The sonofabitch had done it, bought his way out of China with the blood of his own brother.

Now Wang Bin was free. Stratton knew. And he would find out where to look. And when Stratton caught up with Wang Bin it would all explode. There was no avoiding it. My secret, Linda thought, my failure. "One case is all it takes, right?" Stratton had said at that long-ago dinner. Yes, one case was all it took for glory-or for demotion down to some backwater, shuffling papers for the rest of her life. All those years fighting those stupid patronizing male smiles just to get somewhere-and now this. There'd be nothing left to save.

"… and finally," Powell was saying, "I got a call yesterday from one of our friends in the fourth estate. He wanted another update on our deaths-by-duck, so I presume we'll be reading about it in the next week or so. I'm sure the travel agents back in the States will be thrilled to tears."

"Excuse me, Steve, who-" Linda began.

"Jesus, what else can they write?" piped one of the preppy junior officers.

"Didn't the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe do big take-outs year before last?"

"Yeah. So did AP," Powell grumbled. "But I had to give out the list, it's a public record."

"Steve!"

Powell was startled. "Yes, Linda."

"Excuse me, I was just wondering who it was who called." Her tongue was chalky; her heart pounded.

"McCarthy. Jim McCarthy from the Globe."

"He's the one who did the first story," interjected one of the junior officers, hoping that someone would remark on his keen memory.

But it was Linda Greer's memory that stabbed at her, jolted her back to the first day Tom Stratton had walked into the embassy. Jim McCarthy had been the one who had sent him; Stratton had said so.

She was sure it was no coincidence. McCarthy wouldn't be updating his story, not so soon. Oh, he wanted information, all right, but not for a newspaper story.

For a friend.

"Linda, is there a problem?" Powell asked. "We gave Jim a full list the first time around. Interviews, too. No one said there was a problem."

Linda smiled. "Oh, no problem. I was just curious." She thought her voice sounded tremulous.

Powell seemed not to notice. "It's really nothing," he said. "McCarthy just wanted to know how many Americans had died here over the last couple months. I gave him the names. No big deal."

"Sure," Linda said agreeably. No big deal. Jesus, if Powell only knew. "Is that all for today?"

In the hallway, she could scarcely keep from running toward her office. Now she knew everything. She knew that Stratton's plan was already in motion, and it spelled disaster for her.

In a bleak way, it was funny, she reflected. It all came back to the goddamn morgue-her job, too. An awful little job-late at night. A simple detail, really.

Or one would think. But Linda had botched that, too.

She would have to leave immediately for the United States. Sick leave, Linda would call it, or an illness in the family. There was no time to fight the bureaucracy.

Tom Stratton would have to be stopped.

Wang Bin would have to be caught.

She had to get to one of them before they got to each other. And she had to do it alone.

Wang Bin, Stratton-her responsibilities, both of them. That's what you're here for, the station chief had told her. That's what you're good at. Do what you have to, he had said-not warmly-but get them where we want them. Keep them there.

Gone was not where she wanted them.

Getting them back was the only thing that would save her career.

There was no time to worry about breaking a few laws.

A warm breeze from Tampa Bay ruffled Stratton's hair and stood him up as he walked across a broad, green lawn that seemed to ramble all the way to the water. Wheeling gulls bickered high above and a dour pelican plunged into a school of mullet. The splash startled the old man who had been pushing a lawn mower around the tombstones.

"Hello!" Stratton called.

The old man cocked his head. He glanced up to the sky, wondering if one of the noisy birds had actually shouted to him.

"Here! Hello!" Stratton yelled over the mower's engine.

The old man spotted Stratton and muttered a grumpy acknowledgment. He turned off the mower and pulled a handkerchief from the belt of his trousers.

"I'm looking for the grave of Sarah Steinway," Stratton said.

The old man noticed that Stratton carried a modest spray of flowers.

"Are you a relative?" he asked.

Stratton said he was a nephew. "I came all the way from New York."

"Jesus H. Christ," the old man said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry to hear that."

He led Stratton along the water to a footpath that took them up a gentle man-made hill. On the other side was a stand of young pine trees that formed the boundary of the cemetery's newest lot.

"If you'd have come tomorrow most of it would have been cleaned up," the old caretaker said apologetically.

"What are you talking about?"

"Come on."

Stratton followed him to the gravesite. Many of the plots were recently turned; others remained untouched, the gravestones bare-prepurchased, Florida-style.

They walked to the end of a long row before Stratton saw what the old man meant.

The caretaker stopped and pointed up and down the column of graves. "Look what they did!"

"They" had gone amok, toppling the headstones, shredding the flowers, trampling and thrashing the soil. On one grave sat a mound of rotting garbage, with bright blue flies buzzing obscenely. Another was peppered with broken whiskey bottles.

Still another grave had been defaced with bright crayons. Stratton bent over the granite slab and read:

There was an old geezer named Saul Who dropped dead in the Hillsborough Mall His wife called a cop Then went back to the shop So she wouldn't miss the sale, after all "Cute," Stratton muttered.

"It's sick," the old caretaker said. "Teenagers, that's all."

One double headstone read: "Eva and Bernard Melman." Beneath the names, smeared in burgundy, was a Nazi swastika. In dripping letters at the base of the tombstone, someone had painted the words more dead jews.

Stratton stepped closer to study the vandalism. After a few moments he turned to the caretaker and asked, "Did you call the police?"

"Of course. They sent a man. So what? What can they do?"

The old man moved forward and pointed with his foot to an area around the Melmans' granite slab. The dirt was dark and moist and loose, as if a shovel had been plunged into the ground and withdrawn.

"I figure they were interrupted by a car," the old man speculated.

"What about Aunt Sarah?" Stratton asked.

The caretaker pointed to the next headstone on the row:

Sarah Rose Steinway 1919-1983 The only mark of vandalism was another swastika, this one drawn in orange crayon between the "Sarah" and the "Rose."

"Look at that," Stratton said disgustedly.

"That'll come right off, mister. I can get it with some turpentine, or some real strong acetate. Won't harm the marble, either. I'll clean it off this afternoon."

Stratton set the flowers on the grave and stepped back to the footpath. The caretaker took a deep breath. "It's impossible to guard a place like this twenty-four hours a day. You understand, don't you? We're just a small cemetery-I mean, we've got a watchman, but he's old and he doesn't hear so well."

Stratton was only half listening. He concentrated on the Steinway grave. The sod around the marker was puckered in several places, and badly gashed near the headstone.

"When did all this happen?"

"Either last night or the night before. See, I don't get around to this side every day. I mow it three times a week, though, and if there's a visitor like yourself, or the men who came a couple of days ago, then I'll bring 'em here to show the way."