I wonder if she knows that?

The blood was warm and satisfying. He thought of the message he would send the Jesuits.

And he knew it would enrage.

Eight.

Major Anthony Weston, United States Army, examined the documents and photographs on his desk without really seeing them. He knew there were other, more pressing matters to attend to, but an immobilising inertial block made him sit at his desk, unable to begin anything new, until the phone call came that would tell him that the location had been determined.

With a great effort of will, he forced himself to at least straighten up his desk. He began to slide the papers back into their grey metal file container. For the last time he looked at the glossy eight-by-tens of the three hundred and forty rats that had been suffocated by a rapid rise in temperature in their lab at Berkeley. They were meaningless to him. He had far worse things on his conscience than the deaths of rats.

Washington D.C., January 16 Included in the documents was a photocopy of his letter, refusing a reallocation of funds to enable the experiment to be restarted. He knew that he would have to answer to that young doctor he had had placed at the Haaberling Institute (he couldn't remember his name), but that would come later. The experiment had been stopped. That was all that mattered for now.

Weston looked far older than his years. Since he had been assigned the directorship, he had aged incredibly under the strain. This is what happens to presidents, he thought. They enter the Oval Office, eyes bright, laces fresh, and then the briefings begin. The quiet, sombre men begin to call. They whisper their secrets to their new commander, and in months the burden shows. Conditions and situations the quiet men have dealt with for years enter the presidents lives in moments. In four years they age ten. Nothing would ever be the same for any of them. But Weston had never been in the Oval Office. There were some secrets in Washington which could not be trusted to someone whose power rested in his appeal to the people. That kind of power base was too unstable. The real power of the government was not subject to such transitory conditions. Weston and his people held their secrets alone.

He locked the documents in the container. Their classification would be non-existent. They would never be filed where someone not connected with Weston and the Nevada Project could get at them.

Weston stared at his office wall, thinking about the fragmentation that was growing through Washington like cracks on thin ice. So many pieces floating away on their own. How many files like His were there in that city? What other unimaginable secrets were hidden away under only one key because no one could trust the central filing systems?

Sometimes, late at night when sleep eluded him, he found himself thinking that perhaps there was another project like his operating out there. A project just as shrouded in secrecy so that no others knew their work was being duplicated, but a project different from his. That other project would have the answer.

Weston knew it was a dangerous thought, and he knew what was behind it.

He had been forced down too many blind alleys. He had had to order too many repugnant solutions. Hasty, panicked, murderous. Some solutions had been easily bought. Like the young doctor with the rats who had ended up in Stockholm. He had not even known he was being bought off and his experiment stopped. But some of the others, the older ones especially, who could not be easily dazzled and diverted, were much more stubborn. Fatal car accidents were being arranged in an almost regular manner. The loss to the country's scientific potential was enormous, especially now that it was so desperately needed. The moral cost was something Weston had stopped thinking of long ago.

With the directorship had come the understanding that certain actions were to be considered necessary in the extreme. Years ago, he had accepted that. Everything flowed from that decision. Recently, that decision had been coming more and more to mind, but he kept thrusting it from him. Now was not the time to reconsider.

He coughed. The pain seared through him, making him tense up. His deeply etched, lined face contorted. He was alone in his office so he was allowed that. Never before his people. The pain settled to a dull ache in his chest. He resisted the urge to cough again. It was after him all right. He had gone after it, but it had zeroed in on him first. The country wasn't the only thing running out of time. At least he wouldn't be around to see it end. He would be spared that agony. And out of everything he had been faced with in the last fourteen years, that thought was the one thing that really scared him. It would end.

But not today. Today his lungs worked and the country was secure in its ignorance. In a matter of weeks that security would inevitably erode and crumble and he would be forced to go to someone. Certainly not the President.

Certainly not anyone he could think of. Everything hung poised and motionless waiting for his phone to ring.

Eventually, it did.

Weston's agent on the other end gave the location.

"The contact is Leung. She's in Toronto."

Weston's mind broke free of the stagnation of waiting.

