UNNATURAL CAUSES

BY MARK OLSHAKER

Synopsis:

Ex Navy Seal, Viet nam Veteran Brian Thorp now a noted surgeon at
Bethesda Naval Hospital, is draw into investigating the suspicious
deaths of other Viet nam Veterans.  These Veterans all have two things
in common:  all were members of Firefight Eagle's Talon and all had
sustained shrapnel injuries.  Dr. Brian Thorp knows Eagle's Talon too;
also is a survivor, and the only one wounded.  Is he going to die too?

Prologue

Mekong Delta, February 14, 1966

The mission was like all the others.  A three-man hunter-killer squad
from Navy SEAL Team One had been sent to interdict Vietcong forces
harassing riverine traffic in the delta.  Only this time it didn't work
out.  The VC encampment was right where intelligence said it would be.
But on the way in, Donovan had stepped into a sling snare attached to a
bent-over sapling.  The snare flung him through the air like a rag doll
and impaled him on a bed of sharpened bamboo punji stakes.  He was dead
before he had a chance to scream.

The springing of the trap was enough to alert the enemy, though.  They'd
opened fire with everything they had.  McNeely had taken the better part
of a B-40 grenade square in the thigh, and Thorpe got a machine-gun
round in his shoulder.  Now he was the only one left standing; guards
from the camp would be on them in minutes, and McNeely was bleeding to
death.

There was one slim chance: somehow reach Stanway's squad at the
prearranged landing zone about four kilometers away and hope like crazy
some of them were still alive.  Long odds all the way around, but
absolute zero on any other possibilities.

Brian Thorpe tried to suppress the pounding pulse between his eyes, the
queasy feeling in his stomach.  They were dangerous distractions.  The
scaring pain where the machine gun had ripped into his shoulder was more
useful.  It would focus his attention and drive him on, like a jockey's
whip on the flank of a race-horse.

Analyze.  Prioritize.  He struggled to control his breathing.  They had
to get out fast.  But he couldn't leave McNeely alive for the Cong.
They'd torture him into divulging the SEALs'position.  No.

Thorpe either had to take him along or kill him here himself.

How could he move him with that gaping leg wound?  Again, only one
possibility.  Thorpe opened the small first-aid kit on his canvas belt
pouch and took out two sixteen-milligram morphine Syrettes-all he had.
He knelt down and tore away the shredded tiger-stripe camouflage cloth
from the area around McNeely's thigh.  He unscrewed the needle cover of
the first Syrette and pushed in the wire stylet to break the seal.  Then
he jabbed the Syrette into the leg and slowly squeezed the tube until
all the liquid was gone.  He did the same with the second Syrette.
McNeely uttered a low moan.

jarring him as little as possible, Thorpe unhooked his web belt. He
looped it around McNeely's upper leg, pulled tight, and waited an
instant.  It wasn't enough.  The blood was still gushing.

Now there was no choice.  "Forgive me, jerry," he whispered.

He extracted his survival knife from its leather sheath.  He stripped
away the remaining fabric of the pant leg and aligned the blade
perpendicular to the thigh, right above the wound.  Then he pressed down
with all his weight, forcing the knife through the leg.  McNeely opened
his mouth wide in agony but passed out before making a sound.  Quickly
then Thorpe pulled the belt tourniquet as tight as he could.  As
gingerly as possible he dressed the stump in gauze, then wiped the knife
off and replaced it in its sheath.

He was ready to move out when he heard the rustling.  He crouched down,
listening intently.  After a few seconds he saw him-a single Charley
scout off in the dense bushes.  In a moment the scout would find him and
McNeely.  He couldn't outrun the guy under these conditions.  He would
have to take him out.

SEAL training emphasizes precision and surprise.  Thorpe would need
both.  He left the unconscious McNeely lying on the ground as bait and
positioned himself behind the nearest tree.

He withdrew a length of concertina wire from his utility pouch, uncoiled
it, and formed it into a loop.  Then he tossed a stone near McNeely's
head to draw the Charley's attention.  When the scout came sniffing up,
Thorpe saw a smile of delighted surprise cross his face.  He knelt down
over the body.  Instantly Thorpe sprang the entire distance from the
tree.  In the same motion he threw the wire garrote over the scout's
head and pulled the wire tight.  The body slumped silently to the
ground.

Thorpe quickly evaluated McNeely.  Confident that the bleeding had now
stopped, he checked his compass, then hoisted McNeely up on his back and
waded through the swampy forest in the direction of the landing zone.

With his eye continually on the lurking dangers of the tree line, he
slogged through the soft muck of the tidal ponds and the shallow water
of the mangrove swamps.  His knees buckled.  He stumbled and struggled
to keep his balance.  After a while his shoulder went numb, and he began
to feel light-headed from loss of blood.  But the ground was getting
gradually more solid.

Then something whizzed by his head and struck a tree.  Another. Bullets.
AK-47 rounds.  The Cong had found them.

No chance to duck.  He'd have to run for it-dart between the trees on
the firm ground.  Don't give Charley a steady trail.

