“Do you think your friend will still be here?” asked Sam.

“He’ll be here, all right,” said Quinn. “Unless he’s away abroad, or at any of his six homes.”

“He likes to move around a lot,” observed Sam.

“Yeah. He feels safer that way. The French Riviera, the Caribbean, the ski chalet, the yacht…”

He was right in supposing that the villa on Lake Constanz had long been sold; that was where the snatch had taken place.

He was also in luck. They were eating dinner when Quinn was called to the phone.

“Herr Quinn?”

He recognized the voice, deep and cultured. The man spoke four languages, could have been a concert pianist. Maybe should have been.

“Herr Moritz. Are you in town?”

“You remember my house? You should. You spent two weeks in it, once.”

“Yes, sir. I remember it. I didn’t know whether you still retained it.”

“Still the same. Renata loves it, wouldn’t let me change it. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to see you.”

“Tomorrow morning. Coffee at ten-thirty.”

“I’ll be there.”

They drove out of Dortmund due south along the Ruhrwald Strasse until the industrial and commercial sprawl dropped away behind and they entered the outer suburb of Syburg. The hills began, rolling and forested, and the estates situated within the forests contained the homes of the wealthy.

The Moritz mansion was set in four acres of parkland down a lane off the Hohensyburg Strasse. Across the valley the Syburger monument stared down the Ruhr toward the spires of Sauerland.

The place was a fortress. Chain-link fencing surrounded the entire plot and the gates were high-tensile steel, remote-controlled and with a TV camera discreetly attached to a pine tree nearby. Someone watched Quinn climb out of the car and announce himself through the steel grille beside the gates. Two seconds later the gates swung open on electric motors. When the car passed through they closed again.

“Herr Moritz enjoys his privacy,” said Sam.

“He has reason to,” said Quinn.

He parked on the tan gravel in front of the white stucco house and a uniformed steward let them in. Hans Moritz received them in the elegant sitting room, where coffee waited in a sterling-silver pot. His hair was whiter than Quinn recalled, his face more lined, but the handshake was as firm and the smile as grave.

They had hardly sat down when the door opened and a young woman stood there hesitantly. Moritz’s face lit up. Quinn turned to look.

She was pretty in a vacuous sort of way, shy to the point of self-effacement. Both her little fingers ended in stumps. She must be twenty-five now, Quinn thought.

“Renata, kitten, this is Mr. Quinn. You remember Mr. Quinn? No, of course not.”

Moritz rose, crossed to his daughter, murmured a few words in her ear, kissed the top of her head. She turned and left. Moritz resumed his seat. His face was impassive, but the twisting of his fingers revealed his inner turmoil.

“She… um… never really recovered, you know. The therapy goes on. She prefers to stay inside, seldom goes out. She will not marry… after what those animals did…”

There was a photograph on the Steinbeck grand; of a laughing, mischievous fourteen-year-old on skis. That was a year before the kidnapping. A year afterward Moritz had found his wife in the garage, the exhaust gases pumping down the rubber tube into the closed car. Quinn had been told in London.

Moritz made an effort. “I’m sorry. What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to find a man. One who came from Dortmund long ago. He may still be here, or in Germany, or dead, or abroad. I don’t know.”

“Well, there are agencies, specialists. Of course, I can engage…”

Quinn realized that Moritz thought he needed money to engage private investigators.

“Or you could ask through the Einwohnermeldeant.”

Quinn shook his head.

“I doubt if they would know. He almost certainly does not willingly cooperate with the authorities. But I believe the police might keep surveillance on him.”

Technically speaking, German citizens who move to a new home within the country are required by law to notify the Inhabitants Registration Office of changes of address, both where from and where to the move took place. Like most bureaucratic systems, this works better in theory than in practice. The ones the police and/or the income tax authorities would like to contact are often those who decline to oblige.

Quinn sketched in the background of the man Werner Bernhardt.

“If he is still in Germany, he would be of an age to be in employment,” said Quinn. “Unless he has changed his name, that will mean he has a social security card, pays income tax-or someone pays it for him. Because of his background he might have been in trouble with the law.”

Moritz thought it over.

“If he is a law-abiding citizen-and even a former mercenary might never have committed an offense inside Germany-he would not have a police record,” he said. “As for the income tax and social security people, they would regard this as privileged information, not to be divulged to an inquiry from you, or even me.”

“They would respond to a police inquiry,” said Quinn. “I thought you might perhaps have a friend or two in the city or state police.”

“Ah,” said Moritz. Only he would ever know just how much he had donated to the police charities of the city of Dortmund and the state of Westphalia. As in any country in the world, money is power and both buy information. “Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll phone you.”

He was true to his word, but his tone when he called the Roemischer Kaiser the following morning after breakfast was distant, as if someone had given him a warning along with the information.

“Werner Richard Bernhardt,”he said as if reading from notes, “aged forty-eight, former Congo mercenary. Yes, he’s alive, here in Germany. He works on the personal staff of Horst Lenzlinger, the arms dealer.”

“Thank you. Where would I find Herr Lenzlinger?”

“Not easily. He has an office in Bremen but lives outside Oldenburg, in Ammerland County. Like me, a very private man. There the resemblance ends. Be careful of Lenzlinger, Herr Quinn. My sources tell me that despite the respectable veneer he is still a gangster.”

He gave Quinn both addresses.

“Thank you,” said Quinn as he noted them. There was an embarrassed pause on the line.

“One last thing. I am sorry. A message from the Dortmund police. Please leave Dortmund. Do not come back. That is all.”

The word of Quinn’s role in what had happened on the side of a Buckinghamshire road was spreading. Soon doors would start to close in many places.

“Feel like driving?” he asked Sam when they were packed and checked out.

“Sure. Where to?”

“Bremen.” She studied the map.

“Good God, it’s halfway back to Hamburg.”

“Two thirds, actually. Take the E.37 for Osnabrück and follow the signs. You’ll love it.”

That evening Colonel Robert Easterhouse flew out of Jiddah for London, changed planes, and flew on directly to Houston. On the flight across the Atlantic he had access to the whole range of American newspapers and magazines.

Three of them carried articles on the same theme, and the reasoning of all the writers was remarkably similar. The presidential election of November 1992 was now just twelve months away. In the normal course of events the Republican party choice would be no choice at all. President Cormack would secure the nomination unopposed for a second term of office.

But the course of events these past six weeks had not been normal, the scribes told their readers-as if they needed to be told. They went on to describe the effect on President Cormack of the loss of his son as traumatic and disabling.