Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

Chapter Eight

The service at the restaurant was slow, even by European standards, but the food was worth waiting for. The proximity of two waiters and a busgirl throughout the main course made it impossible for us to continue our discussion of John Sinclair without risk of being overheard, and so we talked of other things while we ate. As soon as the waiters and busgirl had retreated after clearing the table and serving us coffee, I leaned close to Veil, said, "Why did you send me to see Gerard Patreaux?"

"What did he say to you, Mongo?"

"He told me a story about Chant Sinclair and Torture Island."

Veil, who was now staring at me intently, nodded curtly. "What specifically did he tell you about that matter?"

"He said Sinclair purposely got himself arrested, knowing that he'd be turned over to the CIA, and betting that the CIA would send him to Torture Island for interrogation. He wanted to avenge the death of a friend of his named Harry Gray. Gray was an Amnesty International investigator who'd been tortured to death on the island. Patreaux kept insisting he was only repeating rumors, but if there's any truth at all to the story-"

"It's true, Mongo," Veil said with quiet intensity.

"Okay," I said, "now I'm thinking that the CIA may have sent him there specifically to find out what he knew, or who he'd told, about Cooked Goose. I'm also thinking that Mr. Gerard Patreaux, distinguished official of Amnesty International, is a close personal friend of the world's most wanted criminal and that it was Patreaux who helped Sinclair pull off that stunt."

"That wouldn't surprise me at all, Mongo," Veil said, and laughed. Suddenly, he seemed much more relaxed, as if some burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He grinned at me. "In fact, I completely agree with your thinking."

"How did you know enough to send me to him, Veil? How did you know about Torture Island, and, if you thought it was so important, why didn't you tell me about it in the beginning?"

"I wasn't sure that it was important, and I still don't know that it is. I knew about Torture Island because I once had a Nicaraguan lady friend who told me about it. Even if I had wanted to tell you about it, Mongo, I couldn't have."

"Why not?"

"In a way, I believe she'd broken a pledge to John Sinclair, or at least gone against his wishes, by telling me the story, and I'd specifically promised her I wouldn't tell anyone else. I knew Patreaux had been a part of it, because my lady friend told me he'd arranged with Sinclair for Amnesty International to take care of the surviving prisoners on the island. Since Patreaux, for whatever reasons, saw fit to share some of that information with you, however he may have put it, I see no reason now why I shouldn't talk about it."

"Who is this woman, Veil?" Harper asked quietly. "And what did she have to do with this Torture Island?"

"Her real name is Maria Gonzalez, but we'll call her Feather, because that's what Richard Krowl, the doctor who was the torture specialist on the island, called her. She was involved in the incident that got Krowl drummed out of the academic community, and she ended as one of Krowl's resident torturers-the most effective and most feared."

Harper made a sound of disgust and anger in her throat. I put my hand in hers, squeezed.

"She was a torture victim herself," Veil continued in an even tone, looking directly at Harper. "Feather's a physician, and she served the Sandinista guerrillas in their rebellion against Somoza. She was captured in the field by some of Somoza's soldiers and horribly tortured in ways I won't spoil your meal by describing. The torturers left her for dead in the jungle, but she was found by the guerrillas, and she somehow survived. However, the experience had left her catatonic. She was eventually sent to a Canadian clinic for torture victims that Richard Krowl was associated with.

"No matter how well cared for they may be, victims of severe torture are almost never the same; very rarely do they recover all their faculties. Their physical wounds may heal, but not the psychological ones; they are emotionally shattered. They can't cope with the flashbacks and nightmares that become their constant companions whether awake or asleep. Richard Krowl had his own notions about how to treat torture victims: he believed that revenge was the best medicine.

"Back in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas had come to power, and most of Somoza's torturers were dead or in prison. One of their prisoners was the leader of the group that had tortured the woman. Krowl arranged for the man to be sent to the United States, supposedly to be a participant in a research project Krowl was setting up in a secure facility to study the minds of torturers. He had already brought Feather there. The fact of the matter was that Krowl couldn't have cared less about the man's thinking or motives. He was only interested in how having this man under her complete control would affect Maria Gonzalez, who hadn't spoken a word in nearly five years. He offered the man to her as a gift, told her she could do whatever she liked with him. She responded. The arrangement cured her of her catatonia, if not her muteness. She opted to torture her torturer to death, as he had tried to do to her. Her choice of torture instruments was a single feather. She worked on the man for a few hours every day, and it took him six weeks to die."

Veil paused as I rose and leaned across the table to wipe tears from Harper's cheeks. He reached out and touched her hand, raised his eyebrows slightly in a silent inquiry as to whether she wanted him to continue.

"Go on," Harper said in a steady voice. "I'm all right. I'm not crying for the man she killed, and you're not really upsetting me. I was just thinking of the horrible physical and mental pain this woman must have suffered to cause it to change her from a healer to a monster like the one she was killing."

"Precisely," Veil said quietly. "But Krowl was only interested in getting her to function at some level, not in healing her emotionally. This latest experience had not only turned her into a torturer but bonded her to Krowl, whom she now viewed as her savior. When his activities were discovered, he was thrown out of the academic and medical communities, and when he proceeded to set up shop on Torture Island, he took Feather with him. Because of the terrible combination of both pleasure and pain she'd learned how to excite using nothing more than a feather, she became Krowl's most effective interrogator, his chief torturer.

"She was there when Sinclair was brought to the island, strapped into a stretcher on a rack in a helicopter. It was Feather who took the first pass at breaking him down, and on the first night she left him unconscious and bleeding from every orifice in his body. What neither Krowl, Feather, nor any of the student-torturers on that island understood was that everything was going according to Sinclair's plan, and he had come carefully prepared. He'd hidden various tiny lock-picking devices inside his body before his capture, and within a few minutes after regaining consciousness and finding himself alone, he was out of his cell, on the loose, and free to kill-which is precisely what he proceeded to do. He began making a circuit of the island, breaking the necks of the various guards posted around the place. He came upon Feather-who never slept more than a half hour or so at a time-alone, standing at the edge of a precipice and staring out to sea. He probably wouldn't have had any compunction about killing a woman if she were just a torturer, but Krowl had told Sinclair her story before setting her loose on him, and he chose not to kill someone who had been a torture victim herself. Instead, he just knocked her out, reasoning that he'd have taken care of his business and would be in control of the island by the time she regained consciousness.