He ran with all his might, trying to cushion McNeely from the shock as
best he could.  His chest heaved from the exertion.  His heart tried to
break out of his rib cage.  The shots kept whistling by him.  Closer and
closer.

Then he saw it.  Like a vision out of the Bible.  The landing zone.  A
packed-earth clearing in the midst of this green ooze, just like
reconnaissance said it would be.  The chopper was there waiting, its
rotors turning, its door gunners poised for attack.

As soon as Thorpe reached the clearing he saw Hugh Stanway emerge from
the chopper and run toward him.  A medic came out and took McNeely from
his shoulders.  Thorpe collapsed in Stanway's powerful arms as the door
gunners laid down covering fire. Within seconds they were airborne.

They laid McNeely out on the floor, and the medic felt his neck for his
carotid pulse.  He placed his cheek right next to McNeely's nose and
mouth and held rigidly still.

"How is he?" Thorpe demanded.

The medic only shook his head.

It couldn't be.  He couldn't be dead.  Thorpe's mind was whirling.  It
was a clean amputation.  He had stopped the bleeding. What had he done
wrong?

The medic turned McNeely on his side.  "This guy saved your life," he
said to Thorpe.

"What ...  how?"

The medic pointed to a small hole slightly below McNeely's shoulder
blades.  "If you hadn't had him on your back, you'd have taken that
bullet."

The drumming whir of the chopper blades rang in Brian Thorpe's ears as
he allowed himself the luxury of unconsciousness.

The memory of that day never ceased to haunt him.  It changed everything
from that point on and led him to his new career.

Chapter One

Bethesda, Maryland.  Dr.  Brian Thorpe waited with the rest of the
trauma team on the edge of Bethesda Naval Hospital's landing pad. In a
few moments the helicopter above them would be on the ground, and the
furious struggle to save a life would demand every element of his skill
and energy.

Perhaps it was his SEAL training, but Brian found he could often reach
down to a certain level of calm and stillness within himself just before
a period of maximum stress.  Then, when the challenge did come, he could
face it with all of his consciousness carefully directed and focused.

Brian's gaze traveled up the strong vertical lines of the hospital's
main building, the twenty-two-story tower rising high above Maryland's
gently rolling hills.  Stolid and fortresslike, the structure was an
impressive example of what might be termed late WPA modern.  How strange
it must have seemed in the 1940s, this military citadel ascending toward
the sky to dominate the rural farms and cow pastures ringing the
nation's capital.

The helicopter landed.  Crouching low to avoid the rotor downdraft,
Brian and the rest of the team dashed for the door as two paramedics
piled out with the stretcher.  One of them held two IV bottles with feed
lines running into the comatose patient.

"What is it?" Brian yelled above the helicopter din.

"Gunshot in the chest," the paramedic shouted back.  "Heavy bleeding.
Unconscious.  Pressure just bottomed out." All this was said as they
raced along the concrete path from the landing pad to the emergency
room's double swinging doors.

Once inside, the anesthesiologist passed an endotracheal tube down the
victim's throat.  Brian ripped open what was left of the patient's
shirt, poured Betadine over his chest, picked up a scalpel, and slashed
from the bottom of his neck to just below his rib cage.  The tissue
layers separated as tiny fountains of blood spurted forth.

"Suction!" Brian ordered.  "And let me have two units of blood."

The resident immediately penetrated the blood-filled chest cavity with
suction catheter tips.  As soon as the fluid had been cleared away Brian
could see the source of the bleeding.  The bullet had ripped into the
ascending aorta.

He worked feverishly to cross-clamp the artery so it would hold long
enough to get the patient into the operating room.

"I'm finally getting a weak pulse," the anesthesiologist said.

"Okay.  Let's move."

As one coordinated unit, the entire trauma team surrounded the patient's
gurney and traveled the short distance to OR 1.

Four hours and thirty-seven minutes later Brian emerged.  His mind and
muscles were weary, his surgical greens caked with blood.  But his
patient was still alive.  To Brian Thorpe, decorated veteran of three
combat tours in Vietnam, the surgeon was society's single combat warrior
against death.  He'd gone one-on-one for almost five hours this
afternoon, and this time he'd triumphed.

He was in the scrub room, stripping off his latex gloves, when a
powerful hand locked onto his elbow.  For a split second an ancient
reflex seized hold of him, and he tensed to strike.  But then a newer,
stronger instinct allowed him to turn around calmly.

A man in worn marine fatigues stood in front of him.  A ward nurse and
hospital security officer were rushing up behind him.

"Commander Thorpe?" the man asked as he removed his hand.

"That's right."

"I tried to stop him, Doctor," the nurse broke in.  The guard stepped
forward and grabbed the man by the arm.

Brian waved them off.  "I'll take over," he said.

"You were a medic with the Third Marine Division at Dong Ha in 1969,"
the man stated urgently.  He was in his early forties, about Brian's
age.  But he had that sort of wild, slightly spooked look in his eyes
that already betrayed a lifetime's worth of hard living and harder luck.

"Yeah, I was with the Third Marines," Brian said.  "Were you?"

"Yes, sir, I was."

Brian studied him carefully.  "Do I know you?"

