He went to the suitcases, hung up the clothing they contained, and then picked up the Bible that was neatly centered on the desk. He sat down in an upholstered chair.

He closed his eyes, and then opened the Bible, and then put his finger on a page.

If the Lord wants to send me a message, what better way? And then, in an hour or so, I will go back out to the airport and get the rest of my things. This time I will have the driver drop me two blocks farther up North Broad Street.

He opened his eyes to see what passage of Holy Scripture the Lord might have selected for him.

He saw that he was in the second chapter of Haggai, the seventeenth verse.

Marion was not very familiar with Haggai.

"17.1 smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the Lord."

Marion read it again and again and again, trying to understand what it meant.

At quarter to ten the private number on the desk of Staff Inspector Peter Wohl rang. Officer Paul O'Mara answered it in the prescribed manner.

"Inspector Wohl's office, Officer O'Mara speaking, sir."

"This is H. Charles Larkin, Secret Service. May I speak with the inspector, please?"

"I'm sorry, sir. The inspector is not available."

"This is important. Where can I reach him?"

"Just a moment, sir."

O'Mara went quickly to Captain Sabara's office.

"Captain, that Secret Service guy is on the inspector's private line. He says it's important."

"Does he have a name?"

"Mr. Larkin, sir."

Sabara went into Wohl's office and picked up the telephone.

"Good morning, Mr. Larkin. Mike Sabara. Can I help you?"

"I really wanted to talk to Peter, Mike."

"He won't be here until after lunch, and I don't really know how to reach him."

"That's not a polite way of saying he doesn't want to talk to me, is it?"

"No," Sabara said. "I… Not for dissemination, he's been promoted to Inspector. He's in the Commissioner's office."

"Well good for him," Larkin said, then added, "Something has come up.May have come up. An ATF guy from Atlantic City has found evidence of a recent series of high-explosive detonations under odd circumstances."

"Really?"

"I just this minute got the call. It may or not be our guy. But on the other hand, it's all anybody's turned up. I'm going to the scene… it's in the Pine Barrens in Jersey… and I'd sort of hoped Peter would either go with me, or send somebody else."

"I can't leave," Sabara said.

"What about Malone?"

"He's at the Roundhouse, and I don't expect him back for at least an hour."

"What about Payne? He at least knows what we're up against."

"When and where do you want him?"

"Here. Ten minutes ago."

"He'll be twenty minutes late. He's on his way."

"Thank you, Mike. I appreciate the cooperation," Larkin said, and hung up.

En route from the Schoolhouse to the Federal Courts Building in Captain Mike Sabara's unmarked car, Detective Payne realized that he had no idea where in the Federal Courts Building he was to meet Supervisory Special Agent H. Charles Larkin. For that matter, he didn' t know where in the building the Secret Service maintained its offices, and he suspected that he would not be allowed to drive a car into the building's basement garage without the proper stickers on its windshield.

Fuck it, he decided. I'll park right in front of the place, and worry about fixing the ticket later.

His concerns were not justified. When he pulled to the curb, Larkin was standing there waiting for him. He pulled open the passenger side door and got in.

"Good morning, Detective Payne," he said cheerfully. "And how are you this bright and sunny morning?"

Matt opened his mouth to reply, but before a word came out, Larkin went on: "Has this thing got a whistle?"

He means "siren,"Detective Payne mentally translated.

He looked down at the row of switches mounted below the dash. He saw Larkin's finger flip one up and the siren began to howl.

"A Jersey State Trooper is waiting for us on the Jersey side of the Ben Franklin Bridge," Larkin said.

Matt looked into his rearview mirror and pulled into the stream of traffic.

No one got out of his way, despite the wailing siren, and, Matt presumed, flashing lights concealed behind the grill.

Larkin read his mind:

"If you think this is bad, try doing it in New York City. They get out of the way of a whistle only when it's mounted on a thirty-ton fire truck."

There was a New Jersey State Trooper car waiting in a toll booth lane on the Jersey side of the bridge, the lights on its bubble gum machine flashing. As Matt pulled up behind it, a State Trooper, his brimmed cap so low on his nose that Matt wondered how he could see, came up.

"Secret Service?"

"Larkin," Larkin said, holding out a leather identification folder. "I appreciate the cooperation."

"We're on our way," the Trooper said and trotted to his car.

There were more vehicles than Matt could count around what looked like a depression off a dirt road in the Pine Barrens, so many that a deputy sheriff had been detailed to direct traffic. He waved them to a stop.

"I'm Larkin, Secret Service," Larkin said, leaning across Matt to speak to him.

"Yes, sir, we've been waiting for you," the sheriff said. "Pull it over there. Everybody's in the garbage dump."

Matt parked the car and then followed Larkin to the depression, which he saw was in fact a garbage dump.

A tall, slender man with rimless glasses detached himself from a group of men, half in one kind or another of police uniform, a few in civilian clothes, and several in overalls with FEDERAL AGENT printed in large letters across their backs.

"Mr. Larkin?" the man asked, and when Larkin nodded, he went on, " I'm Howard Samm, I have the Atlantic City office of ATF."

"I'm very glad to meet you," Larkin said. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help with this."

"I like to think we have a pretty good team," Samm said. "And Agent Glynes was really on the ball with this, wasn't he? We didn't get that Request for All Information teletype until yesterday."

"He certainly was," Larkin said. "Mr. Samm, this is Detective Payne of the Philadelphia Police Department. He's working with us."

Samm shook Matt's hand.

Well, that's very nice of you, Mr. Larkin, but it's bullshit. Unless driving you around and running errands is "working with you."

"Well, what have we got?" Larkin asked.

"Somebody has been blowing things-specifically metal lockers, the kind you find in airports, bus stations-up with high explosives. My senior technician-the large fellow, in the coveralls?-says he's almost sure it's Composition C-4."

"When will we know for sure?"

"We just finished making sure the rest of the lockers weren't booby-trapped. The next step is taking a locker to the lab."

He pointed. Matt looked. Two of the men in coveralls were dragging a cable from a wrecker with MODERN CHEVROLET painted on its doors down to the remnants of a row of rental lockers. A Dodge van with no identifying marks on it waited for it, its rear doors open.

"We have any idea who's been doing this?" Larkin asked.

"That's going to be a problem, I'm afraid," Samms said.

"Not even a wild hair?" Larkin asked. "Who owns this property? Has anybody talked to him?"

"We don't know who owns the property. One of the deputies found a cabin a quarter of a mile over there. But there's no signs of life in it."