"Why would you?"

"Your blindness returns, Mr. Ogilvie. For a price, naturally. ... You have an extraordinary operation in Europe. It's in place and functioning, and under our control we could derive considerable benefits from it."

"Oh ... my ... God," said the leader of Medusa, his voice trailing off as he stared at the consul general.

"Do you really have a choice, Counselor? ... Come now, we must hurry. Arrangements have to be made. Fortunately, it's still early in the day."

It was 3:25 in the afternoon when Charles Casset walked into Peter Holland's office at the Central Intelligence Agency. "Breakthrough," said the deputy director, then added less enthusiastically, "Of sorts."

"The Ogilvie firm?" asked the DCI.

"From left field," replied Casset, nodding and placing several stock photographs on Holland's desk. "These were faxed down from Kennedy Airport an hour ago. Believe me, it's been a heavy sixty minutes since then."

"From Kennedy?" Frowning, Peter studied the facsimiled duplicates. They comprised a sequence of photographs showing a crowd of people passing through metal detectors in one of the airport's international terminals. The head of a single man was circled in red in each photo. "What is it? Who is it?"

"They're passengers heading for the Aeroflot lounge, Moscow bound, Soviet carrier, of course. Security routinely photographs U.S. nationals taking those flights."

"So? Who is he?"

"Ogilvie himself."

"What?"

"He's on the two o'clock nonstop to Moscow. ... Only he's not supposed to be."

"Come again?"

"Three separate calls to his office came up with the same information. He was out of the country, in London, at the Dorchester, which we know he isn't. However, the Dorchester desk confirmed that he was booked but hadn't arrived, so they were taking messages."

"I don't understand, Charlie."

"It's a smoke screen and pretty hastily contrived. In the first place, why would someone as rich as Ogilvie settle for Aeroflot when he could be on the Concorde to Paris and Air France to Moscow? Also, why would his office volunteer that he was either in or on his way to London when he was heading for Moscow?"

"The Aeroflot flight's obvious," said Holland. "It's the state airline and he's under Soviet protection. The London-Dorchester bit isn't too hard, either. It's to throw people off-my God, to throw us off!"

"Right on, master. So Valentino did some checking with all that fancy equipment in the cellars and guess what? ... Mrs. Ogilvie and their two teenage children are on a Royal Air Maroc flight to Casablanca with connections to Marrakesh."

"Marrakesh? ... Air Maroc-Morocco, Marrakesh. Wait a minute. In those computer sheets Conklin had us work up on the Mayflower hotel's registers, there was a woman-one of three people he tied to Medusa-who had been in Marrakesh."

"I commend your memory, Peter. That woman and Ogilvie's wife were roommates at Bennington in the early seventies. Fine old families; their pedigrees ensure a large degree of sticking together and giving advice to one another."

"Charlie, what the hell is going on?"

"The Ogilvies were tipped off and have gotten out. Also, if I'm not mistaken and if we could sort out several hundred accounts, we'd learn that millions have been transferred from New York to God knows where beyond these shores."

"And?"

"Medusa's now in Moscow, Mr. Director."

34

Louis DeFazio wearily dragged his small frame out of the taxi in the boulevard Masséna, followed by his larger, heavier, far more muscular cousin Mario from Larchmont, New York. They stood on the pavement in front of a restaurant, its name in red-tubed script across a green-tinted window: Tetrazzini's.

"This is the place," said Louis. "They'll be in a private room in the back."

"It's pretty late." Mario looked at his watch under the wash of a street lamp. "I set the time for Paris; it's almost midnight here."

"They'll wait."

"You still haven't told me their names, Lou. What do we call them?"

"You don't," answered DeFazio, starting for the entrance. "No names-they wouldn't mean anything anyway. All you gotta do is be respectful, you know what I mean?"

"I don't have to be told that, Lou, I really don't," reprimanded Mario in his soft-spoken voice. "But for my own information, why do you even bring it up?"

"He's a high-class diplomatico," explained the capo supremo, stopping briefly on the pavement and looking up at the man who had nearly killed Jason Bourne in Manassas, Virginia. "He operates out of Rome from fancy government circles, but he's the direct contact with the dons in Sicily. He and his wife are very, very highly regarded, you understand what I'm saying?"

"I do and I don't," admitted the cousin. "If he's so grand, why would he accept such a menial assignment as following our targets?"

"Because he can. He can go places some of our pagliacci can't get near, you know what I mean? Also, I happen to let our people in New York know who our clients were, especially one, capisce? The dons all the way from Manhattan to the estates south of Palermo have a language they use exclusively between themselves, did you know that, cugino? ... It comes down to a couple of orders: 'Do it' and 'Don't do it.' "

"I think I understand, Lou. We render respect."

"Respect, yes, my fancy rendering cousin, but not no weakness, capisce? No weakness! The word's got to go up and down the line that this is an operation Lou DeFazio took control of and ran from beginning to end. You got that?"

"If that's the case, maybe I can go home to Angie and the kids," said Mario, grinning.

"What? ... You shut up, cugino! With this one job you got annuities for your whole passel of bambinos."

"Not a passel, Lou, just five."

"Let's go. Remember, respect, but we don't take no shit."

The small private dining room was a miniature version of Tetrazzini's decor. The ambience was Italian in all things. The walls were papered with dated, now faded murals of Venice, Rome and Florence; the softly piped-in music was predominantly operatic arias and tarantellas, and the lighting indirect with pockets of shadows. If a patron did not know he was in Paris, he might think he was dining on Rome's Via Frascati, at one of the many commercialized family ristoranti lining that ancient street.

There was a large round table in the center covered by a deep red tablecloth, with a generous overhang, and four chairs equidistant from one another. Additional chairs were against the walls, allowing for an expanded conference of principals or for the proper location of secondary subalterns, usually armed. Seated at the far end of the table was a distinguished-looking olive-skinned man with wavy dark hair; on his left was a fashionably dressed, well-coiffed middle-aged woman. A bottle of Chianti Classico was between them, the crude thick-stemmed wineglasses in front of them not the sort one would associate with such aristocratic diners. On a chair behind the diplomatico was a black leather suitcase.

"I'm DeFazio," said the capo supremo from New York, closing the door. "This is my cousin Mario, of who you may have heard of-a very talented man who takes precious time away from his family to be with us."

"Yes, of course," said the aristocratic mafioso. "Mario, il bola, esecuzione garantito-deadly with any weapon. Sit down, gentlemen."

"I find such descriptions meaningless," responded Mario, approaching a chair. "I'm skilled in my craft, that's all."

"Spoken like a professional, signore," added the woman as DeFazio and his cousin sat down. "May I order you wine, drinks?" she continued.

"Not yet," replied Louis. "Maybe later-maybe. ... My talented relative on my mother's side, may she rest in the arms of Christ, asked a good question outside. What do we call you, Mr. and Mrs. Paris, France? Which is by way of saying I don't need no real names."