An hour later, he lay in the four-poster beside Gurt. Her restlessness told him she was not asleep.

"You sure Darleen doesn't mind us camping out with her?" he asked.

"She will have disappointment when we leave. Correction, she will have disappointment when Manfred leaves."

Superficially, Lang found it perfectly understandable that anyone would be delighted to have the little boy around. Realistically, he found it difficult to accept that a middle-aged woman would want a small child underfoot.

As if reading his mind, something she did with disturbing regularity, Gurt rolled over to face him. "With her husband in jail, she is quite happy to have company. She has not been alone since she was seventeen. It has been a long time since she had a child in the house."

Perhaps Lang had underestimated the maternal instinct.

By the dim light from under the door, he could see Gurt's outline resting her elbow on the bed, her head in her hand. "She would be happy to keep him here…"

The slow curveball.

"… so I may help you find those who would harm his father."

The fast break, down and away.

"Are you sure that's smart, leaving a three-year-old with a woman you hardly know?"

Gurt took a moment, composing an answer. "We talk, Darleen and I. She is a good woman. She was not, I would know it. Besides, did you not say there are federal agents nearby?"

"US Marshals, I'd guess. But they're not here to guard Manfred."

Gurt moved her arm, placing her head on the pillow. "How long would we be gone?"

Lang noted the plural Gurt had already made the decision that his son would be fine in Darleen's care. He let it pass. "I'm not sure. I'll know more tomorrow. I've got a doctor's appointment and I'll drop by the office. Between Sara and Francis, I should have some idea then."

Long after her regular breathing told him Gurt was asleep, Lang wondered how she could be so certain his son would be fine left with Darleen. His only consolation was that the child's mother had done without his input for the last three years. That thought was less than comforting for more than one reason.

IV.

Buyukada

Princes' Islands

Sea of Marmara

Turkey

A Week Later

The call of the muezzin from the balconies of a dozen minarets were clearly audible across the water even though the mosques themselves were no more than needles against the silhouette of the shrinking Anatolian shoreline. The electronic enhancement of the five-times-a-day summons to prayer had increased their range if done little to give the flesh-creeping wails any melodic quality.

From his position at the stern of the ferry, Lang had watched as the ship passed Seraglio Point with its Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans. And what a view those rulers of the near east for four and half centuries had enjoyed: the mouth of the Golden Horn to the Bosphorus, separating Europe from Asia. One city, two continents. Idly, he noted a Russian supertanker, high in the water as it made its way north back to the oil fields of the Black Sea.

He recalled the international friction these crafts had caused for years. The Russians, unwilling to hire a local pilot, would not suffer the oil spill resulting from one of the ships going aground less than a mile from Turkish shores on either side.

The foundation's Gulfstream had deposited Gurt and Lang at the customs house behind the main terminal at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport, where they had purchased visas for sixty dollars (euro or New Turkish lira would have been equally acceptable) and been welcomed to Turkey. As anticipated, there had been no customs. Both Lang and Gurt's weapons were available if needed and the copy of the Book of James was inside his shirt. A taxi, equally ambivalent as to currency, had taken them to Karakoy, the swarming anthill of piers from which ferries departed. Travel by water was Istanbul's preference when possible, avoiding the crowded streets and confining alleyways. Lang had noticed about half the women covered their heads; half of those with gaily colored scarfs, others with the full-length, long-sleeved black dress, their heads and faces covered by the traditional burka from which only the eyes were visible.

"Roaches!" Gurt had hissed, making no effort to conceal her scorn for women submitting to a male-dominated society.

Turkey was about 90 percent Islamic, mostly Sunni. Its constitution, however, mandated a secular government, freedom of religion and abolishing the fez and other religious dress in its universities. It was the only Islamic democracy in the world. This was beginning to slip, bit by bit. The country's new president, devoutly religious-

A tug at his sleeve. "Come see!"

Lang followed Gurt to the bow section just as the ship's whistle announced its arrival. Lang saw white two- and three-story buildings ringing a small harbor sheltering hundreds of small boats, a number of them scooting across the sapphire surface like so many bugs. Towering over the activity were green hills with houses stacked along the edges like merchandise on store shelves.

"I don't see any cars," Lang said.

"Motor vehicles are forbidden," Gurt replied. "Other than police or garbage trucks."

Gurt had read the guidebook. Or she had been here before in her past life during the bad old days of the Cold War on some mission neither of them was eager to discuss. This was Lang's first visit to the former capital of the eastern Roman, Byzantine, then Ottoman empires. These islands took their name, Princes', from the fact that the sixth-century emperor, Justin II, had built a palace here. Later, the scattered monasteries served as a place of banishment for overly ambitious members of the royal family or public officials, frequently in addition to blinding, slicing off a nose, having the tongue cut out or castration.

The Byzantines knew how to ensure neither a person nor his potential heirs would ever become troublesome again.

With the advent of steamboat service from the mainland in the late nineteenth century, the islands' beaches and wooded hills became popular resorts as well as home to a number of expatriates such as Leon Trotsky.

Lang noted a number of horse-drawn phaetons obviously waiting for the ship to dock. Bicycles zipped in and out of both equestrian and pedestrian traffic.

"Hope there's one of those carriages left for us," he said, turning to follow the stream of disembarking passengers.

"A bicycle would do you more good," Gurt teased.

Lang took her hand, leading her between a group of giggling high-school-age girls, none of whom wore scarfs. "Some other time when I have a few less broken bones."

"Perhaps a horse?"

"I try to avoid anything that is both bigger and dumber than I am."

As they stepped off the gangplank, Lang inhaled a potpourri of odors: coffee and baking bread, frying olive oil mixed with the pungent smell of horse dung, all blended with a trace of freshly cooked sweets. He and Gurt were standing in a village of shops, restaurants, small inns and businesses the purpose of which was unclear to anyone who did not read Turkish. Outdoor lokanta, cafés, were filled with customers sipping sweet apple tea from small, hourglass-shaped glasses. The mood, both of those just disembarked and those already there, was one of a holiday. Everyone seemed to be speaking at once.

He could have been standing in the center of a number of beach resorts worldwide.

Suitcase in one hand, Gurt's hand in the other, he shouldered his way through good-natured vacationers to where a pair of well-fed horses were harnessed to one of the carriages. The driver, dressed in jeans and golf shirt, held a sign with Lang's name on it.

Francis, who had arranged the visit to their destination, had thought of everything.