I almost laugh, remembering the way I snapped and went after Marston yesterday.

"Henry Bookbinder had been outside parking the car," Stone recalls. "He ran in and backed me down. Nobody died, but Marston screamed blue murder to Hoover. One of Hoover's last acts before he died in seventy-two was firing me. I guess that's a distinction of sorts."

"Where was Portman then?"

Stone goes still, the poker hovering above the crackling logs. "Climbing the Bureau ladder. I didn't tell you everything before. When Hoover took over the Payton case, I started making copies of my case notes. I also copied the audiotape that incriminated Marston."

The hair on my forearms is standing up. "Do you still have that copy?"

He shakes his head. "Portman saw what I was doing. He started spying on me, reporting to Hoover as the case progressed. I can just imagine his reports. May be ideologically unsound, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, everything was stolen out of my apartment two days before I was fired. That was Portman, I guarantee it. On Hoover's orders."

My heart sinks.

"You don't want me as a witness. They'd make me look pathetic on cross. Too many sins of my own."

"What's Portman so afraid of now? From the story you told, his involvement was peripheral."

"The Bureau's been under siege for ten years, in the public-relations sense. Its big Achilles' heel is racism. The FBI has been sued by black agents, Hispanics, women, all claiming systematic discrimination. And these groups have won. Portman was appointed to correct these problems, to polish the image, and he was appointed by a Democratic president. If it was to come out that his 'heroic civil rights work' in Mississippi consisted of helping to cover up a race murder, he'd be out on his ass in an hour. The President would have no choice."

"So, let's make it known. Do the Bureau and the country a favor."

Stone sets the poker in its rack and sits on the hearth, his face weary. "I wish I could. Every trial decision Portman ever made as a federal judge would come into question, every decision as a U.S. attorney. He'd never work in the public sector again. And once the media got its nose into his past, God knows what they'd find. A guy like Portman doesn't cross the line once or twice. It's a management style with him."

"Why didn't the media discover anything during his confirmation hearings?"

"The Bureau is a closed culture. It outlives presidential administrations, judges, even Supreme Court justices. If the leadership of that culture wants to keep Portman's secrets so he can be appointed FBI director, that's the way it'll be."

Stone takes out his phone and checks the line again. "I'd like to help you, Cage. But they've held my daughter over me for a long time. Since she was a kid."

"What?"

"Oh, yeah. After he fired me, Hoover sent me a message. Portman delivered it. If I tried to air any dirty Bureau laundry, my kid wouldn't live to watch me on Meet the Press."

"That's pretty hard to believe."

He laughs bitterly. "This was 1972. Worse things were happening every day, and the government was right in the middle of it."

I pull the curtains away from the front window and squint through the gathering dusk. Beyond what must be the jeep track, the snow-covered wall of Anthracite Mesa climbs toward the sky, with spruce and fir trees marching up it in dark ranks. What I do not see is human beings.

"What did you mean about Presley and Marston making a nice package? You said, 'Why complicate it?' "

Stone stands and walks toward me, telephone in hand. "I didn't mean anything. Forget it."

"You're holding something back, aren't you?"

He has the phone to his ear now, and his face has gone white. He throws down the phone and rushes me, holding out his pistol. "Take it!"

"What?"

"The phone's dead! Take the gun!"

I take the gun, which looks like a Colt.45, and Stone snatches the hunting rifle up from the table. A Winchester 300, with a scope.

"Open the back door for me!" he orders. "There's a sniper out there."

As I run to the back door, I decide that not bringing Daniel Kelly with me was about the stupidest idea I've ever had.

Stone kneels six feet back from the door, shoulders the Winchester, and puts his right eye to the scope, as though preparing to shoot right through the door.

"Open it," he says. "Slowly. Then get clear, fast."

I slowly turn the handle, then stretch as far away as I can from the door and pull it halfway open.

Stone quickly adjusts his aim, then fires. The report of the rifle inside the cabin is like a detonation.

"He's down!" shouts Stone. "Follow me!"

"Where to?"

Before he can answer, the front window of the cabin explodes inward and a bullet ricochets off the hearth. Stone whirls, draws a small automatic from his belt, and empties half a clip through the broken window.

"Move!" he yells, grabbing my arm and jerking me toward the door.

" Where? " I ask, my throat dry as sand.

"Somewhere they can't follow!"

"Where's that?"

"The river."

"The river? In what?"

"You'll see. Move your ass!"

CHAPTER 35

As Stone pulls me through the back door of the cabin, something explodes behind us. We fall facedown on the snow, stunned like cattle after being hit with an electric prod, but we scramble blindly backward for the cover of the cabin wall, knowing instinctively that exposure means death.

Hunched against the side of the cabin, I scan the swollen river and its banks in the dying light. I see no way to use that flooded stream as a means of escape. Stone's lips are moving, but I hear nothing. He turns and begins tugging at something beneath his cabin. It's some sort of inflatable boat, a long red plastic thing, like a cross between a canoe and kayak. Seeing that I can't hear his orders, Stone takes back the pistol he gave me, then motions for me to drag the kayak to the water, a distance of about eighty feet. He obviously means to cover me while I do this, but I'm not going to drag anything. If I have to cross that open space, I'm going to do it as fast as I can.

Dropping to my knees, I turn the kayak upside down and crawl under it, sliding it onto my back like an elongated turtle shell. Its coated fabric skin probably wouldn't stop a pellet gun, but at least I'll be able to run with the thing.

As I start toward the river, my Reebok-clad feet slip and crunch over the snow. The bow of the kayak bobs forward and back as I rush forward, obscuring my vision, making my gauntlet longer than it needs to be. I cringe at the stutter of an automatic weapon somewhere behind me, but the reassuring bellow of Stone's.45 pushes me on. At least I haven't completely lost my hearing.

The last half of my dash to the river has the terrible dreamlike quality of pursuing a receding horizon, the shock of my feet hitting rocks under the snow the only tangible proof that I'm awake. The swiftly falling darkness is probably providing more protection than Stone's pistol, but it can't be long before someone sprays a clip at the fleeing kayak.

When my feet kick up the first splash, I leap forward and land in a bone-chilling current that pulls at the kayak like a giant hand. Fighting to my knees in the current, I flip the kayak upright and lie down in the shallows beside it, leaving only my head exposed. Muzzle flashes in the cabin windows punctuate the flashes below them, where Stone must be firing. There's a brief lull, and then Stone comes charging out of the darkness toward the water, a two-bladed kayak paddle in one hand and his Winchester in the other.

He whirls and fires twice on the run, then breaks in my direction, using the white propane tank for concealment. He's halfway to the water when another flash lights up the interior of the cabin. Stone grabs his buttocks, lurches forward, then spins and returns fire as he goes down in the snow.