All the Rage

Except for religion—Nadia had stopped going to Sunday mass while Mom went daily—they got along fine. Well, maybe Mom was skeptical about her daughter the doctor taking a research job instead of practicing medicine like a "real doctor," but that was a minor point.

Moving out of Mom's and into her own place would not be a problem—Mom was independent and could handle living alone just fine. Moving in with Doug, on the other hand, would become an issue. She'd wail about her daughter living in sin and embark on a string of Novenas to try to save Nadia's soul.

What was the point in putting the poor woman through that torment? She and Doug would be married before long. Until then she'd hang in with the current arrangement, which wasn't hard to take. They saw plenty of each other, and living apart certainly hadn't stunted their sex life.

"Didn't want to start anything," Doug said.

"I know," she sighed. Reluctantly she pulled free of his embrace and rose. "Gotta go."

"Call me when you get in."

He always had her call him after she left, just to let him know she got home safe.

"How will I get through if your modem's got the line tied up?"

He held up the cell phone from the desk and hit a button. "I'll leave this on." He blew her a kiss and renewed his attack on the keyboard.

Another wave of apprehension eddied around her as she headed down to wait for her cab. Tonight she wished more than ever that she lived here.

17

Dressed in layers of rag shop clothing, Jack sat on a piece of cardboard in a shadowed doorway of Doyle's auctions across the street from Dr. Monnet's co-op building on East Eighty-seventh Street. He was keeping a low profile, not because he was afraid Monnet would spot him but because his current look wasn't exactly common in Carnegie Hill, especially just a few blocks up from the mayor's digs. The hour was late and traffic was light in this land of upscale shops and high-rise condos and co-ops.

Business must be good in Pharmaceuticals, he thought as he checked out the front of Monnet's building. Eight stories—tall stories—the apartments inside had to have ten-, twelve-, maybe fifteen-foot ceilings—with some sort of turretlike superpenthouse or common area on the roof. Three different kinds of brick, and large balconies recessed in the face. Even a small apartment in that place probably had a seven-figure price tag.

Since Dragovic was more secretive and harder to tail—and was probably already out in the Hamptons for the weekend anyway—Jack had decided to stick close to Monnet. Jack hadn't said anything to Nadia, but he wasn't ready just yet to buy into her idea that Dr. Monnet was a completely unwilling participant in any relationship he might have with the Slippery Serb. Guys like Dragovic did their fair share of arm-twisting, but lots of times the arm they were twisting had been offered to them. Jack was curious what else Monnet might be into.

But where was the good doctor? Jack had called his number before coming over, and a couple of more times from the pay phone on the corner. All he'd got was the answering machine.

That didn't necessarily mean the man wasn't home. Maybe he had caller ID and didn't pick up when the readout said "unknown caller." So Jack had parked himself here to keep an eye on the front entrance and see if Monnet showed—either coming or going.

But he'd been at it since nine and here it was almost midnight with no sign of him. No sense in hanging here any longer. If Monnet was in, he'd most likely stay in; if he was out, Jack wasn't going to learn anything by watching him come home. Time to pack it in.

Annoyed at the waste of time he could have better spent with Gia, he rose and folded his cardboard and headed west. He entered Central Park at Eighty-sixth Street and walked across the Great Lawn with his Semmerling in his hand in case some genius got the bright idea that a homeless guy might be an easy roll, but he reached the bright lights of Central Park West without incident.

Back in his apartment he stripped, showered, then set up the projection TV for the start of his Moreau festival—not Jeanne… Dr. Moreau. Jack had the tapes set up in chronological order. Unfortunately that meant playing the best first. The Island of Lost Souls with Laughton, Lugosi, and Arien was one of his all-time favorites and certainly the best of the Moreaus. Despite the inexplicable Hungarian accent of his man-wolf character, Bela remained unmatched as Sayer of the Law.

"Not to spill blood! That is the law! Are we not men?"

And then the guttural response from dozens of coarse throats not designed for human speech… "Are we not men? …"

But fatigue got the best of him. He dozed off with Charles Laughton complaining through his prissy little mustache and goatee about "the stubborn beast flesh creeping back…"

Somewhere in Jack's dreams Sal Vituolo became the Sayer of the Law, crying over and over, "Are we not men?… Are we not men?…"

FRIDAY

1

"Jesus H. Christ!"

It had changed.

Nadia sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the printout in her vibrating hands.

The diagram of the Loki molecule's structure—it looked different, was different. She couldn't say how, exactly, but she knew that some of the side chains present yesterday afternoon were missing this morning. For the life of her, though, she couldn't remember what they were.

She'd meant to check the printout last night when she came home but forgot. Probably because she hadn't thought it worth the effort, or maybe she'd subconsciously believed that Dr. Monnet had been kidding her. In Nadia's world, diagrams did not alter themselves.

Until now.

No-no-no. Don't go there. This is impossible.

Wait. She'd also printed out the empirical formula and memorized it. She pulled the sheet from her shoulder bag and unfolded it. It read "€24113404." But that was wrong. She was sure it had been C₂₇H₄₀O₃. Or had there been six oxygen atoms? Damn! She couldn't be sure. And that wasn't like her.

She checked the empirical formula against the molecular structure—they tallied perfectly.

She closed her eyes against the queasy, dizzy feeling stealing over her. This can't be happening. It's some sort of trick. Has to be.

Somehow someone had got into her shoulder bag and switched the printouts. But who? And when? She'd made the printouts just before she'd left GEM yesterday, and her bag hadn't been out of her sight since. And why the hell would someone go to all that trouble?

But a switch didn't explain her memory lapse. Even on a bad day she'd be able to remember at least one of the missing side chains, but this morning she was drawing a complete blank.

A strange mixture of unease and excitement started buzzing through her. Something very strange was going on here. That molecule—Loki—was some sort of singularity. It had properties she could not explain but not unfathomable properties; over at GEM she had tools that could help her unravel its mysteries. This would be ground breaking work. She thought of all the papers she could publish about Loki, all the lectures she would give. Barely thirty and she'd be world famous.

Well, famous among molecular biologists.

And best of all, she was getting paid to do what she'd be willing to do for free.

Nadia started pulling on her clothes. She wanted to be in the dry lab right now, but she had to stop by the diabetes clinic first. She'd do a fly-through there, then run straight over to GEM.

As she hurried down the hall toward the front door, passing various portraits of Pope John Paul and loops of dried palm fronds tacked to the walls, she heard her mother's voice call out from the other side of her bedroom door.

"I heard you, Nadj!"

"Heard me what, Mom?" she said, still moving.

"Take the Lord's name in vain. You shouldn't do that. It's a sin."

When did I do that? she wondered. But she had no time and less inclination to discuss it right now.

"Sorry, Mom."

Doug's right, she thought as she swung into the hallway. Got to move out. And soon.

2

Doug's eyes burned from staring at the monitor. He leaned back and rubbed them. He'd spent the whole night chipping away at the defenses in the GEM mainframe. Some he'd overcome—the partners' expense account records, for instance. He'd tooled through those and wasted a lot of time without finding anything unusual or even interesting.

But the defenses around the finances of GEM Basic were giving him fits. He could follow the money trail to the R & D division, but there it stopped. Details of where, when, and how that money was spent were locked in a cyber safe, and he didn't have the combination.

Not yet, anyway. He was making headway, but at a glacial pace.

"Need a break," he muttered as he rose and rotated his aching back.

He walked around the study, stretching, punching at the air to loosen up. He felt tired but wired. He was getting the hang of the GEM security codes. Whoever had set them up was good, but Doug was pretty good too. He'd pulled his share of all-nighters with the computer nerds back in college, hacking into various corporate and academic systems and leaving prank messages in the sysops' mailboxes. Nothing vicious, more like the cyber equivalent of water paint graffiti.

He glanced at the clock. Damn—almost eight and he had a couple of calls scheduled for late morning, plus he was delivering lunch to the staff of a group practice in Bay Shore.

He hated quitting now, but if he didn't get a little shut-eye he'd be useless the rest of the day. But then, why should he worry about sales calls and feeding nurses and receptionists if sales had no relationship to his commissions?

Good question, but it wasn't his style to blow off appointments. And besides, he had tonight and a three-day weekend ahead to complete the hack.

Reluctantly he shut off his laptop and staggered to the bedroom. He set the alarm for nine-thirty, then toppled onto the bed like a falling tree. The sheets still smelled vaguely of Nadj. He dozed off with a smile on his face.

3

"See!" said Abe, jabbing a juice-coated finger at the Daily News spread out on the counter before him. "See!"

"See what?" Jack said.

Breakfast with Abe again, back in their customary positions on either side of the counter. Jack had brought a couple of papayas this time. Sipping coffee, he watched as Abe quickly and expertly began quartering and seeding them, amazed that his chubby, stubby fingers could be so agile.

"Right here. More congested spleen being vented. It says some high school teacher in Jackson Heights tossed two unruly students out a second-story window."

"Probably a physics lab and they were having trouble with the concept of gravity."

"One's got a broken arm, the other a broken leg. Four cops it took to arrest the teach. Know what he said when they finally subdued him? 'They were talking while I was talking! Nobody talks when I'm talking! Next time they'll listen!'"

"Somehow I doubt there'll be a next—hey, what are you doing?"

Abe had just dumped a mass of black papaya seeds and their gooey matrix on the sports section of the Times.

"What? I should dump them on my nice clean counter?"

Jack wasn't going to get into that—the counter was anything but clean. "What if I wanted to read that?"

"Suddenly you're Mr. Yankee Fan? A jock you're not."

"I used to be a star hitter in Little League. And what if I wanted to know who won the Knicks game?"

"They didn't play."

"All right. The Nets, then."

"They lost to the Jazz, one-oh-nine to one-oh-one."

Jack stared at Abe. He believed him. Abe listened exclusively to talk radio. He'd probably heard the scores a dozen times already this morning. But Jack wasn't giving up. He rarely read a sports section outside of World Series time or Super Bowl season, but a principle was at stake here. He wasn't sure which one, but he'd come up with something.

"But sometimes I like to read about a game."

Abe had freed up the orange papaya fruit but left the crescents lounging in their rinds. Now he was cross-slicing the crescents into bite-size pieces.

"You know the score already. You need more? For why? You're going to read some self-styled mavin's postulations on why they won or why they lost? Who cares unless you're the coach. Team A won; Team B lost; end of story; when's the next game?" He gestured at the papaya with his knife. "Eat."

Jack popped a piece into his mouth. Delicious. As he reached for another piece, Abe gestured to where Parabellum was eyeing the gloppy mass on the sports section. The parakeet cocked his head left and right with suspicion, hungry for the seeds but not sure what to make of the goo.

"Such a fastidious bird I've got."

"You kidding?" Jack said. "You plopped that stuff down on George Veczy's column, and now he can't read the end."

Abe fixed him with a silent, over-the-reading-glasses stare.

Jack sighed. "All right then, hand me the Post, will you—unless you've messed up its sports section too."

Abe's hand started toward it then stopped. "Well, well, well. Here's something that might interest you."

"Something about the Mets, I hope," Jack said.

"A different kind of sportsman—your preppy rioter friends are in the news again."

"Sent to Sing-Sing, I hope."

"Quite the contrary. They're walking—all of them."

Jack's mood suddenly darkened. "Let me see that."

Abe gave the Metro Section a one-eighty spin and jabbed his finger at a tiny article next to the lottery numbers box. Jack scanned it once, then, not quite believing his eyes, read it again.

"None of them booked! Not one! No charges against any of them!"

"Due to 'a new development' in the case, it says. Hmmm… what do you think that could mean?"

Jack knew what Abe was getting at: Well-to-do guys, some of them undoubtedly with a connection or two in City Hall or Police Plaza, get a few strings pulled and sail home as if nothing had happened.

And one of them was Robert B. "Porky" Butler. The bastard who'd damn near killed Vicky hadn't spent a single night in jail—wasn't even being charged with anything.

"I've got to make a call."

Abe didn't offer his phone and Jack wouldn't have used it if he had. Not with so many people using caller ID these days.

Jack had retrieved Butler's phone number from his wallet by the time he reached the pay phone on the corner. He plunked in a few coins and was soon connected to the home of Robert B. Butler, alumnus of St. Barnabas Prep and attacker of little girls on museum steps.

When the maid or whoever it was answered the phone and asked in West African-accented English who was calling, he made up a name—Jack Gavin.

"I'm an attorney for the St. Barnabas Prep Alumni Association. I'd like to talk to Mr. Butler about the unfortunate incident Wednesday night and his injury. How is he doing, by the way?"

"Very well," the woman said.

"Is he in a lot of pain?"

"Hardly any."

Damn. He felt his jaw muscles tense. Have to fix that.

"May I speak to him a minute?"

"He's with a physical therapist right now. Let me check."

A minute later she was back. "Mr. Butler can't come to the phone right now, but he'll be glad to see you anytime this afternoon."

Keeping his voice even and professionally pleasant, Jack said he'd be over around one.

Scaring Vicky, endangering her life, and then skating on any charges…

He and Mr. Butler were going to have a little heart-to-heart.

4

Nadia sat in the sealed, dimly lit room and stared at the 3-D image floating in the air before her. The first thing she'd done upon reaching the GEM Basic lab was light up the imager and call up the Loki structure from memory: the Loki molecule—or rather its degraded form, which she'd begun thinking of as Loki-2—had appeared.

Changed, just like her printout.

OK. That could be explained by someone tampering with the imager's memory. But she had an ace up her sleeve. Before leaving yesterday she had scraped a few particles of the original Loki sample from the imager.

She removed the stoppered test tube from her pocket and dumped the grains into the sample receptacle. Something about the color… she couldn't say exactly what, but it wasn't right. She sat back and waited, then punched up the image. Her mouth went dry as the same damn molecule took shape before her.

The dry lab lightened, then darkened again as the door behind her opened and closed.

"Are you a believer yet?"

She turned at Dr. Monnet's voice. He stood behind her, looking as if he hadn't slept last night.

She swallowed. "Tell me this is a trick. Please?"

"I wish it were." He sighed. "You have no idea how much I wish this were some sort of hoax. But it is not."

"It has to be. If you were simply asking me to believe that this molecule alters its structure during the course of some 'celestial event,' I could buy that. I'd want to know how the 'event' effected the change, but I could imagine gravitational influence or something equally subtle acting as a catalyst, and I could handle that. But what we've got here—if we haven't been flim-flammed—is a molecule that not only mutates from one form to another but substitutes its new structure for all records of its original structure. In effect, it's editing reality. And we both know that's impossible."

"Knew," Dr. Monnet said. "That was what we assumed was true. Now we know different."

"Speak for yourself."

He smiled wanly. "I know how you feel. You are utterly confused, you are frightened and suspicious, yet you are also exhilarated and challenged. And the tug-of-war between all these conflicting emotions leaves you on the brink of tears. Am I right?"

Nadia felt her eyes begin to brim as a sob built in her throat. She wiped them and nodded, unable to speak.

"But it's true, Nadia," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Trust me. We are not being tricked. There's something here that challenges our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the physical world, about reality itself."

And that was what was so upsetting, making her crazy. What if the ability to reorder reality, along with the very memory of reality, were not confined to this one molecule? What if it were happening every day? How many times had she typed or written a word and then stopped and stared at it, thinking it looked wrong, that it was spelled some other way? She'd look it up and find most times that her original spelling had been correct, so she'd move on despite the feeling that it still looked wrong.

"We must know how it works," Dr. Monnet said. "And the first step toward an answer is to stabilize the molecule."

"How can you do that if you can't even remember what it looked like originally?"

He pulled a vial from his pocket and held it out to her. "Because we have a new supply."

Nadia stared at the tube for a heartbeat, then snatched it from him and with trembling hands began preparing a sample of the pale blue powder for the imager. When it was ready she fed it to the machine and waited.

Finally the molecule appeared and she wanted to cheer when she recognized it. This was what had been erased from her brain. Now the memory was back and, disturbing though its shape might be, she felt whole again.

"How… where did you find the unaltered Loki?"

"From the source. It doesn't change within the source, only after it's been removed from it."

She turned to face Dr. Monnet. "And are you still keeping the source a secret?"

"For now, yes."

Nadia wanted to scream at him to tell her. It had to be organic—a plant? An animal? What?

"And the mysterious celestial event? Does that remain a secret too?"

"I only held back on that until you'd seen for yourself the changes wrought by the event. The event itself is common, occurring a dozen, sometimes thirteen times per year: the new moon."

Nadia wet her lips. "The new moon? When was that?"

"Exactly eight-forty-two last night."

The cycle of the moon, one of the primal rhythms of the planet. And the new moon… a time when Earth's celestial night-light was out, blind to what was going on below on the darkest night of the cycle.

A chill ran over her skin.

"I'd like you to get started right away," Dr. Monnet was saying. "We have no time to lose. The Loki source may be… unavailable after this, and then we will have lost forever our chance to unlock its secrets."

"Don't you think we should get some outside help? I mean, if we've only got twenty-nine days…"

Dr. Monnet shook his head vigorously. "No. Absolutely not. Loki does not leave GEM. I thought I made that clear."

"You did, but—"

"No buts about it." His face paled, but Nadia wasn't sure whether from anger or fear. "Absolutely no outside consultation on this."

Nadia wanted to wail that he couldn't—shouldn't—put all this responsibility on a beginner like her.

"You are going to help me, I hope," she said.

"Of course. To save you time, I'll show you all the dead ends I've already explored. After that, I'm counting on you to come up with a new perspective."

Uncertainty tickled her gut. "I don't know if you should count too heavily—"

He held up a hand. "I never told you this, but before I hired you I put in a call to Dr. Petrillo."

She stiffened. Her research mentor during her fellowship—the Grand Old Man of anabolic steroids. "What did he say?"

"What didn't he say! I couldn't get him to stop talking about you. He was overjoyed you were staying in research instead of 'wasting' your talents in clinical practice. So you shouldn't underestimate your abilities, Nadia. I'm certainly not. But as an extra incentive: if you stabilize the Loki molecule within the next four weeks, I am authorized to offer you a bonus."

"Really, that's not necessary."

He smiled. "You shouldn't say that until you hear the amount. How does one million dollars sound?"

Nadia was struck dumb. She opened her mouth but it took a few seconds before she was capable of coherent speech. "Did… did you say—T

"Yes. A lump sum of one million. You can—"

Pat, a middle-aged tech with salt-and-pepper hair, knocked on the dry lab door before pushing it open. Fluorescent light streamed in from the hall.

"Excuse me, Dr. Monnet," she said, "but Mr. Garrison's on the phone."

Dr. Monnet looked irritated. "Tell him I'll call him back."

"He say's it's urgent. 'An emergency' was how he put it."

"Oh, very well." He turned to Nadia. "I'll be right back. Nothing is more important right now than this project."

I guess not, she thought. A million dollars… a million dollars!

The words kept echoing through her head as she waited, fantasizing what she could do with that amount of cash. She and Doug could get married right away, put a down payment on a house, get his software company up and running, jump out of limbo, and start living.

When a good ten minutes had passed and Dr. Monnet didn't return, Nadia stepped outside and signaled to Pat.

"Where's Dr. Monnet?"

She pointed toward the door. "He got off the phone with Mr. Garrison and hurried upstairs."

Nothing more important right now than this project, hmmm? she thought as she returned to the dry lab. Obviously something was. She hoped Mr. Garrison's emergency wasn't too serious or personal.

She stepped up to the imager and began rotating the 3-D Loki image back and forth, hoping the more she saw of it, the less discomfiting it would seem.

