Sholavsky, it read, was Russian by birth. Born in Minsk a few years after the First World War. A dedicated Communist, he'd served in the Red Army through the forties, distinguishing himself as an artillery captain in Germany.

After the war, Sholavsky had been promoted, a lateral promotion as opposed to an upward one within the army. He'd been a.s.signed to the KGB, whereupon he'd been a.s.signed to Soviet Consulates in Oslo and Paris, in the guise of a clerk.

"See the fine print at the bottom?" asked Hearn.

"It says that Sholavsky died of illness in Turkey in 1965. And evidently someone somewhere believes that because these prints were among those of the dead."

"But they gave them to us anyway?" asked Sha.s.sad flatly, not yet realizing the proper implications.

"Yeah," said Hearn.

"They said,

"Hey, you idiots, cut the clowning. Stop wasting our time with old prints. Cut the s.h.i.t. "And just to show us that we'd taken the wrong print off the mirror, they gave me these. The print boys wanted to show us how wrong we were" Sha.s.sad eyed his partner coldly.

"But we're not wrong, are we?"

he said.

Hearn reached into his pocket.

"Here are the pictures we took" he said.

"I picked them up at forensics on my way uptown" Hearn laid out the prints of Jacobus through the telephoto police lens. Side view next to side view, full frontal next to full frontal.

The picture of Jacobus next to the deceased KGB agent, Sholavsky.

Jacobus was ten pounds heavier, balder, and wore more lines around the eyes. Otherwise, the conclusion was clear.

"It's the same man" said Sha.s.sad.

"The same man."

Hearn and Sha.s.sad exchanged long stares. They were both exhilarated and perplexed by their discovery. Yet they were simultaneously put off by it, too. What were they doing? After all, they were New York City homicide detectives, not counterespionage agents.

They were investigating a murder on a sidewalk, not a spy ring.

And yet." And yet . . .

One aspect of the case, formerly so inexplicable, now made sudden, brutal sense. The two men on Seventy-third Street, the pair who'd slain Ryder. Sha.s.sad had always thought they were professionals. But his theory had made no sense. What business did a janitor have dealing with trained killers and alerting them when to strike a designated victim? A janitor had no such business. But an alien agent? A man long since thought to be dead, masquerading for years as a night custodian? Professional a.s.sa.s.sins fit perfectly to a man like that.

After several moments of pause, Hearn spoke.

"Aram, look he said.

"We've got to make a decision. This doesn't look like our turf.

We could wrap this up as is and dump it on the Feds. Matching fingerprints, pictures, the corpse, everything. We'd never see it again, which might suit us fine."

"Yeah'" said Sha.s.sad, hesitantly, thoughtfully.

"You don't like that, do you?"

"h.e.l.l," said Sha.s.sad.

"What do we get paid to do? Solve murders, right? We run with it. I don't give a flying f.u.c.k where it takes us."

Hearn's face radiated with a smile.

"I knew you'd see it my way,"

he intoned.

"Have some tea!" said Sha.s.sad. He held up the cardboard cup as if to throw it at Hearn.

"Come on. Let's do some digging" And dig they did, a.s.sisted by the two other teams, McGowan and d.u.c.h.ecki, Grimaldi and Blocker. Within two days, Sha.s.sad and Hearn were in possession of new and perplexing details which contributed to the background of the Ryder murder case.

The developments were disjointed and obviously unconnected to Ryder himself.

Yet somewhere there was a covert connection. Sha.s.sad wanted it.

They all wanted it. Was it through Daniels? Sha.s.sad continued to work on the 'wrong man" theory, postulating that the victim had no link to the crime except bad luck. The most unorthodox murder case he'd ever encountered, Sha.s.sad admitted to himself in his most private thoughts.

And, unorthodox? How about Rota Films?

The stated business of the company was the import and export of films; commercial American films purchased for viewing abroad, and doc.u.mentary films about North America shot by Rota employees. Many Rota films were clearly nonpolitical studies of wildlife and geology. All of their original films were returned in sealed cans to Romania for developing and processing.

Such activities appeared innocuous enough on the surface. What bothered Aram Sha.s.sad about Rota films was what was left unsaid, the unseen factors lurking beneath the surface.

Little things, for example. Like the full-time armed guards who protected their Varick Street offices against 'burglaries" around the clock. Or like the bank their checks cleared through the same bank that Jacobus used.

Then there were the big things.

Rota, for example, owned no modern film equipment. They employed no professional camera operators. They had not purchased an American film for Romanian distribution since 1973. They had no apparent income and should have been losing inordinate sums of money for the past several years. Yet they were unquestionably solvent, maintaining two entire floors of office and 'production' s.p.a.ce in a st.u.r.dy-and recently reenforced-warehouse at the base of Varick Street, in the bowels of Manhattan.

And then there was the factor that piqued Sha.s.sad the most. Despite the fact that Rota produced few films and purchased fewer, they were a hornets' nest of activity when it came to export. Exposed films to be developed were constantly being shipped back to Europe. And therein lay an apparent sweetheart deal with the Romanian government.

So that the sealed film cans would not be 'accidentally" opened and exposed, Rota Films managed to send their products home via the diplomatic pouches, therefore at no time under the scrutiny of any Customs service. The pouches, and the sealed film cans therein, flew a triangular route between New York, Washington, and Bucharest. Then, once arrived on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Rota products would drift into oblivion.

Sha.s.sad called a meeting of all five detectives a.s.signed to the Ryder case for ten A.M. on a Monday. Five weeks had pa.s.sed since the murder of Ryder. He reviewed all information previously a.s.sembled and anything new any detective had to offer.

"Think of a dirty word that starts with an

"F," he then suggested obliquely In unison, three of the other detectives made a four-letter suggestion, the presence of Saint Theresa notwithstanding.

"No," answered Sha.s.sad, "the word I'm thinking of has five letters." He looked expectantly from face to face. His dark eyebrows were raised slightly, his thin lips pursed in antic.i.p.ation. When there were no takers after several seconds he offered the answer.

' "Front," " he said.