"On his way to the building where Krowl and his staff slept, Sinclair stopped in Krowl's offices to pick up two things he had come for in addition to the revenge he was exacting: a fortune in black pearls Krowl had amassed by forcing prisoners to dive for him in the shark-infested waters, and Krowl's records."

"I can understand his wanting the pearls," Garth interjected, "but why bother with the records?"

"He was finishing Harry Gray's work for him," I heard myself saying, instinctively sensing the truth of it, but not knowing exactly why. "He planned to shut down Torture Island simply by killing Krowl and the other torturers there, but he also wanted to make sure the names of the governments and organizations that had financed and used it were made public. It was his way of trying to keep another such place from starting up."

"That's correct," Veil said. "However, when he scanned the records and other papers in Krowl's office, he came across information that caused him to change his original plan. A memo he found indicated that in three days a well-known Russian dissident and his wife were being flown there for a little gentle persuasion and brainwashing to get the man to recant certain statements he had spoken and written before he and his wife were sentenced to internal exile. If Sinclair went ahead and put Torture Island out of operation that night, there would be nobody to take delivery, as it were, of the couple, and they would be returned to internal exile-perhaps even death-in the Soviet Union. If, on the other hand, Sinclair were to postpone his plans, if he could manage to somehow survive three more days in captivity until the Russians were delivered, he would also be able to rescue them. Obviously, there was going to be additional pressure above and beyond more torture he would have to endure. There were the dead guards he was leaving behind as evidence that something was seriously amiss; many of the torturers on the island knew him by reputation, and that reputation was such that he'd be suspected even if he were still locked in his cell. There would be demands to kill him outright, and, at the least, additional security precautions would be taken.

"Despite the fact that he was home free if he just continued on that night with his original plan, and despite the certainty of more pain and the possibility of death-certain death if Feather had glimpsed his face before he'd knocked her out-Sinclair headed back to his cell and chained himself up again, just to buy time in order to try to rescue the Russian dissident and his wife.

"Well, he pulled it off, obviously-and the second time he escaped from his cell, he did it with Feather's help. He killed every torturer on that island, freed the prisoners, escaped from the island in a Russian helicopter with the pearls, prisoners, and Krowl's records. He turned the prisoners and half the pearls over to Gerard Patreaux, who was waiting on a hospital ship at a prearranged site off the Chilean coast. Sinclair had saved the lives of all those people, and he had swelled the coffers of Amnesty International by a hefty amount, and all he asked in return was that the people involved not reveal what had happened, not talk about him or what he had done. End of story."

"Maybe a ninja bullshit story," Garth said, and from his terse, dismissive tone of voice I could tell that was exactly what he considered it.

"Maybe," Veil replied easily. "But I've seen the scars left on Feather's body by Somoza's torturers, and those were not part of any fairy tale. Neither was her love for, and total devotion to, Chant Sinclair. Somehow, he managed to heal her soul. Whether that story is true or not, he was a tough act to follow. I loved her, and she at least seemed content to be with me, but my knowing that I was constantly being compared with him is the reason Feather and I are no longer together."

I looked at Harper, who had grown very pale, and said, "That certainly doesn't sound like a man who would sanction random killings, or torture to death a bunch of servants."

Veil slowly turned his coffee cup in its saucer. "I don't believe he did either of those things. The gunman at the hotel was an Asian, and Sinclair always works alone. And he couldn't have kidnapped Neuberger and killed his servants if he's still running around here in Switzerland."

Garth made a derisive gesture with his hand and started to say something, but Veil cut him off. "Extreme violence is certainly Sinclair's signature," he said, speaking directly to my brother, "but I suggest there's more to that signature if you closely examine his behavior and past record." He paused, looked at Harper and me, continued, "Discounting, for the moment, all of the incidents connected with this Cornucopia business, consider who all his victims have been. In every case I've ever read about, his victims were scum of the earth, people whom everyone at this table would agree got what they deserved. Check it out; I have. Sinclair scams corrupt, criminal people and outfits-child pornography rings, drug cartels, terrorist networks, the Mafia, rogue government operations. To a man, the people he's killed have been killers themselves, like the good doctor on Torture Island. He may be a butcher, but his victims have butchered tens, hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people. I read of one incident where his victim was the owner of a Dutch pharmaceutical concern. What Sinclair did to the man and his colleagues got all the headlines, but when you got down to the fine print at the back of the better newspapers, you found out that this man had decided to increase his company's profits a bit by watering down all the medicines he had contracted to deliver to an African nation where a plague was raging. The medicines were worse than useless, because the doctors who prescribed them, and the people who took them, had every reason to believe they would work and that there was no reason to take any further medical action. Before Sinclair exposed the wholesale adulteration scheme, hundreds of men, women, and children had died of disease. These are people who might have lived if the medication they had been given had been the proper dosage."

"How did John Sinclair kill the man?" Harper asked quietly.

Veil smiled grimly. "By forcing him to drink a glass of water contaminated with a heavy concentration of a certain type of microscopic worm that eats its way along the optic nerve into the brain. There is no cure. It was a cruel act, to be sure, but I suggest there was more than a trace of poetic justice to it. Other cases fit the same pattern-victims deserving what they get. It's another reason, Mongo, why I-and presumably Mr. Lippitt- tried to warn you off this one. If Sinclair had targeted Cornucopia for one of his scams, I considered the chances very good that Cornucopia was something more than the paradigm of philanthropic benevolence you obviously believed it to be."

"Well," I said with a small sigh, "I think even the village idiot in our midst can now begin to figure that one out. Assuming Cornucopia distributes any funds at all to the causes it claims to support, which I think it unquestionably does, its primary function has always been to serve as a vast money-laundering operation. Duane Insolers told me money has been continuously siphoned off from the foundation since its inception decades ago, and I have to assume he knows what he's talking about. Neuberger's grandfather set up Cornucopia, but only after he had already made a fortune legitimately. He didn't need to set up any criminal operation, because he certainly didn't need the money."

"Greedy people never have enough money," Harper said.

"You've got that right. But even if the elder Neuberger was the biggest crook who ever lived, I just don't believe Emmet P. Neuberger has the necessities, as it were, to run a big criminal organization. He certainly knows everything that's going on in Cornucopia, but as an administrator I see him straining his talents to the limit just to be a figurehead for the family foundation. You agree, Garth?"

"Yes," my brother replied simply. He appeared thoughtful, and had obviously been thinking about what I said. "The money-laundering operation exists for a person, or persons, unknown. It's probably some crime cartel that's been around for a long time, and that may have bankrolled the grandfather, and performed other services, while he was amassing his otherwise legitimate fortune."