I'm going to beat you, she thought, staring at the molecule. Not for the bonus… this is the challenge of a lifetime, and I'm going to show I can do it.

But she wouldn't turn down that bonus. No way.

5

"We've been hacked!" Kent Garrison said as soon as the soundproof door was pulled shut and latcned.

Kent, flushed, suit coat off, crescents of perspiration darkening the armpits of his bulging blue shirt, stood at the end of the table.

"Not true," Brad Edwards said. Dressed in a perfectly tailored blue blazer, he sat hunched forward in his chair across from Luc, twisting his delicate hands over the mahogany surface. "They said they think someone got past the fire wall, but they're not sure."

Stunned, Luc sank into a chair. "What? How? I thought we were supposed to have the best security available."

"Well, apparently we don't." Kent directed a venomous stare at Brad who was responsible for the computer system. Kent tended to be full of bluster except when Dragovic was around.

"I was assured we had a state-of-the-art fire wall," Brad said. His usually perfect hair was in disarray, as if he'd been pulling at it. "But that was last year. Hackers learn new tricks too."

"Why aren't they sure?" Luc asked.

"They found evidence of temporary alterations in codes that could have innocent causes." Brad ran a hand across his mouth. "I don't pretend to understand it all."

Kent couldn't seem to stand still. He paced in an arc at the end of the table. "If it was some fourteen-year-old with too much time on his hands, I don't give a shit. He might have screwed up some data, but he'd never be able to make any sense of what he found."

"What if it wasn't a kid?" Luc said. "What if it was someone looking for something on us?"

"Like who, for instance?"

"One of our competitors. We're playing with the big boys now. Or maybe Dragovic hired someone. Or worse yet, a corporate raider looking for inside information before making a move on us."

Finally Kent sat down. He rubbed his eyes. "Oh, God."

Luc turned to Brad. "What countermeasures are we taking?"

Brad perked up at this. "The software people are going to link up to our system and monitor it. If anyone breaks in, they'll know, and they'll trace him."

"And then what?"

"We throw the fucking book at him," Kent said. "Unless of course it's our friend Milos, in which case we'll say pretty please don't do that anymore because it makes us very nervous."

Luc said, "But what if the hacker learns what we're doing with the money that's supposedly going to R & D?"

Silence around the table. An expose would lead to an audit, an audit would eventually lead to Loki, and that would put them all behind bars for a long, long time.

Brad Edwards let out a long, tortured groan as he shook his head. "I don't know how much more of this I can take. I did not enter into this venture to become a criminal. We started with a straight honest business—"

"That was going down the tubes!" Kent said.

"And so we got in bed with the devil to save it."

"I don't see you hopping out of bed."

Brad stared at his hands. "Sometimes I wish the shit would hit the fan. Then this whole ordeal would be over. Maybe then I could sleep at night. When was the last time either of you had a decent night's sleep?"

Good question, Luc thought. If not for a few glasses of his best wine before retiring, he doubted he'd sleep at all.

"Cut the crap, will you?" Kent said, his face now nearly as red as his hair. "If you go up, don't think you'll be doing your time in some federal country club! We're talking drugs, here, and worse. With what they'll have on us, you'll spend the rest of your life in Rikers or Attica, where they'll pass you around as an after-dinner treat."

"Me?" Brad said, his lower lip quivering. "Just me? What about you?"

Kent shook his head. "I'll blow a big hole through my brain before it ever gets that far."

Luc wanted to scream. He'd heard all this before. "Can we return to the matter at hand? What do we do if this hacker breaks in and learns enough to bring us down?"

Kent did not miss a beat. "He gets the Macintosh treatment." He looked around, daring anyone to challenge him.

Luc had a flash of Macintosh's face as he died… the bulging eyes, the startled O of his open mouth…

Not again… please, not again…

"Let us hope we won't be faced with that choice," he said. "If it was indeed an intrusion, perhaps it was just a capricious stunt by an otherwise disinterested hacker who will target another system tonight."

"But if he doesn't," Brad said. "If he chooses to come back, we'll track him and find him."

They fell into silence. The meeting was over, but no one moved to leave. Luc didn't know how the others felt, but the world beyond their insulated, isolated, soundproof, bug-proof boardroom seemed full of danger and menace, a giant trap waiting to snap shut on him. He wanted to delay venturing outside this sheltering cocoon as long as possible.

6

Jack spent much of the late morning on his computer, designing an attorney business card. He'd used the program only twice before and still hadn't got the hang of it. He botched the first couple of attempts, then came up with a design that looked like the real thing. Running off a single sheet yielded a dozen cards. Plenty.

At one o'clock exactly, showered, shaved, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie, John Gavin, attorney-at-law, presented himself and his brand-new card to the doorman at the Millennium Towers on West Sixty-seventh Street. A call upstairs confirmed tbat he was expected, and he was pointed toward the elevator.

The Butler condo was on the twenty-first floor. On his way up Jack reviewed his options. He hadn't yet worked out just how he was going to handle Butler—hang him out the window for a while or maybe break his other leg—a lot would depend on how Jack felt when he saw him again. Right now he was in a pretty good mood. A shame to spoil it like this, but some things you could let slide; other things you couldn't.

A private nurse, her black skin seeming even darker against her white uniform, greeted him at the door. Jack recognized her accent from his phone call. She led him to the study and left him with Mr. Butler.

Jack felt the old fury scald his insides again as he stared at the bastard. Butler wore a Princeton sweatshirt and matching sweatpants with one leg cut off at mid-thigh to accommodate his cast. And he still looked like Porky Pig.

"Gavin, right?" he said, thrusting out a hand. "Bob Butler. Thanks for coming over." When Jack didn't shake hands, Butler said, "Something wrong?"

"Don't I look familiar?" Jack said.

"Not really." He smiled apologetically. "I assume you're a Barny if you're working for the alumni association, but I can't recognize some of the guys in my own class, let alone—"

"Last night," Jack said through his teeth.

Butler's smile faded. He averted his eyes. "Yeah. Last night. I suppose you want to know about that."

"I know all about it," Jack said. "I was there, remember?"

Butler looked up at him again. "You were?"

Jack leaned closer, pointing to his face. "Remember?"

"No," Butler said. "Everything's kind of a blur."

If he was lying, he was damn good at it.

Butler rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw. "I remember being at the reception hall. Because it was our twenty-fifth, we mixed up a batch of our traditional 'everything punch.' We lugged in a galvanized tub and filled it with blocks of ice, fruit juices, and bottles of the cheapest vodka and rum we could find, just like in the old days. I remember downing a couple of glasses of that; I remember some of the guys getting loud and a couple of them even swinging fists at each other. After that…" He shrugged.

"You don't remember being in a mob that terrorized a bunch of people on the museum steps?"

He sighed and nodded. "I remember being in the street, then on some steps, fighting with… someone. But that's pretty much it. I don't remember details, though. I'm told I had a concussion. I woke up in the hospital with a broken leg and no idea how I got it. You say you were there. Did you see me?"

Jack nodded, watching for the slightest hint that he was lying.

"Did… did I do anything… bad?"

Jack forced calm. "You tried to kill an eight-year-old girl."

"What?" The depth of horror in Butler's expression could not be faked. "I did what?" His eyes pleaded with Jack. "Tell me she's all right! Please tell me I didn't hurt a child!"

"Somebody pulled her away from you just as you tried to chuck her off the top of the steps."

"Thank God!"

Butler's genuine relief cooled Jack's anger, hut that didn't let him off the hook.

"You guys had to be doing more than cheap rum and vodka to mess up your heads like that."

"We were, but we didn't know about it. At least most of us didn't. But that bastard Dawkins did."

"Dawkins?"

"Yes. Burton Dawkins. Didn't you hear?"

"I'm afraid not."

"That's why I thought you were here—about Burt. The police were immediately suspicious that the punch had been drugged, so they tested it right away and found out it was. That's why we were released without being charged. They arrested Dawkins for spiking the punch." He shook his head. "Who would have thought a dweeb like him would do something like that. But the cops caught him red-handed with a whole bag of the drug."

"What drug?"

"They haven't said yet, but I called someone I know down at the commissioner's office, and he told me they think it's some new designer drug that's been popping up all over the country the past few months."

"What's it called?"

"He said it's sold under lots of names. They didn't have the lab report back yet, but he suspected it was a highly concentrated form called Berzerk."

"Sounds appropriate."

"I'm told it's spelled with a z."

"Like the old arcade game."

Butler flashed a smile. "Yeah. I remember that. Used to be my favorite when I was a kid. But there was nothing fun about this stuff. Potent as all hell. Between you and me, I smoked my share of weed in my younger days, snorted coke once or twice, did some speed-rite-of-passage stuff, you know? I've been high before, but I've never felt like I did the other night. I remember this sensation of awesome power, as if I were king of the world. It was truly wonderful for a while, but then it turned into this anger, this… this rage because this was my world and everything in it belonged to me and there were these other people around who were keeping me from what was rightfully mine." He grinned sheepishly. "I know it sounds insane now, but at the time it all made perfect sense. I felt like a god."

Jack hadn't heard of anything that did that to your head, but then he didn't hang with druggies.

"Sounds like you had a whopping dose of whatever it was."

"I guess so. I just know I don't want any more. Ever." He shook his head. "Imagine… trying to hurt a child. I've never even spanked one of my own kids—not once." He set his jaw. "Let me tell you something: Burt Dawkins is not going to get away with this. When the criminal courts are through with him, I'm going to haul him into court and sue his ass for every penny he's worth."

"You do that," Jack said, feeling deflated now that his anger had leaked away. He stepped toward the door. "Well, I've learned what I came for. I'll be in touch."

"Wait," Butler said. "You were there. Did you see how I got hurt?"

"Um, yeah. When someone grabbed the little girl from you, you, um, tripped and went down the steps yourself."

He paled. "I could have been killed. I guess I'm pretty lucky."

"You've got that right," Jack said, turning away.

7

"You're not hungry?" Mom said in her thick Gdansk accent. "Or you don't like my cooking no more?"

Nadia stared down at her half-empty plate. "You still make the best pierogies in the world, Mom. I'm just not that hungry."

Her mother sat across the rickety table from her in a kitchen where the smells of cooked cabbage and boiled kiszka permeated the walls. A thin, angular woman with a heavily lined face that made her look older than her sixty-two years, but her bright eyes still had a youthful twinkle.

Mom had already finished eating and was working toward the end of her second boilermaker. She nursed two of them every night, sitting there with a bottle of Budweiser and a shot of Fleischman's rye—"Flesh-man's," as she said it—alongside. She'd pour an ounce or two of beer into a tumbler, sip it down, then pour a little more; every so often she'd nip some of the rye. Up until a few years ago she'd have been smoking a Winston as well. Nadia had got her off the cigarettes, finally convincing her that they were what had done Dad in, but Mom wasn't about to give up the boiler-makers. This was how she'd learned to drink, and no one, not Nadia or anyone else, was going to change that.

"You have a fight with Douglas? That is why you're eating dinner with your mother on a Friday night?"

Nadia shook her head and pushed a pierogi around her plate. "No, he's just busy."

"Too busy for the girl he's to marry?"

"It's a project he's working on."

Doug had said he wanted to get back to his GEM mainframe hack before he got cold. He was determined to break through the final barriers tonight. She thought of him alone, hunched over his keyboard, not eating or drinking, totally absorbed in the data flashing across his screen. She'd been a little hurt, but then she realized she was developing an obsession of her own.

"Work, work, work. That's all you two do. That's all young people do these days. At least now that you are not in residency, you have off the weekends. You will see him tomorrow."

"Maybe."

Mom's eyebrows lifted. "Saturday he is working too?"

"Not him. Me."

Now her eyes fairly bulged. "You? This company is paying you by the hour?"

"No. It's salaried. But there's a project—"

"If they not pay you for going in on Saturday you should not go. See, if you were working as a real doctor with real patients instead of this research silliness you would make extra for doing extra."

"I will. I get a bonus if I complete the project before a certain date."

Mom shrugged. "A bonus? A big bonus?"

Nadia didn't want to tell her the million-dollar figure. She didn't want Mom working herself up with anticipation.

"Very big."

"A big-enough-to-be-working-on-Saturday bonus? Big enough so that after you get it you will quit this company and become a real doctor with real live patients?"

Nadia laughed. "Ooooh, yes."

"Then I think," Mom said, smiling, "that you should go to work tomorrow."

8

Sal Vituolo huddled on an East Hampton dune and wondered what the hell he was doing. Freakin' long ride to get here, and the sand being damp and chilly wasn't helping matters much. He hoped this was going to be worth all the trouble.

And expense. This Repairman Jack guy didn't come cheap. Sal had tried to pay him in car parts but it was cash—and lots of it—or nothing. He hadn't particularly featured handing over that much dough with no receipt, no guarantee. Guy could be a scammer and just take off, but sometimes you just had to put aside everything you'd learned in the school of hard knocks and go with your gut. Sal's gut said this Jack was a stand-up guy.

But maybe not wrapped too tight. Tires? What did he want with a freakin' truckload of old tires?

The guy had shown up this afternoon to pick up the rubber and his money. Then he told Sal to go out and rent a videocam, a professional model with the best zoom lens and low-light capabilities, and haul it out here to where he could see Dragovic's house. Keep your distance but get as close as you can without being spotted, he'd said. Sal wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but here he was.

He glanced around uneasily, hoping no one was watching him—especially no one from Dragovic's crew. No telling what would happen to him if he got caught spying on the party.

He checked his watch. Ten o'clock. Jack had said start taping at ten, so Sal flicked on the power and settled into the eyepiece. He'd been practicing with the videocam since he got here and had the workings down pretty good. At maximum zoom, the telephoto night lens magnified the light and the house to the point where Sal felt like he was looking at the place from twenty feet away.

He'd peeped the party off and on. Looked like the Slippery Serb was tossing a bash for his boys and his big customers. The crowd was all guys, some in suits, some in sweaters or golf shirts. Sal knew the type from their haircuts and their swagger—Eurotrash and local tough guys, probably the kind Dragovic's lawyers would refer to in court as "business associates."

Sal had watched them chow down on the best damn buffet he'd ever seen—whole lobsters, soft-shelled crabs, a sushi chef, carvers serving everything from prime-rib to filet, a raw bar, a caviar bar with bottles of flavored vodkas jutting from a mound of shaved ice—until he got so hungry he had to turn off the camera.

As he focused the scene now, he noticed something new going on at the party. A bunch of bikinis were splashing around in the pool. Where'd they come from? The guys were all hanging around the water, sipping after-dinner drinks, smoking fat cigars, and watching.

Sal felt his shoulder muscles, knot… He'd bet his life that somewhere in that crowd were the guys who splattered Artie all over Church Avenue. He could be looking at them right now.

What am I doing videotaping a party? What for? And where do Jack and my old tires come in?

Then he heard the helicopter.

9

"My, what interesting people," Cino said.

Her sarcastic tone irritated Milos. They stood in the corner where the main house joined its eastern wing. Drinks in hand—Ketel One for Milos, the ever-present Dampierre for Cino—they leaned on the railing of the highest tier of one of the multilevel decks and surveyed Milos's guests below.

Cino wore a high-collared embroidered kimonolike dress of red silk that clung to every curve of her slim body on its way to her ankles. With her dark bangs and jet eyes, she looked Oriental tonight.

"I'm sure you'll be more impressed with Sunday's guest list," he said. "The beautiful people are more your type. But these folk"—he gestured with a sweep of his arm—"are the ones who make this place and this party possible. My buyers, sellers, suppliers, and distributors."

"Distributors of what?" Cino asked with a mischievous grin as she leaned against him like a cat. She'd been hitting the champagne since midafternoon and her glittering eyes said she was feeling little pain.

Milos returned her smile. "Of the many items I import and export."

"What kind of items?"

"Whatever is in demand," he said.

"And the bathing beauties," she said, jutting her chin at the pool. "Are they part of your distribution network too?"

"Hardly. They're items in demand, which I imported from the city especially for the occasion."

He'd hired the best-looking girls from a number of strip clubs and vanned them out for the night. Their job was an easy one: party, have a good time, wear very little, and be very friendly.

"Ah," Cino said. "Window dressing."

"More like party favors."

Cino seemed to think this was very funny, and Milos enjoyed the ringing sound of her laughter as he watched the girls. Nature and silicone had provided them with fabulous bodies. They were on display now, but their real work would begin after they dried off. They had been instructed as to the pecking order of the guests and, keeping that in mind, were to pair off with anyone who was interested.

Tonight was supposedly a little bonus for the key people in the network of drugs and guns and currency that fed Milos's operations. Many races down there on the patio: Italians, Greeks, Africans, Koreans, Mexicans, all soon to be part of his growing empire. His was now an international business, and thus he had to be an international man and deal with everyone. Of course for his personal operations and security he used only full-blooded Serbs, hard, loyal men, blooded in battle.

But this gathering was more than just a party. It was a testimonial, an affirmation of sorts. They were here as Milos's guests. Some of them might harbor an inkling in the backs of their minds that they could be his equal, but tonight should lay that to rest. This wasn't neutral territory where equals meet. They had come to his place, where he called the shots; they were enjoying themselves on his tab and getting a good look at his impressive new digs. They were in a position where the fact that Milos Dragovic was the man was being pounded home every minute of their stay.

They were down there with the bimbos; he was up here with the supermodel. Didn't that say it all.

Forty-eight hours from now things would be very different. No business associates, no bodies in the pool. Sunday would be purely social, to establish and enhance his status among the big names out here.

"What's that noise?" Cino said.

Milos recognized the rapid wup-wup-wup that seemed to come from everywhere. "Sounds like a helicopter."

And then he saw it, maybe a hundred feet up, gliding in from over the ocean. A bulging net of some sort dangled beneath it. Milos couldn't see what was in the net, but it looked full of whatever it was. Some new way of fishing, maybe? But no water was dripping from the net.

Whatever he was up to, Milos thought, the pilot shouldn't be flying that sort of cargo over homes. If that net should tear…

"Oh, look," Cino said. "He's stopped right overhead."

That was when the first suspicion that something might be wrong flitted through Milos's mind. It became stronger when he noticed that the helicopter didn't have any numbers on it. He didn't know the exact rules, but every damn aircraft he'd ever seen had a string of numbers on the fuselage. Either this one didn't have any or someone had masked them.

Milos looked around and saw that the party had stopped dead. All his guests were standing still, looking up. Even the babes in the pool had stopped their splashing and were pointing at the sky.

"What do you think he's up to with all those tires?" Cino said.

Tires? Milos looked up again. Damned if she wasn't right. That net was full of tires. Must have been fifty of them at least.

What's that asshole doing dangling all those tires right over my house?

And then the net opened…

And the tires tumbled free…

And fell directly toward him and the house.

Cino let out a high-pitched scream.

"Get inside!" Milos shouted as he turned to do just that, but she was already on her way, moving remarkably fast on her sky-high high heels.

Milos dived through the door just as the first tires hit the roof with the staccato thudding of a giant doing drumrolls with telephone poles, accenting with the cymbal crash of shattering skylights. An instant later other tires landed directly on the deck-patio area, smashing railings, overturning tables, wrecking the greenhouse.

It wouldn't have been so bad if that had been it. But the tires on the ground didn't stop on impact; they kept moving, bouncing ten, fifteen feet in the air in all directions. The ones on the roof were even worse, caroming off the pitched tiles and sailing toward the pool.

Milos ducked as a tire slammed into a sliding glass door just a few feet to his left, cracking it but not breaking all the way through. Screams and panicked shouts rose from outside. Milos clung to the door frame, watching in horror as his party dissolved into chaos.

