The coroner had been irritated but had complied. On Wednesday, October 2, Kate brought the thick report out to Alan Stevens at the CDC imaging lab. Everyone there was pleased to see her, but she had no time for pleasantries. She barely glanced at the sealedoff ClassVI biolabs where Chandra and Tate had died, and had not even sat down in her own office after confirming that the floppy disks, files, and project reports were indeed gone. She met Alan in a basement conference room that had just been repainted but still smelled ` of smoke.

“Kate, I'm so terribly sorry . . .” began the redhaired technician.

“Thank you, Alan. “ She slid the report across to him. “This was done by the county coroner. Do we need to do it over?”

Alan bit his lip as he flipped through the stapled pages. “No,” he said at last, “the conclusions are sloppily written up, but the data looks solid enough.”

“And could that child be Joshua?”

The technician settled his glasses higher on his snub nose. “This baby is the right gender, the right age, approximately the right size, and there's no reason for another child to have been in the house . . .”

“Could it be Joshua, Alan? Look at the section under `blood samples.' “

He nodded. “Kate, it's not unusual in fires and massive trauma cases like this that there is little blood left in the body.”

“Yes, I know,” Kate said as patiently as she could. She did not mention her emergency room residency or her training with one of the country's finest pathologists before choosing hematology. “But all of the blood missing or boiled away, Alan?”

“It's unusual, I admit,” said the technician. “But not unheard of.”

“All right,” said Kate. She handed him the extra folder with the X ray and MRI hard copy. “Is this Joshua?”

Alan spent almost thirty minutes studying the stills and comparing them to hard copy and stored computer visuals in the imaging control room. When he was finished; they returned to the conference room. “Well?” said Kate.

Her young friend's face was almost forlorn. “I can't find the stomachwall abnormality for certain, Kate . . . but you can see the extent of the internal damage from whatever fell on the child. A support beam perhaps. But the actual tissue samples support the identification. I mean, the cellular pathology is similar.”

“Similar,” said Kate, standing. “But not necessarily the same as Joshua's?”

Alan. took his glasses off and squinted at her. His face looked very vulnerable and very sad. “Not necessarily . . . there's no way to be sure with this postmortem data . . . you must know that. But the chances of an infant of similar size, with such an unusual cell pathology, being found in the same house . . . “

Kate walked to the door. “It just means that they sacrificed one of their own,” she said.

Alan frowned at her. “One of whose own?”

“Nothing,” said Kate and opened the door.

Alan rose with the files. “Don't you want these?”

Kate shook her head and left.

The infant was buried in a lovely cemetery near Lyons, a small foothills community where Kate and Tom had sometimes walked. When she had requested a headstone, the salesman had gone into the back room for a minute and brought out a photocopy of an elaborate stone with an infant's cherubic face, a lamb, and a curling flower.

Kate shook her head. “A plain stone. No ornamentation whatsoever. “

The salesman nodded enthusiastically. “And the deceased's name to be inscribed . . . ah, yes . . . Joshua Neuman,” he said and cleared his throat. “I . . . ah . . . have read the newspaper accounts of the tragedy, Doctor Neuman. My deepest sympathies.”

“No,” said Kate, and the flatness in her tone made the man glance up over his bifocals. “No name,” she said. “Just inscribe the stoneUnknown Romanian Infant.”

On Friday, October 4, Kate withdrew a total of $15,830 from her savings account, another $2,200 from her checking account, put most of the cash in folders with other loose papers that went into her carryon bag, stuffed the rest of the bills in her purse, took the shuttle limousine to Stapleton International Airport, and boarded a United flight to New York with tickets in her purse for a connecting PanAm flight to Vienna.

The plane had moved away from the gate when a man dressed all in black dropped into the empty seat next to her.

“You're late,” said Kate. “I thought you'd changed your mind. “

“No,” said O'Rourke. “I promised, didn't I?”

Kate chewed on her lip. Her headache, although much improved over the migraineintensity a few days earlier, still roared through her skull like a rasping wind. She found, it hard to concentrate, but did so anyway. “Did your senator friend get through to the man at the embassy in Bucharest?”

O'Rourke nodded. The bearded priest looked tired.

“And is the embassy guy going to contact Lucian?”

“Yes,” said O'Rourke. “It will be done. They chose someone who is . . . ah . . . not unused to delicate assignments.”

“CIA,” said Kate. She rubbed her forehead with her good hand. “I keep thinking that I've forgotten something.”

O'Rourke seemed to be studying her face. “The travel arrangements you requested have been made. Lucian will know where and when to meet us. My friends at Matthias Church in Budapest have made the contacts with the Gypsies. Everything we discussed is in place.”

Kate continued to rub her forehead without being aware of doing so. “Still . . . it feels like I've forgotten something. “

O'Rourke leaned closer. “Perhaps you've forgotten you need time to mourn. “

Kate pulled back suddenly, turned away as if looking out the window during the takeoff, and then turned her gaze back on the priest. “No . . . I feel it . . . I mean, Tom and Julie's and Chandra's deaths are in me like a pain more real than this concussion or this arm . . . but I can't take time to feel it all yet. Not yet.”

O'Rourke's gray eyes studied her. “And Joshua?”

Kate's lips grew tight. “Joshua is alive.”

The priest nodded almost imperceptibly. “But if we can't find him?”

Kate's thin smile held no warmth, no humor, only resolve. “We'll find him. I swear on the graves of the friends I just buried and the eyes of the God you believe in that we'll find Joshua. And bring him home.”

Kate turned away to watch out the window as the plains of Colorado fell behind as they flew east, but for the longest time she could feel O'Rourke's gaze on her.

Chapter Twenty-one

KATE had never been to Vienna before, but her jumbled, jetlagged impressions of it were pleasant: beautiful old architecture coexisting with the most modern refinements, parks, gardens, and palaces set along the circular ring roads of the old city, easy affluence, efficiency, cleanliness, and an obvious care for aesthetics that had not faltered in centuries. She thought that she might like to return to Vienna someday when she was sane.

She and O'Rourke had arrived shortly after sunrise and taken a cab to the Hotel de France on Schottentor, near Rooseveltplatz, and a cathedral that O'Rourke said was called the Votivkirche.

“You've been to Vienna before,” said Kate, trying to focus through the headache and jet lag.

“Even cities as prosperous as Vienna have orphanages,” said O'Rourke. “Here, I'll check us in.”

Their rooms were on the fifth floor, in a modern edition of the hotel carved out of a twocenturyold building behind the main structure. Kate blinked at the gray carpet, gray walls, teak furniture, and twenty-first-century appointments.

O'Rourke dismissed the bellboy in German and turned to leave for his own room when Kate called to him from the door.

“Mike . . . I mean, Father . . . wait a minute.”

He paused in the narrow hall. Behind him, greenhouse style windows looked down on slate roofs and old courtyards.