—

"Well, there you have it," I sighed, leaning back in my chair and waving at the printout. "Your likeliest suspects. Take your pick."

Maxwell said a particularly obscene word and hefted the stack of paper. "I don't suppose there's a chance we missed any helpful criteria, is there?"

I shrugged. "You sat there and watched me feed it all in. Expert safecracker, equally proficient with fancy vaults and fancy electronic alarm systems, not dead, not in jail, et cetera, et cetera."

He shook his head. "It'll take days to sort through these."

"Longer than that to track all of them down," I agreed. "Any ideas you've got, I'll take them."

He gnawed at the end of a pencil. "What about cross-referencing with our hate mail file? Surely no ordinary thief would have any interest in killing President Thompson."

"Fine—but most of your hate-mail people aren't going to know about the President's doll in the first place. We'd do better to try and find a leak from either the White House or Pak and Christophe's place."

"We're already doing that," he said grimly. "Also checking with the CIA regarding foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations. These guys—" he tapped the printout—"were more of a long shot, but we couldn't afford to pass it up."

"Nice to occasionally be included in what's going on," I murmured. "How's the President?"

"As of ten minutes ago he was fine." Maxwell had been calling at roughly fifteen minute intervals, despite the fact that the Baltimore Secret Service contingent had my phone number and had promised to let us know immediately if anything happened.

"Well, that's something, anyway." I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o'clock; two and a half hours since we'd left the voodoo acupuncture clinic and maybe as many as sixteen since the doll had been stolen.

And something here was not quite right. "Maxwell, don't take this the wrong way... but what the hell is he waiting for?"

"Who, the thief?"

"Yeah." I chewed at my lip. "Think about it a minute. We assume he knows what he has and that he went in deliberately looking for it. So why wait to use it?"

"Establishing an alibi?" Maxwell suggested slowly.

"For murder with a voodoo doll?"

"Yeah, I suppose that doesn't make any sense," he admitted. "Well... maybe he's not planning to use it himself. Maybe he's going to send out feelers and sell the doll to the highest bidder."

"Maybe," I nodded. "On the other hand, who would believe him?"

"Holding it for ransom, then?"

"He's had sixteen hours to cut out newspaper letters and paste up a ransom note. Anything like that shown up?"

He shook his head. "I'm sure I'd have been told if it had. Okay, I'll bite: what is taking him so long?"

"I don't know, but whatever he's planning he's up against at least two time limits. One: the longer he holds it, the better the chance that we'll catch up with him. And two: the longer he waits, the less power the doll's going to have."

"Unless he knows about the Haitian soil connection... no. If he'd known he should have helped himself to some when he took the doll."

"Though he could have a private source of the stuff," I agreed. "It's still a fair assumption, though. Could he have expected us to have Pak standing by waiting to counteract whatever he does? He might be holding off then until Pak relaxes his guard some."

"The theft went undiscovered for at least a couple of hours," Maxwell pointed out. "He could have killed the President in his sleep. For that matter, he could have done it right there in the vault and never needed to take the doll at all."

"Point," I conceded. "So simple murder isn't what he's looking for—complicated murder, maybe, but not simple murder."

"Oh, my God," Maxwell whispered suddenly, his face going pale. "The debate. He's going to do it at the debate."

For a long second we stared at each other. Then, simultaneously, we grabbed our jackets and bolted for the door.

—

It was something like forty miles to Baltimore; an hour's trip under normal conditions. Maxwell insisted on driving and made it in a shade over forty-five minutes. In rush hour traffic, yet.

We arrived at the Hyatt and found the President's suite... and discovered that all our haste had been for nothing.

"What do you mean, they won't cancel?" Maxwell growled to VanderSluis, the Secret Service man who met us just inside the door.

"Who's this 'they' you're talking about?" the other growled back. "It's the President who won't cancel."

"Didn't you tell him—?"

"We gave him everything you radioed in," VanderSluis sighed. "Didn't do a bit of good. He says canceling at the last minute like this without a good reason would be playing right into Danzing's rhetoric."

"Has he been told...?"

"About the doll? Yeah, but it didn't help. Probably hurt, actually—he rightly pointed out that if someone's going to attack him using the doll, hiding won't do him a damn bit of good."

Maxwell glanced at me, frustration etched across his face. "What about Pak and Christophe?" he asked VanderSluis. "They here?"

"Sure—down the hall in seventeen."

"Down the hall? I thought I told them to stick by the President."

"They're as close now as they're likely to get," VanderSluis said grimly. "The President said he didn't want them underfoot while he was getting ready for the debate."

Or roughly translated, he didn't want any of the media bloodhounds nosing about to get a sniff of them and start asking awkward questions. "At least they're not back in Washington," I murmured as Maxwell opened his mouth.

Maxwell closed his mouth again, clenched his teeth momentarily. "I suppose so," he said reluctantly. "Well... come on, Harland, let's go talk to them. Maybe they'll have some ideas."

We found them in the room, lounging on the two double beds watching television. On the floor between the beds, the room's coffee table had been set up like a miniature surgical tray, with Pak's acupuncture needles laid out around a flower pot containing Christophe's replacement doll. It looked as hideous as the ones back in their Washington vault. "Anything?" Maxwell asked as the doctors looked up at us.

"Ah—Mr. Maxwell," Christophe said, tapping the remote to turn off the TV. "You will be pleased to hear that President Thompson is in perfect health—"

"He had some stomach trouble an hour ago." Pak put in, "but I don't think it had anything to do with the doll. Just pre-debate tension, probably. Anyway, I got rid of it with the new doll."

Maxwell nodded impatiently. "Yeah, well, the lull's about to end. We think that the main attack's going to come sometime during the debate."

Both men's eyes widened momentarily, and Christophe muttered something French under his breath. Pak recovered first. "Of course. Obvious, in a way. What can we do?"

"The same thing you were brought here for in the first place: counteract the effects of the old doll with the new one. Unfortunately, we're now back to our original problem."

"Communications?" I asked.

He nodded. "How are we going to know—fast—what's happening out there on the stage?"

I found myself gazing at the now-dark TV. "Dr. Pak... how are you at reading a man's physical condition from his expression and body language?"

"You mean can I sit here and tell how President Thompson is feeling by watching the debate on TV?" Pak shook his head. "No chance. Even if the camera was on him the whole time, which of course it won't be.

"Maybe a signal board," Maxwell suggested, a tone of excitement creeping into his voice. "With individual buttons for each likely target—joints, stomach, back, and all."

"And he does, what, pushes a button whenever he hurts somewhere?" I scoffed.