The girls in the pool were lucky—they ducked underwater as tires splashed around them. But the men on the decks and patio didn't have that option. They scrambled around, fleeing in all directions, bumping into each other, occasionally knocking each other down as the tires rained on them, flattening them, knocking them into the pool, upending tables, and sending food and flaming chafing dishes flying. The randomness of the assault, the unpredictable, helter-skelter nature of the trajectories added terror to the chaos.

Where was his security? He scanned the tumult and found a couple of them still upright. Splattered with an assortment of desserts, they crouched by one of the raised decks with their guns out and raised, eyes searching the sky. But the helicopter was nowhere in sight.

With the tires bouncing from the direction of the main house and the wings hemming them in on both sides, those guests still upright had nowhere to run except toward the beach. The tires bounced in pursuit, catching up to some and knocking them face-first into the sand.

It seemed as if the tires would never stop bouncing, but eventually, after what seemed like aeons, the last one wobbled to a halt. Milos stepped outside and gazed in horror at the shambles that had once been the pride of his grounds. Every square foot had suffered some damage. The girls were wailing as they crawled shivering and dripping from the pool. The cracked decks and patio were littered with debris and battered men struggling to their feet, some groaning, some cradling broken limbs, a few out cold and lying where they had landed. It looked like a war zone, as if a bomb had exploded.

But worse than any physical destruction was the deep, hemorrhaging wound to Milos's pride. Guests in his home, proud men here at his invitation, had been injured or—worse—caused to run like panicked children. Their humiliation while under his aegis was a double disgrace for Milos.

Who would want to do this to him? Why?

He searched above for the helicopter, but it was gone, as if it had never been.

Never had Milos felt so impotent, so mortified. He fought the urge to scream his rage at the moonless sky. He had to remain poised, appear to be in control—as much as one could be amid such havoc—and then his gaze came to rest on the tire that had almost smashed through into his living room. It was mud-stained and bald, so worn that its steel belts showed through in spots.

Junk! Bad enough that he'd been attacked in his home, but he'd been assaulted with garbage!

With a cry that was half roar, half scream, he picked up the tire and hurled it the rest of the way through the window.

As he watched it roll across his living room carpet, Milos Dragovic swore to find out who had done this and to have his revenge.

10

Sal's body was bucking so hard from repressed laughter he had to turn off the camera. If only he could scream it out, lie on his back and guffaw at the sky! Of course that might attract the kind of attention that would stop all laughs for good. He wiped his eyes on his sleeves and, still giggling, hurried off the dune toward his car.

Oh, God, that was wonderful. Those tires bouncing all over the place, tough guys running around like a bunch of cockroaches when the light goes on, screeching like little old ladies. The Slippery Serb's gotta be shitting a brick! And I got it all on tape!

When he reached his car he sat in the front seat and caught his breath. He stared out the window at the empty dunes.

Bad night for Dragovic, yeah, but was it enough for what he'd done to Artie? No. Not nearly enough.

But it was a start.

11

Jack crouched in the doorway across East Eighty-seventh Street from Monnet's building and listened to the radio on his headphones to pass the time.

He'd been on the Monnet trail for the past six or seven hours, following him from the corporate offices on Thirty-fourth over to the GEM production plant in the Marine Terminal area of Brooklyn, then to a warehouse down the street from the plant. Monnet had stayed late at the warehouse, returning home about an hour ago, and hadn't budged since.

Jack wasn't sure what he was looking for—something suspicious, something he could tag and follow up. So far he'd come up empty.

He spun the tuner dial to an all-news station in time to catch a story about a scandal in the police department. The drug seized in connection with the preppy riot had been stolen and an inert substance substituted in its place. Internal Affairs had launched an investigation.

So what does this mean now? Jack wondered. That classmate Butler had mentioned—Burt Dawkins, wasn't it?—walks? He shook his head. Great system. And he had no inclination to go after Dawkins himself. The link was too thin.

Jack's beeper vibrated through his pocket against his thigh. He checked the readout: one of the Ashe brothers. He went to the phone on the corner and used one of his calling cards to pay for the call.

Joe Ashe came on the line. "Twin Air."

"How'd it go?"

Joe started laughing. "What a pisser you are, boy! What a evil pisser! Frank was laughin' so hard he damn near put us in the drink! Those tires"—the word came through his Georgia accent as "tahrs"—"was bouncin' ever' which way. You shoulda been there, Jack! You shoulda seen!"

"Oh, I'll see it," Jack said, hoping Sal had made a good tape. Exhilaration bubbled through him. It had been a wild idea, one that easily could have flopped. "I thought it might work, but you never know until you do it."

"Jack, it worked so well I don't know why the Air Force don't use tires instead of bombs next time we have another Gulf War or Yugoslavia thang. You know how many tons and tons of old tires we got in this country that we gotta go out and bury or sink in the ocean ever' year? We could load 'em all into B-52s and drop 'em from fifty thousand feet. Can you imagine the commotion of a zillion tires landing after a ten-mile drop? Why, they'll be bouncin' right over buildings is what. Panic in the streets, man. If we'd thoughta this before, we coulda just buried Baghdad and Belgrade and got rid of a whole pile of junk to boot."

"I'd appreciate it if we kept the U.S. Air Force out of this for the time being," Jack said. "We're still set for another run on Sunday, right?"

"Set? We can't hardly wait! Almost seems a sin to be gettin' paid for this! Say, y' know, I was thinkin' maybe I'd add a little music on Sunday, y'know, like special for the occasion."

"Joe, I'd rather you—"

"You remember that ol' Bobby Vee song, 'Rubber Ball,' and the part where it goes 'Bouncy-bouncy, bouncy-bouncy.' Wouldn't it be cool if we could be blastin' that from some speakers while all those tires—"

Jack had to smile. "Let's keep it simple, Joe. Once we start embellishing, we start asking for trouble."

"The ol’ KISS rule, huh? I gotcha. Just a thought."

"And a good one too, but let's do the second one just like the first, OK."

"You got it, boy."

Jack waited for Joe to hang up, then hit the # key to make another call.

12

His guests had gone now, most managing to exit under their own power, some needing assistance. After profuse apologies, Milos had seen the last one off, then got down to business.

He'd had Kim set up Cino in the theater room with the new Keanu Reeves film on the plasma screen and a fresh bottle of Dampierre in an ice bucket as her companion, then had put the Korean in charge of the caterer's staff to start them on the massive clean up job. That taken care of, Milos lined up his men in the security office in the basement.

This was his nerve center, crammed with state-of-the-art electronics. The feeds from all the surveillance cameras were monitored here; all outgoing calls of a sensitive nature were routed through here for scrambling. Milos had spent a fortune on this room so he could stay in the Hamptons and still run his operations with security. But tonight none of it had helped.

Sometimes for effect he acted like a madman, as he'd done in the GEM conference room yesterday. But tonight was no act. He stalked back and forth, red-faced, punching the air, screaming his rage at these men for allowing this to happen. He knew it was not their fault, but he felt he had to loose this pressure inside him or explode into a thousand bleeding, twitching pieces.

Finally he wound down. He stood staring at his silent, white-faced men. He knew what they were thinking: would he make an example of one of them as he had in the past?

Nothing Milos would have liked better—make someone the fall guy and shoot him dead right here. But that would be a waste of a good man, and if he was going to find out who did this, he'd need every one of them.

"Does anyone have anything to say?" he said when the silence had stretched to the breaking point.

More silence.

"Have any of you noticed anyone strange hanging around, anyone snowing unusual interest? You, Vuk." He singled out an ex-corporal from the Yugoslav army who liked to bleach his hair. The man blinked but otherwise remained calm. "You've been on patrol this week. You see anyone paying too much attention to the house?"

"No, sir," he said. "Ivo and I ran off a man and his wife yesterday, but they were just walking on the beach. When they stopped to look, we moved them on. The wife didn't want to go, but the man gave us no trouble."

Milos nodded. "What is on the security cameras?" he said to Dositej, the surveillance man.

Dositej jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the half-dozen monitor screens in the surveillance booth. "I've been checking last week's tapes, sir. Haven't found anything yet."

"Nothing?" Milos said, feeling his anger rising again. "Nothing?"

Just then a phone rang. Dositej, anxious to duck the spotlight, hurried to answer it.

"It's Kim," he said after listening a few seconds. "Says you've got a call."

"I told him no interruptions!"

"He says it's from someone who wants to know if you got any old tires you care to part with."

Everyone started talking at once. Milos felt a sudden calm. He didn't have to search out the enemy; the enemy was coming to him.

Grabbing the phone from Dositej, he pointed to Mihailo, his balding, bespectacled communications man. 'Trace the call." Then he spoke to Kim upstairs. "Put him through."

A crisp, WASP-inflected voice that sounded like a cross between George Plimpton and William F. Buckley came on the line. "Mr. Dragovic? Is that you?"

Milos could hear the same words echoing from across the room where their conversation was playing from a speaker on the communications console.

"Yes," Milos said, straggling to modulate his tone. "Who is this?"

"I'm the president of the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee, Mr. Dragovic. Did you get our message tonight?"

"Message?" Milos said, playing along. "What message?"

"The tires, dear boy, the tires. Surely you noticed them, although considering the simply dreadful house you've built there, I suppose it's possible you might have missed them. Anyway, I'm calling just in case you've missed the point."

Milos felt his teeth grinding. "Just what was the point?"

"That you're not wanted out here, Mr. Dragovic. You are cheap and vulgar and we will not tolerate your type amongst us. You are a toxin and we are out to clean you up. You are garbage and your house a waste dump, and that is how we intend to treat it until you decide to pack up your trashy self, your trashy friends, your trashy lifestyle, and go back where you came from."

Milos clutched the receiver in a death grip and sputtered a reply. "Who are you?"

He heard an exultant "Yes!" from the communications console. He looked over and saw Mihailo giving him the OK sign. He'd traced the call.

"I believe I told you: this is not the militant wing of the LVIS, this is the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee, and we mean business. Be warned, Mr. Dragovic," the man on the phone was saying. "We are quite serious. This is not a game."

"You think not?" Milos said, smiling. "I say it is—one that two can play." He hung up and turned to Mihailo. "Who is he?"

"Can't say," Mihailo said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses nervously, "but he was calling from the city—a pay phone in the East Eighties."

Milos cursed silently. He'd been hoping for a name, but he should have known the man would not call from his home.

"I think I've got something," Dositej called from the video monitoring room.

Milos stepped into the cubicle where Dositej was leaning close to a monitor, his nose almost touching its screen. "What is it?"

"I remember now. This car came by yesterday. Pulled right up to the front gate and stopped. I was about to send someone out when it pulled away."

Milos saw the grainy image of a man staring at the house from the passenger seat of an American-made sedan.

"I know him," said Ivo. "He's the one we chased off the beach."

Milos turned. Vuk and Ivo stood side by side. "You think he could be the one on the phone?"

Vuk shook his head. "Not the same voice. And the man we chased was too afraid of a fight to try anything like tonight."

"I'm not so sure," Ivo said, squinting at the screen. "We saw a man who did not want to fight, but I would not say he was afraid."

Milos considered Ivo the more perceptive of the two. And he did not bleach his hair, which was another plus. "We must find this man."

"No problem," Dositej said. Milos turned and saw the image of the car frozen on the screen. Dositej was pointing to the bumper. "There's his license plate."

Milos felt a grin spreading across his face as he stared at the numbers. Whoever you are, he thought, I will find you. And I will make you wish you had never been born.

13

Luc cradled the bottle of 1959 Chateau Lafite-Rothchild in his arms like a baby. He smiled at the thought. He and Laurell had had no children—thank God… she probably would have turned them into monsters just like her—but his wines were a consolation. Better, in fact. Each year, instead of costing you more, a good wine increased in value as well as flavor.

This Lafite, for instance. One of the finest ever produced, and never abandoned by its true parents. Every couple of decades or so Chateau Lafite sent over a team of experts from France to recork and top off its older vintages. This particular bottle had been recorked by the cMteau in the mideighties; they'd even affixed a label as proof.

And a wine, unlike a wife or a child, will never break your heart.

When Laurell had sued him for divorce, she'd added injury to insult by demanding half of his wine cellar. The slut knew nothing about wine—she drank white zinfandel and wouldn't have been able to distinguish jug wine from premier cru. She wanted his only because she knew it was valuable and that splitting it up would break his heart.

She'd wanted to hurt him. She'd already forgiven him for two affairs, but the third had sent her over the edge. He'd tried to tell her that none of them meant anything to him, and that was true; he'd sworn that he loved her and only her, but that of course wasn't.

When was the last time he'd loved? Curious question. He made love, but that was different. He preferred brief, intense affairs, where both parties went their own ways afterward with no strings.

The ultimate had been that afternoon with Nadia. Such intensity, such abandon. He felt himself growing hard at the memory. Nadia hadn't wanted strings then and maybe wouldn't now. He'd love an encore, and he'd go for it if he were sure it wouldn't interfere with her work. He'd have to wait and see. Stabilizing that molecule was the top priority.

Another priority was packing this wine, the wine Laurell had coveted. She'd thought she'd crush him, but he'd anticipated her. As their marriage had deteriorated toward the breaking point, he'd methodically smuggled out his best bottles and substituted junk. Laurell wound up with a nice selection of vin ordinaire. She'd howled when she got the appraisal, but when asked which specific wines were missing, she hadn't a clue.

Luc gently nestled the Lafite into the excelsior-lined rack within the wooden packing crate, then took a sip of another wine and let it roll around on his tongue. He'd opened a 1982 Haut-Brion, a fabulous Graves, to help him through the ongoing chore of packing up his wine collection. All 600 bottles had to be removed from their temperature-controlled lockers and packed and ready to go within the next week or two.

He was not taking any chances. He had great faith in Nadia, but stabilizing the Loki molecule might be beyond her, might be beyond anyone. And if she failed, he did not intend to be around on June 22 when Dragovic learned that he'd just received his last shipment of Loki. No, Luc would be back in France, and his wines with him.

He hadn't told Brad and Kent. He smiled, wondering if they were in their own homes right now, making similar preparations. He doubted it. They both had wives and children to tie them down. And they didn't have anyplace to go.

He'd leave them to the Serb. They deserved it. After all, they were the ones who'd got the company into this mess in the first place.

He carried his glass out of the wine closet and through to his study. He would hate losing this grand place, but if as expected the creature died during the next few weeks, and if Nadia's work didn't show signs of real progress by mid-June, he would leave and never look back.

He almost wished that would happen… to force him to turn his life upside down and start it up again—in a new place, as a new person.

He picked up the vial of pale blue powder from his desk. This was it. A sample from the new batches being synthesized from last night's blood sample. Loki… the stuff that had made him rich, the stuff that could ruin his life.

Luc drained his glass. He would have loved another, but it was time to cab over to the warehouse and test the potency of this new batch.

Luc's stomach lurched… perhaps the last test he'd ever run. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or scream.

14

Jack hung up and rubbed the flesh in front of his ears. That Thurston Howell lockjaw accent was tough on the jaw muscles. But he thought the call had accomplished its two purposes: first, to get Dragovic thinking he was the target of some snooty locals willing to take extreme measures to get him out of the neighborhood—ludicrous, but it would serve to muddy the waters for the next few days; second, to set up Dragovic for the call Jack would make after the Sunday night party; that was the pivotal point. If that call didn't work, the whole plan would fall apart.

He took one last look at Monnet's building. The doctor wasn't going anywhere at this hour. Time to head home for part deux of the Dr. Moreau festival: the Burt Lancaster-Michael York version from 1977. Not as atmospheric as Island of Lost Souls—Lancaster's Moreau could never match the oozing perversity of Laughton's—but Barbara Carrera's presence went a long way toward making up for that.

But as Jack turned to go he saw a cab pull up to the front entrance. The doorman opened the glass door and Dr. Monnet stepped out. Jack whirled and dashed up to Lexington where he'd parked the Buick.

The night wasn't over yet.

15

"I'm in!"

Doug pushed back from the keyboard and his chair rolled away on its casters. He felt like jumping up and doing a little dance but he was a lousy dancer. Instead he rose and headed for the kitchen, making a pit stop along the way. He grabbed another Jolt from the fridge, filled a bowl with Quisp and milk, and was back in front of his monitor in minutes.

He crunched the cereal as he studied his screen. The internal blocks around the financial files had finally yielded to his assaults. He was in. He'd routed the call through Washington, D.C., this time. No chance of a back-trace, should anyone be trying.

But now the real scut work began: making sense of all the numbers, finding the ones he wanted, and following the R & D money trail.

He rubbed his hands together. Just like the old days. A long night ahead, but he was wired and ready to go. With the right amounts of sugar and caffeine singing through his veins, he wouldn't have to stop until he'd tracked down what he wanted to know.

SATURDAY

1

Belly-crawling along a steel beam twenty feet off the warehouse floor, Jack stopped and pinched his nose to stifle a sneeze.

He could hear the building's resident pigeons cooing and rustling in the corners behind him. He'd upset them by climbing through the skylight during their sleep time, but luckily not enough to send them into panicked flight. Jack guessed they slept in the corners, but it was obvious from the droppings on the beam beneath him that they spent plenty of time right here. Good thing he was in raggedy castoffs. This getup was not going to be salvageable.

Jack had tailed Dr. Monnet from Carnegie Hill in Manhattan to its economic polar opposite in the old Marine Terminal area of Brooklyn, right off the BQE on the waterfront between Bay Ridge and Sunset Park. He hadn't liked the idea of using his own car, but counting on a cab to stop for someone dressed in his current ragman ensemble would have been an iffy proposition.

Monnet had stopped off at the GEM Pharma plant first, and Jack had been surprised to see the place lit up like Times Square. Its parking lot was crowded and the plant seemed to be going full tilt. GEM was running a third shift on a Saturday morning when every other factory around it was locked up tight. Business was evidently very good.

Monnet didn't stay long. Jack next followed him here, back to the same old brick warehouse he'd tailed him to earlier today. Jack had waited outside in the afternoon, and might have done the same tonight, but after watching one rough-looking down-and-outer after another being passed through what looked like a metal detector at the warehouse door, he decided he needed a look inside. Obviously the place was being used for more than just storage.

The building was sealed tight at ground level, with no way up to the roof. But the neighboring building was abandoned and all but leaning against it. Jack had been able to break through a window, make his way to the roof, and then jump the narrow gap to this building.

The interior was a single large open space, three stories tall, crisscrossed by supporting beams and girders, and mostly empty. Only one corner was occupied: a lit-up area covering less than a quarter of the floor had been walled off and partitioned but not roofed over.

Jack eased himself farther along the beam, closer and closer to this glowing island in a dark sea until he could peer down into the two sections of the enclosure. The nearer area was brightly lit. Half a dozen men—the ones he'd seen entering through the metal detector—stood around a small table, drinking from numbered plastic cups.

In an adjacent room beyond the far wall, the lights were lower; a number of indistinct forms huddled there, watching the front room through a cracked panel of tinted glass set in the wall that separated them.

A voice came through the speaker set above the glass.

"Be sure to finish all of your drink. We do not want you to become dehydrated during the test."

Monnet's voice? Jack had never heard him speak but had to assume that was him.

"Everybody finished? "

The men either held up their empty tumblers or said yes.

"Excellent. Now, each participant will take his spot at the test station that matches the number on his cup."

The men milled around, each eventually ending up before a "test station" that consisted of some sort of red vinyl cushion about the size of a bar pizza, set chest high into the wall; LED counters, each reading 000, rested at eye level over each.

Jack slid closer for a better view of the "participants."

