The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

1

I was on an errand to help an injured friend who scoffed at my insistence that he was in great danger from a pale-eyed, monstrous ninja who could do just about everything but walk on water, and who was working for a dead man. I hoped I wasn't too late.

It was dark by the time I reached the East Village, and the streets were crowded with people of all ages, types, colors, and dress strolling about and enjoying an unusually balmy early spring evening in New York City.

The crowds gradually thinned out, and the streets were deserted by the time I reached the deteriorating, desolate block where Veil Kendry lived. I parked my Volkswagen in front of the otherwise gutted factory building housing his loft, smiled when I looked up and saw the bone-white mercury vapor light spilling out of all the windows; despite the fact that he had his right arm in a sling, Veil was back to work, painting. I wondered what changes, if any, would now show up in his work after months of subtly hunting, and being hunted by, Orville Madison, Veil's ex-C.I.A. controller and United States secretary of state, recently appointed and confirmed, and even more recently deceased when my brother had blown his brains out.

The feud between Veil and Orville Madison had extended over two decades, its poisonous seeds having been planted during the war in Southeast Asia. Madison, who had always hated anyone whose spirit he could not crush, had particularly hated Veil, who-on a good day, in the best of moods-had been unpredictable, supremely contemptuous of authority, and prone to unexpected violence. Destroying Veil became an obsession to Madison, and he had finally struck at the man whose code name was Archangel with a plan marked by stunning deviousness, subtlety, and cruelty. Veil, when he realized just what it was Madison intended to do, had struck back with stunning directness and brutality.

My friend had prevailed, inasmuch as he had thwarted Madison's plans for him and the Hmong people he had fought with for years, but there had been a heavy price to pay. In the course of his duel with Madison, Veil had been forced to betray his countrymen in order to save a Hmong village from destruction. Veil had been stripped of all his honors, and his service records altered to erase most traces of his military career and make it appear that he had been discharged from the army because he was a psychotic. Madison, convinced that Veil would self-destruct in civilian life, had nonetheless added an unusual, and secret, punishment of his own: an indeterminate sentence of death. The day Archangel ever experienced true happiness or peace, Madison told Veil, would be the day Archangel died.

But Veil had not self-destructed. He had found sanctuary from his private, savage demons in art. And Orville Madison had gone on to bigger and better things in government.

Which was the way things would have remained, except that the poisonous boil inside Veil's enemy had come to a head a few months before when a thoroughly mad Orville Madison had decided to celebrate his nomination to the post of secretary of state in President Kevin Shannon's newly elected administration by having a loyal employee put a bullet through Veil's skull. The C.I.A. assassin had missed, setting in motion a bizarre and complex chain of events that had caused the deaths of many innocent people and spawned a manhunt across the breadth, and deep into the soul, of this land called the United States of America. The manhunt had ended three days before, in a vast, dusty hearing room in an unused section of the Old Senate Office Building, when Garth had splattered Orville Madison's brains against a wall that had already been pockmarked by bullets from Veil's submachine gun. In line with a decision that it was in everyone's best interests to keep the people of the country innocent of the fact that their charismatic new president had had the bad judgment to choose as his secretary of state a maniac who was a mass murderer, and thanks to the fact that every elected representative and civil servant who had witnessed the killing had his or her own very good reasons for joining a conspiracy of silence, arrangements had been made successfully to make the death look like the result of an unfortunate hunting accident. Sure enough, the morning papers had carried the news that Orville Madison, vacationing in Maine, had died in a tragic hunting accident when he had tripped over a log and his rifle had discharged, firing a bullet into his head.

Madison had tripped, all right-over his obsessive hatred for a man who'd become a legend as the mysterious and deadly "Archangel" during the war in Southeast Asia.

So Orville Madison had met his match and his end-but it was not the end of the matter, at least not for me. Garth, his own brains apparently fried by doses of a rare and little-understood drug he'd been fed during the course of an investigation he'd been conducting before being abruptly reassigned by the NYPD to help me search for Veil, had fallen into a rigid catatonic state immediately after he'd blown away Madison's head and put a bullet into Veil's right shoulder. Mr. Lippitt, our seemingly ageless friend who was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was of the opinion that being forced to become involved in my search for Veil had actually saved Garth's life. Even if that was true, it was little comfort to me; fifty minutes before, I had left Garth, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, staring vacantly at the beige-colored stucco ceiling of his room from his bed in a secret D.I.A. clinic at the Rockland Psychiatric Center, a few miles upstate.