Veil had been listening intently, but also tapping his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. Now he said, "Let's shift the focus back to Sinclair, because he's the puzzle we have to solve. The point I was trying to make is that Cornucopia, it now seems evident, is typical of the kind of organization Sinclair targets. It's corrupt at its core, and that's what made it vulnerable. Torturing to death Neuberger's servants? Yes, he's a killer, and he takes no prisoners, but, again, he's never done anything like that to anyone who wasn't richly deserving of his attention-not to my knowledge anyway."

I grunted, said only half jokingly: "That could serve as a description of both you and big brother here. I'm thinking the three of you might actually get along just fine."

Veil laughed, but quickly turned serious again. "The shooting at the hotel, the murders of the Interpol people and others, appear atypical of Sinclair's usual M.O. I say Sinclair has demonstrated a streak of altruism, although, for some reason, he goes to considerable lengths to disguise it. Consider the story about Torture Island: He got what he ostensibly went there for-revenge and a fortune in black pearls. And he'd already suffered considerably for his troubles. Feather told me what she'd done to him. He could have been out of there in twenty-four hours. He certainly didn't have to subject himself to three more days of torment just on the chance he might be able to rescue the Russian couple; he didn't have to concern himself with any of the other prisoners. He spared the life of his chief tormentor, Feather, because she had once been a torture victim herself. Finally, he certainly didn't have to turn over half the treasure he'd gained with his blood to Amnesty International."

"That could still turn out to be a ninja bullshit story," Garth said in a deceptively soft, even tone. "We all agree he's a killer, and I'm nowhere near ready to concede he's not the one trying to kill my brother."

"As Mongo so perceptively pointed out," Veil replied firmly, "the term 'killer' might well apply to certain other people sitting at this table. And Torture Island isn't a ninja bullshit story; it happened."

I glanced at Harper, then looked back at Veil. "You make him sound like a kind of very bad-ass Robin Hood who pounds on and takes from the victimizers, then gives to the victims-after taking a hefty cut for himself. The ultimate vigilante."

Veil smiled wryly, shrugged. "Actually, that may not be a totally inaccurate description. I've been involved with the martial arts all my life, and I've met with others like myself all over the world. I've been in a position to pick up bits and pieces of information and hear rumors that you don't read in die newspapers. A lot of those things are ninja bullshit stories-but not all. Chant Sinclair may be the greatest all-around master of the martial arts who's ever lived, and I freely admit that he's always fascinated me. He operates in the ancient, traditional fashion of the ninja-as an outcast and mercenary. In this case, he's a mercenary who happens to be self-employed. Also in the ancient tradition is the way he relies on mental and psychological skills, on deception, as much as, or more than, he relies on sheer physical prowess. He's a master of tactics and strategy. He's also a master of disguise-and I'm not just talking about the usual wigs, moustaches, and accents. I'm suggesting that even his use of extreme violence may be a kind of disguise designed to keep most people from seeing him as he really is. He may only kill killers and other victimizers, but the manner in which he does it manages to scare the shit out of everyone, and it's what the media always focuses on. He may calculate that this works to his advantage. Why else ask Gerard Patreaux, Feather, and all the prisoners he rescued from Torture Island not to tell anyone what he'd done there?" Veil paused, looked inquiringly at each of us in turn. "It was almost as if he was afraid the truth might ruin his image."

"You are definitely beginning to sound like a fan," Harper said, unable or unwilling to keep a faint note of disappointment out of her voice. "Even if most of his victims do deserve what happens to them, why romanticize a man who makes a living out of terrorizing and butchering human beings?"

"My point isn't to try to romanticize him, Harper," Veil replied easily. "I'm suggesting a different way of viewing John Sinclair, an alternate perception of reality. Mongo's life, and maybe even our own lives, may depend on just how accurately we're able to determine what's really going on here in Switzerland."

"I'm sorry, Veil. I didn't mean to imply-"

"There's no need to apologize, Harper. If what I'm suggesting has any truth in it, then I guess it's fair to say I'm a fan. I've never thought of it that way, but I have followed his career for a long time, and I'm certainly in awe of his abilities. He's a criminal, yes, and a killer, yes, but Mongo's description of him as a kind of ultimate vigilante may also fit. What he does may not be legal, but there does seem to be a concern for justice-"

"That's nonsense," Garth interrupted. "You and I may have had our differences, my friend, but I've never accused you of being silly. That's what I'm hearing now. Where's the justice in trying to kill Mongo?"

If Veil was offended by Garth's words or tone, he didn't show it. "But I don't think Sinclair is trying to kill Mongo, my friend," he replied evenly. "Obviously, neither does Gerard Patreaux." Veil paused, turned to me. "Did Patreaux tell you the Torture Island story right away?"

I shook my head. "End of the evening-virtually as I was on my way out the door."

Veil grunted, turned his attention back to Garth. "Patreaux was sizing your brother up, trying to determine if Mongo might be Sinclair's enemy. When he was satisfied that Mongo wasn't, he told him that story as a way of indicating that Sinclair wasn't Mongo's enemy either." He paused, looked at Harper. When he continued, his voice was lower, more intense. "You accuse me of sounding like a fan. Okay. But I am telling you that Maria Gonzalez, Feather, would unhesitatingly lay down her life for this man. I suspect Gerard Patreaux might do the same. The man commands loyalty from decent people who have had dealings with him, Harper. If I'm right, Sinclair may have a whole global network of secret friends and allies, good people who know him as a just man, and who are willing to help him keep his secrets. Some of these friends may be in positions of power and influence. I think Sinclair may even have passed on information to some of these people when it would do some good. That's how he'd come to know Harry Gray and Gerard Patreaux in the first place: he'd been feeding them information on various human rights violations."

"Veil," I said, placing my hand on my friend's arm, looking into his piercing blue eyes, "I have to ask you something. Are you one of those friends? If this network of friends and allies does exist, are you a part of it?"

He seemed taken aback by the question. He looked at me oddly for a moment or two, then replied simply, "No. I've never met the man."

Harper asked, "Would you tell us if you had? Would you tell us if you were a part of his network?"

"You'll have to decide that for yourself, Harper," Veil replied evenly.

Garth, who had been studying Veil carefully, abruptly announced: "He's telling the truth."