"Good. Now, you've all been briefed on how the test works, but allow me to recap for you so that there are no mistakes. When the test is to begin, we will ring a bell. As soon as you hear the bell, you will begin punching the padded impact meter before you. This device measures the strength of each blow. The idea is to punch it as hard as you can as often as you can. You are scored for strength as well as speed, and your cumulative score registers on the readout above your impact meter. The one who ends with the highest score wins an extra two hundred dollars. I must emphasize that there are no losers tonight. Everyone gets three hundred dollars no matter what the score. Please remember that. Is everybody ready?"

Nods and a chorus of grunts.

"Excellent. Now remember, don't begin until you hear the bell. Ready… set…"

The bell rang and the men began hammering their fists against the pads, some using one hand, others going at it left-right-left.

Jack, stretched out in pigeon guano, literally and figuratively above the fray, watched in bewildered fascination. What the hell was going on here?

The guys putting more power into their blows weren't matching the frequency of the ones with lighter, quick-shot styles, but for the first minute or so the scores stayed fairly even. Then Jack noticed one of the smaller fellows start to pull ahead. He had wide shoulders and short thick arms and was beating the crap out of his "impact device" with a rapid-fire two-handed assault.

This wasn't going unnoticed by the competition. Most of the men were glancing around, checking out their rivals' score, which didn't help their own. When they saw the little guy's, they upped their efforts, pounding harder and faster, but still craning their necks to see what the leader was doing.

He was pulling away, that was what he was doing. He was focused on that pad and he was going at it with everything he had.

Jack could see the frustration building in the others—read it in the hunching of their shoulders and the quick glimpses he had of their faces as they glanced around while they bashed furiously on their pads. But no one was catching up to the little guy.

Finally, one of the also-rans lost it. With a howl of rage he leaped from his station and began pounding on the little guy. As they traded powerful punches without seeming to feel them, they bumped into a third participant who immediately joined the fray. Within seconds all six were tangled in a wild, vicious brawl.

As Jack watched, agog, he was reminded of the mindless violence of the museum steps. But worse: these guys could fight.

Someone's going to get killed, he thought.

Then he noticed jets of yellow gas shooting from the walls. The mist enveloped the brawlers, making them cough, separate, and finally collapse. The gas settled over them like a heavy fog, then was drawn away through vents just above the floor line, leaving a tangle of unconscious forms.

Jack realized that this obviously wasn't the first brawl they'd had here and maybe not even the worst, considering the crack in the tinted observation glass, but the gas jets indicated that they had expected violence.

What the hell was Monnet up to? And who was in that control booth with him?

Jack slithered forward… just a few more inches to get a better angle on the control room. Had to be careful though. He was moving into the wash of light from the test room; he'd be visible from below if anyone looked up.

He stopped as the door to the test area opened and three men stepped through. Weird-looking dudes—heavyset, thick-shouldered with no necks to speak of, all with short hair, pug noses, tiny ears, and beady eyes. Some sort of security force? They looked like they'd all come from the same cookie cutter, and the identical turtlenecks only reinforced the impression. Reminded Jack of the Beagle Boys from the old Uncle Scrooge comics.

A lone figure remained in the control area. Jack could see him now: Monnet.

What are you doing here, Doc? What are you looking for?

Jack returned his attention to the worker types who were disentangling the unconscious brawlers and stretching them out on their backs. Where did Monnet find his "participants"? Better question: where had he found these strange-looking security guys?

As Jack pressed the back of his hand against his nose to stifle another sneeze, he noticed one of the security men look up and freeze. He grunted and pointed up, directly at Jack. The others followed his point.

They can't possibly see me all the way up here in the dark, Jack thought. Can they?

One of the three let out a cry that sounded an awful lot like the bay of a hound on the scent, and the three charged out of the testing area.

Shit, I guess they can.

Jack wasn't going to wait around to see where they were going or how they expected to get up here. Suddenly he was late for the door.

Did a one-eighty swivel on his belly and started crawling back the way he'd come. Moved as quickly as he could, scraping along through the guano, no longer worried about noise.

"Who's there?" called a voice, the same one that had given the "participants" their instructions, only now he sounded worried. Had to be Monnet. "Who's up there? Come down at once!"

Jack kept crawling. Movement below caught his eye. Three shadowy forms were racing across the floor, separating, each to a different wall where they leaped and began to climb.

Christ, they're climbing the walls!

No… not the walls themselves but the pipes and girders attached to them. These Beagle Boys were as strong and agile as they were strange-looking. And nowhere near as dumb as they looked. By splitting up they were reducing Jack's escape options to one: up.

Fortunately, that was where he wanted to go. But he'd never beat them at this pace. With a slow sick twist of his stomach, Jack realized that if he was going to escape he had to stand up and walk the beam—run, maybe. And he couldn't wait until he'd steeled up his nerve—had to get up and go now.

Wishing he'd taken gymnastics or at least balance-beam lessons somewhere along the course of his childhood, he pushed himself up to a crouch, one foot in front of the other, then rose to standing. Teetered for a heart-stopping instant as the beam seemed to tilt under him, then steadied himself. Arms out like a tightrope walker, he began shuffling toward the end of the beam.

Eyes on the beam, not on the floor… eyes on the beam, not on the floor… he made it a litany as he slid his feet along, coughing in the cloud of guano he was kicking up. He arrived at one of the vertical beams. He'd had a bad time getting around it on the way in when he hadn't been in a hurry; couldn't let it slow him up now. Trusting in his reflexes and the muscular toning from his regular workouts, Jack clenched his teeth and swung himself around the beam and kept moving. Had a hairy moment when he picked up too much momentum and felt himself falling forward but somehow managed to maintain his balance.

The wall lay twenty feet ahead; a narrow support ledge ran along it left and right from the beam. A brief dash to the left on that would take him back to the skylight. Chanced a quick glance around and saw two of the Beagle Boys making good time up the walls. The third was somewhere behind him and to his left. No way Jack was risking a look over his shoulder.

He all but ran the last three steps to the wall and didn't slow when he reached the ledge. With surer footing now he could move faster. Searched the shadows as he hustled toward the skylight and spotted the third Beagle far down the adjoining wall—just pulling himself up onto the ledge. Jack increased his speed. Had to reach that skylight first.

Didn't slow when he reached the corner—made the turn at his best speed and kept moving toward the skylight. The Beagle was on the ledge now, moving quickly—almost scampering—toward Jack. Didn't seem the least bit afraid of the height or of falling. If he got to Jack before Jack reached the skylight…

With a final desperation-fueled burst, Jack came abreast of the skylight and leaped off the ledge. Not a long jump—on the way in he'd been able to hang down and swing over to the wall ledge—but he had to be up and through before the Beagle Boy. Snagged the near edge backhanded and used his momentum to swing his legs up. When his sneakers caught the far edge he levered himself up and rolled out to the side. Soon as his body hit the roof he swiveled and slammed the skylight closed.

A howl of frustration filtered through from below. With nothing but air below the skylight, there was no way to open it from inside without a pole, and Jack hadn't seen one lying about.

"Sorry, Fido," he muttered; then he was on his way again.

He hopped the alley to the abandoned building and quickly made his way down to ground level. The street was deserted as Jack beat it to his car. Once in the front seat, locked inside, he allowed himself a moment to catch his breath.

What had he learned tonight? Had it been worth the risk?

Definitely. Monnet was testing a drug and, from the way he was going about it, not a legal one. The way the human guinea pigs reacted to it reminded Jack too much of the preppy rioters the other night for it to be anything but the Berzerk stuff Robert Butler had told him about.

Nadia wasn't going to be happy to hear that her beloved boss was dabbling with Berzerk. The way she'd spoken of Monnet had led Jack to expect a halo hovering over his scalp. But halos tended to dim when you started poking into someone's corners.

Was Dragovic involved? Had to be. Even if he was miles away tonight, the whole situation reeked of him.

Just as my clothes reek of pigeon guano. Jack started the engine. Time to get home and—

The car rocked as a heavy weight slammed against the driver door with alarming force, startling a shocked shout out of Jack. He had a quick impression of a dark shape hammering at the window inches from his face as another began pounding on the passenger door. A third landed on the hood as Jack fumbled for the gearshift.

The dog-faced security men had tracked him somehow.

As soon as his hand found the shift he rammed the car into gear and stomped the gas. The two flanking attackers hung on for a few yards but lost their grip as the car accelerated. The third remained, pounding on the windshield, but he slid off during a sharp swerve to the left.

Took a while for Jack's heart to stop hammering. Maybe he'd skip The Island of Dr. Moreau tonight.

2

"Did you catch him?" Luc said as the three roustabouts shuffled through the door empty-handed.

All three shook their heads in unison.

"Do you know who he was or what he was doing here?"

A trio of shrugs.

"Very well," he said irritably. He pointed to the test subjects who were beginning to stir to consciousness. "Get them on their feet, pay them, and send them on their way."

Luc returned to the control room so he wouldn't be seen. He slumped into a chair behind the tinted glass and tried to imagine who could have been spying on him. Not the police, certainly. If that were the case, the street outside would be filled now with flashing red lights.

One of Dragovic's men then? For what purpose? Dragovic knew that Luc tested the potency of each new batch of Loki but had never shown the slightest interest in the how or the where.

Perhaps just a common criminal, looking for something to steal. Lucky for him Prather's roustabouts didn't catch up to him.

Forget him. Who cares who he is as long as he's gone and keeps his mouth shut. I just want out.

The readouts indicated that tonight's strain of Loki was somewhat weaker than previous batches. He'd have to tell Dragovic to cut the new shipments less than the previous ones to maintain potency.

I don't care. I just want out.

As Luc watched the roustabouts rousing the test subjects, he realized that although he had every reason to be sunk chin deep in a black depression, he felt strangely jubilant.

Somewhere during the course of watching these low-life creatures pummel each other, he had come to an unconscious decision that now bubbled on the surface: I am getting out. No matter what, I am getting out.

And that means I will never have to test another batch of Loki. Even if Nadia succeeds in stabilizing the molecule, I am walking away.

Of course, he would much prefer to leave behind a stabilized molecule. That would allow him to sell his shares and retire in plain sight. The alternative—should Nadia come up empty—would force him to go into hiding.

But one way or another, stabilized Loki or not, by this time next month Luc Monnet would be in France.

He found himself whistling contentedly—when was the last time he had whistled?—as he waited impatiently for the last test subject to be paid and shoved out the door.

Luc wanted to get home. He had wine to pack.

3

"This can't be true," Nadia said, her mouth going dry.

"Take it or leave it," Jack said with a shrug.

Nadia stared at him in dismay. Jack had dropped into the diabetes clinic unannounced this morning and said he had a progress report. Nadia had brought him back to her office where they could have privacy. He'd sat down and begun telling her this surreal tale about Dr. Monnet sneaking off to some warehouse in Brooklyn where he oversaw a group of men who bashed walls and each other…

How could she accept such a bizarre tale from a near-stranger? It was too much. Insane.

Jack looked tired. She wondered if he might be into drugs, hallucinogens maybe. That would explain his story.

"I don't mean to doubt your word, but—"

"I think he was testing Berzerk," Jack said.

"What's that?"

"Street name for a new designer drug I've been hearing about."

"An illegal drug?" Nadia felt a surge of anger. She wanted to ask him if he'd been sampling some himself, but bit it back in time. "Oh, now you've gone too far!"

"I saw it in action the other night," Jack said. "During the preppy riot. The way Monnet's 'participants' acted last night reminded me of those homicidal preps I saw."

"But not Dr. Monnet!"

Jack shrugged again. "You wanted a connection between your doc and the Serb. There you go."

Feeling queasy, Nadia leaned back in her chair and squeezed her eyes shut. Milos Dragovic, reputedly dealing in anything illegal that turned a buck… Dr. Monnet, partner in a drug firm… a relationship between the two of them, hostile or not, what else could it be but drugs?

"All right," she said, opening her eyes. "If he is involved with this Berzerk stuff—and I'm not for an instant conceding that he is—it's because he has no choice."

"Whatever you say."

"You think he's a willing participant, don't you."

"I have no agenda here. I'm just telling you what I saw."

"And I saw Dragovic roughing up Dr. Monnet!"

"Could have been a disagreement over how to split the profits."

Nadia clenched her teeth to hold back a scream. "He is not in this willingly. Dragovic is holding something over him."

Jack leaned forward. "OK. I'll work on that end. But maybe you ought to be nosing into things at your end. If your guy is manufacturing something illegal like Berzerk, he's probably using company equipment to do it."

"All the production is done in… Brooklyn."

Jack was nodding. "Yeah. Right down the street from the punch 'em-up warehouse."

Nadia sighed. "It looks bad, doesn't it."

"It do. It do indeed."

"We have to help him." An idea began to take root. "What does this Berzerk do?"

"Not sure, but from what I've seen, it makes you act crazy violent."

"Really. Why on earth would someone want to take something like that?"

"A logical question. But logic doesn't enter much into the druggie world. If it feels good, do it—and screw the side effects."

"Can you get me some?"

Jack's eyes narrowed. "Why? You want to try it?"

"Not a chance. But I have a machine at work that can analyze anything. If I can identify this Berzerk, I can run a match for it in the company's database and see if there's any record of it."

"And if there is?"

She sighed. "Then we'll have one piece of the puzzle."

Jack pushed himself up. "I'll get on it. Call you when I find some."

A black mood settled over Nadia as she watched Jack go. Despite the warmth of her office she felt cold; she thrust her hands under her arms to warm them. Jack was supposed to help Dr. Monnet, yet he seemed to be gathering evidence against him. She had a bad feeling that this was not leading to a good place.

4

Doug couldn't help but laugh as he poured himself another shot of Old Pulteney fifteen year old. As a rule, eight o'clock in the morning was a tad early for scotch, but what did "early" mean if you'd been up all night?

He'd done it. It had taken him until dawn, but finally he'd tracked the GEM Basic R and D money to its final resting place.

"Ho-ho-ho!" he said, toasting himself. "You are a clever one!"

But what good is a triumph if you can't share it?

He called Nadj at the clinic. First thing every morning, rain or shine, weekday or weekend, that was where she could be found. But the nurse told him she'd already left. He tried her home but her mother said she was at the lab and expected to be there all day.

At the lab? On a Saturday? And then he remembered the million-dollar bonus offer. Yeah, he'd be working Saturdays and Sundays for something like that.

He called her extension at GEM but she didn't pick up, so he left her an enigmatic voice mail.

"Hi, honey, it's me. I did it. I found the answer to the question. I'll tell you the whole story at lunch. Meet me twelve-thirty at the Gramercy Tavern and we'll celebrate. Until then, think about hocking everything you own, begging, borrowing, and stealing every dime you can lay your hands on, and putting it all into GEM stock. Love ya. Bye."

He grinned as he hung up. That ought to pique her interest.

He yawned. Now for some shut-eye. God, he needed sleep.

Doug finished his scotch, turned off the computer, turned off his cell phone, disabled the ringer on the house phone, and headed for the bed.

No interruptions, just sleep, sleep, sleep.

5

"A dealer?" Abe said. "Plenty of dealers you know already. Why should you want to know another?"

He finished slathering margarine onto one of the kaiser rolls Jack had brought and took a huge bite.

"Not just any dealer," Jack said. "I need a guy who really knows his stuff. Somebody heavy into designer shit, who knows his chemistry and knows who's making what."

Jack had told Abe about his visit with Robert Butler and about the scene at the warehouse last night.

"A chemist, you say." Abe thought as he chewed.

"The best man I can think of is Tom Terrific."

Jack had heard the name but never met him. "I thought he was mostly crystal meth."

"That's his mainstay, but he dabbles in other things as well."

"Think he'd know about Berzerk?"

"If it's out there and people are buying it, Tom has probably figured how to make it."

"Sounds like my man. Where can I find him?"

"Always a good question with Tom. He tends to keep on the move." Abe pulled a little notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped through it. "Here it is."

"You keep his number?"

"He's a customer."

Jack could see why a speed merchant would want to keep some firepower handy.

"What did he buy?"

Abe did his baleful stare over the tops of his glasses. "A pizza, what else."

"Come on, Abe. I just like to know what people are carrying out there."

"You want I should tell people what you buy?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Then such things you shouldn't ask. I am a priest and the basement is my confessional."

Jack made a face but said no more. It had been worth a try.

Abe dialed a number, spoke for half a minute, then hung up.

"He'll see you, but it'll cost."

"I've got to pay just to talk to him?"

"He says he's a busy man. A hundred for fifteen minutes. A consultation, he calls it. Two o'clock this afternoon. And he wants me along because you he doesn't know."

"A hundred for you too?"

"I'm free," Abe said, taking another bite of the kaiser and sprinkling poppy seeds all over the counter.

As Jack mentally ran over the rest of the day, he watched Parabellum hop around pecking up the black specks and idly wondered if birds got high on poppy seeds. If Tom Terrific was at two, he'd have time to get out to Sal's and arrange another shipment of party favors for tomorrow night's soiree at Dragovic's.

He wondered how the Serb's place had looked at first light this morning. Couldn't have been pretty.

6

It's still a shambles, Milos thought as he stood at his bedroom window and surveyed the grounds below. But not as much as it was an hour ago, and much more of a shambles than it will be an hour from now.

The workmen were making good progress. It hadn't been easy to find them. Milos had spent a lot of time on the phone last night threatening, cajoling, and calling in a slew of favors to get these men out here on a holiday weekend, not to mention offering triple time and a 30 percent on-time completion bonus.

But the place had to be fixed up in time for tomorrow night's party. He could not allow the beautiful people of the Hamptons to see his place in anything less than perfect shape.

And he could not allow a word of last night's madness to reach the press. He had sworn his staff and last night's guests to secrecy. Most of them would comply, the former out of fear, the latter because none of them had acquitted himself particularly well during the tumult.

As for today's workers, they would see the tires and the damage but he doubted they could reconstruct what had happened. They'd probably say that the Slippery Serb must throw some awfully strange parties.

Of their own accord, Milos's hands knotted in fists. Who?

The question had plagued him all night. That he'd been attacked by a group calling itself the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee had seemed absurd at first; yet when he considered that the assault had been aimed at his pride rather than his person, it became more believable. Whoever had planned it had not only guts, but a cruel and crafty mind. And that would be more in line with a clique of outraged locals than one of his hard-assed competitors. They would have dropped napalm.

"May I come in?"

Milos turned at Mihailo's voice. He sounded excited.

"What is it, Mihailo?"

The communications man stepped through the doorway and glanced about through his thick glasses. Probably hoping to catch Cino undressed, Milos thought. But after watching her in that thong bikini she'd worn around the pool yesterday—and Milos had no doubt every male in the household had ogled her at one point or another—what was left to see?

"Remember that license plate we saw on the surveillance tape last night? I had a contact in the DMV trace it."

"And?"

"It's registered to a Gia DiLauro who lives on Sutton Square in the city."

"You mean Sutton Place."

"That was what I thought," he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. "So I checked. Sutton Square is a little cul-de-sac off Sutton Place at the very end of East Fifty-eighth Street. Eight town houses at most. Very exclusive."

"But didn't you tell me the call was made from a pay phone in the East Eighties?"

Mihailo shrugged. "That's where the trace went."

Milos remembered the drab Buick on the tape last night. "A very ordinary car for someone at such a fancy address."

"I know. Could be a live-in maid."

"Could be."

Milos pondered this. If the owner had been from Jackson Heights or Levittown, he'd have dropped it. But if this Gia DiLauro was rich enough or connected to someone rich enough to live in an exclusive spot on the East Side—only thirty blocks from where that arrogant shit called last night—she easily could be connected to someone with a place out here. So she or someone close to her could be involved with the so-called protection committee.