Nor did I think the matter was finished for Veil, despite his contrary opinion. During the course of my search for Archangel, Veil, I had crossed paths with one of the most terrifying men I had ever met-Henry Kitten. Kitten was not terrifying because he was mindless, or because he was big-which he most certainly was-or because he was capable of great savagery; indeed, Veil Kendry, when he chose to be, was probably as merciless as Kitten, if not more so. No; Henry Kitten was terrifying for the same reason I would find Veil terrifying if Veil were my enemy instead of my friend. Like Veil, Henry Kitten was a man who gave the impression-a correct one-that he was a human weapon against which there was virtually no defense, an inexorable killing machine which, if loosed on you, was an occasion for a quick trip to your lawyer's office to update your will, if you had time. Like Veil, Kitten was a master of the martial arts, a man who'd literally dodged my bullets and, with a single blow, left me paralyzed on a snow-covered field in a park in New Jersey while he'd dumped two men who hadn't dodged my bullets into the Hudson River. Veil and Kitten were two awesome warriors.

Although the white ninja with the triangular face and pale, khaki-colored eyes could have killed me on that day, he hadn't. Yet Henry Kitten hadn't spared my life out of.kindness or mercy, but simply because he found me useful in his own hunt for Veil. I had been left alive to play the dual roles of stalking horse and Judas goat. Unlike Veil, who made his living as an artist and used his martial skills only when necessary, Kitten was a free-lance assassin, reputedly the global underworld's best and highest paid. He'd been hired by Orville Madison, who'd used him in the past, to finish the job Madison's assassin had botched. Veil, who claimed never to have heard of Kitten, had dismissed my suggestion that the sudden death of Kitten's employer would make no difference at all to the assassin. But Kitten was a consummate professional who had made it clear to me that he took great pride in his work, played for an international audience of potential future employers, and always finished an assignment. I half suspected that Veil's attitude of casual disregard of my warnings was intended to protect me by keeping me out of harm's way. Under other circumstances I wouldn't have been concerned, since I'd put my money on Veil in a mano-a-mano fight with any man, using any weapons, in any kind of test, from a duel with machine guns to a spitting contest. The problem now was that Veil's right collarbone had been cracked by the bullet my brother, as he plummeted into the mindless void where he was now lost, had fired into him, and it seemed to me that Veil's damaged arm tipped the odds a bit too much in Kitten's favor. Veil Kendry was a friend who'd saved my life and Garth's on more than one occasion in the preceding months. If Henry Kitten was still coming at Veil, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was, I wanted to be at Veil's side when the ninja arrived.

Which was why I was now sitting in my car outside a gutted factory building in the East Village trying to think of new arguments I could use to convince Veil that he should at least let me sit down with him and help him plan offensive and defensive strategies against a deadly shadow who, as matters now stood, seemed to control all the options.

Suddenly the lights in the loft, and all along the block, winked out. The rest of the neighborhood appeared to be unaffected; I could see lights in the adjoining blocks and in the skyscrapers in midtown continuing to glow, but I was left sitting in a car in the middle of a rectangle of unrelieved night. I quickly ducked down behind the dashboard and drew my Beretta from its shoulder holster.

Henry Kitten, I felt almost certain, had come to call.

I crawled over the gear shift and hand brake, then pushed open the door on the passenger's side. I sucked in a deep breath, rolled out of the car and, keeping low, sprinted across the sidewalk to the steel door cut into the side of the building. Although I did not know why, I strongly sensed that the door would be unlocked-just as it had been months before when I had passed through that portal to investigate a loft flooded with light but empty, and found a cryptic oil painting and an envelope containing ten thousand dollars in cash addressed to me.

I was right. The steel door banged open on its well-oiled hinges when I hit it with my shoulder, and I sprawled on my belly on the floor in the small foyer at the foot of the elevator shaft, gun held out in front of me with both hands.

