Khalil closed the door behind him, fired a bullet through the guard's head, then walked to the monitors as the guard fell off his chair.

Khalil scanned the monitors until he saw the one that showed images of the hangar with the modern jet aircraft. He saw changing scenes of the exhibition space, recognizing the rolling staircase, then the F-lll with its canopy down. He also saw images of the theater, the exterior doorways where his car was parked, and various images of the atrium lobby. No one else seemed to be in the building.

He found the video recorders stacked on a countertop and pushed the Stop button of each one, then extracted all fifteen tapes and put them in his bag. He knelt beside the guard, removed the dead man's wallet, found his shell casing, then left the security office and closed the door behind him.

Khalil walked quickly back through the atrium, and exited one of the front doors. He pulled on the door behind him and noted with pleasure that it was locked.

Khalil got into his rental car and drove off. He looked at the dashboard clock. It was 10:57 P.M.

He set his Satellite Navigator for Long Island MacArthur Airport, and within ten minutes was on the parkway heading north toward the Long Island Expressway.

He dwelt a moment on the last minutes in the lives of Mr. Satherwaite and Mr. McCoy. It occurred to him that one could never anticipate how a man was going to die. He found that interesting, and wondered how he would act in a similar situation. Satherwaite's final arrogance had surprised him, and it occurred to Khalil that the man had found some courage in the last few seconds of his life. Or perhaps the man had so much evil in him that those last words were not courage at all-but pure hate. Asad Khalil realized that he himself would probably act as Satherwaite had in a similar situation.

Khalil thought of McCoy. This man had reacted in a predictable way, assuming he was a religious man. Or he had quickly found God in the last minute of his life. One never knew. In any case, Khalil appreciated the man's choice of psalms.

Khalil swung off the parkway into the eastbound Long Island Expressway. There was not much traffic, and he kept up with the other vehicles, noting his speed on the speedometer's metricscale at ninety kilometers per hour.

He knew full well that his time was running out-that these double murders would attract much attention.

The appearance of a robbery was very suspect, he knew, and sometime this evening, Mrs. McCoy would call the police and report her husband was missing and that no one answered the telephone at the museum.

Her story of Mr. McCoy meeting an Air Force comrade would cause the police to worry far less than Mrs. McCoy was worrying. But at some point, the corpses would be discovered. It would be some time before the police thought to go to the airport to see about the aircraft that Satherwaite arrived in. In fact, if McCoy never mentioned his friend's method of arrival to his wife, it would never occur to the police to go to the airport at all.

In any case, no matter what Mrs. McCoy or the police did, Asad Khalil had time for his next act of vengeance.

Yet, as he drove, he felt, for the first time, the presence of danger, and he knew that somewhere, someone was stalking him. He was certain that his stalker did not know where he was, nor did his stalker completely comprehend his intentions. But Asad Khalil sensed that he, the Lion, was now being hunted, and that the unknown hunter understood, at the very least, the nature and substance of what he was hunting.

Khalil tried to conjure an image of this person-not his physical image, but his soul-but he could not penetrate this man's being, except for the strong force of danger that the man radiated.

Asad Khalil came out of his trance-like state. He reflected, now, on his trail of corpses. General Waycliff and his wife would have been found no later than late Monday morning. At some point, a member of the Waycliff family would attempt to contact the deceased General's old squadron mates. In fact, Khalil was surprised that by now, Monday evening, no one had telephoned McCoy. A telephone call to Paul Grey would not have found him able to come to the phone, nor would a call to Mr. Satherwaite be answered. But Khalil had the feeling that Mrs. McCoy, aside from her worry about her husband, might be given the additional worry, tonight or tomorrow, of a call from the Waycliff family or the Grey family, with the tragic news of the murders.

Soon, by tomorrow, he guessed, there would be many telephone calls, answered and unanswered. By tomorrow evening, his game would be drawing to a close. Perhaps sooner, perhaps later, if God was still with him.

Khalil saw a sign that said REST STOP, and he pulled off into a parking lot hidden from the road by trees. There were a few trucks parked in the big lot, as well as a few cars, but he parked away from them.

He retrieved Satherwaite's Air Force overnight bag from the rear seat, and examined the contents, finding a liquor bottle, some underwear, prophylactics, toiletries, and a T-shirt, which depicted a jet fighter and the words:

NUKES,NAPALM, BOMBS, AND ROCKETS-FREE DELIVERY.

Khalil took Satherwaite's bag and his own bag and walked into the woods behind the rest rooms. He retrieved all his money from Satherwaite's wallet, and the money from McCoy's wallet, which amounted to eighty-five dollars, and the guard's wallet, which contained less than twenty dollars, and put the bills in his wallet.

Khalil scattered the contents of all three wallets in the undergrowth, and threw the wallets into the woods. He also scattered the contents of Satherwaite's overnight bag, then flung the bag into a thicket of bushes. Finally, he removed the security videotapes from his overnight bag and threw them in different directions into the woods.

Khalil made his way back to his car, got in, and drove back onto the Expressway.

As he drove, he dropped the three.40 caliber shell casings onto the highway at intervals.

They had told him in Tripoli, "Do not waste too much time erasing fingerprints or worrying about other scientific evidence of your visits. By the time the police process all of this, you will be gone. But do not get caught with any evidence on your person. Even the most stupid policeman will become suspicious if he finds another man's wallet in your pocket."

Of course, there was the matter of the two Glocks, but Khalil did not consider that evidence-he considered the pistols as the last thing a policeman would see before he saw nothing at all. Still, it was good to divest himself of the other things, and to leave the automobile without obvious evidence in it.

He continued on, and his thoughts returned to home, to Malik, and Boris. He knew, as did Malik and Boris, that he could not play this game for very long. Malik had said to him, "It is not the game itself, my friend, it is how you choose to play it. You have chosen to have the Americans in Paris lay their hands on you, to make a grand entrance into America, to have them know who you are, what you look like, where and when you arrived. You yourself Asad, have invented the rules of the game and made those rules more difficult for yourself. I understand why you do this, but you must understand that the odds are against you completing this mission, and you have only yourself to blame if you fall short of winning a complete victory."

To which Khalil recalled saying, "The Americans never go into battle unless they've done all they can to assure victory before the first shot is fired. This is like shooting a lion from a vehicle and using a telescopic sight. It is not victory at all-only slaughter. There are tribesmen in Africa who have guns, but who still hunt the lion with spears. What good is a physical victory without a spiritual or moral victory? I have not made the odds go against me-I have simply made the odds even, so that no matter who wins this game, I am the winner."