"Tell Vuk and Ivo I want to see them."

They'd seen the couple on the beach. He'd send them into the city to check on this Gia DiLauro. If she was the same woman, they'd find out the name of the man.

And if he or she was in any way involved…

Milos ground a fist into his palm until it hurt.

The phrase scorched earth lingered in his mind.

7

"… Until then, think about hocking everything you own, begging, borrowing, and stealing every dime you can lay your hands on, and putting it all into GEM stock. Love ya. Bye."

The words echoed in Nadia's head as she walked down a sunny Park Avenue South—a different Park Avenue from the Waldorf neighborhood farther uptown. The sidewalks here were lined with office buildings and businesses instead of luxury residences.

She'd listened to the message twice on her voice mail before deleting it. Doug had sounded so strange. He'd probably been up all night, and that would explain it, but still… she wasn't sure she liked this manic side of him.

And worse, this was distracting her from her work. Not that she was getting anywhere. She'd spent yesterday and all this morning reviewing Dr. Monnet's failed approaches, and it seemed to her that he'd exhausted every possible route. Then she'd reviewed her predecessor's notes and seen that Macintosh had come up with new approaches, but none of those had worked either. Where to go from here? It was frustrating the hell out of her.

Nadia walked along tree-lined Twentieth Street until she came to the Gramercy Tavern. She wound her way through the crowded front room with its bar, wooden floors, and bare tables, and spotted Doug waving to her from the rear dining area. Carpeting and tablecloths back here.

She smelted scotch on his breath as he kissed her and pulled out her chair. His eyes were bright with triumph.

"How did you ever get a table?" she said as she sat.

The Gramercy was one of the city's hotter restaurants.

"Holiday weekend," Doug said. "All the regulars are out of town, I guess. Can I order you a chardonnay?"

Nadia shook her head. "Just an iced tea." She was heading back to the lab after this.

"Aw, come on," he said, grinning. "We're celebrating."

"Celebrating what, Doug?" she said, feeling an edge creep into her voice. "You call and leave this strange message, then when I try to call back I can't get through on any of your phones—"

"I pulled an all-nighter and was trying to get some sleep."

"I figured that, but meanwhile I'm left in the dark."

Doug reached across and took her hand. "Sorry. I've had tunnel vision for the last couple of days. A hack isn't something you can snack at-—you know, do a little bit now, take a break, come back and do a little bit latter. It's like a supercomplex juggling act where you keep trying to get more and more balls into the air. Once you've got them moving and you've found the rhythm, you've got to stay with them. If you stop, even for a short nap, you lose the cadence and they all come crashing down. Then you've got to go back and start again with ball one."

The waiter arrived with their menus and a bread basket. Doug ordered Nadia's iced tea.

"But why go to all that trouble?" she said when they were alone again. "You're risking—"

"Because I've been lied to," he said, his mouth taking a grim turn. "They were keeping things from me and I was determined to find out what."

"And are you satisfied now?" Nadia said, squeezing his hand and praying he'd say yes.

He shook his head. "Not completely."

"Oh, Doug," Nadia said, feeling her heart sink, "you're not going to keep this up, are you?"

He grinned. "Nope. It's too wearing. I still don't know why the company's paying me commissions on sales I'm not making, but at least they're not cheating me, so I can let that go. And I did learn one answer I was looking for—the one that concerns you—so I feel I can back off with my pride intact."

A twinge of alarm ran down Nadia's neck. "Me? What concerns me?"

"Your subsidiary. I found where all the research and development money is going."

Nadia couldn't help but ask. "Where?"

"Stock." Another grin. He looked like a little boy who'd found pirate treasure. "They're using every spare penny to buy back company stock." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "And let's not mention the company by name, OK? Just in case."

Nadia glanced around. In case what? He didn't think he was being followed, did he?

"No, I'm not paranoid," he said, as if reading her mind, "but you never know." He straightened. "Anyway, I matched the timing of the stock purchases to a graph of the stock price, and it seems that every time the price takes a little dip, they buy up a bunch of it."

"Propping up the price? Why would they do that?"

"I can't imagine. But I can imagine why they'd be secretly hoarding a load of stock. Think about it: if you had insider knowledge that the stock price was going to jump, wouldn't you want to pick up as many shares as possible—without tipping anyone off, of course."

"But that's not only illegal, it's stupid. And as the principals in the company, they each must hold a ton of shares already."

He shrugged. "Since when does greed know limits? The important thing is that they must think the stock is going to be very valuable. And that, my dear, is a good thing to know."

Nadia caught herself running through the sources she might tap for a loan and pulled up short.

"Why?" She couldn't keep the note of reproach out of her tone. "So we can use this stolen information and load up on shares?"

Doug glanced away, then back at her. "Does sound tacky, doesn't it." He sighed. "Easy money… it's such a high. I suppose I'm as vulnerable as the next guy. Seemed like a great idea… get that start-up money and go to work for myself. Now, sitting here with you, it seems kind of sleazy."

"I can't quite take on the holier-than-thou role. For a few moments there I was thinking about how a windfall from a sure thing like that could affect my mother's standard of living—and my own."

"What's that make us?"

"Human, I guess. Though some people would call us stupid humans for not jumping on it."

Doug caressed the back of her hand. "I'll never feel stupid if I'm with you."

She laughed. "How many scotches have you had?"

He only smiled and she knew the love in his eyes was reflected in her own.

They sat in silence for a while. Finally Nadia voiced a question that had been bothering her. "What I'd like to know is what do they have up their sleeves that makes them so sure the stock is going to jump?"

"Only two things I can think of." Doug held up a finger. "They're expecting a takeover bid." Another finger popped up alongside the first. "Or… they're expecting a major breakthrough, like a new product that's going to take the market by storm." He pointed both fingers at Nadia. "Hey… maybe it's the project you're working on. Maybe you're the key to the company's future."

Me? A queasy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. The best she could say about the status of the project under her captaincy was that it was becalmed and rudderless.

"If that's the case," she said, "I think we'd be better off leaving our money in the bank. And maybe I will have that chardonnay."

8

"I don't know how you manage it," Kent Garrison said with a note of hostility as Luc stepped into the conference room. Kent was stuffed into a pink golf shirt that matched the flush of his ample cheeks. "But somehow you always manage to be the last to arrive."

Up yours, Luc thought, but managed an ingenuous smile instead. "Just lucky, I guess."

Kent had called about an hour ago, saying, "We've caught the culprit," and that they needed an emergency meeting. He'd say no more, but Luc knew what he meant: the software people had tracked the hacker who'd broken into the GEM system.

Kent sneered. "What were you doing—counting your wine bottles?"

That brought Luc up short. Did they know? He glanced quickly at the usually dapper Brad Edwards. He looked terrible. Wrinkled shirt, half-combed hair, glazed eyes, slack expression—was he on tranquilizers?

"Counting his wine bottles," Brad said with a dull laugh. "That's a good one."

"I had to cancel plans," Luc said. A lie. His only plans had been to continue packing his wine. "Plus I was up late at the test session."

"Oh, right," Brad said, looking apologetic. "How'd it go?"

Kent held up a hand before Luc could answer. "Close the door first."

"It's Saturday morning," Luc said. "We're the only ones here."

Kent shook his head. "Not quite. Your new researcher is signed into the lab."

"Really?" Luc had to smile. "Amazing what the offer of a million-dollar bonus will do." He pulled the door shut and latched it, then sat down. "Couldn't we have discussed this in a conference call?"

"Our computer's been hacked," Kent said, leaning back and stretching the fabric of his golf shirt over the bloat of his belly. "How do we know our phones aren't tapped?"

The possibility startled Luc, especially in light of the uninvited guest at the test session. He told his two partners about it.

"Someone was spying on us?" Brad said, his lower lip jutting.

"I can't say for sure," Luc said. "He may simply have been some sort of squatter who thought the building was deserted. After all, we only use it once a month."

Brad turned to Kent. "Do you think he's connected to Gleason?"

"Gleason?" Luc said, alarm tugging at the inner wall of his chest. He knew only one Gleason. "You don't mean our sales rep, do you? What about him?"

"He's our hacker," Kent said.

Luc slumped back in his chair. "Oh, no."

"Yeah," Kent said, his face reddening. "One of our own."

"Whatever happened to loyalty?" Brad was saying, looking around as if the answer were going to pop out of the air. "First Macintosh, now Gleason. I can't stand it."

"Has he made any demands?" Luc said.

Kent shook his head. "Not yet. But he will."

"How do we know that?"

"He broke the financial codes."

"Damn it!" Luc said, anger burning through the alarm. "I thought the software people said they'd stop him!"

Brad fidgeted. "We told them to trace him, then stop him. They spent all night trying to trace him. The sysop in charge overnight said Gleason's very good. The only way they managed to identify him was through a signature code transmitted by his computer."

"I don't understand," Luc said.

"He was using a company laptop!" Kent shouted, hammering the table. "That's how he got through the fire wall. He used the goddamn computer we gave him, the sonovabitch!"

"Why would he do such a thing?" Brad said.

Luc ignored him. "Then you think he knows about the repurposing of the R & D funds?"

Listen to me, Luc thought. Repurposing. What an inane euphemism.

"Who knows?" Kent said. "The sysop said he was in the middle of all the numbers. If that was what he was looking for, he found it."

"What'll we do?" Brad said.

"Same thing we did with Macintosh," Kent said, fixing Luc with his gaze. "We hire your buddy Ozymandias Prather."

"No," Luc said. He wouldn't be a party to another death. "You yourself said he hasn't made any demands or any threats. He—"

"Only a matter of time," Kent said.

Brad was nodding. "Why else would he be snooping around in our computer?"

Luc didn't have an answer for that.

"I have a worse scenario," Kent said. "Gleason and the spy in the warehouse could be working together—for Glaxo or Roche or who knows."

"Aren't we getting a little paranoid?"

"With good reason!" Brad said. "We've got that crazy Serb on one side and the DEA on the other. We've got nowhere to turn!"

Kent slapped his hand on the table. "Look. It doesn't matter if Gleason's an industrial spy, a greedy bastard, or a goody-two-shoes potential whistle blower, he's got to go."

"You're talking about a man's life here," Luc said.

"Damn right I am!" Kent shouted, reddening as he leaned forward. "Mine! And if I have to choose between my skin and some disloyal nosy bastard's, guess who gets my vote!"

"Listen to us," Brad said softly as he pressed the heels of his palms over his eyes. "Voting on killing a man like we're voting on some minor corporate policy change."

"You know something?" Kent said. "It's not so hard the second time. We've done it once already. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say." He raised his hand. "I vote yes."

Brad lifted his hand. "Me too, I guess. I don't see any other way." He shifted his watery gaze between Luc and Kent. "You know what we've become? We've all become Dragovics."

Luc's inability to deny the awful truth of those words sickened him. "I wish I'd never heard of Loki."

"You wish?" Kent said, jabbing his finger at Luc's face. "How about us? This is all your fault! If you hadn't started fucking around with that goddamn thing's blood, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

Luc's thoughts flashed back to the strange phone call he'd received last fall. Someone calling himself Salvatore Roma, saying he was a professor of anthropology and telling Luc he should pay a visit to a traveling "oddity emporium" that was stopped for the weekend in the village of Monroe on Long Island. Professor Roma had said there was an odd creature there with extremely interesting components in its blood. "Look into them, Doctor," the soft, cultured voice had said. "I guarantee you will find them most interesting."

Luc had made a few calls and had learned that indeed there was a tent show in Monroe for the weekend. Suspecting he was being hoaxed, but curious nonetheless, he'd made the trip and bought a ticket. When he saw the strange creature he assumed it was a fake, but it was an awfully good fake. So he introduced himself to Prather who seemed almost desperate to identify the creature. Because of this, he allowed Luc to take—for a fee—a sample of its blood.

And in that sample Luc found what he would later dub the Loki molecule. He isolated it, synthesized it, and began testing the blue powder on mice and rats. The results were disturbing. The mice, who usually clustered together in friendly piles for mutual warmth, began running around in bursts of frenzied activity and attacking one another. Their cages became miniature slaughterhouses. The rats, who were caged singly, would chew at the wire mesh of their cages until their mouths were bloody ruins, and leap to attack whenever one of the techs opened a cage door.

Luc had tried to reach this Professor Roma but could find no trace of him at any New York college. He cursed himself for not finding out how to contact the man.

Unknown to Luc, one of his research techs had a cocaine habit. To curry favor or perhaps to work a deal on a buy, the tech pilfered samples of the Loki powder and gave them to his supplier. These somehow found their way to Milos Dragovic.

Luc had known nothing of this at the time. As it was, he couldn't devote the time he needed to delve fully into the properties of this strange molecule, and perhaps he should have kept closer track of the Loki stock, but he'd been distracted by GEM Pharma's financial crisis.

"I also wish I'd never heard of TriCef!" Luc shouted, anger surging as he snapped back to the present. "I didn't put this company on the brink of financial ruin by wagering its future on the success of a single product!"

"The vote to invest in TriCef was unanimous," Brad reminded him.

"Yes, I went along," Luc admitted, "but only because I couldn't get on with my work with you two badgering me constantly."

GEM had been doing well, extremely well, with generic Pharmaceuticals, but Kent and Brad wanted to boost the company from its small-time, also-ran status into a major. Luc had reluctantly agreed to their plan to buy world rights to a new third-generation cephalosporin that was supposed to blow all the other broad-spectrum antibiotics out of the water. They put the company deep into debt to launch TriCef. And TriCef tanked.

Then, to their shock, Milos Dragovic appeared and offered to buy the blue powder Luc had been experimenting with. He said he would take all they could produce for an undisclosed market overseas. They'd been wary, but not wary enough. What they'd known of Dragovic then came from the papers where he was portrayed as a rather glamorous if shady character. And he was offering a lot of money…

"If GEM had been solvent when Dragovic approached us," Luc said, "we could have—we would have laughed him off. But as it was, we were faced with the choice of either throwing in with him or going Chapter Eleven."

The Dragovic money would pull them back from the brink, so they agreed to gear a percentage of their production facility to the stuff Luc called Loki.

"The proverbial offer we couldn't refuse," Kent said.

"We had a choice," Luc said. "We could have bit the bullet and refused. But we didn't."

Luc knew he had been right there on the line with his two partners, voting an enthusiastic yes—anything to save their financial hides.

Brad moaned. "But if we'd only known what the stuff could do, what he'd do with it."

"Let's not kid ourselves," Luc said. "You knew from my reports that it increased aggression tenfold in rodents; and none of us was so naive as to believe someone like Dragovic had a legitimate use in mind."

Luc later learned that Dragovic had performed impromptu human studies with the samples. He'd discovered that a little of the blue powder imparted an intense euphoria, an on-top-of-the-world feeling. A larger amount elicited outbursts of mindless violence at the slightest provocation, sometimes with no provocation at all.

Dragovic had found an instant market in his gunrunning customers, so he sent the first shipments to his contacts in the various Balkan militias. Word spread like wildfire through the military underground and soon every military and paramilitary organization—from the Iraqis and the Iranians to the Israelis and Hamas—wanted a supply.

Dragovic set up a dummy corporation in Rome where he received bulk quantities of Loki shipped from GEM as TriCef. There his people filled capsules and pounded out tablets to distribute Loki throughout the world.

"Yeah," Kent said, "but we thought his market was a bunch of Third World military crazies who'd kill each other off and that would be it."

"Right," Brad said. "Who ever dreamed it would become a street drug right in our own backyards?"

Luc couldn't help laughing.

"What's so fucking funny?" Kent shouted.

"I ought to call Mr. Prather and see if he has use for ethical contortionists!"

"Don't push me, Luc," Kent gritted through his teeth.

"That's not fair," Brad said. "I've been tortured by this."

"Really?" Luc said. He didn't know why he was feeling so hostile. Almost as if he'd taken some of that damn drug himself. "I haven't noticed a big surplus in your draw account."

Brad averted his gaze.

The truth was that the huge profits from Loki had salved all their consciences. The drug had turned GEM Pharma into a money machine—a self-laundering money machine from which all the income derived from Loki was cleaned up by declaring it as profit from international sales of TriCef.

Kent had devised an almost perfect system. GEM synthesized the drug in its heavily automated Brooklyn plant where the few employees needed to maintain the production line thought they were manufacturing an antibiotic. GEM records showed bulk shipments of TriCef to Rome. From there the drug traveled such a tortuous path of cutting and packaging and repackaging that by the time the pills reached America their trail was so attenuated that it would be virtually impossible to trace them back to GEM.

Atop all that was the added safety factor of the un-consumed Loki spontaneously converting to an inert compound every new moon.

Loki had made them all very rich, but also guilty, trapped, and desperate.

And paranoid.

Dragovic's mercurial moods were not their only worry. A few months ago Brad had brought up the possibility of a hostile takeover by another corporation. The purchase of a controlling percentage of GEM stock would inevitably lead to exposure of their secret. To head that off they had been funneling the funds earmarked for basic research into the repurchase of their own company's stock.

What a catastrophic mess.

Luc sighed and closed his eyes; he pictured himself in a tiny rural cafe in Provence, sipping dark, rich coffee while the owner's cat basked nearby in a sunny window.

In three weeks I'll be out of this. Just three weeks.

But if Gleason blew the whistle… Luc's bucolic vision shifted from rural France to a jail cell right here in Manhattan.

He opened his eyes and fixed Brad, the company comptroller. "Prather will want cash, in advance. It's Saturday. How will you—?"

"I'll get it," Brad said. "Same amount as for Macintosh, I assume. I'll have it for you by this afternoon."

"One more thing we need to consider: Gleason has some sort of relationship with our new researcher."

Kent clapped his hands against the sides of his head and tugged on his red hair. "Aw, shit! How close?"

"I can't say. I do know he recommended her for the job, but beyond that…" Luc shrugged.

"Dear God," Brad said. "Can't anything be simple? What if they're close? We don't want to do anything to distract her from her work! You've got to find out!"

Luc rose. "I'll do my best."

"In the meantime," Kent told Brad, "get the cash together."

As Luc turned and reached for the door, Brad's voice was a low moan behind him. "How long can we keep this up?"

Brad was unraveling before their eyes.

Hang on just a little longer, Brad, Luc thought. Just a few more weeks. After that, you can dissolve into a quivering mass of Jell-O for all I care.

9

"If Abe vouches for you," Tom Terrific said, "that's good enough for me. But I'd like my consultation fee up front if you don't mind."

'Take a check?" Jack said.

Tom Terrific acknowledged the patent absurdity with a smile that revealed small yellow teeth spaced like kernels on a stunted ear of corn. His forehead went back even farther than Abe's, but he was much thinner, and the long salt-and-pepper hair growing off the rear half of his scalp was twisted into a single braid. He looked to be in his late forties, slightly hunched posture, painfully thin, wearing torn jeans and a sleeveless Mighty Ducks sweatshirt that revealed a showroom of tattoos up and down his arms. The Harley-Davidson insignia clung to his wasted left deltoid; a big red "1%" was engraved on his right. If Uncle Creepy had been a Hell's Angel, he'd have looked like Tom Terrific.

"I see you're into ink, Mr. Terrific," Jack said as he pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his back pocket. "You into bikes too?"

The massive rottweiler in the corner leaped to his feet and growled as Jack's hand moved toward Tom Terrific with the money.