My somewhat melodramatic entrance was greeted with nothing but silence. Wherever the assassin with the triangular face and khaki-colored eyes was, assuming my fears were well founded, he was not in the foyer. And he was not outside on the street, watching and waiting; the open door told me that. This time the door was open not because Veil had left it unlocked for me, but because Henry Kitten had shunted the alarm system, picked the lock, and passed through before me. He was somewhere in the building, perhaps already up in the loft itself, stalking. .

I did not dwell on the question of how Henry Kitten had managed to short out all the lights in a single block, although I suspected it could be done with detailed maps of the city's sewer system and power grid, and a delayed-time charge placed on one of the main power lines beneath the street. Nor did I dwell on how he had managed to get into the building, and perhaps up into the loft, without encountering an extremely warm greeting from Veil, who would have immediately recognized his stalker from my description. The ninja assassin had performed an almost equally remarkable feat a few weeks before when he'd bypassed a state-of-the-art alarm system, gone unnoticed by a cadre of bodyguards, then scaled the wall of a four-story mansion like a 220-pound fly to crush the skull of a Vietnamese, an ex-ARVN colonel, with a single blow of his fist. Henry Kitten was no slouch in the stealth department; however he had done it, I felt deep in my guts that Henry Kitten was here, probably wearing infrared night-vision goggles and armed with-whatever. If I was wrong, if I found Veil upstairs stretched out on his bed and reading by candlelight, I would certainly feel very foolish; I would apologize for disturbing him, and he could remind me that it was precisely this kind of bizarre behavior that led some people to think me eccentric. Then we could have a drink and laugh about it. But I wasn't worried about feeling or looking foolish; I was worried about finding Veil dead, and maybe joining him.

I got to my feet, looked around. The only illumination in the foyer came from a faint band of moonlight spilling in through the open steel door, but it was sufficient for me to see that the freight elevator Veil used to get to and from his loft was not at ground level. I imagined I could manage to reach the fire escape running up the side of the building, but that would only get me outside a locked, wire mesh-covered window on the fourth floor, where I would be silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Not a good idea. Although I could not see it in the darkness, I knew there was a second steel door to my right, and beyond it fire stairs that could also get me up to the fourth floor. I knew where the key to the door was hidden, but the problem was that anyone on that stairway would make a ridiculously easy target for anyone with night-vision goggles waiting above. That didn't seem like such a good idea either.

Out of curiosity, I groped my way along the wall until I came to the door, then pushed on it. It swung open. Kitten must have picked this lock, too, and was either lurking on the stairs or already in the loft.

I waited a few beats, put my Beretta back in its shoulder holster, then pulled the door shut with what I hoped was just enough force to allow the sound of steel clicking against steel to be heard by two ninjas listening in the silent darkness four floors above me; it would tell Veil that help-if that was an appropriate word to describe me and my rather untenable position-was on the way, and could serve to distract Kitten. At the least, I hoped it would have the ninja assassin looking in the wrong direction if and when I joined the party.

After slipping out of my light jacket and dropping it to the floor, I jumped out into the elevator shaft and grabbed hold of the thick guy cable that ran up the center of the shaft and was attached to the bottom of the elevator. Then I began hauling myself hand over hand up into the pitch blackness.

It had been a long time since my days as a headliner with the circus; I was a lot older than when I'd made a living climbing, swinging, flipping, and soaring, but I made it a point to stay in peak physical condition, and I found the going up the steel cable probably easier than I had any right to expect. By stopping occasionally, wrapping my legs around the cable and allowing my arms to hang free for a few moments, I was only slightly winded, with a mild case of palm burn, when I finally reached up and felt my knuckles graze the rough, splintered surface of the elevator floor.

Trying not to think of the chasm that yawned below me, I groped to both my left and right, found a warped slat to my right, wrapped my fingers around the edge and swung away from the cable. I dangled for a few of the most exquisitely exciting seconds of my life, twisting back and forth, then found a second warped slat farther to my right. A second swing got me to the steel and wood frame of the chute, and within seconds I was up and over the side, in the box of the elevator. I again drew my Beretta, got down on my belly, and crawled forward toward the open end of the box. The fingers of my left hand touched the steel lip at the four-foot-wide entrance to the loft; the gate was up. The elevator was eight feet wide, which left me a two-foot "safety zone" on either side of the opening. I slithered to my right, sat up in a corner to ponder just what it was I planned to do next.

