalks and into the choked streets, eager to make as much headway as possible before the show crowds had dispersed, leaving the area to the street people who made the visitors nervous.

Another time, Helman might have been caught up in the lights, the activity, and the excitement of so much life surrounding him, but that night he was caught up in other things.

It was ten minutes to eleven.

If contact wasn't made by twelve, he had made up his mind to go into hiding. His sister and her two boys would unfortunately have to go with him. Somebody wanted him. He could not afford to leave anything behind by which they might snare him. He loved them too much. They were his only family. His only refuge. Miriam was waiting for his call. He searched the Times Square crowd.

It was five minutes to eleven.

He decided to cross over to Nathan's for some coffee. He could sit near the window and continue to watch.

Two hands grabbed his upper arms. Two men flanked him.

"Look straight ahead, Mr. Helman. Keep walking. Your ride is on its way."

A hand took away his attache case. He was made to walk faster, along 42nd to Sixth.

A silver Fleetwood limousine, almost as common in Manhattan as a yellow cab, waited at the corner, exhaust forming an ominous ground mist around it.

The two men guided Helman toward it. The windows were darkly tinted. He could not see who waited for him. At least, he thought, they won't kill me in this car; it's too expensive. But somehow their surveillance had picked him up, despite all his efforts, within minutes of his arrival in a darkened city of millions. Perhaps expense was of no concern to them.

Steps from the limousine, the door swung slowly open. No hand appeared to be on it. Helman was guided inside. The two men did not follow.

Another figure sat in the far corner of the car.

"Thank you for being punctual, Mr. Helman. I am Mr. King. I will accompany you to your meeting."

Helman felt a tightness constrict his chest. It was the voice from the phone call Exactly. There had been no masking device. Mr. King actually spoke like that.

"Your surveillance is very good, Mr. King." Helman controlled himself, resisting his temptation to lash out. The situation belonged to the man across from him. Helman must wait; carefully choose the proper moment to react.

Mr. King leaned forward and Helman saw his face, deeply shadowed from the overhead light. It was completely unremarkable. Except for the eyes. For one moment they seemed to shine with a tiny highlight of their own. Yet they were so dark in shadow.

Helman did not have time to consider it further.

Mr. King reached out, peeled off Helman's moustache and removed his wig.