"If you promise not to do that again."

"I promise."

TWENTY-TWO.

HE LED HER into the bedroom.

Since he needed a furnished house, he used a complaint about the furnishings as his pretense for getting her upstairs. But she knew better. The s.e.xuality had grown so intense on the drive over that neither had said much. As she climbed the stairs, she felt her knees weaken.

Carl opened the window. Midmorning light streamed in, followed by a slight breeze and the distant, melodious accompaniment of songbirds. In the relative silence, he directed her to the edge of the bed and ran his hands in her hair. She closed her eyes. "That's delicious," she said. He kissed her mouth and she welcomed it.

Carl scooped an arm under her knees, lifted her off her feet and set her down gently on the bed. He opened her blouse and his shirt and he pressed himself against her. Tears fell from her eyes. He asked, in a voice she could hardly hear, if he should stop. She shook her head no.

He gently stole the remainder of her clothes, lost his own onto the floor somewhere, and sat alongside her. Tenderly, carefully, he browsed every inch of her with fingertips that felt like feathers. The breeze ruffled the curtain and the sound of the birds grew even louder. A bold sparrow dared to observe them from the windowsill.

This felt dangerous. Her fears drove her pleasures higher, wind to her fire. Carl refused to have it over with quickly. This stranger milked every sensation he could from her, stretched every experience as if to test her tenacity. To challenge her. Twice she called out for him to enter her. Twice he whispered back, "No." And twice she let herself go.

Perhaps that was the real thrill: the surrender. She turned herself over to him. Her skin, her nerves, her innermost privacies, her self. This skillful man owned her for these long minutes. He drew imaginary patterns on her skin, finger-painted her thighs, drew her willingly open until she was fully offered to him. He kissed her there for ages, played with her, toyed with her, drove her to the edge of frenzy, only to retreat and settle her again. "My G.o.d," she heard herself cry in a shuddering whimper. He kissed and tongued his way from her navel to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and back again. There was no end to his patience. He indulged himself with her, drove her clear to the edge and then past it, until she flooded with an intense heat that soothed her and carried her off so far that she neither heard him nor felt him. She reached down and pulled for him, but he would not give her this. He generously refused.

Minutes, hours, weeks later? their mouths suddenly met, hot and wet, and he penetrated her at this instant. She cried out with joy. She felt him swell inside her. Deeper and deeper. Was there no end to him? She felt his rhythms. A connection so full and sweet, so tender and yet so filled with authority. Yes, he owned her.

He pulled back and withdrew. "No," she murmured, wanting him. He teased her entrance. Toyed with her. She opened her eyes and tried to focus on his face, but found it impossible. He was smiling. She knew that much. She could feel it from him. Dreamy and distant, she retired to a place so full of joy and pleasure that she wanted to die. "Please," she said, feeling her lips curl into a sleepy smile.

He delivered himself slowly. Smoothly. Further and further. Totally. She arched her back to accommodate him. His hot tongue found her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and she felt herself explode. Never anything like this. Never anything close.

She felt a complete and total whole with him. No longer two halves. No names. No faces. No ident.i.ties. The same. Equals. His pleasure was hers. Her movement was his. Their moment was this.

He went rigid, from toe to head, and erupted inside her. She saw flames. They cried out together. The bird took flight in a soft sputtering of wing. The two lovers convulsed and trembled, cried out and laughed, collapsed in a tangle of sweat and heartbeats.

Naked, he smoked a cigarette by the window. He needed those keys. He needed to clear his head and get back on track. It wasn't easy. She lay peacefully wrapped in the blankets, half asleep. He could feel her staring at him. He studied the backyard. "I would love it here," he said in a distant voice that he hadn't intended. What was happening to him? He felt unable to focus. There was much work to be done and he had no desire to do it. Emotions flooded him, so foreign that before he could prevent it, he became a victim to them. He felt like the juggler who took on one too many items and now found the task before him impossible watched before his eyes as the circling objects defied his attempts to control them.

"Would?" she asked.

"Will," he corrected, hating himself for his continuing deceit. Could he tell her? Could he possibly risk the truth? The truth? It was nothing but another of the objects in the slowly degenerating circle. "This is the way I will always think of this room," he said. "Us. Now. This moment."

"You seem sad."

"Extremely happy, I a.s.sure you. If I could preserve this moment, if I could lock that door over there, the two of us inside .. . forever. Well, that would be my little piece of heaven."

"Can't you?"

"Can I?"

"You don't sound convinced," she said.

"You have another life. I've interfered. Should I sound convinced?"