I had been up in the loft enough times for me to be able to picture its layout clearly in my mind. The freight elevator entrance to the loft was about three-quarters of the way down its length. Just inside the entrance, to the right, a plywood partition separated Veil's austere living quarters from the vast work area. The entire wall at the opposite end was comprised of a bank of windows; normally, Veil pulled a heavy drape over the windows at night, but when I had approached the entrance I had glimpsed to my left a large, cross-hatched patch of pale moonlight-which only served to make the rest of the loft seem darker. In the far corner, to the left of the windows, there were thick mats, punching and kicking bags suspended from the ceiling, and a large wooden box filled with martial arts weapons. There were three support columns marching down the center of the loft. The entire floor would be covered with stained tarpaulins, paint pots, palettes, mauled tubes of oil paint, brushes soaking in jars of turpentine-all of the paraphernalia for a different kind of battle, one of the mind, that Veil waged constantly in order to produce the kind of eerie, multipaneled mural that covered most of the wall directly opposite me.

Once inside the loft, I could scramble for cover to one of the support columns, or try to make it around the partition into the living quarters. But either route I chose, there was no guarantee that I wouldn't run right into the deadly embrace of Henry Kitten. Then again, if he was indeed wearing night-vision goggles, he could simply put a bullet in my head the moment I showed myself. On reflection, it seemed a good idea to stay right where I was.

"Yo," I called softly into the darkness. "Anybody home?"

There was no answer, which didn't surprise me. Both men would be crouched inside somewhere in the darkness, poised, waiting for the other to make some kind of mistake and show himself, or betray his position. The difference was that Kitten had use of both his arms, and could undoubtedly see.

"Yo, Kitten," I continued in a conversational tone as, taking care to keep pressed against the side of the elevator with my gun at the ready, I sidled closer to the entrance. "This is the cavalry speaking. You could have killed me up in Fort Lee, but you didn't; I figure I owe you one. I won't kill you unless you force me to. I say it's better to light one little candle than to die in the darkness. Drop whatever it is you're carrying, then walk on over and stand in front of the windows with your hands in the air. Then the three of us can chat about what we're going to do with you. If we wait around here long enough, the lights are eventually going to come back on, anyway. Then you're finished; if Veil doesn't nail you, I will."

I paused, listening intently, but there was still no answer or sound of movement from inside the cavernous loft. Despite my conviction that sudden death crouched somewhere beyond the entrance, I had to admit the possibility that I'd rolled and bounced into Veil's building, hauled myself up four floors on a steel cable, to end up sitting in a freight elevator and talking to myself.

I had no way of knowing how long it would be before Consolidated Edison recognized the problem and restored power to the block, especially if Kitten had blown up an entire circuit. In the meantime, at that very moment Kitten could be on the move in the darkness-heading toward me. He would not want to fire a gun, because the muzzle flash, if not the deafening blast, would give away his position to Veil, who could see pretty well in the dark even without night-vision goggles. But Henry Kitten had a few dozen other ways to kill, and the thought of him skulking in my direction and suddenly popping up beside me in the elevator sent a chill through me and caused the small hairs on the back of my neck to sit up and take notice. Sitting in the darkness and talking to myself was decidedly too passive a strategy to use against the ninja assassin, and so I decided it was time to up the ante in our silent poker game.

I transferred my gun to my left hand, arched my back, and stretched my right arm around into the entrance. I groped around on the floor until I felt the paint-stiffened edge of a tarpaulin. I wrapped my fingers around the canvas, began pulling the tarp into the elevator. I heard something tip over, and then there was the sharp, eye-watering smell of turpentine. Perfect.

