'Relax and I'll let go. If you try to get up, I'll knock you on your ass.'

He stopped trying to get up and I released the pressure.

As soon as I let go, he took a belt of the Popov. 'Goddamn. That hurt.'

I took out my wallet and opened it to the license. 'A fifteen-year-old girl who told me that her name was Teresa Haines gave me two hundred dollars to find her father.'

Brownell took another belt of the vodka.

'I have come up here at my own expense because Teresa, whose name I now discover is really Hewitt, and her two younger siblings have a missing father who has apparently abandoned them.'

Another belt.

'I have discovered that Clark Haines, whose name is also Hewitt, is a drug addict. I have discovered that Mr. Hewitt has come to Seattle, has spent time with his old friend, Mr. Brownell, but that Mr. Brownell doesn't give enough of a damn about these minor children to cooperate in helping me find their father.' I put away the wallet, then took out the picture of Brownell and Clark and their wives and put that on the bar.

The picture was creased from having been in my pocket. Brownell's jaw tightened. 'You went into my home.'

'Yes.'

His jaw flexed some more, then he picked up the picture and put it in his own pocket. He had more of the vodka, and I saw that his hand was shaking. 'You don't know a goddamn thing about anything.' His voice was soft and far away.

'I know Clark was with you.'

He shook his head, and the soft voice came again. 'You're in somethin' now you don't know anything about. If you're smart, you'll just go home.'

'So tell me and I'll go.'

He shook his head and tried to lift the Popov, but his hand was shaking too badly. I didn't think it was shaking from the booze. 'I can't help you and I got nothing to tell you.' He blinked hard, almost as if he were blinking back tears. 'I love Clark, you see? But there ain't nothing I can do. I don't know where he went and you shouldn't be asking about him. I'm sorry about his children, but there ain't nothing I can do about that. Not one goddamned thing.' Brownell's hand shook so badly that the Popov splashed out the glass.

'Jesus Christ, Brownell. What in hell's got you so scared?'

The bar door opened and the blond guy from the Lexus came in. He was maybe six-two, with hard shoulders and sharp features and ice blue eyes that looked at you without blinking. He stepped out of the door to make room for his friend, and the friend needed all the room he could get: He was a huge man, maybe six-five, with great sloping shoulders, an enormous protruding gut, and the kind of waddle serious powerlifters get. His thighs were as thick as a couple of twenty gallon garbage cans. The buzz cut was wearing a blue sport coat over a yellow T-shirt and jeans, but his friend was decked out in a truly bad islander shirt, baggy shorts, and high-top Keds. The big guy had a great dopey grin on his face, and he was slurping on a yellow sucker. The buzz cut said, 'Willie.'

Wilson Brownell said, 'Oh, shit.' He knocked over his stool as he lurched from the bar, then hurried through a door in the rear. Gone. The bartender didn't look. The women didn't look. The guy sleeping on the bar stayed down.

The buzz cut and his friend came over. 'You are coming with us.' The buzz cut spoke the words with a careful, starched pronunciation that made me think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, only the accent was Russian.

'Sez who?' I can slay 'em with these comebacks.

The weightlifter reached under his shirt and came out with a Sig automatic. 'You'll come or we will shoot you.' He said it in a normal speaking voice, as if he didn't give a damn who heard. Another Russian.

I said, 'Have you guys been following me from Los Angeles?'

The weightlifter shoved me, and it felt like getting blindsided by a backhoe. 'Shut up. Walk.'

I shut up. I walked.

Maybe Wilson Brownell was right. Maybe I was in something deeper than I realized, and now it was too late to get out.

Isn't hindsight wonderful?

CHAPTER 9

The buzz cut held the door as the lifter walked me out, then followed behind us. The big guy let the gun dangle along his leg but made no effort to hide it. A woman with two kids came out of a bakery across the street, saw the gun, then grabbed her kids and stumbled back into the bakery. I said, 'Don't you guys know it's illegal to walk around with that thing?'

The big guy said, 'This is America. In America, you can do what you want.'

'I'd put it away if I were you. The cops will be here in seconds.' Maybe I could scare him into letting me go.

He made a little gesture with the gun, as if it were the gun shrugging, not him. 'Let them come.' Guess not.

'Who are you guys?'

The buzz cut shook his head. 'Nobody.'

'Where are we going?'

'To the car.' Everybody's a comedian.

The black Lexus was parked by a fire hydrant at the end of the block. This morning I was boarding a jet to fly to Seattle to find the missing father of three children in what should have been a no-big-deal job, and now I was being taken for a ride by two unknown Russian maniacs. I was willing to walk with these guys, but I did not want to get into the car. There are two crime scenes at every kidnapping. The first crime scene is where they snatch you, the second is where the cops find your body.

The lifter didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention, but the buzz cut was looking at everything. He scanned the storefronts and alleys and roof lines, his ice blue eyes moving in an unhurried, practiced sweep. I wondered what he was looking for, and I wondered where he had picked up the habit. I said, ' Afghanistan.'

The ice blue eyes never stopped their search.

The big guy said, 'Da. Alexei was Spetnaz. You know Spetnaz?'

The ice blue eyes flicked at the big guy, and Alexei mumbled something soft in Russian. The big guy's eyebrows bunched like dancing caterpillars. Nervous. I guess he was scared of Alexei, too.

I said, 'I know Spetnaz.' Spetnaz was the former Soviet army's version of our Special Forces, but they were really more like Hitler's SS. Motivated zealots with a penchant for murder. 'That's a kind of Austrian noodle, isn't it?'

The ice blue eyes flicked my way, and Alexei smiled. The smile was wide and thin and empty. 'Da, that's right. A little noodle.'

I wondered how many Afghan kids had seen that smile before they died.

The big guy was walking behind me, but Alexei was maybe three paces back and to the side so that he wasn't between me and the gun. If I could put Alexei between me and the lifter, I could use him as a shield from the gun and perhaps effect an escape. Superman could probably do it, and so could the Flash. Why not me?

I slowed my pace, and almost at once Alexei slid sideways, brought up a Glock semiautomatic, and locked-out in a perfect two-hand combat stance. Guess they both had guns. He said, 'The car is safer, my friend.'

I showed him my palms and we went on to the car. So much for effecting an escape.

They put me in the front seat. Alexei got behind the wheel and the big guy got into the back. When he got in, the car tilted. Steroids. We started away and the big guy leaned forward and pushed a CD into the player. James Brown screamed that he felt good, and the big guy bobbed his head in time with the music. He said, 'You like James Brown, the king of soul?'

I looked at him.

Alexei said, 'Turn it down, Dmitri.'

Dmitri turned it down, but not very much. He made little hand moves with the music as if he were dancing, looking first out one side of the Lexus, then out the other, as if he wanted to take everything in and miss nothing. 'I enjoy the king of soul, and the Hootie and the Blowfish, and the Ronald McDonald's. Do you enjoy the Big Mac?'