I looked at my brother, nodded. Over time, I had become a reluctant believer in his uncanny "nose for evil." His poisoning with a mysterious substance called nitrophenyldienal, combined with some particularly horrific experiences we'd shared while tracking a madman who had, in effect, declared genetic warfare on humanity, had subtly altered not only his personality but also his perceptions and sensibilities. He had become a highly receptive empath, virtually a human lie detector. If I'd followed his lead in refusing to have anything to do with Emmet P. Neuberger, I wouldn't be sitting in a restaurant in Zurich trying to figure out how to avoid being killed. If Garth said Veil was telling the truth, that was good enough for me. But then, I would have believed Veil in any case; he might withhold information, or refuse to speak about something, but I didn't think he would lie to me.

I said, "Let's get back to the role of the village idiot in these proceedings. We know I was set up, but we don't know why. So let's look at what we know now, or are pretty certain of. First, I think we can safely assume that Emmet P. Neuberger is a big-time crook, if only by association, because his family foundation was set up, from day one, as a very large money-laundering operation. We know it was begun by Neuberger's grandfather, but not whether he did it for himself, out of his own greed, or on behalf of secret backers who may have been pulling his strings. My hunch is that John Sinclair found out that Cornucopia was crooked during the course of some other con job he was pulling; he not only found out that large amounts of money were being laundered and skimmed from Cornucopia, but he discovered the basic mechanism for doing it. He then proceeded to do a little skimming himself, ten million dollars' worth. Does that seem like a plausible theory?"

Garth, Veil, and Harper exchanged glances with one another, and all three nodded their heads.

"It'll do until something better comes along," Garth said. "But now it gets tricky. With all the publicity surrounding Sinclair's theft of the ten million and the killing of the Interpol inspector, Neuberger had to have been aware that there was an extreme risk that Cornucopia's money-laundering function was going to be exposed; even if Interpol and the Zurich police didn't stumble on the truth, Sinclair might leak the information. Now, you would think that absolutely the last thing in the world Neuberger would want would be to have a crack private investigator joining Interpol and the police in poking around over here. There's no better investigator in the world than baby brother here, and yet Neuberger moans and groans and goes through all sorts of emotional contortions in order to manipulate baby brother into coming over here to join the parade. Why increase his risk of exposure? What's the point of the exercise?"

I said, "He never expected me to have time to learn anything. I was sent over here by Neuberger as an expendable stalking horse, a Judas goat to flush out his enemies, and then be disposed of later. The man who approached me outside the hotel had a chance to say something just before he got blown away; he was very upset, and he wanted to know why I hadn't shown up for some meeting. Also, there had been a message, supposedly from Sinclair, left for me at the desk, but that was all part of the setup, to make sure I was neutralized in the unlikely event that I had already learned things I wasn't supposed to know and was thinking of sharing the information with the authorities."

"Why were you supposed to be at this meeting?" Garth asked. "What were you supposed to contribute?"

"I don't know. The man never had a chance to say. However, since I'd come here at Neuberger's behest, I think it's safe to assume I was supposed to be bringing something from him. Maybe a message."

"Or money," Harper said easily. She was resting her elbows on the table, cupping her chin in her hands, and staring at me. I very much liked the look in her eyes, and found myself very much looking forward to the end of this particular meeting, when Harper and I could repair to more private quarters.

"Okay, I like that. The man thought I was a courier carrying money. At the meeting I was supposed to hand over the money to him and his partners in exchange for. . uh. ."

"Try to pay attention, brother," Garth said drily. "Your attention seems to be wandering, despite your dire circumstances, and I can't imagine why. Give him the answer, Harper."

"Incriminating documents proving Cornucopia was a crooked operation. Neuberger was being blackmailed with documents Sinclair stole."

"Thank you, my dear," I said, stroking the back of her hand. "I'm not sure that's as self-evident as you make it sound, but it will certainly suffice until a better answer comes along. Now the big question: Why me? Neuberger could have used anyone as a phony courier, but he did everything but beg on his knees in order to get me to go. What's so special about poor, hapless Robert Frederickson?"

There was silence around the table for almost a minute, and then Garth spoke. "You're easy to spot. Neuberger told his blackmailers he was sending a dwarf with their money. How many dwarfs would be landing at the airport that day?"

"No," Harper said with an air of certainty. "Robby wasn't approached at the airport by anyone but his chauffeur. Robby's being a dwarf had nothing to do with it; clothes, a hat, a pink carnation in the lapel, virtually anything could have served to identify a courier. Neuberger was planning to have them all killed after Robby flushed them out and then steal the documents back. But he had to be as certain as possible that the blackmailers wouldn't hold anything back as insurance against a double cross; he had to try to make certain they would have all the documents with them when they went to this meeting, where they could be double-crossed and killed. For them to be so trusting as to show up with all the documents, they would have had to have absolute trust in a courier who would keep his word, and wouldn't be a part of any double cross. Robby fit the bill."

Again there was a prolonged silence, and then Veil grunted his approval. "Not too trashy, Ms. Rhys-Whitney. It could very well be that it was Mongo's vaunted reputation as a straight arrow that got him into this mess. Do I take it we're all assuming it wasn't Sinclair doing the blackmailing?"

Garth nodded. "Hell, he didn't need to. He'd already picked up ten million with his original scam; if he'd wanted more, he could have taken it when he transferred Cornucopia's money in the first place. But if not Sinclair, then who?"

"Somebody else who got hold of the documents," Harper said, but her tone had grown more tentative. "But how could that happen? If Sinclair did steal documents along with the money, it was for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason was- since we agree it probably wasn't to blackmail Neuberger. It doesn't seem likely that he'd lose them, or that somebody could steal them from him."

"Damn," I said softly as an answer came to me with sudden, perfect clarity. "Sinclair did take documents along with the money, but he didn't lose them, and they weren't stolen from him. He gave them away, and the person he gave them to was Bo Wahlstrom."

"Yes!" Veil exclaimed, sitting up straight in his chair. He glanced at me sharply, and his blue eyes glinted with excitement. "Oh, yes! That's it!"

Garth, obviously puzzled, glanced back and forth between Veil and me. "Bo Wahlstrom is the Interpol inspector Sinclair murdered right after he ripped off Cornucopia. He burned his eyes out. What are you two talking about?"

"No," Veil said.

"No what?"

"Sinclair didn't kill Wahlstrom."

"Explain."

I said, "The connection between Bo Wahlstrom and Chant Sinclair goes back a long time. It was Wahlstrom who arrested Sinclair and, presumably, turned him over to the CIA. But remember that was exactly the scenario Sinclair wanted. We already know of one highly respected official who worked with Sinclair, and that's Gerard Patreaux. Bo Wahlstrom may have been another friend and ally. If it's true, then other pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together."