"We're going to play a little game of chicken, Kitten," I said as I continued to haul the tarpaulin into the elevator. Finally my fingers touched what I had been hoping to find-a turpentine-soaked paint rag. "I presume to speak for my friend when I say I believe he'd rather lose his loft than his life. If you're not silhouetted in front of those windows in ten seconds, I'm going to set this place on fire. With all the wood, canvas, turpentine, and oil paint in there, it'll go up fast. But you're the only one who's not going to get out of here. The first glimpse I get of you, I'm going to put a bullet thr-"

I ducked away just as something whistled through the air, sliced through the front of my shirt, and planted itself in the wood siding of the elevator with a solid thunk. Shuriken. So much for the pleasant fantasy that I might be talking only to myself. Wherever Kitten was, he now had an angle on me. I crabbed sideways back into the corner of the elevator, groping in my pocket for the book of matches I always carried, since a cold day in Wisconsin years before when Garth's life and mine had depended on a single match I'd found in a grimy book at the back of the glove department of a car. Lying on my side in an attempt to make myself as small as possible, hoping I wasn't going to catch the next star-shaped blade in the throat, I put a match to the corner of the paint rag. Instantly, it burst into flames. I sucked in a deep breath, got to my feet, and dove for the opposite side of the elevator, hurling the flaming paint rag into the interior of the loft as I sailed past the opening. I landed on my shoulder and rolled over on my belly, crawled back to the entrance and cautiously peered around the corner.

The rag was burning brightly a few feet away from a support column, and from its epicenter tongues of flickering, blue-white flame were licking along in all directions on the surface of the tarpaulin, sending up plumes of black, foul-smelling smoke and stabbing fingers of light into the surrounding darkness. I estimated that in less than two minutes the interior of the loft would be a raging holocaust.

Chicken, indeed.

Assuming that the flickering light from the flames would be playing havoc with Kitten's night-vision goggles, I heaved the upper half of my body into the loft and used both hands to sweep my Beretta back and forth in front of me, ready to fire a fusillade of bullets into anything that moved that didn't have shoulder-length, gray-streaked yellow hair.

"All right, Frederickson!" It was the familiar, rich baritone of Henry Kitten, somewhere off to my left. I immediately swung my gun in that direction. He coughed, and then there was a thud as something heavy hit the floor. "That was my gun! Now I'm going over by the window!"

"No! Step out into the firelight where I can see you! I want to see your hands flat on top of your head, fingers laced together!"

A few moments later the looming figure of Henry Kitten, thick smoke swirling around his waist, appeared at the edge of the spreading circle of light from the flames. A pair of bulky night-vision goggles hung from a strap around his neck, and his hands were dutifully clasped on top of his head. Coughing, squinting against the acrid smoke, he slowly turned toward me.

"May I suggest you put out the fire, Frederickson?" the big man with the pale eyes said laconically. "It's getting a little close in here."

"I've got it, Mongo," Veil said easily as he suddenly appeared behind and to the right of Kitten, walking quickly through the firelight and smoke.

Whatever had happened before I'd arrived on the scene, Veil had obviously managed to get to his equipment box; nunchaku were draped around his neck, and he had two throwing knives stuck in the waistband of his jeans. His clothes, his face, and his hair were speckled with paint, which meant he'd done some rolling around on the floor, probably an instant or two after the lights had gone out. He disappeared behind the partition, emerged a few seconds later with a fire extinguisher braced under his right arm in its paint-stained sling. He pushed a lever on the extinguisher, aimed the nozzle with his free hand, and began pumping foam over the spreading flames. In less than a minute the flames were out, the swirling smoke caught in drafts and mercifully being sucked out of the loft through three open panels in the bank of windows. Throughout, I remained flat on my belly, gun aimed at the center of Kitten's barrel chest.

"Now back up to the window," I said as I got to my feet. "Take slow, easy steps. If I see anything but your feet moving, I'll put a bullet in your heart."

"Like I said up in Fort Lee, you can be a real pain in the ass, Frederickson." There was just the slightest trace of a smile on Henry Kitten's face as he slowly backed toward the ceiling-high bank of windows. "How the hell could you know I'd be here tonight?"

"I didn't; I just knew you'd show up eventually, despite what happened to your employer. You made that clear to me, remember?"

"Obviously I talked too much."

"I was coming down to talk to Veil about you. We seem to have arrived at about the same time."

"You showed up at a most inopportune time."

