The tiger leaped straight from the riverbank at Monk.

He back-paddled and kicked, dragged by the weight of his pack and the boy. Pyotr tightened his arms, strangling him.

The tiger flew, legs out wide, black claws bared, a scream of feral fury.

Monk could not swim fast enough.

But the river's flow made up for it.

The tiger crashed into the water a few yards away, missing its prey.

Monk angled into a swift channel between two boulders. He got dumped into a churning hole, thrown down deep, then back up again.

Pyotr choked and coughed.

Monk twisted and spotted the tiger thrashing upriver. It spun in an eddy of current. Despite the myths of cats and water, tigers were not averse to water.

Still, the beast paddled for the shore. It was not how cats hunted.

Cats were all about the ambush.

The tigers had plainly stalked them, following them quietly through the forest as they fled away, driven by Pyotr's initial warning. The boy had been right.

Following age-old instincts and cunning, the pair had tracked them, waited until their prey had tired before charging. Tigers were sprinters, not long-distance runners. They timed their charge so they could strike at the perfect moment.

Along the river's edge, another tiger appeared, stalking back and forth, thwarted. The first cat hauled out of the river, waterlogged and drenched. It shook its laden pelt and sprayed water.

Monk got a good look at the pair. Though still muscular, they looked emaciated, starved. Their fur had a ragged appearance. He noted matching steel skullcaps, like on the wolves. One tiger's ear was gnarled, shredded from an old hunting injury. Zakhar, according to Konstantin's description. Born siblings, it was the only way they could be told apart.

In a single smooth motion, as if responding to a silent whistle, the pair turned and vanished into the darkness.

Monk knew it wasn't over.

The hunt was just beginning.

He twisted and saw Konstantin and Kiska disappear around a bend in the river.

Monk sidestroked after them. Pyotr shivered against him. Monk knew the boy was not trembling from the cold, nor even from fear of the tigers. His huge, panicked eyes were not on the riverbank, but on the flow of water all around him.

What was terrifying him?

3:35 P. M.

Pyotr clung to the large man. He kept his arms tight around his neck, his legs around his waist. Water flowed all around him, filling his world. He tasted it on his lips, felt it in his ears, smelled its sweetness and green rot. Its ice cold cut to his bones.

He could not swim.

Like Marta.

He searched the far bank as it swept past, searching for his friend.

Pyotr knew much of his fear of water came from her heart. Deep water was death to her. He had felt the quickening thud of her heart when they crossed on the boulders earlier today, saw the tightening of her jaw, the glassy wideness to her eyes.

Her terror was his.

Pyotr clasped tighter to the man.

But the true heart of Marta's terror lay deeper than any sea. He had known it from the moment she had come to his bedside, laying a lined paw upon his sheets, inviting friendship. Most thought she had come to comfort him as he recovered from his first surgery.

But in that long breathless moment, staring into her caramel-brown eyes, Pyotr had known her secret. She had come to him, seeking comfort for herself, reassurance from him.

From that moment, terror and love had bonded them equally.

Along with a dark secret.

4:28 P. M.

New Delhi, India

Did you know man can see into the future? Dr. Hayden Masterson asked as he tapped at the computer.

Gray stirred from studying the depths of his coffee. The group shared one of the private rooms at the Delhi Internet CafT and Video. Kowalski leaned against the frosted glass door, ensuring their privacy. He picked at an adhesive bandage on his chin. Elizabeth had tended to the man's scrapes and was now stacking the pages coming out of the laser printer beside the workstation. It was just the four of them. Rosauro and Luca had gone out to rent them a new car for the journey ahead.

Though Gray still wasn't sure where they were going.

That all depended on Masterson and he wasn't in a talking mood. The professor had spoken hardly a word since they'd escaped from the attack at the hotel.

Attempts to draw the man out, to get him to reveal why he might be the target of assassination, had only seemed to make him withdraw.

He just continued to study the marred ivory handle of his cane. His eyes glazed not with shock, but in deep concentration.

Elizabeth had given Gray a quiet shake of her head.

Don't press him.

So they'd driven north out of Agra, aiming for the capital of India, New Delhi.

During the ninety-mile trek, Gray had them change vehicles twice along the way.

Once they reached the teeming outskirts of the city, Masterson had given only one instruction: I need access to a computer.

So here they were, in a cramped back room of an Internet cafT. The professor had promptly logged on to a private address on the University of Mumbai's Web site, requiring three levels of code to access it.

Archibald's research, Masterson had explained and had begun printing it all out. He had remained silent until this cryptic statement about mankind seeing the future.

How do you mean? Gray asked.

Masterson pushed back from his workstation. Well, many people don't know this, but it's been scientifically proven in the last couple of years that man has the ability to see a short span into the future. About three seconds or so.

Three seconds? Kowalski said. Lot of good that'll do you.

It does plenty, Masterson replied.

Gray frowned at Kowalski and turned back to the professor. But what do you mean by scientifically proven?

Are you familiar with the CIA's Stargate project?

Gray shared a glance with Elizabeth. The project Dr. Polk worked on for a while.

Another researcher on the project, Dr. Dean Radin, performed a series of experiments on volunteers. He wired them up with lie detectors, measuring skin conductivity, and began showing them a series of images on a screen. A random mix of horrible and soothing photos. The violent and explicit images would trigger a strong response on the lie detector, an electronic wince. After a few minutes, the subjects began to wince before a horrible image would appear on the screen, reacting up to three seconds in advance. It happened time and again.

Other scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, repeated these tests at both

Edinburgh and Cornell universities. With the same statistical results.

Elizabeth shook her head with disbelief. How could that be?

Masterson shrugged. I have no idea. But the experiment was extended to gamblers, too. They were monitored while playing cards. They began showing the same pattern, reacting seconds before a card would turn over. A positive response when the turn was favorable, and negative when it wasn't. This so intrigued a Nobel-winning physicist from Cambridge University that he performed a more elaborate study, hooking such test subjects to MRI scanners in order to study their brain activity. He found that the source of this premonition seemed to lie in the brain. This Nobel Prize winner and keep in mind, not some bloody quack concluded that ordinary people can see for short spans into the future.

That's amazing, Elizabeth said.

Masterson fixed her with a steady stare. It's what drove your father, he said gently. To determine how and why this could be. If ordinary people could see for three seconds into the future, why not longer? Hours, days, weeks, years.

For physicists, such a concept is not beyond comprehension. Even Albert Einstein once said that the difference between the past and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Time is just another dimension, like distance. We have no trouble looking forward or backward along a path. So why not along time, too?