Sounded good to me. There were a lot of considerations regarding an event of this magnitude. The bad actors were putting on a tragedy, but we weren't going to give them free advertising.

Anyway, there wasn't much new in the news, so I accessed my voice mail as Kate was now doing. I should have used the handset rather than the speaker because the first message was from Beth at 7:12 A.M. She said, "Hey, you. I called your place last night and this morning, but didn't leave a message. Where are you hiding? Call me at home until eight, then the office. Miss you. Big wet kiss. Bye."

Kate continued listening to her own voice mail, pretending not to hear. I said, as if to myself, "Got to call Mom back," but I didn't think that was going to fly.

Anyway, the next message was from Jack Koenig, who said, "Message for Corey and Mayfield. Call me." He gave a long phone number with lots of zeros and ones, and I guessed he wasn't back in his office down the hall.

There was a similar message from Teddy Nash, which I deleted.

There were no further messages, and I looked at new stuff on my desk.

After a few minutes, Kate looked up and said, "Who was that?"

"Jack and Ted."

"I mean the other one."

"Oh… Mom?"

She said something that sounded like "wool shirt," but I may have misunderstood. She stood and walked away from her desk.

So, I'm sitting there, sleep-deprived, the bullet hole in my abdomen aching, six under cooked brioches in my stomach, the last and final act of my career in trouble, and some crazed terrorist is drinking camel milk somewhere, staring at my picture in the papers. I could handle all of that. But did I need this? I mean, I thought I'd been up-front with Kate.

Just when I was having second thoughts about Ms. Mayfield, she returned with two mugs of coffee and put one on my desk. "Dark, one sugar. Right?" "Right. No strychnine. Thanks."

"I can run out and get you an Egg McMuffin if you'd like. With cheese and sausage." "No, thanks."

"A man on the move needs solid food." "Actually, I'm just sitting here. Coffee is fine. Thanks." "I'll bet you didn't take your vitamins this morning. Let me run out and get you some vitamins."

I was detecting a wee bit of taunting in Ms. Mayfield's tone, or maybe the word of the morning was baiting. Not only was I bait, I was being baited. I said, "Thanks, but coffee is all I need." I lowered my head and studied a memo in front of me.

She sat opposite me and sipped her coffee. I felt her eyes on me. I looked up at her, but those blue eyes, which were heavenly a little while ago, had turned to ice cubes.

We stared at each other, then finally she said, "Sorry," and went back to her paperwork. I said, "I'll take care of it." Without looking up, she replied, "You'd better." After a minute or two, we got back to the business of catching the world's most wanted terrorist. She said, "There's a combined report from various police departments regarding car rentals in the Metropolitan area… basically, thousands of cars are rented every day, but they're trying to isolate cars rented to people with Mideastern-sounding names. Sounds like a long shot."

"A very long shot. For all we know, Khalil is driving a car borrowed from a compatriot. Even if it is a rental car, his accomplices could use the name Smith if they had the proper ID."

"But the people renting it might not look like Smith."

"True… but they could use a Smith-looking guy, then whack him. Forget the car rentals."

"We got lucky with the Ryder van in the World Trade Center bombing. Solved the case."

"Forget the fucking World Trade Center bombing."

"Why?"

"Because, like an Army general who tries to relive his past successes in a new battle, you'll find that the bad guys are not trying to relive their past defeats."

"Is that what you tell your students at John Jay?" I

"I sure do. It definitely applies to detective work. I've seen too many homicide cops try to solve Case B the way they solved Case A. Every case is unique. This one, especially."

"Thank you, Professor."

"Do what you want." I got surly and went back to my memos and reports. I hate paper.

I came across a sealed Your Eyes Only envelope without a routing note. I opened it and saw it was from Gabe. It said: I kept Fadi incommunicado yesterday, then went to the home of Gamal Jabbar and interviewed his wife, Cola. She claims no knowledge of her husband's activities, intentions, or his Saturday destination. But she did say that Jabbar had a visitor Friday night, that after the visitor left, Jabbar put a black canvas bag under their bed and instructed her not to touch it. She did not recognize the visitor, and heard nothing that was said. The next morning, her husband stayed home, which was unusual, as he normally worked on Saturdays. Jabbar left their Brooklyn apartment at 2:00 P.M., carrying the bag, and never returned. She characterizes his behavior as worried, nervous, sad, and distracted-as best I can translate from Arabic. Mrs. Jabbar seems resigned to the possibility that her husband is dead. I called homicide and gave them the go-ahead to break the news to her and released Fadifor the same purpose. Speak to you later.

I folded the memo and put it in my breast pocket.

Kate asked, "What was that?"

"I'll show you later."

"Why not now?"

"You need some plausible deniability before we speak to Jack."

"Jack is our boss. I trust Jack."

"So do I. But he's too close to Teddy right now."

"What are you talking about?"

"There are two games being played on the same field-the Lion's game, and somebody else's game."

"Whose game?"

"I don't know. I just have this feeling that something is not right."

"Well… if you mean that the CIA is in business for itself, that's not exactly news."

"Right. Keep an eye on Ted."

"Okay. Maybe I'll seduce him, and he'll confide in me."

"Good idea. But I saw him naked once, and he has a teeny weenie."

She looked at me and saw that I wasn't kidding. "When did you see him naked?"

"Bachelor party. He got carried away with the music and the strippers and before anyone could stop him-"

"Cut it out. When did you see him naked?"

"On Plum Island. After we left the biocontainment lab, we all had to shower out. That's what they call it. Showering out."

"Really?"

"Really. I don't think he showered throughly because later that day, his dick fell off."

She laughed, then thought a moment and observed, "I forgot you guys once worked a case together. George, too, right?"

"Right. George has a normal dick. For the record."

"Thank you for sharing." She mulled a bit, then said, "So, you came to distrust Ted on that case."

"It wasn't an evolving process. I didn't trust him three seconds after I met him."

"I see… so, you're a little suspicious of this coincidence of meeting him again."

"Perhaps a little. By the way, he actually threatened me on the Plum Island case."

"Threatened you in what way?"

"In the only way that matters."

"I don't believe that."

I shrugged. I further revealed to Ms. Mayfield, "He was interested in Beth Penrose, for your information."

"Oh! Cherchez la femme. Now it all makes sense. Case closed."

It may have been unwise of me to share that. I didn't reply to her illogical deductive reasoning.

She said, "So, here's a solution to both our problems. Ted and Beth. Let's get them together."

Somehow I'd gone from an anti-terrorist agent to a soap opera character. I said, to end the conversation, "Sounds like a plan."

"Good. Now give me the thing you just put in your pocket."

"It says my eyes only."

"Okay, read it to me."

I took Gabe's memo out of my pocket and sailed it across her desk. She read it to herself and said to me, "There's nothing much new in here that I shouldn't see, and nothing that I have to deny seeing." She added, "You're trying to control information, John. Information is power. We don't work like that here." She further observed, "You and Gabe and some other NYPD here are playing a little game of hide-it-from-the-Feds. This is a dangerous game." And so on. I got a three-minute lecture, ending with, "We don't need what amounts to a sub-rosa organization within our task force."