"I couldn't disagree more," Veil said dryly from somewhere behind me and off to my left. There was a faint click, and the beam of a powerful flashlight cut through the smoky air and moonlight, spotlighting the assassin's broad torso and head. Eddies of smoke still whirled around Kitten as he stood in front of the window, feet braced slightly apart. I might have been in hell, talking to the devil himself, and when I had to cough I made certain my right hand remained steady and I didn't blink. Kitten's moves, like Veil's, could be measured in milliseconds.

Veil propped the flashlight on a stiff fold of tarpaulin, then came over to stand beside me. "Thanks, Mongo," Veil continued as he studied the man caught in the beam of the flashlight. "I was in a bit of a spot there."

"You're welcome."

"Obviously, this is the guy you kept trying to warn me about."

"That's him," I replied tersely, backing away slowly while I kept my eyes on Kitten's face, which seemed remarkably impassive in the bright light. When I bumped up against a wall, I slid down it until I was sitting on the floor. I brought my knees up and rested my forearms on them so as to be able to keep a steady aim on Kitten's chest while making myself as small a target as possible. Even with my gun trained on him while he stood with his hands clasped on his head, I didn't intend to lose my concentration for a second.

Veil moved a few steps to his left, then leaned casually against a support column as he continued to study Henry Kitten. "Why did you come up here?" he asked easily as he hooked his left thumb into a pocket of his jeans. "You certainly don't look stupid, and Mongo tells me you're actually quite clever. It must have occurred to you that there were easier ways to try to kill me. Why didn't you just blow up the place, or pick me off out in the street?"

Henry Kitten's response was a shrug of his broad shoulders-a slight movement that almost cost him his life, since I was ready to pull the trigger at the least provocation. I'd seen the ninja assassin in action, and wasn't taking any chances; in my opinion, Veil still wasn't treating the other man with sufficient respect and seriousness.

"I'm afraid I underestimated you, Kendry, not to mention the prescience of your friend over there. I thought this was the easy way."

"Are all the lights in the neighborhood out?" Veil asked as he glanced over in my direction.

"Just this block."

Veil grunted. "A time-delayed charge, in just the right spot. Interesting. In addition to his other talents, Mr. Kitten here appears to be a master electrician."

"Yeah. How'd he get in?"

"Up the fire stairs. He managed to pick the locks on both doors downstairs without my being aware of it, but I'd already seen the needle on the security system monitor fall, indicating that the entire system, including the battery-powered emergency backup, was out. I was just getting ready to check out my batteries when the lights went out. It seemed a bit too much of a coincidence for my alarm system to go out at the same time as the power failed, and I hit the floor about a second before Jumbo here came crashing through the upstairs door. I managed to get over to the equipment box and take out some weapons without getting shot, and I just stayed there. He couldn't move over these stiff tarpaulins without my hearing him, and he obviously didn't want to test my skills with a throwing knife. It was a standoff until you showed up."

Henry Kitten, who had been following our conversation with mild interest, now smiled, his lips parting to reveal even, white teeth. "I saw in the morning papers that the man who hired me is dead. Somehow, I strongly doubt that he shot himself in a hunting accident; Orville Madison never took vacations, and people were the only prey he was ever interested in hunting. Somehow, you managed to find out who he was and get to him, didn't you, Frederickson? The profile I gave you in the park led you to him. That was a nice piece of work. You did a hell of a lot better job of flushing out Madison than I did with Kendry here."

"Which just goes to show that you have to pay attention to quality in choosing your clients," I said.

"I'll remember that in the future."

"You don't have a future," I replied curtly. I was in no mood for-and had no intention of being lulled into-light chitchat with Henry Kitten.

"So, Mongo," Veil said easily, "what are we going to do with our visitor?"

It seemed an excellent question, one for which I didn't have a ready answer. Perfunctorily gunning down in cold blood a man who had spared my life-albeit for his own good reasons-didn't really appeal to me, and turning him over to the police would pose any number of serious dilemmas, any one of which could tear apart a carefully constructed and necessary tissue of lies. An enormous amount of political power had very recently been brought to bear to conceal the fact that the dead secretary of state had been a murderous psychopath responsible for the brutal murders of a lot of innocent people, and that it had been my brother who'd killed him. The way things had worked out seemed best for all. But with the world's most wanted assassin sitting in jail awaiting trial, the whole thing could start to unravel virtually overnight. Captured, with what I presumed were death sentences hanging over him in two dozen different countries, Henry Kitten would have no reason whatsoever to keep quiet about his own long association with Orville Madison, and the events of the past few months. People would start asking questions, and reporters would begin comparing notes. Neither Garth, Veil, Mr. Lippitt, President Kevin Shannon, nor I needed the attention Henry Kitten's tales would bring us.

