"He goes to sleep every night about ten," said Ogden as they walked along kicking dust. "We'll go in around midnight. One shot and it's over."

"While he's asleep?" Vlado asked.

"Easiest way."

"I want him awake. I want him to know why he's dying."

"Negative. This is a job, and we don't have time for dramatics. In and out, understand?"

Vlado nodded. "All right, all I want to do is kill him."

"That's it. Any questions?"

"I thought I wasn't supposed to ask any."

"There was one I was sure you'd ask. I thought you'd want to know if we were sure that Koller is the man."

Vlado looked at him in surprise. "Is there any doubt?"

"Not in my mind, but nobody's perfect. In this business, mistakes get made all the time. What if we've targeted the wrong man?"

Vlado thought for a while as he trudged along. He shrugged, and said, "Then that's his bad luck, I guess."

Christ, he's an icicle, thought Ogden. That's what I was hoping he would say, but he sure as hell isn't the same kid I knew on that mountain.

It was six in the evening when they came to the outskirts of Rijeka, and they found a shady hollow on the side of a hill where they could rest and wait for darkness. They ate the plums, and Ogden went over the workings of the pistol and the silencer until he was sure that Vlado had it right. Then they slept, waking when the first breezes of the night found their faces.

Just after midnight, Ogden led the way down into the city, and to a small house on a side street near the port. The street was still, and there were no lights. They went around through a garden to the back door, and Ogden dealt with the lock. He edged the door open, and it creaked.

Ogden whispered, "Let's see how quietly you can move with your shoes on." He led the way down a corridor to a room with an open door. He motioned Vlado through the doorway. The room was filled with the odors of must and sweat, and the sound of heavy breathing. Faint light came through the shutters, enough to see a man asleep in a bed. Ogden pointed to the man, and then to his own temple. Vlado nodded. He walked to the bed, put the pistol against the man's head, and pulled the trigger. There was a flat crack, louder than expected, and Josip Koller was dead.

A fat woman in a long nightdress walked into the room. She opened her mouth to scream. Ogden had his pistol out, but Vlado turned and shot the woman square in the chest. She went down, and lay without moving. Ogden checked both bodies.

"Done," he said. "Out, and no talking."

Back on the street, they walked quickly and silently down to the port. There were lights in this part of town, but not many of them, and two waterfront cafes still open. Rickety piers jutted into the harbor, and Ogden made for one that lay in darkness beyond the second cafe. A rowboat was tied to the end of the pier, and Ogden motioned Vlado into it. He climbed in himself, and cast off.

"You row," he said, breaking the silence. "Straight out past the mole."

When they were under way, Vlado said, "Did you know about the woman?

"No. I told you, mistakes get made all the time."

"Was I right to shoot her?"

"Yes, it had to be done. I would have done it if you hadn't."

"Good. I wasn't sure. Where are we going?"

" Italy. Keep rowing. There's a fishing boat waiting about a mile off shore."

"You told Debanjak that you were going out the same way you came in.

"Yes," Ogden agreed. "That's what I told Debanjak."

An hour later the fishing boat loomed out of the darkness, and they were taken aboard, the rowboat abandoned. The fishing smack was old and the crew was older, two ancient mariners who spoke to Ogden in a grunted Italian that Vlado did not understand. Ogden said, "There's food in the cabin if you want some."

"No," said Vlado. "I'm not hungry."

"How do you feel?"

Vlado thought about that. "Empty."

"Then you should eat."

"Not that kind of empty. I thought it would make me feel good to kill him, but it didn't. I didn't feel anything. It was like a game. I pulled the trigger, and he was dead. The same thing with the woman. I felt nothing."

Ogden nodded.

"That isn't right, is it? It shouldn't be that way."

It sure as hell shouldn't, thought Ogden, but he said, "Different people take it differently. Don't worry about it."

They sat on the deck with their eyes astern, watching the florescence of the wake spread out behind them. Ogden started to fill his pipe, but one of the Italians said something, and he put the pipe away.

"No lights," he explained. "We're still in Yugoslav waters. Another hour before we're out of the gulf."

"And then?"

"Four hours, maybe five to Rimini." He saw Vlado's blank look. "In Italy."

" Italy. What happens to me then?"

"A car to Rome, and then we fly to the States. America."

" America." Vlado said it softly. "And then what?"

"I have a home for you in a place called Maryland with a good family, people I know. A new name, new papers, a school. You have a new language to learn, a whole new life. I have it all arranged."

Vlado tried the word. " Maryland?"

"That's it."

"And you? Where will you be? "

"I'll be around. You'll see me once in a while."

"Once in a while." Vlado was silent, staring out into the night. " Ogden, I don't want to go to Maryland, and I don't want to go to a school. I want to stay with you."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Couldn't we do it that way?"

"Not now. After a while, maybe. After you've done some growing up, but not now."

"I want it to be now."

"I know."

"Please."

Ogden shook his head. Carefully, almost delicately, he put an arm around the boy's shoulders, and held him. Those shoulders began to shake, and he held him closer. He did not look at him. The kid was crying for the first time in ten years, and he deserved a little privacy.

"Listen, what the fuck is going on?"

Sextant, still kneeling on the floor between the two beds, was jolted out of his reverie by the rasp of Beer-gut's voice behind him. He shook his head, leaving that other time reluctantly. He did not turn around.

"For Chrissake, let's get this show on the road. It's stupid sitting around like this."

"Get out."

"God damn it, you can't…"

"Get out," Sextant repeated. His voice was low and controlled, but it was deadly. Feet shuffled, and the door closed behind him. Sextant still had not turned. His eyes were on the two young people on the beds, shifting from Lila's terrified face to the hatred burning in Chicken's eyes.

So long ago, he thought, sitting on the deck with Ogden 's arms around me, crying my heart out. And for what? Because I had killed a man and a woman? Certainly not. Because I had just found Ogden again, and was about to lose him again? Perhaps. Because I was finally able to cry for my mother, and what they had done to her? That, yes. Definitely yes, but after that no tears. No tears when Ogden left me with those people in Maryland, and no tears when he came back for me three years later. No tears when he sent me to kill the senator in Chile. Or the Jew in Cairo. Or the bomb in the garage in Santa Monica. Or the Canadian jet with all those people on board. No tears for any of those jobs, or for all the jobs in Nam and after Nam. Never a tear, and now, after all those knives in the night that I drew for David Ogden, the wheel comes round again. Rape, the short and ugly word like a stab in the dark. Why me, David? I'll do it, of course. I've always done whatever you've asked, but I have to tell you, David, that I do not want to do this one. There it is, flat out. I do not want to do this.

I do not want to do this.

Chicken heard the words that rang in Sextant's brain like the tolling of a hollow bell. He heard them clearly, just as he had heard all the rest of it. He had heard it in Slovenian, the mother-tongue that Sextant thought in, for, like any other sensitive, he could absorb a language from another man's mind. He stared up into Sextant's eyes, and was not surprised to see sorrow there. He stared into Sextant's mind, and was not surprised to see a sadness without limits. He tapped in further, and saw the warping of the boy who had become the man. And he saw that the man was a fraud. He thought of himself as a man of ice, without compassion, but he was wrong, the compassion was there. It was twisted out of recognition, and it was buried so deep that it could only be sensed by a sensitive. But it was there, and Chicken knew that he had to get it to the surface.