If she had contacted the primed doctors in Washington or Chicago or any of the other major American cities, it would have been the end of it. The field was far too open and she would be dead before the proper arrangements could be negotiated. But Canada meant there was a chance the Nevada Project could be first. His mind raced with the possibilities.

He spoke quickly. "How soon can we have a team operating there? Can we get a consular expedience order to bring in the Mounties?'

His agent responded. "We've got Davis up there now making the final negotiations with Leung. Davis is sure he's going to co-operate fully. Everyone will be in place for the first moves tonight. Davis says not to bring in the Mounties." The agent paused, wondering how much he could say even over a secure line. "Someone's already brought them in."

Weston had half-expected that, but still he was surprised. Rome had also made the location. The others wouldn't have bothered with the Mounties. But how had they done it?

His men would now be operating in a friendly nation without sanction. But a diplomatic incident would only bring it all to a head a few weeks earlier. There was, in the end, nothing to lose.

"Set up for surveillance and protection. I'll be there within twenty-four hours for the initial contact." There was a silence.

"Jack," Weston said finally, calling the agent by his first name. "This is it, you know. There's nothing else."

"We'll do it," was all the agent said. The line went dead.

Weston switched to another line and began to make his travel arrangements.

Everything rested on this last effort.

If they failed, nothing else would matter, ever again.

Nine.

The plane was half-empty and Helman sat alone in his row by a window, staring sightlessly out over the night darkened water. The flight from LaGuardia was almost over. The atrocity he must commit would soon begin.

They had told him his victim's name and then they had told him little else. What Adrienne St. Clair had done to them, what one person could possibly do to them which would make them react this way, he had no way of knowing.

He could only guess that her actions had been devastating, because the conditions of this closing were the most vicious he had ever agreed to.

"An example must be made, Mr. Helman," one of the black-masked ones had said. "She has gone from our ways onto another path, and any who might be tempted to follow her must know what reward is waiting. The conditions must be met exactly!" The last had been a hiss, like an animal spitting its rage, and Helman had felt the first tendrils of a nightmare disorientation; an intense feeling that things were somehow wrong, like some cloudy manifestation from the pit of his mind. Those people could not be real.

The No Smoking/Fasten Seatbelt light chimed on in the cabin and Helman returned to the present as he watched the lights of the city grow closer. The plane banked and began its descent. He wondered if it would somehow be better this time if it crashed.

Toronto, January 16 Four years earlier, Helman had spent a month in Toronto on "standby". Power plays influenced by criminal organisations from the predominately French city of Montreal had threatened the stability of a Toronto family's control over a Canada-wide development industry. Helman, and he believed, at least five others in a similar line of work, had been brought to Toronto as a show of force and as insurance, in case the conflict spread from Montreal and obstacles had to be removed.

As the situation had developed, a carefully orchestrated accident involving a well-known political figure occurred in Montreal. The details surrounding the accident were enough to destroy the politician's career. He had immediately seen the possibilities and capitulated that same evening. Certain elements of the planted evidence were removed from the scene of the accident and when the story broke, even the newspapers were sympathetic to the politician in their reporting.

The politician's future was secure, important concessions had been made, and five days later a fire bombing in a Montreal night club eliminated the final holdouts to a settlement. The threat had been contained and Helman and the others were free to leave Toronto, paid well for their month of waiting.

Helman had heard that two years afterward, an investigative reporting team came across disturbing evidence that a concentration of 'hired guns' had existed in Toronto for that month. The reporters explained it away by saying it was part of an attempt by motorcycle gangs to consolidate their control over drug trafficking in the area.

Helman had never been sure if that story showed that the Canadian police and press could be bought off easily, or if it had just shown how stupid they were. Either way, he had not liked his stay in the city, and he did not like the fact that it was going to be his killing ground for the closing of Adrienne St. Clair.

Customs clearance and baggage claim took minutes. Helman walked out of the enclosure directly to a wall of pay phones. This was the first chance he had had to be alone since he was picked up in Times Square. After his briefing, Mr. King had again reached up to Helman's neck and Helman had been unaware of anything until he woke up in a car in the LaGuardia airport parking lot. Mr. King, who was beside him, accompanied him to pick up his ticket, and then saw him off in the departure lounge. Finally Helman was free to call his sister.

