"Well, yes, I guess he did come by, now that you mention it," she said. "But, gosh, we handle so many files all day than I can't say which ones they were."

Helen, who was in her early sixties and not looking to retire for another five years, did not equivocate well. Her face had darkened as she was struggling to maintain her composure.

Meanwhile, in his mind, Quentin saw himself in the cabin of the Regine with Vince hanging over him like some carrion bird.

"Helen, the efficiency and operation of this office falls under my responsibility, including the handling of its files-which, I need not remind you, are very important and confidential. In turn it is your responsibility to be certain that such files are not casually passed about. Is that clear?"

"Certainly, Mr. Cross," she said, hearing the suggestion that she could be replaced by a younger woman with better recall.

She then moved to the cabinets and went through the motions of trying to determine which files had been removed. "Ah, yes," she said after a brief while. "I believe it was Alpha-Chemie."

Quentin was barely able to squeeze out a thank you.

Ross knew.

Back at his desk, Quentin sat in numb realization, half expecting Ross to come storming in for an explanation. But that didn't happen. Ross had left early without dropping by.

An hour before closing, Sally came in to say that Ross had telephoned to ask that Quentin drop by his house that evening.

For the rest of the afternoon, Quentin attended paperwork and made calls, while in the back of his mind a notion took form. While it was still soft, he took and squeezed it like clay, kneading it, examining it from different angles, pressing here, poking there, molding it until by the time he left, the thing had shaped and hardened like a brick.

After the last employee had left, Quentin let himself into the restricted area of the storage room and into a vault accessible to only a handful of people. It was where they stored highly sensitive compounds such as cocaine, heroin, lysergic acid, and other psychotropic drugs-some in purities approaching 100 percent.

At the rear of one shelf he removed a small glass vial. He slipped it into his pocket and left.

Ross lived on prestigious Belmont Hill in a handsome brick garrison on two woodsy acres set back against tall oaks. It was the home he and his late wife had purchased when the company began to flourish some years ago.

Around nine o'clock, Quentin pulled up the long driveway. Ross watched him get out of the Mercedes, thinking how this would be the last time he would be dropping in like this. After tonight, all would be changed. Sadness undercut Ross's anger and disappointment. After Quentin's marriage to Margaret, Ross had come to look upon him as the son he never had. Yes, he had suffered from pie-in-the-sky ventures that had cost them dearly. But Quentin was bright and aggressive and capable of acting with prudence, Ross had told himself. Now he was a crook.

Ross met him at the door, unable even to feign a smile. He led him into the living room where a small fire burned. A bottle of scotch sat on the bar with a bucket of ice. Quentin helped himself. Ross sat by the fire with a brandy. Since his heart attack five years ago, he was restricted to one drink a night.

"Refill?" Quentin asked. Ross handed him his empty. Quentin's eye twitched. "Police say they're following leads. Wendy's got a sister in Michigan someplace."

Ross sipped his drink quietly.

"We're trying to reconstruct assays on the compound from old notes, except it's like trying to build a car from memory."

"That's not why I called you," Ross finally said. He got up and put another log on the fire. "I'm asking for your resignation, Quentin."

"My resignation? You've got to be joking."

"I'm not joking. I want you out by Friday."

"Why, for god's sake?"

Ross handed him printouts of downloaded files. "Over the last year you transferred 3 million dollars of earnings from overseas clients to corporate accounts in Caribbean banks-bogus outfits with nothing more than an account line. My guess is that you used the funds to pay off your drug pals from Apricot Cay. I'd like to believe it's not true, but the evidence is sitting in your lap." Ross looked down at him and simply asked, "Why?"

A long moment of silence filled the room as Quentin struggled to fabricate explanations. But he had none. Finally he cleared his throat and said in a soft voice of defeat, "They threatened to kill Robyn if I didn't pay."

"You could have come to me. We could have gone to the authorities. We could have done something. God Almighty, Quentin, you had options other than fraud and theft."

"You don't understand."

"No, I don't, because you violated everything that's important-your family, career, your future, your sense of self."

Quentin silently stared into the fire. There was nothing else to say. Next week Ross would begin an outside search for a replacement. Quentin stood up. "I'm sorry about this, Ross."

"You're sorry! Is that it? Is that all you have to say? No explanation why you embezzled money from your own family's company to pay off drug barons? A company I nearly killed myself to build? A company that was going to be handed to you, to build for your own child and grandchildren? Nothing more than a little 'sorry about this,' as if you'd spilled your drink?"

Quentin locked his eyes on Ross's and his face shifted as if something large and dark had passed behind it. "I guess not."

Ross sighed as if his heart were breaking.

Quentin started toward the door then stopped. "I'd appreciate it if you would not tell Margaret. It's my problem, and my job to tell her."

Ross nodded. He had not told her. Nor did he want to. It would be like delivering a death warrant. And he was already at the edge of despair. Seventy-four years old, at the threshold of retirement, and facing the biggest crisis of his life. "One more thing," Ross said. "They're saying that the plane was sabotaged. Do you know anything about that?"

Quentin slammed his glass down. "No, goddamn it! And you're not going to pin that on me, too."

"I'm not pinning it on you, but you've been dealing with the kind of people who don't think twice about killing others."

"Well, you're wrong, Ross. Dead wrong! That was your golden boy, and when the cops bring him in they'll fry his ass."

Quentin left and slammed the door behind him, leaving Ross standing there with tears in his eyes and feeling very old and tired and desperately missing his wife. He turned off the lights, and went upstairs and took a double dosage of Xanax to help him sleep. At his age, sleep was a reluctant friend.

He settled in bed and felt a warm mist fill the pockets of his brain, blotting out the last look on Quentin's face before he stormed out the door-a look that said he was lying.

Tubarine chloride is a salt derived from the curare plant found in humid tropics of South America. A woody shrub (curarea toxicofera), the plant's bark is used by the Jamandi Indians of Brazil and the Kofans of Ecuador and many other tribes as the chief ingredient in the poison of their blowgun arrows. Known simply as tubarine, the chloride is mixed with sterile water before being injected. An overdose causes respiratory failure, which begins with a heaviness of eyelids, difficulty in swallowing, paralysis of the extremities and the diaphragm, a crushing substernal pain, and ends in circulatory collapse, and death. The effect is immediate-within ten to twenty seconds-and the drug remains in the body only a brief time after expiration. Unless there is suspicion otherwise, death appears as a heart attack.

In his pocket Quentin carried a capped syringe containing five cubic centimeters of tubarine, enough to send a bull elephant into cardiac arrest.