"Do I detect a note of indecision?" Henry Kitten asked in a mild tone. "Why not just turn me over to the police? They can book me for breaking and entering."

I said, "They'll book you for a whole hell of a lot more than that, Kitten."

"Will they? Somehow, I get the impression that you're keeping things from me. Exactly what did you and your brother discuss with President Shannon, Frederickson?"

"You know about that?" Kitten only had it half right; I was the only one who'd actually talked to Shannon. But Kitten's intelligence was still impressive.

"I guessed. I tracked the two of you to Washington, and I saw you heading into the park toward the Viet Nam War Memorial. Considering the large numbers of police and Secret Service agents hanging about, I figured it had to be the president you were going to see. At that point, I decided that it was a waste of time to keep tracking the two of you in an attempt to find Kendry, because Madison was finished — how finished he was I didn't fully appreciate until I saw the papers this morning. Anyway, with Madison destroyed, I naturally assumed that it wouldn't be long before Mr. Kendry would come out of hiding and be. . available to me."

"You should have gone home yourself, Kitten."

"That's not my real name, you know."

"You say."

"I'm impressed that you came up with a name at all, but that's not the right one."

"Who cares? They can bury you under 'John Doe.' "

"Oh?"

"What is your real name?"

"Did the president personally issue the order for Madison to be killed, Frederickson? Is that why you can't quite decide what to do with me?"

"Veil?" I said. "What do you think?"

"Kitten," Veil said to the huge figure standing before the window, "I know you spared Mongo's life. Would you consider getting out of here and forgetting about killing me?"

"You'd accept my word?"

"I would. I believe you act on your own strong code of honor, which is the real reason you chose to attack me the way you did. Even if you're forced to take a sizable cut in future earnings, it's still better to lose some of your reputation and fees than all of your life. Remember that I don't owe you anything, and I might just break your neck now and be done with it if I think you're going to be a headache in the future."

"Do you really think you could do that, Kendry?" Henry Kitten asked in a low, even voice. "Do you think you could do it even with the use of both your arms?"

"With the friend that you mentioned and his gun over there, Kitten, I'm not obliged to give you lessons. As I said, I take you to be a man of honor and great pride. Will you promise that I won't see or hear of you again if Mongo and I let you walk out of here?"

"It's certainly a tempting offer," Henry Kitten said, and shrugged his shoulders again.

That was one ninja shrug too many, and I pulled the trigger on the Beretta. As the gun roared, his left arm-which had shot out from the top of his head with the speed of a striking snake-jerked back. He spun around and grabbed for his left shoulder at the same time as what felt like a white hot branding iron sliced across my forehead, just above my eyes. I pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession, firing blindly now as a thick, warm curtain of blood flowed into my eyes. I heard glass shatter.

Stunned, I fell over on my side and frantically swiped at my blood-filled eyes with my free hand as I heard the thud-thud-thud of bodies colliding and blows landing. I felt nauseated and light-headed, and knew that I was close to fainting.

My left hand found a paint rag. I used it to wipe away the blood from my eyes, then pressed it tightly against the shuriken-split flesh of my forehead. I struggled to my feet, swaying, then leaned back against the wall and squinted at the blurred tableau in a pool of moonlight almost perfectly bisected by the powerful beam of the flashlight.

What I saw was two ninjas doing battle, dancing on the balls of their feet as they spun and charged, firing side and high kicks at one another's body. I noted with some satisfaction that I'd managed to even the odds a little, since Henry Kitten's left arm flopped uselessly at his side, and blood seeped from the bullet hole I'd put in his shoulder. Like Veil, the assassin was now forced to rely primarily on kicks, while taking care to protect his injury.

