Too bad, but he didn't think much of the alternative.

"I do what's necessary," he said. "But in your wonderings have you considered where we'd be right now if they'd caught us?"

She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And the worst thing is that it didn't settle anything. We're still looking over our shoulders. I can't even go home."

"I'm sorry about that. But we're making progress. We know more than we did two days ago, and I've got a feeling we'll know a lot more when I find the lock to this key."

And get some more playtime with that little four-by-four, he thought. Something very strange about Clayton's "Rover."

He held the key in the direct sunlight and saw faint remnants of the words "Bern Interbank" embossed on the red vinyl case.

Hallelujah, he thought.

2.

Yoshio took a deep, sharp breath when he saw the white Chevrolet, and nearly choked on his Egg McMuffin.

He had spent hours last night watching Alicia Clayton's apartment. She never appeared. Yoshio had been disappointed but not terribly surprised. He assumed the ronin had done what he would have done under those circumstances: rented a hotel for the night.

And so Yoshio was idling here on Seventh Avenue where he could see the entrance to the hospital and the children's center where the Clayton woman worked. His backgrounding on her had revealed how devoted she was to her small charges. He doubted she would stay away.

And now he had been proven correct.

Small satisfaction, but one took it where one found it.

He watched the ronin escort the Clayton woman to the hospital door. Yoshio was in gear and moving when the . ronin returned to his car. No question as to what his next step would be: follow the ronin. If he and the Clayton woman had learned anything last night, now was the time to act upon it.

Carefully keeping his distance, Yoshio trailed the ronin west on Fourteenth Street and then uptown on Tenth Avenue. He did not see anyone else following. He smiled. Certainly Kemel Muhallal had other, more pressing concerns at the moment—an acute manpower shortage among them.

He saw the ronin stop his car before a row of dingy storefronts. Yoshio drove past, adjusting his speed to catch the red light at the next corner. He adjusted his rearview mirror and watched the ronin enter a doorway next to a dirty window with a sign that read:

ERNIE'S I.D.

ALL KINDS

PASSPORT

TAXI

DRIVER'S LICENSE

Yoshio hurried around the block and was relieved to see the Chevrolet still double-parked on Tenth Avenue when he returned. He pulled into the curb by a bus stop on the far side of the street and waited, trusting the rush-hour traffic to hide him.

ID… why would the ronin enter such a place? Did he want to prove his own identity, or did he wish to identify himself as someone else? Ronald Clayton perhaps?

Yoshio rubbed his palms together to relieve the sudden tingle of anticipation.. He sensed he was onto something here.

And then the ronin emerged from the store and looked around before he reentered his car. As his gaze came Yoshio's way, a bus edged between them. Yoshio took advantage of the cover to nose his way into traffic and position himself so that he was behind the bus when it moved on. His car now looked like just another of the countless thousands crawling through rush hour.

He saw the white Chevrolet pull away and continue uptown. Yoshio followed him all the way to West Seventy-sixth Street where the ronin double-parked again and walked into a building.

Yoshio saw the sign as he passed: BERN interbank.

And now the tingle spread from his hands to the back of his neck. Yes. This was important. He couldn't say how he knew, he simply… knew.

Hurriedly he looked for a place to leave his car. He could park it illegally and hope his DPL plates would protect it, but he didn't know how much time he would need. The city had been cracking down on diplomats abusing their parking privileges. Yoshio did not want to return and find that his car had been towed away.

He saw a Kinney Park sign and accelerated toward it.

The success of all his efforts for the past two months might hinge on what he did in the next few minutes.

3.

Powder from Alicia's latex gloves left white smudges on Hector's latest chest X ray as she held it up to the window. She didn't need a lightbox to show her how bad it was. His lung fields were almost entirely opaque. Only small dark pockets of uninfected lung remained, and those were becoming progressively smaller with each successive film. Soon even the ventilator would be unable to force oxygen to his blood cells.

She turned and faced the comatose child, who seemed to have shrunk since she'd last seen him yesterday morning. Naked, spread-eagle on the bed, Hector seemed to be made more of plastic tubing than flesh—two IV lines, one in an arm and one in a leg, the ventilator tube down his throat, a catheter running into his penis to his bladder, the CVP line running under his clavicle, the cardiac monitor leads glued to his corduroy chest. His skin had a mottled, bluish cast. Sorenson was wiping the crusts from his eyes.

Tuning out the ICU Muzak of beeps and hisses, Alicia picked up Hector's chart and read his latest numbers in dismay. His O2 saturation was dropping, his WBC count had been 900 this morning, and his blood pressure was in the basement.

He's slipping away, she thought. And there's not a damn thing—

A change in the beeps from Hector's cardiac monitor caught her attention. She checked the screen and saw the dreaded irregular sine-wave pattern of ventricular fibrillation.

Sorenson looked up, eyes wide above her surgical mask. "Oh, shit."

She reached a gloved hand toward the code button.

"Wait," Alicia said.

"But he's in V-fib."

"I know. But he's also in immunological collapse. He's got nothing left. We can't save him. The Candida's in his brain, in his marrow, clogging his capillaries. We can break a few more ribs pounding on his chest, submit him to a few more indignities, and for what? Just to prove we can delay the inevitable for a couple of hours? Let the poor boy go."

"You're sure?"

Was she sure? She'd tried everything she knew. All the subspecialists she'd called in had attacked Hector's infection with every weapon at their disposal. All to no effect.

I can't seem to be sure of anything else in my life, but of this one thing I am absolutely certain: No matter what we do, Hector will not survive the morning.

"Yes, Sorenson. I'm sure."

Stepping aside from all her emotions, Alicia watched the sine waves slow, then devolve into isolated agonal beats, then flat line.

Sorenson looked at her. When Alicia nodded, the nurse checked her watch and recorded the time of death of Hector Lopez, age four. As Sorenson began removing the tubes from Hector's lifeless body, Alicia ripped off her surgical mask and turned away.

Staggering under the crushing futility of it all, she leaned against the windowsill and looked down at the street. The cheery glare of the morning sun seemed an affront. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. She could not remember feeling this low in all her life.

What good am I? she thought. Who am I kidding? I'm useless. I might as well call it quits now and end this charade.

When she caught herself eyeing the cars below and wondering how it would feel to plummet toward them, she pushed herself away from the window.