"Easy, Manfred," he said without turning his head. "He's only giving Daddy some bread." To Jack: "Hey, call me Tom, Okay. The Terrific's just for kicks, y'know? And as for being a biker, yeah, I used to ride. Dropped outta Berkeley and rode with a Fresno gang for about ten years. Used to weigh in at an eighth of a ton too. But those days are gone. I now live the life of a pharmaceutical artiste."

Jack glanced around the basement apartment. Abe had led him down here to a narrow cobblestone street just south of Canal in Chinatown where Tom Terrific was probably the only non-Asian resident. His furnished apartment sat under a Thai restaurant, although furnished was probably a euphemism. The rug and furniture looked like the kind of stuff that people put out on the curb but nobody would haul away, not even the sanit men.

A long way from the digs of that other pharmaceutical artiste, Dr. Luc Monnet.

"What do you want to know?" Tom said as he tucked away the bill. "Looking to start your own operation?"

Jack shook his head. "Just want to know about Berzerk. Heard of it?"

"Heard of it?" Tom Terrific snorted. "Course I heard of it. Just wish I could make the damn stuff."

'Tom Terrific can't make it?" Abe said as he eased himself into a threadbare lounger. "I've always heard that if you can't make it, it can't be made."

"True up till this new stuff arrived. But lemme tell you, man, it's got me stumped." He grinned again. "But I'm not alone. Got the feds stumped too. They keep trying to class it as a CDS—"

"Seedy what?" Jack said.

"CDS—controlled dangerous substance—but they can't seem to pin down its molecular structure. Which, considering the equipment those fuckers got, must be real complex. But I'm not surprised. I mean, it's one fucking elegant drug from the distribution standpoint because it degrades into an inert substance after a while." He cackled. "Driving the feds and the cops nuts, man. They bust somebody with the stuff and by the time arraignment comes around, the evidence ain't a drug no more."

"The preppy riot guy!" Jack said, snapping his fingers. "They had to let him go because they said someone pulled a switch with the evidence."

Tom Terrific was shaking his head. "No switch. The stuff just changed. That's what happens, man: every bit, no matter where it is, goes inert at exactly the same time. Ain't it cool? You gotta use it or lose it. The dude who dreamed this one up has got to be the fucking Einstein of molecular biologists."

Jack couldn't help recalling Nadia's glowing praise for her hero, Dr. Monnet, about how brilliant he was.

The pieces were falling into place, but Nadia was not going to like the picture.

"If I was a customer," Abe said, "I should be pretty mad if my stuff goes dead on me like that."

Tom Terrific shrugged. "If it does, it's your fault. The stuff comes with an expiration date."

"But what is it?" Jack said.

"The million-fucking-dollar question. I can tell you what it's not, and it's not speed. Lemme tell you, I know everything there is to know about amphetamines, and this stuff ain't even a distant relative. Not an opiate or a barbiturate or a clone of PCP or Ecstasy either. Stuff's something entirely different. It magnifies whatever aggressive tendencies you have."

"And what if you don't have any?" Jack said.

"Everybody's got 'em. It's the beast in all of us, man; it's just that some of us are farther from the trees than others. I call it BQ: beast quotient."

"'The stubborn beast flesh

"What?"

"Just a line from a movie I was watching the other night."

"Yeah, well, lemme tell you, a normal-size hit'll send a guy who's already violence-prone—you know, with a high BQ—right over the edge. A heavy dose can make even Casper the Friendly Ghost blow his top. Nobody's immune."

"Just what the world needs," Abe said. "More blown tops. Who would make such a thing? For what purpose?"

"I hear it got its start in paramilitary units overseas but moved into the consumer market like schnell, man. And lemme tell you, whoever's marketing this shit is another kinda whiz. They're selling it in all shapes and sizes, with names geared to specific target markets. If they're going after the gangbangers and such, they call it Berzerk—that's their most popular brand—but it's also called Terminator-X, Eliminator, Predator, Executioner, Uzi, Samurai, Killer-B, and so on."

"How big a market can that be?"

"Not huge, but just the tip of the iceberg, it turns out. Once it caught on with the jocks and the suits—"

"Jocks and suits?" Jack said. "What the hell do they want with it?"

"Aggression, man. Aggression! You can be the new Air Jordan or John Elway or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. All you need is an edge, and this stuff—in the right amount, of course, in a fine-tuned dose—gives it to you. The jocks are buying Touchdown, Goal, Slam-Dunk, Victory, Ninety-Yard-Dash, and TakeDown—different names, same shit. The stuff's replacing anabolic steroids as most abused substance in scholastic and professional sports. You heard about what happened at the Knicks game last night, right?"

Jack shook his head but saw Abe nodding.

"Can't believe you missed it, man. Leon Doakes, that new wide-body forward for the Knicks? He took the Pistons' little point guard—can't remember his name but he was driving the lane and floating past Doakes all night, making him look like a lead-footed jerk. Anyway, Doakes finally has enough so he just picks up this guard and tosses him into the stands. Tosses him! Guy landed in the sixth row!" Another cackling laugh. "I flipped around to all the news shows; caught the replay five times, man. It was awesome. And I'll bet you anything they were both ripped on Slam-Dunk."

"You said suits too?"

"Yeah. They get the mildest forms—I've heard of names like Success, Prosperity, CEO. Yessiree, lots of white-collar types are bringing it into the boardrooms. The stuff is spreading like wildfire. It'll be everywhere soon. The ultimate growth market. I'd love to hitch a ride on that train but it's just too tough a molecule for a small operation like mine."

"Who is making it, then?" Jack said.

Tom Terrific shrugged. "Don't know. I tried to find out, see if I could maybe get a line on its molecular structure, but I ran into a wall, man—a Serbian wall."

"Dragovic?"

"You got it. And that's when I stopped poking around. Lemme tell you, I ain't lookin' to mess with him."

Another piece falling into place.

"No other players?" Jack said.

"Dragovic's organization seems to have a lock on the supply. Near as I can gather, the source is in Europe somewhere. Makes sense, since that's where the stuff first appeared."

Here was a piece that didn't fit. If Monnet and his company were behind Berzerk, it seemed logical they'd be making it here in the U.S. where they had a plant. What better cover for illegal drug manufacturing than a legal operation?

"Got any you can sell me?" Jack said.

"Berzerk? Nothing active. But I've got some in the inert state I was working on till it changed. When the preppy guy's turned, so did mine. I'll just give you some of that. No damn good to me anymore." He motioned Jack toward the back room.

"I'll stay out here," Abe said. "I want to take notes on your decor so I can maybe duplicate it in my own place."

The back room was Tom Terrific's lab. He was known to specialize in speed—ice specifically—and Jack had heard that his product got high marks from folks who were into the stuff.

When he turned on the light, a panicked horde of roaches scuttled for the corners and disappeared.

"Excuse the little guests, man. They weren't invited, but lemme tell you, they're a fact of life when you live under a restaurant."

Manfred the rottweiler had followed Jack and his master to the rear room but didn't enter. Jack immediately knew why. The place smelled like a high school chemistry lab with the drama club doing the experiments—a mixture of paint thinner and dirty cat litter. Trays of white paste sat on benches with fans blowing over them. An exhaust fan in the corner ran into a shiny new galvanized duct that ran up through the ceiling, but the room still stank.

"Just out of curiosity," Jack said, "what do you get for an ounce of the stuff you make?"

"Ounce? Hey, I sell it by the gram, man. My stuff is pure, and my tweakers know it's a long high." He gave Jack a sidelong look. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well, you're practically a legend. You've got to be able to afford better digs than this."

"Oh, I can, man, and someday I will. But creature comforts aren't the important thing now. I'm an artist, you see, and I need to stay close to my work."

Everybody's an artist these days, Jack thought.

"And one of the things about my art is that the, um, materials I use, especially the solvents, have got telltale odors that can bring the heat down on you PDQ. So what I've done is hooked into the hood over the stove in the restaurant upstairs. My fumes mix with their cooking odors and they all come out together on the roof. Pretty cool, huh."

"Very," Jack said. His eyes were burning from the fumes and he wanted to get out of here. "What about the Berzerk?"

"Right over here," he said and started fumbling through a pile of glassine envelopes. "I only deal to finance my art, you know, and lemme tell you, I'm working on something that'll make Berzerk last week's news. I call it Ice-Nine. One hit will give a smooth, utterly bodacious high that'll last a week. It's my Holy Grail. When I reach it, I'll be fulfilled. That's when I'll retire, but not a minute before. Ice-Nine or bust, man."

Right on, Sir Gawain.

"Here 'tis," Tom Terrific said, holding up a small clear envelope with a layer of yellow powder in its lower corner. "It's some sort of blue in its active state—"

"Just what kind of blue is 'some sort'?" Jack said.

"You know," he said with a wavering, uncertain smile, "I can't really say. Ain't that weird. I've been working with the stuff for the past coupla weeks, seen it every day, but I can't quite remember its color. But I know it wasn't yellow. Yellow means it's gone inert." He handed the envelope to Jack. "Here. Take it."

"All of it?"

"Sure. I was gonna throw it out anyway."

"How about some of the active form, just for comparison."

Tom Terrific's ponytail whipped back and forth as he shook his head. "Don't have any. There's always a lag in supply after the old stuff goes inert. The new stuff won't show up for another day or so."

"Strange way to do business," Jack said.

"Tell me about it. Was me, I'd have the new stuff out Day One after the old stuff crashed." He shrugged. "But who knows? Maybe they've got a good reason."

Jack stuffed the envelope into his pocket and turned to go.

"Wait," Tom Terrific said, holding up another envelope, this one half-filled with fine clear crystals. "Here's my latest—Ice-Seven. Want to try a taste?"

"No, thanks," Jack said, moving toward the door.

"On the house. You'll like it. Lasts about three days. Takes tired old reality and makes it much more interesting."

Jack shook his head. "For the last year or so, Tom, reality's been just about as interesting as I can stand."

10

Gia stopped her paintbrush in midstroke and listened. Was that the doorbell? She and Vicky had come out to the sunny backyard—Vicky for her playhouse, Gia to work on her painting—and they were a long way from the front door.

She heard the chime again, clearly now. With a glance at Vicky, who was setting a Munchkin-size chair before a Munchkin-size table by her playhouse, Gia wiped her hands and stepped inside.

As she headed through the house toward the front door, she wondered who it could be. Jack had said he'd be tied up most of the day, Gia hadn't arranged a play date for Vicky, and this was not a neighborhood where people popped in for a cup of coffee.

Despite the months of living in this grand old East Side town house, Gia still didn't feel she belonged here. Vicky's aunts, Nellie and Grace, had owned it but they were gone now, officially missing persons since last summer. But Gia knew the truth—the two dear old women were dead, devoured by creatures from some Hindu hell. If not for Jack, Vicky would have suffered the same fate. And thanks to Jack, the creatures were as dead as Nellie and Grace, incinerated on the ship that had brought them, their ashes sent swirling into the currents of New York Harbor. Vicky would inherit the house when Grace and Nellie were declared legally dead. Until then, she and Gia lived here, keeping it up.

Gia padded across the thick Oriental rug that lined the foyer floor and approached the front door as the bell rang again. Probably Jack and he'd forgotten his key, but just to be sure, she put her eye to the peephole—

And froze.

Gia's heart kicked up its tempo as she recognized the two men standing on her front step—from the other day on the beach in front of Milos Dragovic's house. No way she'd forget the obnoxious one with the bad bleach job.

What were they doing here? How had they found her? Why?

Jack. Had to be Jack. Always Jack. He'd been interested in Dragovic, and the objects of Jack's interest tended not to be the happiest bunch after he finished with them. But now Jack—and she as well, it seemed—had attracted the attention of the city's most notorious mobster.

Gia jumped as the bell chimed again. She looked back down the hall, hoping Vicky wouldn't hear it and come charging in expecting to find Jack. The best thing was probably to stay quiet and hope they'd conclude no one was home. Since the town houses here all sat cheek by jowl along the sidewalk, there was no way for them to go around to the rear. Maybe they'd just give up and go away.

She heard them talking on the other side of the door. It didn't sound like English.

Finally they walked back to the black Lincoln sedan at the curb. Gia breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled away, but they didn't go far. They parked at the end of the cul-de-sac and lit cigarettes.

They're watching for us. Damn them!

Gia felt a quiet anger begin to simmer beneath her uneasiness. She and Vicky were trapped in their own home. And they had Jack to thank for that.

She picked up the phone and dialed his beeper. He got us into this; he can damn well get us out.

11

"Whatsa matta?" Sal Vituolo said, giggling as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "You don't think that's funny?"

Sal had just run the tape of last night's raid on the little TV-VCR set in his office.

"I think it's perfect," Jack said.

Ten minutes ago he would have had some good yucks watching Dragovic's goons running and ducking as the tires chased them. That would have been before he'd spoken to Gia and learned that two of those goons were parked outside her door at this very moment.

He knew how they'd found her: had to be that hidden security camera by Dragovic's front gate.

My fault. Should have spotted it sooner. Must have recorded a picture of the car, and they traced her from the plate.

Damn! Never should have taken them along.

The good news was that Dragovic couldn't know that Gia had any connection to last night's rubber rain. He was just flailing about.

Trouble was, the man might get lucky.

Jack's first thought had been to tell Gia to call the cops and complain about two suspicious-looking guys lurking outside. That would chase them, but not far. They'd move, but they would not go away.

So he'd have to handle this but be careful as to how. His first reflex had been to take them out, permanently, leave the police to clean up the mess. Since they both work for Dragovic, everyone would write it off as a mob hit.

Everyone except Dragovic. He'd know why those two were there, and removing them would be like erecting a big neon sign over Gia's door saying, I'm involved.

No, this called for a more subtle approach. But what…?

Sal's voice jarred him back to Staten Island. "I don't know how many times I've watched it already, but I crack up every time." He popped the cassette out of the set and held it up. "How many copies do I make and where do we send them? Eyewitness News?

"No copies yet."

"Ay," Sal said, pointing to the new dual-deck VCR Jack had instructed him to buy. "Ain't that why I bought this? To make copies?"

"Right," Jack said. "But we need more. You've got to be on that dune to film the sequel at tomorrow night's party."

"I'll be there, but how about something better'n tires this time? How about glass? Yeah! I gotta shitload of broken glass around here."

He forced his voice to stay calm. "Tires are just phase one. Phase two is where he gets nailed."

"Nails?" He heard an unmistakable note of glee in Sal's voice. "You're gonna use nails? Now you're talkin'!"

Jeez. "No."

"Then what's phase two?"

"All in good time, my man. All in good time. Meanwhile, not to worry. I've got it all figured out."

"But we done tires. I don't want to do tires again. Tires ain't enough."

Jack chewed the inside of his cheek and resisted the urge to whirl and get in Sal's face and tell him if he didn't like what was going down he could take over and finish it himself.

That's the worry about Gia and Vicky, he realized.

It was getting to him.

He rose and stepped to one of the windows. Through the grime on both sides of the pane he could vaguely make out the mountains of old cars and scrap metal stretching behind the office.

"Gotta be something better than tires again," Sal whined.

"OK, Sal," Jack said, giving in. "Let's take a walk through your yard. If we find something better, we'll use it. If not—tires again."

And maybe I'll come up with a solution for Dragovic's goons.

As an ebullient Sal led him out into the sunny afternoon, Jack noticed a couple of men piling scrap metal onto the hydraulic lift on the rear of a battered old delivery truck, the same one Jack had used to deliver the tires to the Ashe brothers on Friday.

He watched the old truck's lift return to ground level after another load of scrap had been pushed into its interior. Its rear edge was beveled… like a knife…

That gave him half of an idea. Jack scanned the rest of the yard and spotted some battered and rusted cars lined up against one of the fences. He pointed to them.

"Any of those wrecks drivable?"

Sal stopped and looked around. "Yeah, I s'ppose. Not legal-like. A coupla them'll getcha from here to there, but probably not back."

"I don't need to get back."

"Whatchathinkin'?"

Jack was beginning to feel a little better now.

"I'm thinking I may take out some of my fee in trade after all."

12

"How long are we going to sit here?" Vuk Vujovic said, lighting another Marlboro.

All he'd done today was camp in this damn car in this rich neighborhood and smoke while they waited for this woman to show. He was stiff, restless, bored, and an unbroken chain of cigarettes had left his tongue feeling like soggy cardboard. The Lincoln was comfortable to drive, but he felt as if he'd moved into it. He checked his bleached hair in the rearview mirror. Dark roots were starting to poke through; he was going to need a touch-up soon.

"How many times are you going to check your hair?" said Ivo from the passenger seat. "Afraid it's going to fall out?"

"Not mine, old friend." He glanced at Ivo's dark but thinning hair. "I'll still have plenty when you're as bald as an egg."

"At least I won't look like a girlie-man."

Vuk laughed to hide his irritation at the remark. If anyone in this car was a woman it was Ivo—an old woman. "The ladies love the color."

Ivo grunted.

They'd met in the Yugoslav Army and later had gone through the Kosovo cleanup together. With the army and the country in shambles after that, they'd hired on with Dragovic.

Vuk stared at the woman's door. Look at this neighborhood. Elegant brick-fronted town houses on an almost private block that dead-ended at a little park overlooking the East River. No places like this back home, unless you were high in the regime. He tried to imagine what it cost to live here.

"I hate this waiting."

Ivo sighed. "Could be worse. We could still be in Belgrade waiting for our back pay."

Vuk laughed again. "Or waiting on line for a gallon of gas."

"Do you ever think about home?" Ivo said, his voice softer.

"Only when I think about the war." And he thought about that every day.

Such a time. How many woman had he taken? How many men, some KLA, most simply able-bodied males, had he marched into fields or stood against walls and shot dead? Too many to count. How powerful he'd felt—a master of life and death, surrounded by cries and wails and pleas for mercy, a master whose whim decided who lived and who died, and how they died. He'd felt like a god.

Vuk missed those days, missed them so much at times it nearly brought him to tears.

"I try not to."

Vuk glanced at his companion but said nothing. Ivo had always been soft, and now he was going softer. This was what happened when you lived in America. You went soft.

I'm going soft too, Vuk admitted. I used to be a proud soldier. Now what am I? A bodyguard to a gangster—a Serb by birth, yes, but more American than Serb—and sent on wild-goose chases like this one. But he knew he was better off than others of his generation still in Belgrade.

"Do you think this DiLawopizda has any connection with last night?" Vuk said, reluctantly moving their talk back from the past to the present.

"Could be," Ivo said. "But even if she is, she seems gone for the holiday, just like everyone else around here."

All they'd seen in their many hours on watch were a few children with their nannies. Vuk had checked in twice with the East Hampton house to report that nothing was happening, hoping they'd be called back. Instead they'd been instructed to stay right where they were.

"We're wasting our time," Vuk said.

"You got us into this."

"Me? How?"

"You had to identify the man on the video." He mimicked Vuk's voice: " 'I know him. He's the one we chased off the beach.' You never know when to shut up."

Vuk had turned, ready to give Ivo hell, when he saw him straighten in his seat.

A delivery truck with no markings had turned into Sutton Square. It rattled toward them, then angled sharply toward the curb.

"He must be lost," Ivo said, easing back into his seat.

Vuk agreed. The truck might have been white once, but now it was so dented and scraped and covered with grime he could only guess at the original color. The driver had a thick white beard and wore a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. His features were blurry through the windshield. Vuk watched him pull out a map and look at it.

Dumb, Vuk thought. How do you get lost in a city where the streets and avenues are all numbered?

