“I’m warning you!” Van Pelt screamed.

“Warn the French police,” Janson said. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“I know who you are,” said Van Pelt.

“No, you don’t,” Janson said, herding Iboga out the door. The former dictator was limping and half doubled over, still gasping.

“I know who you are!”

“You thinkyou know me. You don’t.”

“I know about the do-gooding.”

Janson paused in the doorway. “What?”

Van Pelt said, “Iboga is my client. Return him to me immediately.”

Kincaid pushed back into the cellar, eyes hot, nostrils flaring. “And if we don’t?”

“Secure Iboga,” Janson ordered softly. “Pat him down. He’s got a ton of pockets in that bush jacket. Confiscate everything—weapons, phone, money, passport—everything on his person. I’ll take care of this.… Do it!”

“Yes, sir.” She backed out the door.

“Answer her question,” said Janson. “If we don’t return your client? What will you do? Report us to the police? Press charges for delivering a bloodthirsty dictator to the World Court to stand trial for crimes against humanity? Go ahead. We’ll be long gone. You’ll still be nailed to the floor.”

Hadrian Van Pelt stood to his full height. His bloodied face was tight with rage, but it was controlled rage. “I give you one final warning,” he said with deep conviction. “If you do not return Securité Referral’s client this minute, we will hound you to the ends of the earth. You will stare over your shoulders for the rest of your lives. You will be so busy struggling to stay alive that you will never do a do-gooding job again.”

“Who will lead this hounding? You?”

“Believe me.”

“I believe you,” said Paul Janson. “You leave me no choice.”

He picked up the fallen pistol and aimed it at Van Pelt’s head.

Van Pelt laughed at him. “A do-gooder would pull the trigger on a man chained to the floor?”

“Twice.”

Van Pelt stopped laughing. His lips turned white. “Twice?”

“As assassins are trained to,” said Paul Janson. He did it so fast that the two shots sounded almost like one.

PART FOUR Ambush

Evening

29°45′ N, 95°22′ W

Houston, Texas

THIRTY-SIX

Doug Case was leading “Chair Night” at the Phoenix Boys Shelter—his halfway house for teenage gangbangers crippled in gunfights—on the south side of Houston when his cell phone buzzed with the one call he would never block, even when he was visiting the kids. The Voice was calling, sooner than five days, breaking pattern. Events must be coming to a head if even the cool, dispassionate, wise, and cynical Voice was getting anxious.

“Guys, I’m really sorry,” Case apologized. “I gotta take this call. Who’s going to fill in for me?”

He chose two from the eager hands and watched the kids proudly as he backed his own chair toward the door. Those who had already earned their superchairs presented the new kid who had earned his by painstakingly learning to master the multiple controls with the fingers of one hand. The other had been paralyzed along with his spine in a gun battle the kid had lost defending a crack-cocaine business in an abandoned house on Higgins Street.

A male nurse lifted the shrunken form, which was all that remained of a hefty teenager, out of his ordinary chair and placed him in his customized super.

Case wheeled out to the foyer. There was an armed guard at the front desk and wire mesh on the small windows to discourage attacks by gangstas not yet crippled from the shoot-outs they had fought in backyards of the Sunnyside neighborhood. Case glanced through the window at his black Escalade idling at the curb. His driver was sitting at the wheel with a pistol in his hand.

Case parked his chair in front of a glass case displaying trophies that Phoenix shelter boys had won in qualifying events for the Paralympics, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair fencing, wheelchair tennis, power lifting, judo, and archery.

“George,” he called to the guard.

“Yes sir, Mr. Case.”

“Still indulging in your coffin nails?”

George grinned. “ ’Fraid so.”

“Why don’t you step outside and have a smoke. I’ll cover for you.”

George stepped out eagerly.

Case answered the vibrating phone: “Hello, Strange Voice.”

“Took your time picking up.”

“I had to create some privacy. Sorry.”

“How are you making out with Paul Janson?”

This was a happy subject and Case answered, “Janson bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

“He really believes that you’re quitting ASC?”

“Better than that.”

“How so?”

“Janson believes I switched sides. He thinks I’m now his mole inside ASC.”

“Mole?” Digitally distorted, the caller’s laughter squeaked like a slipping fan belt. “Where’d he get that idea?”

“I let him recruit me.”

The Voice laughed harder. “Well done! Very, very well done, Douglas. You are a man after my own heart.”

“I’ll take that as high praise, sir.”

“What does he want of his mole?”

“Nothing specific, so far,” Case lied. “General observations.”

“Let me offer you a word to the wise.”

“Please do,” Case answered hastily. All the distortion in the digital spectrum could not muffle the suddenly icy tone of threat.

“Don’t get so caught up in your performance that you come to believe it.”

“I won’t.”

“What makes you so sure? Paul Janson is a man who can offer a broad array of temptations.”

“I’m not mole material.”

The Voice was not convinced. “Don’t get so caught up that you believe that becoming mole material would be in your interest. It would not be in your interest. It would lead to unbearable pain and suffering.”

Case was enraged that anyone would dare to threaten him. If he could, he would reach through the phone and crush the life out of The Voice. But when Case looked at his reflection in the trophy case, he saw a man in a chair. The poor devil mirrored back a crumbling smile of remorse and regret. The days of crushing the life out of men who challenged him were gone forever. Savagery these days would be of the mind.

As he shook with thwarted anger, it took all his strength to force himself to answer mildly, “Not to worry. I know who butters my bread. And I am grateful.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

They rang off.

Case gazed inquiringly at his reflection.

The threat was not characteristic. The Voice had never threatened him so openly. Even when the mysterious caller had risked his first overture, he had never tried to control Case by sowing terror. He had a funny feeling—a gut feeling born of a lifetime of plots and counterplots—that The Voice had inadvertently revealed that he was deep inside ASC, not outside. Inside and very, very high up. Why else would he be so paranoid that Case might betray ASC’s strategy to Paul Janson?

Then a funnier feeling hit Case. Was the revelation not inadvertent, but deliberate? Was The Voice subtly signaling that he trusted Douglas Case more than ever by revealing more about himself? Were they nearing the time when they would deal face-to-face as equals?

There was a way to find out.

Case made two quick calls, then stared into the trophy case, waiting for his phone to ring. It did. The Voice.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve just received word that Iboga was snatched from Securité Referral.”

The glass trophy case reflected a wide smile. “As I predicted, SR has proved to be a disappointment.”

“But we’ve lost Iboga just when we need him most.”

“I would not call Iboga lost,” Doug Case replied with another smile for his reflection.

“What the hell would you call him?”

“Temporarily misplaced.”

“You sound damned sure of yourself.”

“I am in this instance, sir. Please don’t worry.”