“Ex-cop,” said Janson. “I met him in London. Dominique Ondine.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know. He was head of security here until he got transferred for pissing off the president of France.”

Ondine glided through the party with the self-assurance of a man carrying a warrant and a gun.

“What does he want?” asked Kincaid. “Money?”

“Let’s hope so.”

They exchanged nods across the crowd as Ondine drew near. He looked Jessica up and down, glanced at the other scantily clad young women, and said to Janson, “I see you’ve adopted the local custom.”

“My associate Ms. Kincaid,” said Janson.

Ondine bowed over Kincaid’s hand. “Mademoiselle.”

Janson said, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

“I imagine you didn’t.”

“Are you looking for work?” he asked, explaining to Kincaid, “Monsieur Ondine is a private security consultant.”

“Like you,” said Ondine.

“Forensic accounting?” asked Kincaid.

The Frenchman smiled. He had not been drinking cognac, not today, thought Janson. “Nothing so intellectual,” said Ondine. “More the sort of security that involves weapons.”

“Not our thing,” said Janson.

“Mr. Janson, I’ve reconsidered your question about Securité Referral.”

“Why?” asked Janson, watching him carefully, while Kincaid scoped the party for Ondine’s backup.

“Why? If there is such an animal as an honest policeman, it is I.”

Paul Janson told Dominique Ondine, “I want to know why a man who calls himself ‘an honest policeman’—and is a retiredhonest policeman at that—followed me all the way to Corsica at his own expense.”

Dominique Ondine indicated the burned-out hotel with the red-lettered protest sail flapping from the roof. “The fire was last week. Only the latest incident. Empty villas have been shot up, their owners’ Mercedes bombed while they’re away, their boats sunk.”

“You told me that in London. Corsica’s a powder keg. Separatists, Union Corse mafia, poor fishermen, and environmentalists. Not Securité Referral.”

“To be sure,” Ondine agreed. “Arson and vendetta are endemic in Corsica. Corsicans routinely take matters into their own hands.”

“You told me that in London, too. You also told me that you had never heard of SR. May I ask you again? Is Securité Referral a Corsican organization?”

“Non.”

“Then what is the connection? You’re baffling me, Monsieur Ondine.”

“Securité Referral thrives under such lawlessness.”

Janson and Kincaid exchanged smiles visible only to them. SR thrived among the lawless? So did CatsPaw.

“Continue, monsieur,” Janson said brusquely. “What do you want from me?”

“Work. The consulting business is slow.”

“Can you give me information that will help me fight Securité Referral?”

“Do accountants fight?” Ondine smiled.

“Don’t get cute,” said Kincaid.

Ondine looked at her sharply. Kincaid stared back.

The Frenchman dropped his gaze. “I cannot give you such information.”

“Can’t or won’t?” asked Janson.

“I cannot. I do not know it. But if I could, I would not. I am not inclined to suicide.”

“At least we agree that you know of them.”

“A little. Securité Referral is international, but it was conceived by French intelligence officers—servants of their country turned criminal—who learned their trade spying in Russia. Now it is everyone—Russians, Serbs, Croats, Africans, Chinese. That is all I can tell you.”

“There is something else you can do for me.”

“Name it.”

Janson nodded at the burned-out hotel. “Do you see the sign they hung from the roof?”

“Of course.”

“By midnight tonight, I want a secure meeting with the operators who hung that sign.”

“You’re not serious. The separatists are my enemies. As a policeman I hunted them.”

“You better believe he’s serious,” said Kincaid. “If you work for us, when you see a job that needs doing you do it. This meeting job needs doing. You’re the man. Set up the meeting.”

Ondine swallowed hard. “What may I offer them to come?”

“Money.”

“How much?”

“One million euros.”

Ondine gasped. “One million euros to come to a meeting?”

“No. One million if they do the job.”

“What job?”

“The job they’ll learn about at the meeting.”

“What is my cut?”

“Ten percent finder’s fee. After they do the job.”

“I will do my best.”

“Midnight,” said Janson.

“And when we leave this party,” said Kincaid, “tell those two cops moonlighting as waiters not to follow us.”

THIRTY-FOUR

The only problem with heroin was getting it. With a consistent supply it was a very fine drug. Snort it and nothing ever hurt, particularly when a man’s brain spun every day of his life like a turbine, always at full speed, consuming his mind and soul and spirit faster than Abrams battle tanks burned kerosene. Heroin put the brakes on for a moment, long enough to recharge and come out swinging. It helped not to have an addictive nature and it was vital to understand that only losers shot up with needles. Many in the veterans hospital spiraled down from lesser drugs into heroin. He had ascended.

It was night. Almost.

Doug Case had been talking nonstop on his sat phone since the sun was high in the sky. Seated in his wheelchair, staring out his office window at the sea of electric lights that the vast, powerful city of Houston spread from horizon to horizon, he felt neither pain nor anxiety but increasingly in charge of what had started out as a bad situation.

His phone rang. He answered, saying, “Did you get the plane?”

“C-160 Transall twin-engine turboprop.”

“What color?”

“Well, there’s a little problem with that. It’s camo, like you asked, but blue.”

“I told you camo green.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Camo green! I don’t care how you do it. Paint it or get another one. Camo green. Standing by tomorrow.”

Case stabbed END. He weighed the relaxing prospect of doing a line or two against the possibility of nodding off at a crucial moment. He decided not to. Drugs were not addictive. Losers were.

He endured ten full minutes of quiet and was sick of the lack of action when his phone finally rang again. He guessed who it was before he checked the screen and was right. The Voice. Clockwork, every five days. He doubted that the caller recognized his own pattern.

“Hello, Strange Voice,” Case answered. “How are you tonight? If it is night where you are.”

“You sound very chipper, Douglas. How are you?”

The caller’s voice was disguised. The sound emitted by his telephone was digitally morphed by a voice transformation system originally developed for psychological warfare and to fool voiceprint ID systems. Case recalled it from his early days at Cons Ops. Digitization, miniaturization, new understanding of articulatory position, and software advances from VTS1 to VTS14.8 had improved it mightily. It enabled the caller to change timbre, transpose pitch, add confusing vibrato and tremolo—even capture and synthesize signals to generate impersonations. The Voice could sound like a robot. He could sound like a little girl. He could sound like Jon Stewart or Hillary Clinton. Tonight he sounded like a cross between Stewart and WALL•E.

The Voice’s phone line was secure. It revealed nothing to Case about his identity or where he was calling from. Nor, Case presumed, did the caller necessarily know where he was, such was the anonymity of cells and sat phones. The difference was that if The Voice asked for Case’s location he would reveal it immediately. While Case would not dream of asking where the caller was.

Case presumed the caller was from within the American Synergy Corporation, high in management—one of the vipers, most likely—or on the board of directors, or the mysterious Buddha himself. Though he could be from outside the corporation, he had a very clear concept of what was going on inside it. Case had received his first call two years ago. “You were the most talented covert officer ever to serve your country,” The Voice had flattered him. “Serve me and be rewarded.”