THIRTEEN

As the taxi rounded a corner and proceeded along a street of well-maintained, century-old houses near Georgetown, Craig stiffened in the back seat, seeing a black Porsche 911 parked ahead at the curb. Abruptly he leaned forward, pointing urgently. 'There,' he told the driver. 'Where that sportscar…'

'Yeah.' The driver scanned the numbers on houses. 'That's the address you want, all right.'

Craig glanced behind him, checking yet again to make sure he hadn't been followed. There wasn't much traffic. A few cars passed through an intersection back there. A UPS truck turned at the corner but headed in the opposite direction from where the taxi had gone. Halfway down the other block, the truck stopped. A uniformed driver got out, carrying a box toward a house.

Craig had seen several UPS trucks on his way here. They were as commonplace as Federal Express and post office trucks. He had no way to tell if that particular truck had been tailing him. Indeed, contrary to popular misconception, Craig knew that unless you had a team using various cars to help you, or unless your opponent was clumsy, it was almost impossible to spot motorized surveillance, especially if your enemy also had a team and alternated vehicles.

Well, Craig thought with growing unease as the taxi stopped behind the Porsche, I've done what I could. I can't keep cruising around the city. I've got to make a choice. I've got to commit. Tess is waiting for me. She needs my help.

Nervous, Craig paid the driver and left the taxi. While it drove away, he studied the Victorian house, saw colorful, high-stalked flowers along the sides, and wondered what on earth Tess was doing here. In a rush, he approached the front steps.

FOURTEEN

'Sorry. Wrong address,' the solemn man with a ring in his pocket told the woman whose doorbell he'd just pressed. 'My mistake. This package belongs down the block.'

The woman had curlers in her hair and looked annoyed that she'd been interrupted. Inside the house, a TV gameshow host announced outstanding prizes, his audience applauding.

'Really. My apologies,' the man said. He wore the brown uniform of a UPS delivery man. When he turned to carry the package back to his truck, he heard the woman slam the door behind him.

At the truck, he climbed behind the steering wheel and turned to the five men in back. They had their handguns ready and ignored him, their concentration focused toward the rear window and the taxi pulling away from the Porsche parked in front of a house in the middle of the next block. The tall, rugged detective stood on the sidewalk for a moment, then disappeared past trees and bushes, approaching the house.

'Well, this might be another false rendezvous, but it's my guess that the bait led us to the quarry,' the solemn man said and closed his door. 'Now all we have to do is wait for the vermin.'

'Assuming they followed him as well. But we didn't see any sign of them,' one of the men in the back said.

'Just as we were careful and hope that they didn't see any sign of us,' the man in front said. 'We know, however, that their only chance to find the woman is to follow the detective.'

In back, someone murmured, 'I'll feel more confident when our other unit shows up.'

The man in front nodded. 'And even more confident when the enforcers arrive. I called our man at the airport. He'll instruct them where we've gone.'

Another man in back asked, 'How long will they take to-?'

Their plane lands in half an hour,' the man in front said. 'Figure another twenty minutes after that. We've got a car waiting to bring the enforcers.'

'In which case, we just have to hope that the vermin don't make their move before… Wait a moment. I see a car.'

The gunmen stared out the rear window.

'It isn't our other unit,' one of them breathed.

The man in front concentrated. Through the rear window, he saw a blue Toyota round the corner, approaching. A thirtyish man drove, an attractive woman beside him.

'Do you think it might be-?'

They probably live in the neighborhood. But if they are the vermin, they've made a mistake.' The man in front drew his pistol. 'Six against two. They're outnumbered.'

The car passed the truck's back window, no longer in sight. As the solemn man turned toward his sideview mirror to watch the car continue forward, he flinched.

The woman hurled a canister through his open window.

The canister hissed.

The car kept driving down the street.

'No!' the solemn man screamed.

At once he shuddered and slumped. Invisible nerve gas filled the truck. The men behind him scrambled to open the back door.

Too late. As the gas touched their skin, they convulsed, voided their bowels, vomited, and lay still.

FIFTEEN

'But what about the photograph of the books?' Tess demanded. 'Do their titles mean anything to-?'

Priscilla removed a magnifying glass from a drawer in the desk and held it over the photograph. 'Eleanor of Aquitaine… The Art of Courtly Love…'

'The one in Spanish means The Dove's Neck Ring,' Tess said.

'I know. It's another treatise on courtly love. Eleventh century as I recall.'

Tess blinked in surprise. 'You can't imagine the trouble I went through to learn that, and you just…'

'Hey, it's my specialty, remember.' Priscilla's wrinkled lips formed a modest smile. 'These titles are all related. It's just like with the sculpture. Once you understand the background, everything's clear. Eleanor was the Queen of France during the century before the fall of Montsegur. Aquitaine, where Eleanor came from, was in southwestern France. She established – and her daughter, Marie de France, continued to maintain – a royal court in that region.'

Tess nodded, having learned that much when she'd read the introduction to The Dove's Neck Ring the previous night at her mother's home, just before the fire had…!

With a shudder, grieving, she forced herself not to interrupt.

'Southwestern France,' Priscilla emphasized. 'Where Mithraism resurfaced, in the form of the Albigensian heresy, shortly after Eleanor's death. Eleanor encouraged the notion of courtly love, a strict set of rules that idealized the relationship between men and women. Physical union wasn't permitted until after a stringent code of overly polite behavior was obeyed. The Albigensians adapted courtly love for their own purposes. To them, after all, the good that Mithras fought for was spiritual. The evil of the opposing god was physical, belonging to the world and the flesh. For example, Albigensians were vegetarians, allowing only the purest of foods to enter their bodies.'

'My friend was a vegetarian.' Tess felt startled.

'Of course. And I imagine he didn't drink alcohol.'

'Right,' Tess said.

'And he exercised rigorously.'

'Yes!'

'He needed to deny and control his flesh,' Priscilla said. 'It's what I'd expect from someone who believed in Mithras. But the Albigensians also believed that sex was impure, that carnal desires were one of the ways that the evil god tempted them. So they abstained, except for rare occasions, allowing intercourse only for the exclusive purpose of conceiving children. A necessary grudging surrender to the flesh. Otherwise their community would have dwindled and died. With that rare exception, in the place of sexual relations, they substituted highly formal, immensely polite social relations that they borrowed from the concept of courtly love.'

'My friend insisted that we could never be lovers, never have sex,' Tess said. 'He claimed he had certain obligations he had to follow. The most we could ever have was what he called a platonic relationship.'