He put through a collect call. The phone was answered in the middle of the first ring and he heard Miriam accept the charges.

He said hello and Miriam began to cry. "He said you were all right but I couldn't be sure."

"Who said I was all right?" Helman had to press his hand against his other ear to hear what his sister was saying.

"Who were you talking to?"

"The man who called the night before you left." Miriam's voice was tinny and sounded far away. Helman realised a tap was on her phone. Either it was an old, unsophisticated, direct link that was drawing far more power than it should from the line, or it was purposely designed to interfere so that Helman would know that his every move was anticipated. The group in New York had reached out to him again. If he told his sister to take her children and run, he doubted if she would make it out the door. She was the group's insurance, and their assumption was correct. He would do anything before he would let harm come to them.

"Well, he was right," Helman yelled into the phone. "Everything's just fine. I should be back in a couple of days.

How're the boys?" Desperately he thought of something he could say to her. Some way to warn her, to tell her to run.

But he had never involved his sister in his work, except for that first time. He had no codes to tell her, no plans had been worked out in advance.

They were all of them locked into the fate of Adrienne St. Clair. Her death alone would buy their freedom.

The rest of the conversation was brief and meaningless. Miriam sounded calmer when she said goodbye, relieved that Helman was alive and soon to be home. She had no idea of the part she was playing. For that Helman was grateful. If anything happened to her or her family, Helman knew he would destroy the group in New York, no matter what the cost.

A man in a long, black leather coat came up to Helman at the hotel's registration desk, and Helman knew immediately the man was his contact from New York.

He was tall and slender and had the same perfect teeth that King had shown. He must have been waiting outside for Helman's arrival because his hands were startlingly cold when he reached out to shake, as though they were two business associates about to conduct a meeting.

That close to the man, under the bright lights in the high ceiling of the lobby, Helman saw an out-of-place discoloration on the man's shirt collar. It was make-up that had rubbed off the man's neck.

"Good evening, Mr. Osgood," the man said, using Helman's 'drop' name and pumping his hand. "I'm Mr. Rice. I'm sure your office told you to expect me."

Helman nodded. Mr. Rice's face was covered in make-up. Not effeminate, not as a new men's fashion, but like theatrical make-up, accentuating what tone and shadow already existed. Helman was sure the man wasn't wearing it as a disguise, but could think of no other reason.

In the more subdued light of the elevator, the evidence of the make-up was impossible to see. Rice looked as if he might be a brother to King or in some other way related. But Helman did not question him. The less they thought he knew about them, the more likely he was to be left alive when he had finished their work. If they had not already made up their minds to kill him, Helman tipped the bellhop and the two men were left alone in the room. It was the typical North American box design: bathroom on the right forming a small entrance hall to the rectangular area with two double beds, two chairs, and an assortment of chests and tables. In the summer, the room would be more expensive because of its sliding glass doors onto a balcony which overlooked the outdoor pool three floors below. But the pool was covered in tarpaulins and the balcony adrift with snow.

Rice spoke first. He threw his attache case on the bed. "These are the final details, assassin. We will study them."

Another incongruity. Rice's voice was different now that they were alone. It had gone from a nondescript flat accent to the drawn-out hissing whisper of King and the group in New York. Were they subjecting Helman to a particularly sophisticated form of subliminal conditioning? Planting any number of false clues, seemingly related suggestions that would lead nowhere, in case he were captured? Or were they actually that strange?

Helman slipped off his coat and pulled a chair over to the corner of the bed. The attache case was cheap plastic, embossed to look like grained leather, and brand new, as if Rice had never had use for an attache case until he was told to deliver material this evening. Even so, Helman didn't touch it. "Is there a certain way to open it?" he asked.

Rice reacted with impatience. "We have no need to play the games that you do, assassin. If we do not wish to have documents looked at, then they are never placed in a situation where they can be looked at. Our briefcases don't explode." He opened the case. There was one large brown envelope inside. Except for a manufacturer's tag looped around the inside pocket closure, there was nothing else.