"I think you should." She threw the covers off. He looked at her. She had a fine body. It had lost its youth, in places, its shape. But there was no body he would have rather seen at this moment. It was perfect. It was her. "Did I show you the two-headed shower?" she asked in a suggestive, humorous tone. "All European tile. Imported. Pressure sensitive controls. May I show you the shower?" she asked, coming off the bed toward him.

She was magnificent, he thought. He tossed the cigarette out the window and watched as it tumbled, end over end, and the sparks scattered on the brick terrace. She headed straight for him and pressed herself against him, wet and warm, and he felt himself begin to swell. "Or should we just stay here in the chair?" she asked, taking him fully in hand and stroking him against her s.e.x.

"Why not both?" he asked.

"Indeed?" she replied, helping him enter her. She closed her eyes and hung her chin on his shoulder.

He listened gratefully to the singing of the birds. He took her firmly beneath the b.u.t.tocks and carried her to the chest of drawers where he set her down. He drew her ankles high around his back and found her source of pleasure again. He watched her face squirm with his experiments.

Then she bit his shoulder, and they both came at once.

Following a brief nap and a failed shower because of no hot water, they toweled themselves clean, joking about how they would smell. Slowly, reluctantly, they dressed.

Kort did what he felt he had to do. With the steady, sure voice of a coldblooded professional he said, "Toss me your keys. I'll steal your car and find us some take-out food."

"I'll come with you."

"I wouldn't think of it," he said. "That will spoil any surprises I cook up."

"You're an incorrigible romantic. You know that, Carl?"

"I try," he replied.

"No, you don't try. It's natural. That's what makes you so appealing."

Natural? he wondered. Call me by my real name, he willed. Call my bluff. Whatever you do, don't hand me those keys!

She fumbled through her purse looking for the keys and, finding them, threw them at him. He caught them effortlessly, a frog's tongue snagging the fly.

He stared at them in the palm of his hands: the keys. A simple little group of keys. A dozen ways he might have obtained them, some easier than others, and yet he had elected this route. Why?

"Carl? Something wrong?"

"Just thinking."

"I'm starved. Ravenous. Stop thinking." She pointed toward the door. "Be off with you!"

"Whatever you say," he said.

Copying the keys was a painless exercise. He pocketed his set, bought them some deli sandwiches and potato salad, and returned to the car. Here, as he was finding a stable location to rest the small bags of hot food, he came across an unexpected bonus: a shopping list written on the back of an envelope addressed to Mr. Cameron Daggett, listing Daggett's street address. This saved him from having to shadow Carrie or Daggett, G.o.d forbid until being led to the house. It briefly cheered him up. But as he returned to the small cottage, his good spirits waned.

Parked in the driveway, he sat behind the wheel for several long minutes, wondering where life might have taken them if they had found each other under different circ.u.mstances. A heavy sadness filled him. Feelings he had suppressed for years bubbled to the surface and spit at him, despite his efforts to contain them. He felt drugged: an unwilling victim of his own conscience. He had violated her, physically, emotionally, and now criminally. He had stolen from her. He had stolen the truth, stolen her trust.

He hated himself.

He slammed the car door hard. He fingered the gate's wrought-iron latch and approached the house solemnly. Angry. Confused.

Oh, yes, he reminded himself sardonically: he had accomplished his goal. Bravo! The keys were his.

But what of his soul?

TWENTY-THREE.

MUM FORD CORNER OFFICE held them all easily, with room left over for a volleyball game. The pathologist, a Dr. Ben-David; Chaz Meecham from Explosives; and Lynn Greene occupied one of the two leather couches. Ben David was a small man with pinpoint eyes and dark skin. Meecham looked his usual all-American, and today, a little younger than his forty-odd years. Lynn looked not a penny less than a million bucks.

Daggett took one of the two leather chairs, leaving Pullman isolated on the opposing couch. Mumford appeared comfortable sitting in his leather high-back chair, enthroned behind his expansive walnut desk.

Daggett could no longer act alone. Without Mumford's blessing, he could not raise the manpower necessary to stop Kort from whatever it was he had planned, and so, two years of investigation came down to this one meeting. If Daggett failed to convince Mumford that the crash of flight 64 was not an accident, but sabotage, then he was to begin his lengthy report on the Backman bombing. With three days to go until the Pentagon meeting which he still believed was directly related to Kort's target everything came down to his performance over the next twenty minutes.

He felt well prepared for this meeting. He had phoned each person individually so they might know exactly what was expected of them. He was to become a conductor now, and like a conductor he tapped his pencil against the edge of folders piled high on the coffee table in front of him. As with music miraculously coming off the written page, he hoped that from this ensemble, a wealth of fact and supposition might develop into a convincing explanation for the behavior of AmAirXpress flight 64. An explanation was all he hoped for.