Incredibly, at least to me, Veil had chosen to toss aside his deadly nunchaku sticks, along with the two knives he'd had in his waistband; it seemed he intended to give Henry Kitten a few lessons after all.

Veil was nothing if not creative in his practice of the martial arts. He had mastered the kata of a dozen different systems, but used no system exclusively; indeed, he had devised what he laughingly called a no-system, which was all his own and which he considered superior to any of the many systems that were traditionally taught. Strict and sterile adherence to any one school's kata could be a deadly trap, he had warned me on more than one occasion, inasmuch as it could telegraph your next moves to a knowledgeable opponent and provide him with a killing suki, or opportunity.

Consequently, much of my training with Veil had consisted of my trying to unlearn the formal system of karate kata I had dutifully mastered in order to earn my black belt. Therefore, it was with some surprise that I watched Veil initially set up and move in a taijutsu mode, kata emphasizing distorted body angles, as if to protect his injured arm. Even Kitten, his triangular face briefly illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, seemed startled by what he must have assumed was his good fortune; and then the white ninja proceeded to execute a series of koppojutsu moves designed to penetrate Veil's defensive maneuvers, to smash bone. His mistake. At the last moment, a microsecond, Veil spun out and away from a side kick, wheeled back in, and delivered an elbow strike to Kitten's jaw that shattered teeth as it whipped the assassin's head back.

First round, first blood, to Veil. Not too trashy, I thought. In the future, which was looking brighter all the time, I vowed to pay even closer attention to the things my teacher had to say.

But Kitten had his own ideas about the future. Seemingly oblivious to shock and what had to be considerable pain, he leaped high in the air, twisted, fired a high kick that would have broken Veil's neck if it had landed. Veil leaned back, letting the foot fly past his head, then drove his left fist into the inside of Kitten's heavily muscled thigh, just above the knee. Kitten grunted with pain and surprise. He landed on his other leg-awkwardly-and just managed to duck under one of Veil's kicks that would have crushed his temple.

I raised my gun with a badly trembling hand, trying to track Kitten, but did not pull the trigger. Both men were constantly spinning and circling, darting in and out of the smoky light, and I would have had a hard time telling which was which even if my vision hadn't been constantly slipping in and out of focus. Also, blood had soaked through the rag I held over my forehead and was once again seeping into my eyes. I wiped away blood with the back of my gun hand, then sidled along the wall, angling closer to the two figures, looking for one clean shot.

Limping slightly, Henry Kitten stepped back and began slowly to circle Veil, who had stopped moving and was now standing calmly in the center of the patch of moonlight, the flashlight beam highlighting his head and shoulders. Suddenly Kitten attacked with what was to me blinding speed, faking a side kick with his left leg, then spinning counterclockwise and launching a flying high kick at Veil's damaged right arm. Veil spun the other way, inside the kick, and drove the point of his left elbow deep into Kitten's momentarily unprotected groin. Kitten cried out and doubled over while he was still in the air. He landed on his side, immediately sensed the danger and managed to scramble to his feet, although he was still clutching at his groin, inhaling and exhaling with great whooping sounds. He tried to back away, but he wasn't fast enough. Veil's fist shot out and landed squarely on the other man's bullet-damaged shoulder. Kitten screamed, took one hand from his groin to clutch at his shoulder. For a moment I thought he would go down, but he managed to keep his balance while he spun around and began to stagger toward one side of the loft. Veil facilitated Henry Kitten's attempt at walking by stepping up behind the man and grabbing his belt, lifting him up on his toes. In what seemed to me an astonishingly brief time, Veil had achieved zanshin — total physical and mental domination of his opponent. He steered the other man around and marched him toward the end of the loft. When they were a few feet from the bank of windows, Veil flexed his knees, and with a mighty pull and shove hurled Kitten through the air. The ninja assassin disappeared into the night in an explosion of glass. Henry Kitten didn't scream; amid the tinkling of glass came the sound of his body landing in the mounds of jagged junk and mushy, rotting garbage in the narrow alleyway four stories below. When Veil turned away from the window and came toward me, he didn't even seem to be breathing hard.

"Not bad for a painter," I managed to say before the gun slipped from my fingers and I slumped unconscious to the floor.