Rice opened the envelope and slid the contents out. The top item was an eight-by-ten, black-and-white photo of a woman. It was a copy print of what Helman took to be an old passport photo. The woman's hair was dark and swept up in a stiff style popular years before. Probably the early fifties, thought Helman.

"This is the woman, Adrienne St. Clair. Study the image carefully. You will not be allowed to keep it. Or any of this," Rice said, indicating the rest of the material on the bed, "except for the map."

Helman held the photo close. The woman was attractive, despite the awkwardness of her hair. Her chin and mouth were small, her eyes a bit too far apart, and her face was stretched by either flat cheek bones or puffiness around her eyes. He couldn't tell which. Something about her made him think she was British. He was sure he could recognise her when he saw her, but her hairstyle was old fashioned.

"It's a clear photo for identification, but it looks about thirty years old. What does she look like today?"

Rice sighed. "The photo is much more recent than that. Her hairstyle and make-up were applied for a particular assignment she was to carry out. She looks much the same today. Her hair is red when it is not disguised, and cut short." Rice picked up a sheet of paper that had been beneath the woman's picture and read from it. "The woman is about thirty years old, five foot five inches in height, weighing approximately 100 pounds. She is ambidextrous, and, as you were told by my associates in New York, trained in a variety of the so-called 'martial' arts. If you get within arm's reach of her while she is conscious, I should not expect you to live more than a few seconds."

Helman nodded, he had been told that. If she had gone through the same training as King, with his ability to paralyse within seconds, Helman could believe it too.

There were many questions to ask.

"You mentioned that her hair is sometimes disguised. Do you know if that is the case now?"

Rice shook his head. "No, she thinks she is well-protected, and has not taken any steps to alter her appearance."

"What does well-protected mean?"

Rice dug into the pile on the bed. He handed two more photos to Helman. The first was of an oriental male. He was wearing dark rimmed glasses and Helman could see a scarf around his neck just above the picture's cropping. A cloud of exhaled breath streamed away from him. The background of the photo, an open courtyard, or something similar, with some small bare trees, was compressed, showing it had been taken with a telephoto lens.

"That was taken a month ago. He is Doctor Christopher Leung. He is on staff at the University of Toronto Medical Facility. The woman is staying with him in his house in the city."

The second photograph, from a reflection in the corner and some blurriness, obviously a shot from a moving vehicle, showed a row of five townhouses. They were four stories high, very narrow and modern looking. Half of a much older, larger house showed at the edge of the picture, indicating the townhouses were built in an older neighbourhood.

"Dr. Leung's is the middle one." Rice paused. "Tell me your plans, assassin, and I shall tell you anything additional you need to know."

Helman stared at the photos of the doctor and the woman. They seemed an unlikely pair to have such attention paid to them.

"What is the woman's relationship with the doctor? Are they lovers?"

Rice looked indignant, "That is quite impossible."

"How do you know?" Another anomaly presented itself.

"You will take my word for it, assassin. I am only to tell you what you need to know to carry out your work."

Helman took care not to raise his voice in the thin-walled hotel room. He pointed to the photograph of the house.

"Look, these top rooms are most likely bedrooms. If they're lovers, I'll only have to penetrate one room with an explosive or a gas. If they're not, I'll have to attack several rooms at once."

"I see your point, but they will have separate sleeping accommodations, you can be sure. The woman will most likely be in a basement room."

"And again, you won't tell me why. I'm just to accept it." Rice smiled. "That is correct, assassin. Accept it."

Helman sat back in his chair and rubbed his face. He tried again. "What is their relationship?"

Rice sighed again. Helman wondered if he always did that before he gave his most dubious answers.

"We believe that the woman has contracted a rare disease. Most likely tropical. Not fatal. Disruptive at best.

Paralysing at worst. We believe she has made an arrangement with the doctor to begin treatment. Each evening she accompanies the doctor to a research facility at his university. When the disease is controlled, she will be free again to work against us."

Helman was sure Rice was lying. "So while she's here, with the doctor, she is not actively working against you?"