Garth glanced at Harper, then looked back at me. "Sorry, Mongo. I'm still not tracking."

"Be patient. Here's another point to consider: The Interpol inspector who originally briefed me never mentioned Torture Island, but I was told that Bo Wahlstrom's full-time assignment was tracking John Sinclair. I'll bet he got that assignment soon after Sinclair's capture and subsequent escape from Torture Island, because it was Wahlstrom who had been given credit for nabbing him in the first place. Well, he never quite managed to catch up with him again, did he?"

"I thought the accepted wisdom was that he had finally caught up with him, and Sinclair killed him for his efforts."

"The accepted wisdom is wrong. Wahlstrom never caught up with Sinclair again, because he didn't want to catch up with Sinclair again. But he caught a hell of a lot of other bad guys along the way. That's another thing I learned from my Interpol briefing. While Wahlstrom was supposedly devoting all his efforts to catching Sinclair, all sorts of information suddenly seemed to start coming his way. Sinclair may have continued to elude him, but in the meantime he managed to shut down a lot of other criminal operations. You think that's a coincidence?"

Harper reached across the table and squeezed my wrist. "You think that John Sinclair has been feeding information to Interpol for all these years?"

"Not to Interpol-to Bo Wahlstrom, because Wahlstrom was another friend and ally. Just like Harry Gray and Gerard Patreaux, to whom Sinclair fed information and documents on human rights violations."

"You're beginning to sound like Veil," Garth said in a neutral tone.

I shrugged. "What can I say? It's just a guess."

"I believe it's a good one," Veil said. "But I see a problem with where this is all leading us. Bo Wahlstrom was, from all accounts and in Mongo's scenario, a good man who would have used the documents to shut down Cornucopia and nail Neuberger, not blackmail him."

"It could have been the partner, Nicholas Furie; I was told Furie had only recently been assigned to assist Wahlstrom. Furie may have been corrupt. He would have been in a position to steal the documents from Wahlstrom, and, with partners fronting for him, try to blackmail Neuberger."

Harper frowned. "But it wasn't Nicholas Furie who killed Bo Wahlstrom. Wahlstrom was killed in the same manner as the servants in New York, and then Furie himself died the same way."

"Indeed."

"Then who's doing all the killing?"

Yet again there was a period of silence as each of us sat with our own thoughts, sorting through the information we had, attempting to separate fact from speculation, examining different scenarios, trying to see a pattern. And then what I was certain was at least a leading candidate for the answer to Harper's question slowly rose to the surface of my consciousness. "It could be the biggest and meanest baddies of all," I said quietly. "The people Cornucopia was set up to service in the first place, the grandfather's backers."

Harper nervously ran a hand back through her long, brown, gray-streaked hair. "If that is the case, then why would they kidnap Neuberger and butcher all his servants?"

I thought I had a pretty good idea why, but so did Veil, and it was Veil who answered. "They killed the servants for no other reason than that they were there, and they kidnapped Neuberger because they may have prepared some kind of special punishment for him. They probably hold him responsible for the fact that Sinclair stole ten million dollars from them. Or Neuberger himself may have been in on-or thought he was in on-Sinclair's scam."

"All right," I said, "let's take it from the top and see how it sounds so far. At some point in time during the course of his own mundane, workaday criminal activities, John Sinclair learns that a certain famous philanthropic foundation is in reality nothing more than a huge money-laundering operation for some big-time criminal organization. He also learns how the money is siphoned off, and he sets up his own scam posing as a Montreal entrepreneur."

Garth, obviously getting into the spirit of things, cleared his throat, his way of asking for the floor. "As Veil suggests," he said, "maybe Neuberger thought he was in on the whole thing. Sinclair could have used incriminating information he'd already uncovered to blackmail Neuberger into giving him the technical information he needed to bypass the security codes, and then offered Neuberger a deal to keep him quiet and in place. Sinclair, posing as French-Canadian, could have made Neuberger believe he was going to be a partner in a foolproof embezzlement scheme."

"Whatever," I said, tapping the table. "Sinclair may or may not have implicated Neuberger in the scam, but it plays either way, because Neuberger is in deep shit either way. He'll be held responsible. Sinclair pulls off the scam, and, assuming Neuberger is a part of it, double-crosses his would-be partner in crime. After taking his ten million, Sinclair forwards any information and documents he may have to his friend, Inspector Bo Wahlstrom of Interpol, for appropriate action by the legal authorities.

"But Wahlstrom's new partner gets a look at the stuff before Wahlstrom can get the ball rolling. Maybe Nicholas Furie can't believe Sinclair only took ten million dollars. He knows there's a whole hell of a lot more than that to be had from Cornucopia, and he doesn't see any reason why a hardworking civil servant like himself shouldn't also get a piece of the pie before the bakery is shut down. He takes on a partner or two to front for him. They contact Neuberger and make their pitch: all incriminating documents will be stolen from Wahlstrom and returned to Neuberger, in exchange for a very hefty fee."

"My turn, Mongo," Garth said.

"It's my scenario, so I should get to tell it. But I may let you speak if you raise your hand."

Harper was not amused. "There's one thing wrong with your scenario, Robby," she said softly, horror in her voice and maroon, gold-flecked eyes. "I don't see how you can assume Neuberger might have originally agreed to cooperate in the scheme. If you were this man, would you consider for even one second crossing an organization that exacts revenge by torturing people to death, burning out eyes and brains?"

"Neuberger-this Neuberger-may not have known who he was dealing with, Harper," Veil said gently. "Cornucopia was founded by the grandfather decades ago and subsequently run by the father for years before control passed to Emmet P. Things probably ran very smoothly for all those years, so no nasty business ever occurred. Now, we have no way of knowing what instructions Emmet P. got from his father. He was certainly told what to do, given instructions as to how to do it, and probably given a stern warning to keep conducting business as usual, or suffer the consequences. But we don't know if Emmet P. had a full appreciation of just what those consequences might be. He may never have had any direct contact with anyone from the organization he was laundering money for. Mongo's scenario doesn't require that Neuberger be in on the deal, but if he was, it was because he'd become complacent. By the time he came to realize the severity of just what could happen to him, it was too late. Sinclair had already double-crossed him, and news of the theft had been made public."