But the driver apparently found what he was looking for, because he began moving again, pulling head-on into the opposite curb. As the truck began backing into the second leg of a three-point turn, Vuk noticed that its rear loading platform was lowered and riding about two feet off the ground. But instead of stopping or even slowing when it had reversed to the middle of the street, the truck picked up speed and kept coming.

Vuk leaned on the horn and pressed back in the seat as he saw the rear corner of the truck angle around and loom larger and larger in the windshield.

"He's going to hit us!" Ivo shouted.

Vuk covered his eyes and braced himself. The impact jarred him forward but wasn't as bad as he'd expected. When he opened his eyes he realized that the corner of the lift platform had punched into the grille. Their car had been spared the full impact of the truck itself.

"Sranje!" Vuk shouted.

Ivo too was cursing a blue streak as they pushed open their doors. This idiot driver was going to wish he'd never turned in here.

But the truck was moving again. This time forward.

"He's taking off!" Ivo shouted.

Vuk sprinted after it, but it was picking up speed too quickly. He motioned Ivo back into the car. The truck ran the red light across Sutton Place and headed up Fifty-eighth—wrong way against the traffic.

"He's insane!" Ivo cried as they watched the truck weave a zigzag course as it dodged cars in the oncoming traffic. Tires screeched, horns blared, but the truck kept going.

Vuk wasn't about to let some old govno in a rust-bucket truck outmaneuver him. "Jebi se!" he shouted. "So am I!"

High beams on and horn blaring, he gunned the Lincoln across the street and up Fifty-eighth. Luckily there wasn't much traffic, but still it was scary.

Up ahead the truck had made a right on First Avenue, and they got there just in time to see it make a left onto Fifty-ninth.

"He's heading for the bridge!" Ivo said.

Vuk followed and spotted the truck taking the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge.

He floored the Lincoln up the incline, screeched into the turn, and pulled onto the span.

Ivo pointed straight ahead. "There he is!"

Vuk grinned. Did this old fool really think he could outrun them?

He accelerated up behind the truck and was about to pull alongside when the car started bucking.

"What's wrong?" Ivo said.

Vuk looked at the dashboard and saw that the temperature gauge was into the red.

"We're overheating!"

The engine coughed, bucked, and, with an agonized whine, died. The Lincoln ground to a halt.

"Sranje!" Vuk pounded on the steering wheel. Through the haze of steam rising from under the hood he watched the truck disappear over the arch of the bridge. "Sranje! Sranje! Sranje!"

Ivo was already out of the car and moving toward the front. Vuk got out and joined him. Horns blared as traffic backed up behind them.

"There's the problem," Ivo said, pointing to the smashed-in grille. "Big hole in the radiator."

"Bastard!" Vuk shouted, slamming his hand on the steaming hood. "The lucky bastard!"

"Was it luck?" Ivo said, staring along the bridge to where they had last seen the truck.

"You think that old govno did it on purpose?"

"Why do you say old? Because he had a white beard? It could have come from a Santa Claus costume."

"You think it was the man from the beach?"

Ivo shrugged. "I'm just thinking, that's all. I'm thinking that if it was the man from the beach, and if he wanted to remove us from the front of his house, he succeeded very well, didn't he."

Vuk was fuming. He wanted to punch Ivo for looking so calm. Instead he spit.

"Sranje!"

How were they going to explain this to Dragovic?

13

Nadia was ready to call it quits for the day. As she waited for the molecular imager to go through its shutdown sequence, she checked her voice mail. One message: Jack wanted to meet her at the diabetes clinic at five. He had something for her. He left his own voice mail number in case she couldn't make it.

Nadia checked her watch. Almost five now. She dialed Jack's number and told him it would be easier to meet in front of the drugstore across from her office at a little after five. As she was hanging up…

"Such dedication."

Nadia jumped at Dr. Monnet's voice. She turned and saw him standing in the doorway of the dry lab.

"You startled me."

"Sorry," he said, stepping toward her. "I came in to pick up a package and noticed that you were still logged in."

"Just getting ready to leave, actually."

"I won't ask you if you've made any progress," he said. "That would be absurd at this early stage… wouldn't it?"

His last two words caught her by surprise. She studied him. Close up like this he looked tired. And well he should be if he'd been up all hours watching men punch each other as Jack had said.

But he seemed beyond tired—more like physically, mentally, and emotionally spent. And beneath the fatigue she sensed something akin to… desperation.

What is that hoodlum forcing you to do? she wondered. What hold does he have on you?

"Yes," she told him. 'Too early. I've only just finished reviewing your experiments. You covered a lot of ground."

He nodded absently, almost morosely. "I tried everything I knew. That's why you're here. For a fresh perspective."

Nadia looked down at the console and gathered up her notes to avoid facing him. How could she tell him she felt lost, that the things Jack had told her about his bizarre testing session in Brooklyn, and Doug's discovery of the secret stock buyback were upsetting her, making it almost impossible to focus.

Monnet cleared his throat. "There's another matter I need to discuss with you: Douglas Gleason."

Nadia stiffened. Oh, God. Does he know about the hack?

"What about him?"

"Word has filtered back that he's been in the research wing, even here in the dry lab with you. That's against the rules, you know."

Nadia relaxed and let out a breath. She turned to face him.

"I thought that only applied to people outside the company." A lie… but a little one.

"No. I believe I made it clear that this area is restricted to research personnel only. Are you two… close? Is that why you've been letting him in?"

Dr. Monnet seemed so intent on her answer. Why?

Nadia decided not to reveal that Doug had been letting himself in, and she remembered how Doug had been wary about letting on that there was any romance between them.

"Close?" She managed a smile. "No. We're just old friends."

"Do you see each other often? Do you discuss your work?"

Where was this going? "He's just a friend of the family." Another lie. "We have lunch now and then. He's just very interested in"—she almost said computers—"research. But I'm sure he'd never—"

"I am sure he wouldn't either," Dr. Monnet said quickly. Why did he suddenly look relieved? "But we must not forget that he's a salesman, his business is talking, talking all day long, and one day in his enthusiasm he might slip and mention a product in a delicate stage of development. But… if he does not know about that product, he cannot slip. Do you see my point?"

"I do." It was a good point, one she could respect. She'd tell Doug about it when they met for sushi tonight. "And I promise you Douglas Gleason will not be seen in this department again."

Dr. Monnet turned and walked back toward the door. He left without a good-bye. She heard only a sigh and thought he said, "Yes, I know," but she couldn't be sure.

14

"Oh, no," Jack muttered as he followed Monnet onto the ramp off Glen Cove Road. "Don't tell me he's heading for Monroe."

This little jaunt had started in midtown after he'd returned from delivering a special party favor to the Ashe brothers on Long Island.

He rubbed his jaw from where the beard glue had irritated his skin. Had to admit he'd pulled a pretty damn efficient maneuver this afternoon with Sal's truck, leaving Dragovic's men stranded on the Queensboro Bridge.

He'd been in frequent contact with Gia since then and so far Dragovic's men hadn't returned.

He'd met Nadia in front of the Duane Reade across the street from her office as she'd suggested. He was just pressing a manila envelope containing the sample of inert Berzerk into her hand when he saw Monnet step out the door and start walking.

Jack had pointed him out and said, "There's your boss man. I'm going to see where he's off to."

Nadia was glancing nervously about as she stuffed the envelope into her shoulder bag. "Isn't this an illegal drug?" she whispered. "Can I get arrested?"

"No," he said, moving off. "It's not Berzerk anymore. Every so often the stuff turns inert—all at once. This stuff turned the other day."

Her eyes widened so much he thought they were going to bulge out of her head. "What?"

"I said—"

"I know what you said; it's just…"

Jack had figured she thought he was nuts. "Hey, that's what I was told." Other people were coming between them now, and he'd moved far enough away so that he had to raise his voice. "Sorry I couldn't get you the active stuff. Maybe tomorrow or the next day."

Nadia had only stared.

He'd waved and hurried off to catch up with Monnet. But even now, almost an hour later, he was still puzzled by her expression. He'd expected disbelief, but hers had looked more like… anguish.

He'd followed Monnet to an Avis rental garage. As soon as he'd seen Monnet step through the door, Jack caught a cab back to the garage where he kept the Buick, then raced back to Avis just in time to see Monnet pull out and head toward the East Side. Jack had followed him through the Midtown Tunnel, along the LIE to Glen Cove Road. And now… toward Monroe.

After his near-death experience there last month, he'd hoped never to see that overly quaint little town again. But here he was, heading down the road toward Long Island's Gold Coast and the Incorporated Village of Monroe.

He took heart from the fact that Monnet was a scientist, a feet-solidly-on-the ground type, not the sort to be involved in the weirdness that seemed to gravitate toward Monroe. But what the hell was he doing out here?

They crawled along the main drag, done up as an old whaling village, which it once might have been, then continued east to a marshy area that curved around the harbor. Jack followed him down a rutted road that ran toward the Sound. The utility poles lining the road were plastered with posters Jack could not read in the waning light and arrows pointing straight ahead.

Jack's and Monnet's weren't the only cars on the road, and Jack was glad of that. Meant he wouldn't stick out if Monnet was headed for a secret meeting. Finally they came to a small cluster of tents ablaze with lights. A banner stretched between two poles proclaimed: THE OZYMANDIAS PRATHER ODDITY EMPORIUM.

A circus? Jack thought. He's going to a circus?

No, not a circus. The banner boasted pictures of a green Man from Mars, a Snake Man, a fortune-teller with three eyes, and other… oddities.

Oddities and Monroe… the combination set Jack's alarm bells madly ringing. A couple of human oddities from Monroe had damn near sent him on a one-way trip into the Great Beyond on his last visit here.

He tried to shake off the uneasiness by telling himself that this would be different, how it was a traveling show, just passing through Monroe… but he didn't quite succeed.

Jack watched as Monnet allowed himself to be waved into a spot in a grassy area roped off for parking; Jack parked three spaces away. But when Monnet got out of his car he didn't follow the meager flow of people toward the brightly lit arch that led to the midway. Instead, he struck off to the right toward a cluster of RVs, trucks, and trailers.

Jack allowed him a long lead, then followed in a crouch through the taller grass. He watched Monnet knock on the door of a battered old Airstream. The door opened and a tall ungainly figure was silhouetted in the doorway before stepping aside to let Monnet in. When the door closed again, Jack saw that it was labeled:

OFFICE.

He crouched in the marsh grass, wondering what to do. Did this have anything to do with what Nadia had hired him for? Monnet had driven all the way out here for a sideshow—in a rented car, no less. He seemed to cab everywhere else; why hadn't he cabbed out here? Couldn't cost too much more than renting a car.

Unless of course he was trying to avoid any record of having made this little trip.

Time to do a little eavesdropping.

The moonless night was a bonus. He was about to rise and creep toward the trailer when he saw a couple of shadowy forms turn the corner of a nearby tent and move toward it. Something familiar about their shapes and the way they moved…

When one of them stopped and sniffed the air, Jack realized with a start that they were a couple of the Beagle Boys who'd chased him from the warehouse early this morning. The one guy kept sniffing, turning this way and that, and Jack wondered, He's not smelling me, is he?

The breeze off the Sound was in Jack's face, which meant he was downwind.

Can't be me.

A few seconds later the pair resumed their course to wherever they were going, leaving Jack a clear field. But then someone else appeared and walked by the trailer. This rear area was a little too busy for his liking. Too much traffic and too likely a chance of being caught with his eye to a keyhole.

But what possible interest could a molecular biologist like Dr. Luc Monnet have in a traveling sideshow? Didn't seem likely it was related to what Nadia had hired him for, but experience had taught him that all too often the most disparate-seeming things could wind up connected.

He had to see this place in daylight. Tomorrow was Sunday. Too bad he couldn't bring Gia and Vicky along. He'd bet Vicks had never seen an "oddity emporium." But after spotting that Beagle Boy, no way. Tomorrow would be a solo flight.

He crept back to his car and pointed it toward Manhattan. Once through the tunnel, he swung by Sutton Square to see if Dragovic's men were back on watchdog duty but saw no sign.

He wondered if they'd be back tomorrow. They'd camped out all day without catching even a glimpse of Gia, so maybe they'd think she was away for the weekend and give up.

And maybe they wouldn't.

If they were back in the morning he'd have to deal with them again. He'd been cooking up an idea, but he'd need help.

Jack drove to the Upper West Side and, miracle of miracles, found a parking spot half a block from his apartment—had to love these holiday weekends. He walked over to Julio's.

The usual crowd was stacked at the bar, but the table area was only moderately filled.

"Slow night?" Jack asked as Julio handed him a Rolling Rock long-neck.

They were standing by the window under the hanging plants. Jack's head brushed against one of the pots, causing a minor snowfall from the dead asparagus fern.

"Yeah!" Julio said, beaming and rubbing his hands together. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt as usual, and the motion caused muscles to ripple up and down his pumped-up arms. "Isn't it great. Just like the old days."

The yups and dinks were all out of town. The regulars at Julio's, working guys who had been coming in since he opened the place, weren't the type to leave on three-day weekends.

"I'm going to need a favor tomorrow," Jack said. "The driving kind."

"Sure. When?"

"Sometime between twelve and one will do."

"What I gotta do?"

Jack explained the details. Julio liked them, and so they agreed to meet around noon.

Jack walked home feeling as if the various situations around him might be under control. Not a comforting thought. Experience had taught him that the time you feel things are under control is the time you should start some serious worrying.

He managed to stay awake through the Lancaster-York The Island of Dr. Moreau, which somehow managed to make a fascinating story very dull. Barbara Carrera was gorgeous, but the luscious Movielab greens of the island sapped the atmosphere, and Richard Basehart didn't quite cut it as the Sayer of the Law. It was an official entry in the Moreau Festival, though, and he felt obliged to sit through it. A penance of sorts before the guilty pleasure to come: the hilarious Brando-Kilmer version from 1996.

SUNDAY

1

Oh, no, Nadia thought as she gazed at the shape floating before her. Oh please don't let this be true.

But how could she deny what was staring her in the face?

She hadn't slept much last night. She hadn't expected to after Jack dropped that bomb on her yesterday. It's not Berzerk anymore. Every so often the stuff turns inert—all at once. This stuff turned the other day.

Turns inert… just like the molecule Dr. Monnet wanted her to stabilize. His had also turned the other day… inert.

The first thing she'd done upon arriving this morning was prepare a sample of Jack's yellow powder for the imager. She'd inserted it a moment ago and now its molecular structure floated before her: an exact duplicate of the Loki molecule after it became inert.

If inert Berzerk equaled inert Loki, then the inescapable conclusion was that active Loki was active Berzerk. Dr. Monnet had her working on stabilizing a designer drug that induced violent behavior.

Amid a wave of nausea, she dropped into a chair. She had to face it: Dr. Monnet was involved with a dangerous drug. But to what extent? Was he manufactaring it for Milos Dragovic or merely trying to stabilize it for him?

And how willing was his participation? That was the real crux. Nadia couldn't help but notice how anxious Dr. Monnet seemed. That certainly was a good indication that he could be being pressured, even threatened. Or was she simply looking for excuses?

No. She had to have faith that he was not a willing party. And besides, logic said it couldn't be for the money. It made no sense for Dr. Monnet to be involved in illegal drugs when there was so much money to be made in the legal ones.

I should go to the police, she thought, but quickly changed her mind.

An investigation might or might not lead to Dragovic, but it would certainly expose Dr. Monnet's involvement. He could wind up in jail while Dragovic remained untouched.

There had to be another way. Jack was the key. She prayed he'd come up with something soon.

One thing she did know, though: she wasn't going to do another lick of work on this molecule until she had some answers.

2

Ivo had the wheel this time. Another day spent in front of the town house would garner attention, so they'd parked on the west side of Sutton Place this morning in front of a marble-faced apartment house, slightly uptown from Fifty-eighth Street and across from Sutton Square. From this spot he had a good view of the town house.

Yesterday's collision with the truck still bothered him: Accident or intentional? How to tell?

Their car today was another Town Car, but older. Since they'd parked Ivo had been noticing an odor.

"What's that smell?"

Vuk sniffed and ran a hand through his bleached hair. "Smells like piss."

"Right," Ivo said, nodding. "We got a car somebody pissed his pants in. Backseat, I'll bet."

Vuk smiled. "Someone was awfully frightened while riding in this car. Very likely his last ride."

"Well," Ivo said, "if a pee-stained car is our worst punishment, I'll take it."

Vuk laughed. "The boss was mad as hell, wasn't he. We're lucky we got off with our skins."

Ivo nodded. They could laugh now, but last night it had been no laughing matter. Normally Dragovic would shrug off an accident like a pierced radiator, but he'd flown off the handle, raging about the security area like a madman. He was still in a fury over the tire attack, wanting to kill somebody for it, but who? For a few moments Ivo had been ready to piss his own pants, fearing that he and Vuk would end up as surrogate whipping boys.

But then Dragovic had stopped abruptly, almost in midshout, and stalked from the room, leaving Vuk and Ivo—and no doubt many of the others present—shaken and sweaty.

Ivo remembered a sergeant like that in Kosovo. He'd had that same unpredictable, almost psychopathic streak. But at least the Army's rules and regulations had restrained him somewhat. Dragovic had nothing to hold him back. The rules were all his and he could change them whenever he pleased.

Ivo missed the Army, even though much time was spent sitting around waiting for something to happen or to be told what to do. Mostly he missed the structured existence. He did not miss the fighting.

He still had nightmares about Kosovo. He hadn't taken part in the cleansing. Never in a thousand lifetimes could he step into a home and shoot everyone in sight. Most of that had been done by the local police and paramilitaries. Some soldiers had participated—Vuk, for one—but most just stood by and let it happen.

That was my sin, Ivo thought. Turning my head. That and looting.

The looting had been so senseless—carrying off televisions with no way to get them back home. Only the officers had access to trucks, and they simply commandeered the most valuable items from the men under them and shipped them home.

The Ivo who left Kosovo was a far cry from the Ivo who had entered that hellish province. The night before boarding the transport out, he'd prayed that he wouldn't have to kill. But he'd returned with blood on his hands—the blood of a few KLA guerrillas, and civilians as well. But he'd killed civilians only when they'd asked for it.

His unit had been stationed in the area between Gnjilane and Zegra, and no one who was not there could ever understand what it was like. An old woman would hobble by a group of soldiers and, just before turning a corner, toss a hand grenade into their midst.

Sometimes you had to shoot first. Ivo knew fellows who hesitated. They went home in boxes.

Ivo had learned, and he'd returned to Belgrade in one piece. But the pale face and dead baffled eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy he'd shot, an unarmed boy who'd looked like he was armed but was only looking for a handout, had followed Ivo home and stayed with him.

At least in the Army you had the weight of the government behind you. Here, with Dragovic, the government was against you. But either way, you spent a lot of time waiting. Like now.

"Do you think the man from the beach was in that truck yesterday?" Vuk said, nodding toward the town house.

Ivo glanced at him. Why was he always paired with Vuk? He liked nothing about him. Too rash, always looking for trouble. Why look for trouble when it had so many ways of finding you.

"I suspect it, but I couldn't prove it."

Neither had mentioned their suspicions about the truck to Dragovic or anyone else last night. They'd have looked like fools for allowing themselves to be suckered, and they knew how the boss dealt with fools.

"One thing I do know," Ivo said, "is that after it happened, whoever lives there was able to come and go as free as they pleased. And that makes me—"

The car jolted and rocked as something slammed into the left front fender, knocking Ivo against Vuk.

"Sranje!" Vuk shouted as he was thrown against the passenger door.

Ivo straightened in his seat and looked around. His first thought: Not that truck again!

