I walked past the lobby entrance and climbed the stairs. Max was in position. I held up one finger, moved my lips like I was speaking, pulled my fingers away from my mouth to show words spilling out. Max nodded-we’d talk the freak out of the building if we could. He could come easy or he could come hard. But he was coming. Max would watch-if he saw the Cobra and me leaving together he’d wait a beat, then slip out so he’d be in the front seat of the Plymouth before us. If Wilson panicked when he saw me on the stairs and tried for the door he’d find it locked. If he smashed his way past that, the Prof would pull his just-released-from-Bellevue madman act on the sidewalk to give us another clear shot. So if Wilson, a.k.a. the Cobra, stepped into the lobby, he was going to be leaving with us one way or another.

I checked the time-21:01 on the face of my genuine Military Assault Watch ($39.95 from a mail-order house). I thought it was a nice touch. My mind wasn’t open to the possibility that the Cobra wouldn’t show. If that happened I’d have to use Michelle, track down that kid in the video joint… too much to think about and I had to get into character for the meet…

I heard the Prof’s voice. “Shine, suh?” and no response. But that was the signal. And when I heard a muttered “Fuck!” I knew the Cobra wasn’t happy about the stairs. Some soldier of fortune-his idea of jungle warfare was probably blowing up a few African villages at long range and then moving in to mop up. But when I heard his footsteps coming up at me I knew he wasn’t a complete phony-he had the light, patterned steps of a martial arts man moving toward an objective, and his breathing sounded correct.

When he came up to where I was waiting against the wall, I took a flash-second to decide-the gun or the game-and then there he was, right in front of me. The Cobra-a little taller than me, thin and hard-looking, his nose and earlobes both too heavily tipped, just like they were in the mug shot, the acne scars in place. Wearing a fatigue jacket so I couldn’t check for tattoos, but it was him. His hair was longish in the back but cropped close up front, and blond, like Michelle had told me. His mouth opened when he saw me and I saw the fear flash in his eyes. I spoke first-calm, level-reassuring. Just a man doing a job. “Sorry about the elevator, my friend. Mr. James insisted-security, you know. You’re the appointment for twenty-one-hundred hours, I assume?”

“Who’re you?”

“My name is Layne. I work for Falcon.”

“You American?”

“Sure. The limeys are just the recruiting end, pal. At our end it’s all the U.S. of A.”

He stood facing me in a karate stance, slightly modified so it wouldn’t be too obvious-keeping both hands in sight. I didn’t like that-it didn’t mean he wasn’t packing a gun, just that he thought his hands were enough to do the job. If he decided to take me out, Max wasn’t close enough to stop him. He would never get out of the building alive, but that was no comfort. Revenge was Flood’s game-mine was survival. I kept both my gloved hands clasped on the handle of the attache case, holding it in front of me.

The seconds slipped by as the Cobra eyed me. It was like the staring contests young bloods would get into on the yard when I was in prison-the kind of game you can’t win. If you drop your eyes, the other con thinks you’re weak-and a weak man in prison doesn’t stay a man for long. If you lock eyes for real, you’ve got to fight. And if you have to fight, you have to kill. Once you’re on that slide, you can have a decent life for yourself inside the walls… but you can never get out. I had to end this part fast.

“You know me?” I asked him.

“No,” he said softly, “I just wanted to see…”

“See what, pal? You did this before, right?”

“Yeah… right,” but his eyes never shifted and he didn’t move.

“All right, let’s get rolling. I got some contracts for you to look over and we got a place for you to stay with the other guys until we move out.”

“Where is this place?”

“It’s downtown, near the docks. Come on, pal. I don’t want to stand in this goddamned stairwell all night, okay?”

And I walked past him like there was nothing for him to do but follow me, deliberately leaving my back exposed to anything he wanted to do-but finally getting myself out of the line of fire between him and Max.

I heard the sharp intake of breath through his nose as I went past. He wasn’t relaxed-wasn’t going for it yet. I kept walking, talking over my shoulder about the “operation” like he was right next to me. When I got to the bottom of the first flight of stairs, I turned around and looked back. The Cobra had moved down a few steps, but he wasn’t coming along-just staring down at me.

I turned to look up at him, now holding the attache case in one hand while the other was comforted by the feel of the revolver in my coat pocket. With twenty feet between us the odds had changed: between my pistol at his front and Max the Silent at his back, he was deader than disco if he moved wrong.

The Cobra seemed to realize he’d lost the edge, and he started toward me. I shrugged my shoulders elaborately, calling up to him:

“Hey, pal, you in or you out? I got a rendezvous at oh-two-hundred over in Jersey and two other men to pick up. What’s your problem?”

“Let’s go,” he said, flashing his snake’s grin for the first time, and staring down toward me.

I turned and went down the next flight, like I expected him to catch up. I was part-way down when I heard movement behind me-he was coming. The muscles in the back of my neck tightened as I concentrated on the sounds. An amateur would try to rush up behind me and knock me down the stairs, but the Cobra would want to get close and do it right.

Now he loomed up silently on my right side, lightly touched my arm. “Can’t be too careful, right?” he hissed, and fell into step with me. I could only see his right hand-the left was somewhere behind me. The Cobra was back in control, he thought.

One more flight to go. I still couldn’t see his left hand. When he spoke he turned to look at me and his body got closer-it wasn’t an accident.

“How long’s this operation going to run?”

“Hey, you know how it works, it runs until it’s over. You’re in for the duration, right? You draw a month’s pay up front in cash, the rest goes to wherever you want it sent.”

“Yeah, right…” It was like I’d thought: all he knew about mercenary work was what he’d read in magazines.

We got to the lobby together, walking past the Prof, who tried another “Shine, suh?” which got no response from me. The Cobra, in character, said, “Shine this, nigger,” hawking and directing a blob in the Prof’s general direction. The Prof ducked his face behind the shoeshine box, and the Cobra smiled his smile more brightly now that he figured he was among friends. But when he glanced over at me and I kept my face deadpan he seemed to realize that he’d made a mistake: real men didn’t spit at niggers, they blew them away. He shifted his shoulders and I knew what was on his mind. “Forget it,” I told him, “we’ve got better things to do.”

He nodded and we went out the door into the street, about a block from where the Plymouth sat waiting dark and quiet, only a whisper of smoke from its exhaust. Max was already there.

Another block to go. I had to keep him off balance, stop him from thinking.

“Got your passport with you?”

He tapped his breast pocket, saying nothing. We were at the Plymouth-I walked over and opened the back door, climbing in myself so that it wouldn’t remind him of the last time he got busted. But he stayed quiet, slid in next to me like he was supposed to, and pulled the door closed.

It was dark in the car. Max didn’t turn around-with the black watch-cap over his skull and the canvas gloves on his hands he looked like anybody else.

“What’s with him?” the Cobra wanted to know. “I thought you’d be alone.”