Harper thought about it, shuddered as she nodded her head. "Okay. I guess it could have been that way. You're probably right when you say he would have been held responsible in any case."

"Right," I said. "Now, Neuberger had already been ripped off once, and he wasn't going to let it happen again, especially by a crew he probably sensed were amateurs. So he set up a double cross of his own, using me as a stalking horse to flush them out so they could be killed, and the documents recovered. But it was too late to cover his tracks, if it had ever been possible. By this time the really bad guys had gotten wind of what was happening, and they began taking care of business themselves, not only exterminating the would-be blackmailers but also going after anyone at all who might know anything about the details of the scam, along with anybody who might be in the line of fire, like those people at the hotel."

"Enter the dragon," Veil said in a curiously distant tone of voice.

"The dragon at the hotel had been marked with a combination brand-tattoo on his back. Garth, did you find out anything about that mark?"

My brother shook his head. "Not a thing. I began by assuming it was a yakuza, or maybe a tong, marking, but I couldn't find anything in the literature, and the FBI and NYPD couldn't help. Tong marks are usually much smaller, and yakuza tattoos usually much more elaborate than what you described to Veil. Nobody knows anything about a mark combining a brand and a tattoo."

Now it was Veil's turn to clear his throat.

"Not you again," Garth said with mock sarcasm-a rare show of humor from my brother toward a man with whom he was usually extremely guarded. "I see I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble by taking you out for a few beers instead of spending all night in the library."

Garth's tone had been light, but the implication of his words was clear: left unanswered was the pointed and pertinent question of why Veil hadn't volunteered the information about Cooked Goose, or anything else he knew bearing on my situation, when I'd called him after the massacre at the hotel.

"That's my fault, brother," I said quickly, anxious to head off any renewed tension between Garth and Veil. "I was feeling pissy when I called Veil, and I made it clear that all I wanted, or would accept, from him was for him to deliver my message to you. I didn't want to listen to anything he had to say, and after the things I said to him, I consider it a small miracle that he's here at all, much less that he's willing to help. It was my stupidity and stubbornness that wasted your time, Garth, not Veil's, and I apologize to both of you."

Garth nodded to me, then to Veil. Veil nodded back. It looked like things were all right.

"What I have to tell you could be nothing more than just another ninja bullshit story," Veil said carefully, looking at my brother.

Garth didn't smile. "This is one I'll listen to very carefully."

"Okay. I mention, and underline, that possibility, because that's what I always considered it to be. Now I'm not so sure. What makes me begin to consider the possibility that it's true, Garth, is, first, Mongo's description of the mark on the back of the gunman at the hotel, and second, what you had to say about Sinclair's family background, his upbringing in Japan, his dissertation on medieval Japanese secret societies, and so on.

"The story I heard concerns a very old, and very secret, Japanese organization that calls itself Black Flame. Supposedly, it dates back more than fifteen hundred years, and it's much more than some antique yakuza outfit. Yakuza gangs operate within carefully delineated territories; Black Flame's turf is the world. They are supposed to have begun like the ninjas, as relatively straightforward mercenaries and assassins, but then their rationale for existence took on a more mystical flavor. Black Flame, so the story goes, became dedicated to the pursuit of power and wealth through the conscious and willing embrace and exercise of evil."

"It sounds like Satanism," Harper said.

Veil shook his head. "No. Satan and Satanism are Christian inventions. Black Flame's devotion to evil would spring from Tao and Shintoism, a sense of the duality of all forces in nature, black and white, good and evil. It isn't the worship of an evil force to gain supernatural power, but a willing eagerness to use evil means to accrue very real power and wealth. By evil means, include the spiritual and physical destruction of innocents."

"It sounds horrible."

Veil smiled without humor. "Probably no more horrible than the goals and methods of your average criminal gang-or a lot of corporations, for that matter. Black Flame, if it really exists, is simply less hypocritical about where it's coming from.

"Over the centuries, Black Flame grew in influence, power, and wealth because its members are very good at what they do. In a way, they can be viewed as just a very successful, overachieving yakuza gang. But what sets them apart from other criminal enterprises, and what they would claim is the fountainhead of their special skills, is the spiritual aspect of the group. The legend goes that they are masters of the so-called dark martial arts-what Westerners might, for want of a better word, call sorcery."

Garth grunted. "Sorcery?"

"Hang on awhile, Garth; I don't want to lose your attention just yet. Let's call it the psychological mastery of others: manipulation, intimidation, domination-either through violent physical means or with drugs." Veil paused, looked at me, and raised his eyebrows slightly. "This isn't what most people think of as the martial arts, but the goal is the same: total mastery of a situation. Mongo and I can tell you that all the kicking, punching, and screaming business will only take you so far, for so long. Age takes its toll on roundhouse high kicks."

I said: "Amen."

"Again, according to legend, Black Flame is comprised of individuals who are masters of psychological warfare. Yes, they can break bones and crack skulls with the best of them, but Black Flame members are more likely to do it with clubs than with their hands or feet. Their primary interest is in the total domination of those who come under their influence by the breaking of minds and souls. Black Flame was the Mafia of its day."

I said: "And maybe still is."

Veil shrugged noncommittally. "I know I'm the one who brought the subject up, but it's a little hard to believe that an organization supposedly as powerful as this one wouldn't show up in FBI, CIA, or Interpol files."

"Maybe it has shown up, but the public just hasn't been told about it. It wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened. What else have you heard about this Black Flame?"

"To be a member-to have 'made one's bones' as it were- was to be guaranteed wealth, and so there was never a shortage of would-be recruits. But only young people who were already far advanced in the physical martial arts were ever accepted."

"Like the young Chant Sinclair," Garth said in a flat voice.

"Yes," Veil replied evenly. "Like the young Chant Sinclair. Once admitted as a novice, the recruit was given training in Black Flame's secrets of the kind of sorcery I mentioned-the properties of various drugs and herbs, the mastery of psychological as well as physical disguise."

"Psychological disguise?"

"Forcing other people to perceive you as you wish to be perceived. If you want to be loved, you're loved; if you want to be feared, you're feared. If you want to make yourself invisible, which is to say that you want to be ignored by everyone around you, that's what you proceed to do. Among other things, you learn to be an outstanding actor and mime in the service of your greater goal, which is to manipulate your enemies into doing what you want them to do. If you've mastered the arts of physical and psychological disguise, you can sneak up on your enemy and kill him; you can move in the world as you want."

"Again," Garth said in the same flat tone, "just like Chant Sinclair."

