Without a location, there could be no application to a foreign government for extradition. Even if Zilic were now sheltering in a "failed" state where the writ of normal governmental authority did not run, a snatch operation could only be mounted if the Bureau knew where he was. In his personal letter to the senator, Assistant Director Fleming apologised that it did not. Fleming's tenacity came with his Highland genes. Two days later he sought out and lunched with Fraser Gibbs. The FBI has two retired senior officers of almost iconic status, who can pack the student lecture halls at the Bureau's Quantico training facility when they go.

One is the towering ex-footballer, former marine pilot, "Buck" Revell; the other is Fraser Gibbs, who spent his career penetrating organised crime as an undercover agent, about as dangerous work as you can get, crushing the Cosa Nostra down the eastern seaboard. When restored to Washington after a bullet in the leg left him with a limp, he was given the desk covering freelancers, mercenaries, and guns for hire. He considered Fleming's query with a furrowed brow.

"I did hear something once," he conceded. "A manhunter. Sort of a bounty hunter. Had a code name."

"A killer himself? You know government rules absolutely forbid that sort of thing."

"No, that's the point," said the old veteran. "The rumour was, he doesn't kill. Kidnaps, snatches, brings them back. Now, what the hell was his name?"

"It could be important," said Fleming.

"He was terribly secretive. My predecessor tried to identify him. Sent in an undercover man as a pretend client. But he smelled a trick somehow, made an excuse, left the meeting, and disappeared."

"Why didn't he just fess up and come clean?" asked Fleming. "If he wasn't in the killing businessÉ"

"I guess he figured that as he operated abroad, and as the Bureau doesn't like freelancers operating on its own turf, we'd have sought top-level instruction and been ordered to close him down. And he'd probably have been right. So he stayed in the shadows, and I never hunted him down."

"The agent would have filed a report."

"Oh, yes. Procedure. Probably under the man's code name. Never got any other name. Ah, that's it. Avenger. Punch up 'Avenger.' See what comes up."

The file the computer disgorged was indeed slim. An ad had to be run in a technical magazine for vintage aeroplane buffs, seemingly the only way the man would communicate. A story had been spun, a rendezvous agreed upon.

The bounty hunter had insisted on sitting in deep shadow behind a bright lamp, which shone forward away from him. The agent reported he was of medium height, slim build, probably no more than 160 pounds. He never saw the face, and within three minutes the man suspected something. He reached out, killed the light, leaving the agent with no night vision, and when the agent had quit blinking the man was gone.

All the agent could report was that as the bounty hunter's hand lay on the table between them, his left sleeve had ridden up to reveal a tattoo on the forearm. It appeared to be a rat grinning over its shoulder while showing the viewer its bottom.

None of this would have been of the slightest interest to Senator Lucas or his friend in Canada. But the least Colin Fleming thought he could do was pass on the code name and the method of contact. It was a one-in-a-hundred chance, but it was all he had.

Three days later in his office in Ontario, Stephen Edmond opened the letter sent by his friend in Washington. He had already heard the news from the six agencies and had virtually given up hope.

He read the supplementary letter and frowned. He had been thinking of the mighty United States using its power to require a foreign government to bring forth its murderer, snap handcuffs on his wrists, and send him back to the United States.

It had never occurred to him that he was too late; that Zilic had simply vanished; that all the billion-dollar agencies of Washington simply did not know where he was and therefore could do nothing.

He thought it over for ten minutes, shrugged, and pressed the intercom.

"Jean, I want to run an ad in the wanted section of an American magazine. You'll have to check it out. I've never heard of it. It's called *Vintage Airplane*. Yeah, the text. Make it: 'AVENGER. Wanted. Serious offer. No price ceiling. Please call.' Then put my cellphone number and private line. OK, Jean?"

Twenty-six men in intelligence agencies in and around Washington had seen the request. All had responded that they did not know where Zoran Zilic was.

One of them had lied.

PART TWO

17 The Photo

Since the attempt by the FBI to unmask him six years earlier, Dexter had decided there was no need for face-to-face meetings. Instead, he built up several defensive lines to mask his location and his identity.

One of these was a small, one-bedroom apartment in New York, but not the Bronx where he might be recognised. He rented it furnished, paid by the quarter, regular as clockwork, and always in cash. It attracted no official attention, and neither did he when he was in residence.

He also used mobile phones only of the type using SIM pay-as-you-talk cards. These he bought in bulk out of state, used once or twice, and consigned to the East River. Even the NSA, with the technology to listen to a phone call and trace the exact source, cannot identify the purchaser of these use-and-jettison SIM mobiles nor direct police to the location of the call if the user is on the move, keeps the call short, and gets rid of the technology afterward.

Another ploy is the old-fashioned public phone booth. Numbers called from a booth can, of course, be traced; but there are so many millions of them that unless a specific booth or bank of them is suspected, it is very hard to pick up the conversation, identify the caller as a wanted man, trace the location, and get a police car there in time.

Finally he used the much-maligned U. S. mails, with his letters being sent to a "drop" in the form of an innocent Korean-run fruit and vegetable shop two blocks from his apartment in New York City. This would be no protection if the mail or the shop was targeted and put under surveillance, but there was no reason why it should be.

He contacted the placer of the ad on the cell phone listed. He did so from a single-use mobile phone, and he drove far into the New Jersey countryside to do it.

Stephen Edmond identified himself without demur, and in five sentences described what had happened to his grandson. Avenger thanked him and hung up.

He then logged onto LexisNexis. There was enough to confirm who Stephen Edmond was, and there had been two articles concerning the disappearance years ago of his grandson while a student-aid worker in Bosnia, both from the *Toronto Star*. This caller seemed to be genuine.

Dexter called the Canadian back and dictated terms: considerable operating expenses, a fee on account, and a bonus on delivery of Zilic to U. S. jurisdiction, not payable in the event of failure.

"That's a lot of money for a man I have not met and apparently will not meet. You could take it and vaporise," said the Canadian.

"And you, sir, could go back to the U. S. government, where I presume you have already been."

There was a pause. "All right, where should it be sent?"

Dexter gave him a Caymanian account number and a New York mailing address. "The money order to the first, every line of research material already done to the second," he said, and hung up.

The Caribbean bank would shift the credit through a dozen different accounts within its computer system but would also open a line of credit to a bank in New York. This would be in favour of a Dutch citizen who would identify himself with a perfect Dutch passport.