But instead of a truck he saw an old rusted-out Ford with its right front bumper buried in the Lincoln's fender. But no bearded man behind the wheel. This time it was a short, muscular Hispanic.

"Hey, sorry, meng," the man said with an apologetic smile. "This old thing don't steer too good."

"Govno!" Ivo yelled as he tried to push his door open, but the Ford was too close.

Vuk was already opening the passenger door, but by the time he'd reached the sidewalk, the Ford was screeching away, leaving them coughing in the thick white smoke from its exhaust.

"Get him!" Vuk shouted.

Ivo was already turning the key. As he threw the Lincoln into gear and hit the gas, it lurched forward a foot or so before swerving toward the curb. Ivo cursed and yanked on the steering wheel but it wouldn't budge.

"What's wrong?" Vuk said.

"Jammed!"

Vuk jumped out and ran around to the front of a car where he froze. Then his face contorted as he began swearing and kicking at the front tire.

Ivo got out to see what he was doing.

"Look!" Vuk shouted. "Look!"

In an instant he understood: the Ford had scored a direct hit on the wheel, leaving it cocked on its axle.

Ivo turned and watched the battered old car dwindling in the distance on Sutton Place. Then he swung around and glared at the town house.

Vuk followed his gaze. "You don't think…"

"The man who hit us just now was not the man from the beach," Ivo said. "But still…"

Vuk turned back to the car. "Never mind him. What are we going to do about this?"

Ivo's anger faded to fear as he realized they were going to have to report another disabled car to Dragovic.

Vuk paled. The same must have dawned on him. "We'll have to get it fixed! Immediately!"

"On a Sunday?" Ivo said. "How?"

"I don't know, but we must!"

As Vuk yanked out his cell phone and began jabbing the keypad, Ivo's mind raced. If they could have the car towed, somehow get it repaired, they'd say nothing. As for watching the house… they'd lie… report no activity. No one was home anyway.

But they had to fix this damn car.

3

"One child," Jack said as he handed a ten to the guy in the ticket booth.

He was a beefy type, wearing a straw boater. He looked around.

"What child?"

"Me. I'm a kid at heart."

"Funny," the ticket man said without a smile as he slid an adult ticket and change across the tray.

Jack entered the main tent of the Ozymandias Prather Oddity Emporium and checked out his fellow attendees: a sparse and varied crew, everything from middle-class folk who looked like they'd just come from church to Goth types in full black regalia.

At first glance the show looked pretty shabby. Everything seemed so worn, from the signs above the booths to the poles supporting the canvas. Look up and it was immediately apparent from the sunlight leaking through that the Oddity Emporium was in need of new tents. He wondered what they did when it rained. Thunderstorms were predicted for later. Jack was glad he'd be out of here long before then.

As he moved along he tried to classify the Oddity Emporium. In some ways it was a freak show, and in many ways not.

First off, Jack had never seen freaks like some of these. Sure, they had the World's Fattest Man, a giant billed as the World's Tallest Man, two sisters with undersized heads who sang in piercing falsetto harmony—nothing so special about them.

Then they came to the others.

By definition freaks were supposed to be strange, but these went beyond strange into the positively alien. The Alligator Boy, the Bird Man with flapping feathered wings… these "freaks" were so alien they couldn't be real.

Like the Snake Man. Jack couldn't see where the real him ended and the fake began.

Makeup and prosthetics, Jack told himself.

But the way he used his tail to wrap around a stuffed rabbit and squeeze it… just like a boa constrictor.

A good fake, but still a fake. Had to be… even if this was Monroe.

One aspect of the show that reinforced his feeling that these weren't real was that there was nothing sad or pathetic about these "freaks." No matter how bizarre their bodies, they seemed proud—almost belligerently so—of their deformities, as if the people strolling the midway were the freaks.

Jack slowed before a booth with a midget standing on a miniature throne. He had a tiny handlebar mustache and slicked-down black hair parted in the middle. A gold-lettered sign hung above him: little sir echo.

"Hi!" a little girl said.

"Hi, yourself," the little man replied in a note-perfect imitation of the child's voice.

"Hey, Mom!" she cried. "He sounds just like me!"

"Hey, Mom!" Little Sir Echo said. "Come on over and listen to this guy!"

Jack noticed a tension in the mother's smile and thought he knew why. The mimicked voice was too much like her child's—pitch and timbre, all perfect down to the subtlest nuance. If Jack had been facing away, he wouldn't have had the slightest doubt that the little girl had spoken. Amazing, but creepy too.

"You're very good," Mom said.

"I'm not very good," he replied in a perfect imitation of the woman's voice. "I'm the best. And your voice is as beautiful as you are."

Mom flushed. "Why, thank you."

The midget turned to Jack, still speaking in the woman's voice: "And you, sir—Mr. Strong Silent Type. Care to say anything?"

"Yoo doorty rat!" Jack said in his best imitation of a bad comic imitating James Cagney. "Yoo killed my brutha!"

The woman burst out laughing. She didn't say so, but she had to think it was awful… because it was.

"A W. C. Fields fan!" the little man cried with a mischievous wink. "I have an old recording of one of his stage acts! Want to hear?"

Without waiting for a reply, Sir Echo began to mimic the record, and a chill ran through Jack as he realized that the little man was faithfully reproducing not only the voice but the pops and cracks of the scratched vinyl as well.

"Marvelous, my good man!" Jack said in a W. C. Fields imitation as bad as his Cagney. "Marvelous."

He moved off, wondering why he'd been afraid to let the midget hear his natural voice. Some prerational corner of his brain had shied away from it. Probably the same part that made jungle tribefolk shun a camera for fear it would steal their souls.

As he passed a booth with a green-skinned fellow billed as "The Man from Mars," he glanced up and stopped cold.

Dead ahead, a banner hung over the midway. Faded yellow letters spelled out sharkman. But it was the crude drawing that had captured his attention.

Damn if it didn't resemble a rakosh.

After what he'd seen here already, he wouldn't be half surprised if it were.

Not that one of Kusum's rakoshi had a single chance in hell of being alive. They'd all died last summer between Governors Island and the Battery. He'd seen to that. Crisped them all in the hold of the ship that housed them. One of them did make it to shore, the one he'd dubbed Scar-lip, but it had swum back out into the burning water and had never returned.

The rakoshi were dead, all of them. The species was extinct.

But something here might resemble a rakosh, and if so, he was extra glad he hadn't brought Vicky along. Kusum Bahkti, the madman who'd controlled a nest of them, had vowed to wipe out the Westphalen bloodline; Vicky, as the last surviving Westphalen, had been his final target. His rakoshi emissaries had been relentless in their pursuit.

Passing a stall containing a woman with a third eye in the center of her forehead that supposedly "Sees ALL!" Jack came to an old circus cart with iron bars on its open side, one of the old cages-on-wheels once used to transport and display lions and tigers and such. The sign above it read: the amazing sharkman! Jack noticed people leaning across the rope border; they'd peer into the cage, then back off with uneasy shrugs.

This deserved a look.

Jack pushed to the front and squinted into the dimly lit cage. Something there, slumped in the left rear corner, head down, chin on chest, immobile. Something huge, a seven-footer at least. Dark-skinned, manlike, and yet… undeniably alien.

Jack felt the skin along the back of his neck tighten as ripples of warning shot down his spine. He knew that shape. But that was all it was. A shape. So immobile. It had to be a dummy of some sort or a guy in a costume. A helluva good costume.

But it couldn't be the real thing. Couldn't be…

Jack ducked under the rope and took a few tentative steps closer to the cage, sniffing the air. One of the things he remembered about the rakoshi was their reek, like rotting meat. He caught a trace of it here, but that could have been from spilled garbage. Nothing like the breath-clogging stench he remembered.

He moved close enough to touch the bars but didn't. The thing was a damn good dummy. He could almost swear it was breathing.

Jack whistled and said, "Hey, you in there!"

The thing didn't budge, so he rapped on one of the iron bars.

"Hey—!"

Suddenly it moved, the eyes snapping open as the head came up, deep yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the shadows.

Imagine the offspring from mating a giant hairless gorilla with a mako shark. Cobalt skin, hugely muscled, no neck worth mentioning, no external ears, narrow slits for a nose.

Spikelike talons, curved for tearing, emerged from the tips of the three huge fingers on each hand as the yellow eyes fixed on Jack. The lower half of its huge sharklike head seemed to split as the jaw opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. It uncoiled its legs and slithered across the metal flooring toward the front of the cage.

Along with instinctive revulsion, memories surged back: the cargo hold full of their dark shapes and glowing eyes, the unearthly chant, the disappearances, the deaths…

Jack backed up a step. Two. Behind him he heard the crowd oooh! and aaah! as it pressed forward for a better look. He took still another step back until he could feel their excited breath on his neck. These people didn't know what one of these things could do, didn't know their power, their near-indestructibility. Otherwise they'd be running the other way.

Jack felt his heart kick up its already rising tempo when he noticed how the creature's lower lip was distorted by a wide scar. He knew this particular rakosh. Scar-lip. The one that had kidnapped Vicky, the one that had escaped the ship and almost got to Vicky on the shore. The one that had damn near killed Jack.

He ran a hand across his chest. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the three long ridges that ran across his chest, souvenir scars from the creature's talons.

His mouth felt like straw. Scar-lip… alive.

But how? How had it survived the blaze on the water? How had it wound up on Long Island in a traveling freak show?

"Ooh, look at it, Fred!" said a woman behind Jack.

"Just a guy in a rubber suit," replied a supremely confident male voice.

"But those claws—did you see the way they came out?"

"Simple hydraulics. Nothing to it."

You go on believing that, Fred, Jack thought as he watched the creature where it crouched on its knees, its talons encircling the iron bars, its yellow eyes burning into Jack.

You know me too, don't you.

It appeared to be trying to stand but its legs wouldn't support it. Was it chained, or possibly maimed?

The ticket seller came by then, sans boater, revealing a shaven head. Up close like this Jack was struck by his cold eyes. He was carrying a blunt elephant gaff that he rapped against the bars.

"So you're up, aye?" he said to the rakosh in a harsh voice. "Maybe you've finally learned your lesson."

Jack noticed that for the first time since it had opened its eyes, the rakosh turned its glare from him; it refocused on the newcomer.

"Here he is, ladies and gentleman," the ticket man cried, turning to the crowd. "Yessir, the one and only Sharkman! The only one of his kind! He's exclusively on display here at Ozymandias Oddities. Tell your friends; tell your enemies. Yessir, you've never seen anything like him and never will anywhere else. Guaranteed."

You've got that right, Jack thought.

The ticket man spotted Jack standing on the wrong side of the rope. "Here, you. Get back there. This thing's dangerous! See those claws? One swipe and you'd be sliced up like a tomato by a Ginsu knife! We don't want to see our customers get sliced up." His eyes said otherwise as he none too gently prodded Jack with the pole. "Back now."

Jack slipped back under the rope, never taking his eyes off Scar-lip. Now that it was up front in the light, he saw that the rakosh didn't look well. Its skin was dull and relatively pale, nothing like the shiny deep cobalt he remembered from their last meeting. It looked thin, wasted.

The rakosh turned its attention from the ticket man and stared at Jack a moment longer, then dropped its gaze. Its talons retracted, slipping back inside the fingertips, the arms dropped to its sides, the shoulders drooped, then it turned and crawled back to the rear of the cage where it slumped again in the corner and hung its head.

Drugged. That had to be the answer. They had to tranquillize the rakosh to keep it manageable. Even so, it didn't look too healthy. Maybe the iron bars were doing it—fire and iron, the only things that could hurt a rakosh.

But drugged or not, healthy or not, Scar-lip had recognized Jack, remembered him. Which meant it could remember Vicky. And if it ever got free, it might come after Vicky again, to complete the task its dead master had set for it last summer.

The ticket man had begun banging on the rakosh's cage in a fury, screaming at it to get up and face the crowd. But the creature ignored him, and the crowd began to wander off in search of more active attractions.

Jack turned and headed for the exit. He'd come here hoping to explain Monnet's interest in a freak show, but that was all but forgotten now. A cold resolve had overtaken his initial shock. He knew what had to be done.

4

Luc had promised himself not to hover over Nadia while she was working—he knew how distracting that could be. She never would be able to give her scientific inventiveness and creativity full rein if she felt someone was looking over her shoulder every minute. But curiosity and just plain need to know had overcome him.

He'd been disappointed to find her signed out, but he'd come down to the dry lab to see what she'd entered into the computer. He tapped on the keyboard to retrieve the last image she'd been working on.

He sighed as a hologram of the too-familiar inert Loki molecule materialized in the air. He'd seen too much of that. He was reaching for the escape button but stopped when something on the monitor caught his eye. He stared in disbelief at the date on the screen, indicating that the image had been created at 9:20 this morning. Not recalled—created.

Impossible. Nadia could not have generated a fresh image without a sample, and he hadn't supplied her with any inert Loki. This had to be a mistake.

Luc checked the sample chamber and felt his chest constrict when he found a residue of yellow powder. How could this be? She must have used some inert Loki he'd left here—that was the only explanation.

But why couldn't he remember leaving it?

Stress. That had to be it. It sapped focus, the ability to concentrate. And he'd certainly had more than his share of stress lately.

And yet… Luc wished he could be sure. Was it possible she'd heard about a street drug that decomposed every month and had picked up a sample? Not Nadia. She wasn't the type to take drugs or have any interest in them.

Still, he couldn't mention this to Kent or Brad. They'd panic and want to do something rash on the chance that Nadia might link GEM to Berzerk. They'd become positively bloodthirsty.

No, he'd wait. Nadia was too valuable an asset.

But she'd bear watching. Close watching.

5

"Damn!" Nadia said as she hung up the phone, none too gently.

"Something is wrong?" her mother said from the kitchen.

Nadia stood in the front room. The little apartment was redolent of the stuffed cabbage Mom was simmering in a big pot on the stove. Since she knew how Doug loved the dish, she'd suggested that Nadia invite him over for dinner.

But how could she when his line was always busy?

"It's Doug," Nadia told her. "He must be on-line with that computer of his."

She'd left the lab early and had been trying to contact Doug all day—and not just to invite him for dinner—but his line had been busy every time she called. He wasn't answering his cell phone either, which meant he probably hadn't turned it on. He often didn't on weekends.

Or maybe Doug had lapsed into one of his programming fugues. Nadia had seen it happen before. He'd take the phone off the hook, bury it under a cushion, and start hitting the keys. Gradually he'd fade into a state of altered consciousness where he became one with his computer and nothing else existed beyond their union. It was spooky.

But why did he have to fugue out today of all days? She'd been in a blue funk ever since running the inert Berzerk through the imager this morning. Seeing that molecule floating before her had drained her enthusiasm for stabilizing it.

Oh, God! she thought, stiffening. I left the sample in the imager!

She'd been so shocked after recognizing the molecule…

She calmed herself. No one would be in the dry lab until Tuesday. She'd go back first thing tomorrow morning and clean up.

What she needed most now was to talk about this. Her mother might be good for any other topic, but not this one. Nadia needed Doug.

"Come, Nadjie," her mother called. "Eat. You'll feel better."

Why not? she thought with a mental shrug. Not much else to do.

But when she sat down she realized she wasn't hungry. As she picked at her food she noticed the beer and shot of Reischman's sitting by her mother's plate.

"Mom," she said. "Would you mind pouring me one of those?"

6

Milos Dragovic gazed out upon the expanse of his grounds and was pleased. In less than forty-eight hours the army of laborers and craftsmen he had assembled had worked a miracle. And just in time. The final touches had been applied just minutes before the first guests arrived.

He watched them milling about the pool and clustering on the decks—the women mostly in black, the peacock men in coats of many colors. Quite a different crowd from Friday night's. Sprinkled among the glitterati he'd shipped in from the city were a fair number of Hamptons society. Not all the creme de la creme had accepted his invitation, but more than enough to allow him to call the party a resounding success.

He smiled. To the uninformed, the acceptance rate to a party hosted by a high-profile gangster might have seemed surprisingly high. But not if Milos's invitation strategy were known. He had investigated Hamptons society and divided the upper echelons into three groups. He then sent out his invitations in three waves, all mailed locally two days apart. When the first wave was received, he knew it would be chatted up in the social circles. He could just hear them: Did you know that boorish Dragovic fellow is having a party and he wants me to come? Can you imagine?

Of course the ones in the second and third wave were thinking, Why wasn't I invited? Not that I'd even think of going, of course, but why was I left out?

Then the second-wave invitation would arrive and there'd be a sense of relief—grateful relief that they hadn't been passed over. The post office's fault. Same with the third wave.

Thus the invitations would not be automatically tossed away. And then the talk that it might be rather interesting to attend—Hamptons slumming, you might say—and it will give us so much to talk and laugh about afterward… we'll postmortem it for days.

But with everything at the party arranged and orchestrated by Kim, seeing to it that only the very best of everything was served, and in the most tasteful manner, the only fodder for their postparty conversation would be how the affair had far exceeded their expectations.

The result would be that no one would turn down his invitations next year.

And in time Milos saw himself winnowing the list, cutting those who were not properly respectful. An invitation to the annual Milos Dragovic soiree would become an object of envy, to be coveted and striven for… like a membership at the Maidstone Club.

He wondered if any members of the self-styled East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee were present. If they hated him enough to dump refuse on his house, how could they bring themselves to attend his party?

Then again, there was the old adage: hide in plain sight. Milos's enemy might assume he'd be above suspicion if he attended. But there he was wrong.

No one was above suspicion. No one.

"Excuse me, Mr. Dragovic," said a voice to his left.

Milos turned and saw a tall, fair man. He stood with a glass of red wine in his left hand and his right extended. Milos recognized his face but the name eluded him.

"Jus Slobojan," the man said as they shook hands.

Of course. Justin Karl Slobojan. The wildly successful action-thriller director, worth a hundred million or so… originally a New Yorker, now living mostly in LA but still summering as much as possible in Amagansett.

"Mr. Slobojan," Milos said. "I've long admired your work." This was no lie. Even though his villains were often drug lords and gangsters, and always met a bloody end, Milos never missed a Slobojan film. "I am so very pleased to meet you."

And pleased he had come, especially after Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer had turned him down.

"And I'm pleased to be here. This is a wonderful party." He leaned closer. "Did I hear that you had some trouble here the other night?"

Milos stared at the director. Could he be involved with this East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee? Unlikely. He spent too little time out here to get upset over who moved in. In fact, he was probably an outsider himself. Milos understood he'd been born in the Ukraine. In a way, that made them almost neighbors.

"A little vandalism by some locals," Milos said. "Nothing important."

"Good," Slobojan said. "Some of the rumors mentioned quite a bit of damage, but I can see now that they were exaggerated. You have a beautiful house for a party. The food is superb, and this wine…" He held up his glass. "If this is your house red, I'd love to see what you keep in your cellar."

"You know wines then?"

Slobojan shrugged. "A little. I dabble."

In Milos's experience, a person who downplayed his abilities as Slobojan was doing was most often a true expert.

"Then I believe I have a treat for you. Come."

He'd led the director halfway across the living room when he heard a sound outside. He stopped and turned.

"What's that?"

"What's what?" Slobojan said.

The sound grew louder as Milos hurried back to the doors. A helicopter! He was sure of it! With his intestines writhing into painful knots, he rushed outside and scanned the night sky.

"Is something wrong?" Slobojan said, coming out behind him.

"A helicopter! I hear a helicopter!"

Slobojan laughed. "Of course you do, old man. The Coast Guard runs up and down the beach all the time."

Already the sound was fading. Milos forced a smile. "The Coast Guard. Yes, of course."