"Perhaps," Veil replied, looking directly at my brother. "Again, it was what you mentioned earlier about Sinclair's youth and upbringing, combined with Mongo's description of the mark on the gunman's back, that made me consider the possibility Black Flame might somehow be involved. But there are many ways in which Sinclair doesn't fit the profile of a Black Flame initiate. The story goes that there was a price to be paid for membership that few understood."

"Explain."

"The price for membership in Black Flame was the loss of personality, of individuality. That was the trap. Centuries ago, supposedly, lots of poverty-stricken families wished for a son to be accepted into Black Flame, in the belief that the family would then share in the resulting wealth and power of the son. If the father had the right connections, and the son the necessary martial arts skills, the father might get the son what amounted to a tryout. But once the son was fully accepted into the society, and the final trial was the gratuitous assassination of some innocent person, that new Black Flame member would no longer be recognizable to his family. Black Flame members were said to have been like zombies; having dedicated themselves to evil, they lost their souls, their personalities. Having been stripped of compassion, they lost the ability to love. They became colorless killing machines with no past they cared to remember. And there was no turning back once a person had been accepted as a novitiate. Another trap: any novitiate who did not live up to expectations, or who was reluctant to carry out the killing that led to full membership, or who displayed any second thoughts whatsoever about joining, was summarily executed."

Garth thought about it, shook his head. "Well, that doesn't sound like Sinclair. He may be a lot of things, but you certainly can't accuse him of being colorless, or of not projecting a very powerful personality over the course of the past twenty years."

"Maybe part of it does fit," Harper said quietly. "We know a different side to him after learning about what he did on Torture Island. The personality he's been projecting for twenty years may not be his real one. He may be a merciless vigilante, but he's not a terrorist in the way he's always depicted in the media; he's very selective about who he goes after, and he doesn't kill innocent people. He's not, it seems, quite what he appears to be."

"A real possibility," Garth said with a nod to Harper.

"Look," I said, "let's stop dancing around the issue. Veil, what do you think is the possibility that this Black Flame outfit exists today?"

By way of an answer, Veil took a pen out of his pocket, drew something on a napkin, shoved the napkin in front of me. "According to the legend, novitiates who were accepted into the society were branded, and the scar tissue embellished by a tattoo. Does that drawing look anything like the mark you saw on the gunman's back?"

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck as I stared at the drawing on the napkin. "It's close enough."

Garth asked Veil, "What do you think are the chances of Sinclair being a member?"

"Nonexistent," Veil answered without hesitation. "A member of Black Flame might have gone off to the Sorbonne, or joined the army, in order to further the aims of the organization, but it's unlikely. If he did, he would operate subtly. Sinclair's been the ringleader of his own three-ring circus for twenty years. He doesn't begin to fit the complete profile of a Black Flame assassin."

"Even more to the point," I offered, "he wouldn't have ripped off ten million dollars from his own people. So there doesn't seem to be much chance-"

"Oh, Jesus," Veil interrupted suddenly. His voice was soft, but there was an air of certainty in his tone.

I turned in my chair, looked into his bright eyes. "What?"

Veil cocked his head to one side, frowned slightly as he stared off into space. I could tell he was far ahead of us now, his mind searching for other connections, answers to questions we had not yet asked.

"Veil?"

He glanced at me, Garth, and Harper, and then his gaze came back to me. "He's an ex-member."

"I thought you said there were no ex-members; there aren't even any ex-novitiates."

Veil's only response was to slowly shake his head back and forth. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, the vision he had suddenly experienced.

"Go ahead, Veil," Garth prompted quietly. "Just tell us what you're thinking."

"There weren't supposed to have been any members who weren't Japanese," Veil answered distantly. "But now I'm thinking. . that the key may have been Sinclair's father. Garth, you said the man was totally immersed in Japanese culture. He arranged for the son to train in the martial arts at a very young age, and the boy was a natural. So the son progresses as far as he can go with the standard sensei, teaching standard techniques. But the father wanted more. What if-and all I'm saying is what if- the father approached a leader of Black Flame, perhaps through some contact he had made, and offered up his son to them in the ancient tradition?"

Harper sighed. "You're saying the father was willing to put his son in grave danger just so the boy could find work one day as an assassin? I don't think so."

"That wasn't the point, Harper," Veil replied quickly, making no effort now to hide his growing excitement. "The father wanted the son to have the opportunity to become the great martial arts master the father thought he could be. He could have been indulging his own pride, as well. He was an American, so maybe he didn't know, or fully appreciate, the kind of people he was dealing with. Or maybe he was simply betting that his son could break free of them after he'd learned the lessons the father wanted him to have. And that's precisely what the young John Sinclair did. He was accepted as a novitiate, he took their secrets, and then he left."

I winced inwardly. "And Black Flame retaliated by killing his parents. It could explain the mysterious circumstances of their deaths."

"True," Garth said. "But why not simply kill the son? Or at least kill him in addition to the parents?"

"They may have tried, and failed. Maybe John Sinclair was never that easy to trap, even as a young man. There's also a possibility Black Flame considered it even greater punishment to leave the son alive after murdering his parents, allowing him to suffer what must have been considerable grief and guilt."

"God," Harper said, and shuddered. "If it's true, that's so terrible, so sad." She paused, took a deep breath, continued, "Assuming this Black Flame society really does exist, and that the present circumstances and past history are about how Veil describes them, why are these people still hanging around here? If Veil's theory is true, I can understand why they would be interested in killing John Sinclair, but we can assume they've been working toward that goal for years. They've eliminated all people and evidence linking them to Cornucopia. So why don't they just fade away?"

"They want to kill Mongo," Garth answered, once again looking around at all the windows and exits in the restaurant, as he and Veil had been doing all evening. "They feel he's a loose end. They know he came here on an errand for Neuberger, and they're not sure how much he knows about Cornucopia and them. They would still want to kill Sinclair, but they may consider Mongo an even greater threat to them at the present time. For whatever reason, Sinclair has never exposed them; they fear Mongo might know enough to do exactly that."

Harper brushed a strand of hair back from her face. "Given the premises we're operating under, that's fair enough reasoning. But it doesn't explain why John Sinclair is sticking around too- if he really is. What does he want?"