He pulled out his list and raised his voice, hoping, against the odds, he might sound confident. Public speaking was not his gift. "First off, I'd like to run around the room with a few questions. I think that will give us a look at some of the background, some of the groundwork involved." He looked around for a gla.s.s of water. Seeing none, he continued.

"My first question is to Dr. Ben-David. He's both reviewed the autopsy protocols and has had direct discussions with the medical examiners in California who performed the autopsies. Specifically, the topic has been blood toxicology. What I wanted to ask you, Doctor, is whether or not you have any way of knowing if a person was unconscious prior to death?"

Ben-David had an unusually high voice, and the annoying habit of pulling at his ear. "What's interesting about this, is that just such a question came up about four years ago. In the medical examiner community .. ." he added. "And then, as now, it involved a plane crash. The concern was that the pilot may have blacked out only moments before impact. Critical moments, I'm afraid. Leading pathologists were pulled together to research the possibility of proving or disproving the pilot's consciousness at the moment of death. The speculation was that by measuring the levels of lactic acid in the blood, we could determine the level of stress just prior to death. High levels might indicate the pilot was struggling to control the aircraft. Low levels might indicate the pilot had died before he was even aware of a problem. But it never really worked out. The tests were inconclusive. That's a round-about way of saying, no, we can't tell not yet, anyway."

He had Mumford's interest. That was a good sign. Daggett asked, "And the cause of death to the flight crew of AmAirXpress flight sixty-four? It's listed as a result of impact. "Body fragmentation is the term, I think. Do you go along with that?"

"No. And neither do the authors of that report. Not any longer. The reports are being rewritten."

Mumford barked out, "Is that right?"

"Absolutely," Ben-David answered.

"Well, Jesus Christ! Why didn't I hear about this?" Mumford huffed for a few long moments. No one interrupted. No one answered him. The answer was obvious: He was hearing about it right now. "What exactly Was the cause of death, Dr. Ben-David?"

Ben-David looked to Daggett.

Mumford corrected, "You don't need Daggett's permission to talk. You need mine." He tapped his chest. "This is my office. This is my f.u.c.king field office!"

"Special Agent Daggett directed my attention to and I subsequently challenged my colleagues to examine the level of carbon monoxide in the blood. The toxicology report." He paused, uncomfortable. He seemed to be thinking looking for layman's terms? "There was a fire on board. We know that." He looked to Lynn Greene, who nodded her agreement. "One good indication of fire is carbon monoxide in the blood. It's often the killer, which is exactly what was believed to be the case here. In fact," he said, tapping the folder in front of him, "the toxicologist believed the two crew members had been overcome by carbon monoxide and had then died upon impact. Body fragmentation, as Mr. Daggett has just said. A plane crash is difficult for pathologists because you have body fragmentation and fire. Special Agent Daggett directed my attention to something in the report that the medical examiners had missed, which was the high level of carbon monoxide, and the lack of any other chemical toxic ant in the blood. Plastic burns to a vapor; it gets into your lungs and into your blood. In a fire, soot gets lodged in your trachea. In the case of flight sixty four there is no record of soot in the trachea of either man.

Even given a very few seconds, as was the case here, we should have seen something in the trachea. Lung tissue samples from both crew members has since been examined in the California DOJ toxicology lab in Sacramento. They found not only an extremely high concentration of carbon monoxide but the presence of white phosphorus." He paused again. "We checked with the gentlemen now on the other end of that telephone," he said, pointing. "There is no source of white phosphorus on a Duhning 959-600. Not on any Duhning aircraft, for that matter. We then checked the cargo manifest. None there either."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Mumford said. "Where's this leave the actual cause of death?"

"If I may," Daggett said, interrupting. "We're coming right to that."

Mumford didn't like it. Nonetheless, Daggett continued. "Chaz, you and I talked about this detonator. The mini-det."

"Right. Sure thing, Michigan." He faced Mumford. "The long and the short of it, d.i.c.k," he said, emphasizing his friendship with Mumford, "is that we have pretty good evidence a very sophisticated detonator was aboard sixty-four. Nothing to take to the courts but f.u.c.k the courts. This guy intended to detonate at a specific moment, almost immediately after takeoff. Weird, I know, but it's the only explanation I can come up with. Furthermore, we have zero evidence of any explosive on board. Zero. So what the f.u.c.k, Chuck? Go to all that trouble and have nothing to detonate?"

Daggett said, "The mini-det, Chaz."

