Bloch ignored him. “The Dutchman helped her get out yesterday. Sammy, Sammy, you’re not helping me. Why don’t you go and find out where she went.”

“Sergeant, I can’t help you! Don’t you understand?”

“Yeah, I do.” Bloch ate some more sunflower seeds. “I understand I’m sitting down here in your goddamn fishing camp with a couple tons of illegal weapons and ten men who probably ought to be in jail and how sweet that’d look splashed across the front page of every goddamn newspaper in this country.”

Ryder coughed, spitting with anger, but that, Bloch knew, was the most he could ever do with his anger-just spit and sputter with it. Made a good politician, Sammy-boy did. “Where am I supposed to find Juliana Fall?”

“Don’t whine, Lieutenant. You’ll think of something.”

“Sergeant-”

“And keep an eye out for Stark, let me know if he comes your way. I don’t like it that he’s messing around out there and I don’t know where he is. I’ve got a man at his house, but he hasn’t showed. You keep in touch, Lieutenant. And Sammy? I can use you in Washington.”

Ryder sputtered, and Bloch laughed, hanging up.

Then he got his number-two man into the office and told him to start packing up. “When I give the word,” he said, “I want to be able to abandon camp within thirty minutes.”

“Will do,” his man said.

Bloch grinned. Now that was what he liked to hear.

Juliana had put on clothes-heavy corduroys, turtleneck wool sweater, socks, boots, deerskin gloves with her spare keys, and parka-before trying her car. It didn’t start. She didn’t know a damn thing about engines, but she opened up the hood anyway and had a look.

She knew enough to spot pulled wires.

“That bastard.”

He’d made damn sure she couldn’t follow him-not that she had the slightest idea where he was. Going after Phillip Bloch, undoubtedly, but where was he? If she had a telephone, she’d call the police and have Matthew Stark arrested for stealing Shuji’s car. But she didn’t have a telephone. She couldn’t even call a damn garage to come fix her car.

“Aunt Willie would say I’m soft,” she told herself aloud.

Aunt Willie, she thought, would be right.

Slamming the hood shut, she went inside for a scarf. Cashmere. It was softer on her neck and mouth. Then she went into the kitchen and looked on the pine shelf where she kept her jam recipes.

The Minstrel’s Rough sat there collecting dust.

Why hadn’t Matthew swiped it along with Shuji’s car?

“Because,” she said, “he knows Bloch is going to get rid of everybody whether he gets the Minstrel or not.”

Get rid of everybody. What a quaint little euphemism. Phillip Bloch would kill everybody whether or not he got the diamond. Matthew knew this, and so hadn’t bothered with it.

But maybe she could use it as a bargaining chip, if not to make a deal, at least to buy some time-for her mother, her aunt, even for Matthew.

She snatched up the huge rough, shoved it into her inner coat pocket, and headed back outside. Her head was pounding, and she was stiff and sore and hungry, but she trudged outside. The sun was blinding on the snow, and the wind had picked up; it was bitterly cold. Walking was difficult and, because she couldn’t see the patches of ice under the freshly fallen snow, treacherous. If she fell and broke a wrist or her hands got badly frostbitten, her career would be over.

Some things, she told herself, you just had to chance.

The nearest house was a mile down the road and belonged to a dairy farmer who brought her surplus tomatoes and summer squash during the summer and sometimes fresh, raw milk that tasted wonderfully unlike anything she’d ever bought in New York. His son was outside shoveling the walk. She explained her problem, and he put down his shovel and drove her back over to her place in his truck. He said it’d take some time to fix her Audi, he wasn’t used to working on foreign cars, would she like to ride someplace?

“Yes, the airport, if possible. There’s-there’s been a family emergency.”

“Albany?”

She nodded. Albany was about forty miles away, but it had regular flights to New York-and probably Washington, too. She was thinking Washington might be her best bet. Senator Samuel Ryder, Jr., was a part of this mess. He was to have met Hendrik de Geer at Lincoln Center, she remembered from what Matthew had told her, and he had been in Vietnam with Bloch and Otis Raymond and Matthew Stark. Perhaps, with proper motivation, he could tell her where to find Phillip Bloch. She was ready to kick ass and take names; she’d give him proper motivation all right.

“Albany’s fine,” she said.

“Okay, get in.”

Matthew spotted the skinny man who’d held the gun on Juliana sitting across from his townhouse in a rented Pontiac and had his cab drive around the block and back again, letting him off below his house. He’d left the Mercedes at the Albany airport and taken a flight to Washington, all very quick and clean. Discipline had helped him put Juliana Fall out of his mind. Helped him, he thought, but without a whole lot of success.

The guy flipped to the sports section. Even at a distance, Matthew recognized the four-inch bold type of the Gazette. He might just be watching his place-or waiting for Matthew to return so he could take him out, although in that case he’d have expected to find him inside rather than out and sure as hell not reading the damn paper. Knowing Bloch as he did, Stark knew killing him wasn’t something the sergeant would want to delegate. He’d prefer to save the pleasure for himself.

But best not to take chances.

Taking the direct approach, Stark tore open the driver’s side door, grabbed the guy by his shoulder and wrist, and ripped him out of the car, shoving him down on the hood and twisting his arm behind his back. He’d left a Colt.45 on the console next to his Styrofoam mug of coffee. He was curly-haired, rail-thin, and probably twenty years younger. Stark felt like an old man.

“You’re Bloch’s man?” Stark asked quietly.

“No.”

“Your orders?”

A woman with a baby in backpack halted fifteen yards down the brick sidewalk, turned white, and quickly crossed to the other side of the street.

Stark jerked the guy up and slammed the car door shut with him. “Talk.”

“Bloch’ll kill me-”

“Bloch isn’t here. I am.”

“Jesus Christ, I knew I didn’t want this job. Look, man, I’m just supposed to keep an eye on the house, ’case you or the girl shows. If I’d known that was her yesterday-” He seemed to realize it wasn’t a good idea to finish his thought and shut up.

The girl. Juliana. Not a girl, he thought, remembering last night. “Then what?”

“She shows, I grab her-not hurt her, okay? Man, I got special orders not to hurt her, so you don’t have to worry about that. You I’m supposed to report back where you go, what you do, stuff like that, take you out if I can but not get killed trying to do it. I been warned about you. I mean, Weaze-”

“Weaze’s got a big mouth.”

“Yeah, right.”

Stark could see the kid idolized Otis Raymond. Weaze must love that, he thought, and loosened up his grip. “What’s your name?”

“Kovak. Roger Kovak.”

“You’re a stupid shit, Roger Kovak. Weasel and Bloch go back to a day before you were even born. Weaze has got an excuse for being dumb. You don’t. You want excitement, go climb Mount Everest. All Bloch’s going to do for you is get you killed or jailed.”

Roger Kovak looked terrified. He was the kind of kid, Stark thought, who would have gone to Vietnam thinking he was going to come home John Wayne and found out way too late all he was going to do was come home dead. Matthew opened up the car door. He got out the Colt, then shoved Roger Kovak back in the front seat and left him there with his newspaper and his cup of cold coffee. He could call Bloch if he wanted. Stark didn’t care.