"To destroy Black Flame," Veil said, his tone once again distant. He tapped his index finger once, firmly, on the tabletop. "It sounds like the ultimate in ninja bullshit stories, and yet it just might be true. He wants to finish a duel that began when a young John Sinclair stole Black Flame's secrets and walked away from them, continued with the murder of his parents in retaliation, and may have resumed in Vietnam when a man who may have been a Black Flame leader took advantage of his assignment working for the CIA to try to destroy Sinclair by involving him in Cooked Goose, by feeding him explosive information that the leader calculated would get him killed by his own countrymen."

"I agree that it sounds like the ultimate you-know-what," Garth said in a neutral tone that made it impossible for me to gauge how much, if any, of it he thought might be plausible. He paused, looked at me, continued, "I also agree it just might be true. Some of it anyway."

In the silence that followed I struggled to share Veil's vision, to see things the way he saw them. I tried to imagine a Japan-obsessed father with intimate knowledge of and love for that culture discovering, to his joy, that his son had a preternatural talent for the martial arts, virtually Japan's national sport. Then I tried to imagine that same father learning of Black Flame, or suspecting its existence, and then, perhaps partially to feed his own ego, deciding to test the decidedly dark waters of Black Flame's powers using his own son as a plumb line. The son, of course, would have eagerly accepted the challenge of seeing if he could receive Black Flame training, ingest their secrets, and then escape-spiritually as well as physically-from their clutches.

The son had met the challenge posed by the father, but neither had fully gauged Black Flame's ruthlessness, or its implacable will for vengeance.

Years had passed. Whether Black Flame had truly been unable to catch up with Sinclair, or had simply been biding its time waiting for exactly the right moment to exact a full measure of retribution for what they considered his betrayal, was impossible to determine with certainty, as was any complete scenario. But if there was any truth at all in the scenario we were patching together out of little more than motes of data in thin air, it seemed Black Flame had waited until after Sinclair had become a war hero before striking at him. It could mean their strategy had been to disgrace him as well as kill him, to see him branded a traitor by his countrymen before being executed. Involve him, against his will, in the monstrous Cooked Goose.

But Sinclair's physical and mental abilities had continued to grow, perhaps beyond even Black Flame's reckoning. He had escaped that psychological and physical snare; he'd rejected the whole idea of Cooked Goose, as the Black Flame advisor had calculated he would, but then managed to kill his own would-be assassins and walk, unscathed, out of Southeast Asia. This the Black Flame master had definitely not calculated.

However, some of Black Flame's goals had been accomplished. John Sinclair, war hero, had been disgraced, and he was totally alone in the world, hunted not only by Black Flame but also by the CIA, which would go to any lengths to make certain he was never in a position to tell about the agency's aborted plan to assassinate innocent American civilians. But then Sinclair turned the tables once again. Branded a renegade and traitor, he appeared to have embraced the labels, virtually cloaking himself in the vilification heaped upon him. In effect, disguising himself. Tearing a chapter or three out of Black Flame's manual on the use of deception and misdirection to achieve goals, he had merrily embarked on a career path that would bring him, presumably, great wealth, and the kind of power one who is feared by a great many people enjoys. Branded a criminal, he would ally himself with a small band of people who fought crime; branded evil, and going out of his way to encourage that perception, he would labor to correct injustice; if Black Flame was a hole in the world through which evil flowed, he would work to stop it up. The duel continued, on a world stage; he would use the very secrets and techniques he had stolen from Black Flame to fight against them. Viewed from this admittedly bizarre angle, it was almost as if John Sinclair, from the moment he had deserted and gone into business as a globe-trotting extortionist, con man, killer, and all-around bad-ass, had actually been engaged in a kind of. . spiritual exercise.

I was getting a headache.

"Mongo?"

I looked up at my brother, who had spoken, and found Harper and Veil looking at me as well. "What?"

"You appear to have drifted away from us. A Swiss franc for your thoughts."

"They're not worth it. This whole discussion probably isn't worth a Swiss franc. In the end, all this speculation about secret society mumbo jumbo and what John Sinclair may or may not really be up to probably isn't worth the paper it's not printed on. It's probably all irrelevant. What is relevant is that I'm the monkey wrench Neuberger dropped into some infernal machine, and I- maybe we-are going to get ground up if I can't find the Off switch pretty damn quick. I'm a target. If it's not Sinclair trying to kill me, then it's somebody else, and it doesn't much matter to me whether it's Sinclair or some bunch of loony, evil-worshipping Japanese assassins. Definitely, the man with the answers I need is John Sinclair. I don't care who's after him. I do care about the people at this table, and he may know how to get me out of the cross fire. That's relevant. So I still have to find him, and so far I can't see how anything we've discovered, or mused on, is of any use. So let's cut to the chase. Garth, what could you find out about the R. Edgar Blake that Duane Insolers referred to?"

Garth reached into his pocket and once again withdrew his notebook. He opened it, studied a page for a few moments, said, "R. Edgar Blake, when he was alive, was a very wealthy fellow. Fortune magazine ranked him number twenty-two one year. His holdings were many, diverse, worldwide. Two of the business articles I read implied that not all of those holdings were on the up-and-up. He seems to have spent a lot of money trying to keep his name out of the newspapers. He had a ton of business interests in the United States, including a pharmaceuticals plant in Texas. R.E.B. Pharmaceuticals held an exclusive patent to manufacture and distribute a drug called gluteathin, or GTN, a very potent hypnotic drug used to treat certain types of psychosis. He was also the founder of Blake College, now defunct, in New York City. He was very reclusive, and there's a strong implication in the literature that he was not a pleasant fellow."

Garth closed the notebook, looked up at me. "A little item of particular interest, brother. Blake was rumored to have had the world's largest private intelligence-gathering network, and supposedly had strong ties to government intelligence agencies around the world, communist as well as Western. The man played all points of the compass. In short, he was very powerful, shadowy, ridiculously wealthy, and an amoral, first-class son-of-a-bitch." Garth paused, raised his eyebrows slightly. "Oh, there is one other thing. Lest I forget, let me hasten to add that R. Edgar Blake was the half brother of Emmet P. Neuberger's grandfather."

"Gee, Garth," I replied evenly, determined not to give my brother the satisfaction of seeing any evidence of the jolt he had just given my nervous system, "I'm really glad you remembered that small bit of information. It certainly is an interesting item. Is that it?"

"Well, there's just a bit more. R. Edgar Blake's principal residence was a castle on the shore of Lake Geneva-which, if I correctly recall my high school geography, is not too far from where we now sit. I believe you also requested that I make a note of any 'countess' that might come to my attention in the course of my exhaustive labors. One did. Living in said castle on the shore of Lake Geneva is one Countess Jan Rawlings."