"Yeah, right. Evidence found in Bernard's hotel room suggests the presence of a mini-det. A miniaturized detonator. Pretty high-tech s.h.i.t, but not impossible for a guy like Bernard to get his hands on. A mini-det flashes hot real hot. You score the outer casing just right and instead of popping it flares. Flares hot enough to melt some metals. Plenty hot enough to start a c.o.c.kpit fire. One of the chemical residues we look for in crash debris, something to indicate the presence of a mini-det, is white phosphorus." He was nodding to emphasize his point. He pointed at Ben-David. "Sounds like he found the white phosphorus." He nodded some more, looked over at Daggett, took his cue nicely, and sat back.

"Which leads us to Lynn Greene with the FAA," Daggett said.

Lynn squared her shoulders. It was a case of nerves for her, but it had a great effect: She had Mumford's attention. Lynn, who had sided with Daggett all along. Lynn, who had brought him the gla.s.s bulb that as far as he was concerned had turned the case. "We hear two distinct sounds on the c.o.c.kpit Voice Recorder just before impact. One is a soft pop .. . the second is a hissing. Within two seconds, the bodies of both men collapse onto the controls. This is confirmed by the Flight Data Recorder. Several switches were thrown that, upon reconstruction, could only be caused by" she lifted her arms out "a body falling forward like this." She collapsed forward to dramatize it. Daggett noted with pleasure that everyone was fully focused on her. She sat back up. "The hissing continues. Because the copilot mentions the fire extinguisher, we decided to take a closer look, wondering if it might be the source of the hissing. This morning we received the results of a lab test conducted on the c.o.c.kpit fire-extinguisher. Evidence suggests that the end of the fire extinguisher was subjected to extremely high temperatures. It's possible, even likely, that the detonator itself was part of the fire extinguisher. Inside the pressure gauge perhaps. There is further evidence of white phosphorus, again indicating the detonator to which Mr. Meecham referred. My guess is that the mini-det not only started a fire but melted the pressure gauge, releasing whatever gas was contained inside that cylinder. Examination of the fire extinguisher itself revealed it was not filled with fire r.e.t.a.r.dants, but instead an extremely high concentration of carbon monoxide. A potentially lethal concentration."

Daggett pointed to Dr. Ben-David, who said, "Pure carbon monoxide, discharged at a close range, would fully coincide with our findings, and would more completely explain the cause of death."

Then he pointed to Chaz Meecham, who said, "And the presence of white phosphorus would explain why we failed to find evidence of explosives. He didn't use any. All this guy wanted was for a mini-det to melt his detonator to nothing. While at the same time opening the fire extinguisher. He burns up what little evidence might have existed, and lets the gas do the rest."

Mumford's mouth was actually hanging open. Daggett thought if he had tried, he could have dropped a paper clip in there.

When he recovered, Mumford said, "So let's say I believe you. Let's say sixty-four was sabotaged; let's even go as far to say it was sabotaged by one of Bernard's detonators. And that means Der Grund, and quite possibly Anthony Kort. Let's say I buy all that, okay?" He paused while his eyes searched the ceiling in thought. "Why bother with something this elaborate? If all he wanted to do was drop a plane, why the f.u.c.k bother with all of this?"

The resulting silence was so intense that Daggett could hear the congestion in Ben-David's lungs.

"What the f.u.c.k was the point?" Mumford asked.

In the end, there was only the truth as he knew it. Daggett said tentatively, "Kort didn't want us knowing the plane had been sabotaged. He wanted it to look like an accident. Why? I think it's because he plans to do it again to drop another 959, here in Washington. That's why Bernard made two identical detonators and why he delivered the second one here."

"We don't know that!" Mumford protested. He was a stickler for accuracy.

Daggett pressed on. "Whatever Kort has planned, has something to do with those tests Ward conducted on the Duhning simulator. You put all of this together and it still doesn't explain what he needed the simulator for. Why repeat the same test with only slight variations a half-dozen times?"

"And do you have an answer for that?" Mumford asked.

"No, sir. Not yet. But given all of this, I think we're getting closer. I think it's time we had better find out."

Daggett waited while Mumford looked impatiently at everyone in the room. There was a mixture of confusion and expectation on each face. Mumford seemed ready to explode. He finally looked back at Daggett. "Well, don't just sit there. Get on with it!"

TWENTY-FOUR.

WHEN KORT ANSWERED the phone, the LED on the small black box he had connected to his room's telephone glowed red, and he knew immediately Monique's line was tapped.

Panic stole over him, unfamiliar and frightening: She was compromised. He had to avoid her at all cost.

"It's me," she announced informally.