"It all gives off the same stench when it burns " They turned another corner and were now on a side street east of Lexington Avenue.

"Can I ask where we're going?" he said.

"See that sign down there?" she asked, pointing halfway down the block to a sign saying READER AND ADVISER, MADAME DIANE.

"That's where we're going."

They walked. She continued to speak.

"My foster father had contacted another man in the Service. The man in Whitehall who was his immediate superior and to whom he would be reporting once his new a.s.signment began. They planned to rendezvous in Maracaibo. They did, in fact. Then they went on to Caracas.

Eventually they were heading north to the United States. There might have been a meeting with some U.S. intelligence service. I don't know.

I only know they never arrived."

"Why not?"

They stopped short and stood immediately beneath the READER AND ADVISER sign.

Leslie glanced at the vacant doorway to the gypsy's parlor.

"The airplane blew up an hour after takeoff," she said.

"A Caracas-to-Miami flight. June 14, 1971. Sabotaged And it wasn't an accident that they were on it. I suspect it was sabotaged for them expressly. After all, there are agents from the 'other side'-as my foster father used to call it-who are actively seeking the oil down there. And with one well-placed bomb, the top British sandhog and his superior were eliminated from the region." She looked at Thomas, studying him for his reaction.

He listened to her story with compa.s.sion and sympathy. He believed her just as he had on the first day she'd come to his office.

And just as he'd believed the man in London calling himself Peter Whiteside.

"And that, Thomas'" she said in softer tones, "is why my foster father can't be of help anymore."

"What about Peter Whiteside?" he asked.

Her smile was pained. She shook her head.

"Sometimes you can be very slow," she answered.

He looked at her quizzically as if to ask what she meant.

"Who do you think his superior was?" she asked.

"The second man on the airplane' There was a long pause and he felt a tumbling sensation in his stomach.

"Naturally," he finally muttered.

"You've learned a lot today," she said.

"Now I'll teach you one thing more. The defense of the rabbit. The fleet escape. Never go into a place which you can't get out of in at least three ways. Follow me in five seconds. You'll see what I mean She leaned forward and was no longer a teacher, but rather a woman and a lover. She kissed him on the lips and had him so starved for her physical affection that he tried to pull her closer by drawing her into his arms.

But she'd have none of that. It wasn't time. No sooner did he try to draw her closer than she resisted firmly and pulled back.

'I'll be back in touch," she said.

"Remember. Follow in five seconds' ' He stood there completely mystified as she briskly went up the stairs beneath the sign of Madame Diane. Thomas watched from the sidewalk, then followed after a slow count to five.

He went quickly up the stairs, reached a dingy hallway at the top, and heard nothing. There were four alternatives. More steps leading up. A corridor to the right, a corridor to the left. Back stairs leading down. All four marked with exit signs.

She'd known this place, which thicket could best confuse the hounds.

She was gone. Had anyone been following them, she would have led the pursuer here and easily slipped away.

Her lesson had been well ill.u.s.trated. He'd learned it.

For himself, he chose the corridor to the left, the one leading past Madame Diane's emporium of guidance. He pa.s.sed down a side stairway into an alleyway between buildings.

He thought of sandhogs, alive and dead, on his way home, men whose lives and jobs...o...b..ted the three spheres of blood, sand, and oil.

McAdam and Whiteside. Men or mirages? And what about Leslie? A cooperative client in desperate need of help? Or a treacherous conniver?

Or both?

During the long walk through the icy wind, he wondered who was real, who was imagined, and who lay in the murky area somewhere in between.

He pulled his coat close to him. Each shadow he pa.s.sed on that cold night, each stranger coming near him on the sidewalk, represented a mult.i.tude of fears. In the same way, the empty apartment he would return to represented a certain loneliness which, at this point in life, he no longer wished to face each night.

He wished that she were coming home with him. But he had no idea where she was, much less who she was.

Chapter 18 It had never escaped Sha.s.sad's thoughts that the slaying of Mark Ryder had been done with such surgical precision that it had the mark of professionals. Similarly, what Minnie Yankovich had described had sounded more akin to an elaborately disguised execution than a mugging.

Sha.s.sad looked at Mrs. Ryder in her moment of most acute grief.

He knew what his job was.

No, she said, she hadn't seen her husband since the morning he'd last left for work. No, he had no enemies that she could think of, n.o.body to whom he was in debt, and she knew of no one whom he might have been seeing whom she didn't approve of. Sha.s.sad gallantly, refrained from asking the next obvious questions: Did she have any idea where her husband might have planned to spend the night? Did she have any idea that he was seeing another woman?

The answers were obvious.

On the morning following Ryder's identification Detective Patrick Hearn had arrived at the offices of Bradford, Mehr & Company, where by five minutes past nine he had obtained a photocopy of Ryde's employment records. Subsequently, Hearn interviewed Ryde's co-workers, none of whom could suggest anyone harboring a grudge against the deceased. To those who seemed to have known Ryder best, Hearn posed one further question: "Do you happen to know if there were any women in addition to his wife?"

Invariably the answer was no, clearly and simply, except in one instance. A young man of Ryder's age, an executive trainee named Durban Hayvis, balked perceptibly before also answering no.

On a hunch, Hearn spent an extra hour going over address lists of company employees, hoping one a female one might read 246 East 73rd Street. None did. The closest address was 316 East 94th Street, the address of Mr. Hayvis. No immediate significance.

However, Hearn did much better two hours later.

He had gone to the Seventy-third Street building itself, and sought to interview the remaining tenants. He finally managed to locate the most elusive, a single girl, early twenties, going by the name of Debbie Moran. Hearn had been seeking her since Daniels had first mentioned the nocturnal activity in her apartment.

Debbie lived in Apartment 3-C, on the floor below Thomas Daniels. She invited the detective in and sat demurely on a large white vinyl couch with large plush cushions, her legs folded under her in tight jeans.

The detective sat across the room and questioned her.

Debbie Moran puffed a cigarette carefully and spoke politely with a hint of a New York accent. She gave her profession as a part-time actress and part-time model. Her hometown, she said, was St. Paul, Minnesota.

"Actress, huh?" asked Hearn with interest.