"No reason you should remember me personally.  But you saved my life,
and the lives of a lot of my buddies, too."

Brian smiled and extended his hand.  "Well, I am delighted to see you
after all this time.  Now, what can I do for you?"

"Sir, Davis is my name, Radley Davis."

There was an awkward moment during which Davis nervously shifted his
weight.  "I heard you'd become a real doctor, and that's what I need-a
real doctor ...  someone I can trust." He glanced warily at Brian's
blood-covered surgical garb.  "So I tracked you down to here, sir."

"Are you still in the corps, Mr.  Davis?" Brian asked.

"No, sir, I'm not, I'm most sorry to say.  Staff sergeant when I left.
Mustered out in 73-"

"He shouldn't even be here!" the nurse broke in again.  "He should be at
the VA hospital."

"No, ma'am.  No, thank you.  I want someone who's looking out for me,
not trying to clear their desk." The lightly buried hysteria was rising
rapidly to the surface.

Brian put up his hands.  "Hold on!  Let's take this one step at a time."
He turned to the nurse.  "Please show Mr.  Davis to my office, would
you, Lieutenant?"

"But Dr.  Thorpe-" she protested.

"I know.  We're just going to have a little talk about the old days." He
turned back to Davis.  "Sit tight for a few minutes.  I'll be back as
soon as I get out of this stuff.  Then we can talk."

"YOU saved my life." Radley Davis spoke haltingly, tightly clutching the
sides of the orange plastic chair as if he were afraid of falling off.
"It was the morning we took Hill Eighty-four.  I was in the first
assault wave, and the VCs were trying to bury us for good.  I took a
load of shrapnel in the gut, and I was just laying there on the ground.
And all the time I'm thinking to myself, This is one lousy place to
die." He sat silently for a moment.  Finally he said, "You pulled me out
of there.  I don't know how you did it."

Brian listened solemnly, elbows propped up on the scuffed surface of his
gray metal desk.  His mind raced back to that time. After completing
college, he had gone back to Vietnam as a corpsman, to assure himself he
really did want to make the commitment to medicine.  He had come back
absolutely certain.

Radley Davis was bringing it all home to him again.  The dreamlike feel
of the whole thing: nostrils burning from cordite; every muscle
cringing, then recoiling as machine-gun rounds whiz by just above your
head; dodging across a stretch of bloodsoaked earth; praying you can
find something among your standard issue supplies to save the life of a
moaning nineteen-year-old kid.  And most of all, the futility.  Because
on one side there's the entire enemy force, geared up for the sole
purpose of causing death.  And on the other side there's only you,
trying to prevent it.

"So anyway," Davis went on, "after that I knew you were the kind of guy
who would never let another guy down-the kind you could trust with your
life.  And that's why I'm here."

Slowly, painstakingly, Davis laid out his life for the physician. He was
a rural North Carolina boy known to everyone simply as Rad.  He had
proceeded directly from his high school graduation ceremony to the
Marine Corps recruitment office, and the day when his parents drove down
to Parris Island to watch him graduate from boot camp was the proudest
of his life.  He wanted nothing more than the distinction of defending
his country from the Communist threat.

He was assigned as an infantryman to the 3rd Marine Division, stationed
at Dong Ha, seven miles from the demilitarized zone, and became a member
of Colonel John Winthrop Blagden's legendary 7th Marine Amphibious Unit,
the same one in which Brian came to serve as a medical corpsman.  He was
awarded the Purple Heart for his wounds on Hill 84 and a Bronze Star for
bravery during the celebrated and controversial Eagle's Talon raid,
debated so long after the end of the war.

It was only after the war that things turned sour for Davis, he
recounted.  The military made it clear it had no further use for him.
Several years, several jobs, and several failed relationships later he
had nothing more to show for himself than a minor police record and a
growing feeling of despair.

"Why, specifically, have you come to see me?" Brian asked. "I have been
having these pains, sir," he explained.  "In my stomach, my side. Lately
it's been getting worse."

"Right or left side?"

"My right side mostly."

"Are you having these pains now?"

,*'a, well, sir, some of them, yes, I'd say I am."

Brian found himself tapping a pencil on the edge of the desk.

"You say you were wounded by shrapnel?"

"Yes, sir."

"And how long have you had these pains?"

"A long time.  I have trouble sleeping.  I'm always tense, just thinking
about it.  I think that's maybe why I can't hold a job no more.  You're
my last hope, Doc." There were tears in his eyes. The way his hands
shook when he tried to light a cigarette could have been used as a
classic study in nervous tremors.

Brian's heart went out to Davis.  His physical complaints were certainly
worthy of follow-up, but the primary diagnosis could be made across the
desk.  PTSD was the acronym the military doctors had assigned to it-for
posttraumatic stress disorder.  It was as serious as any consequence of
the Vietnam War.

"Any other symptoms you can think of, Mr.  Davis?"

"Well, I don't know if you'd call them symptoms, but.  .

That was when it came out.

First, Davis craned his neck around, looking at every corner of the tiny
office.  Then he pulled the chair close enough to rest his forearms on
the front of Brian's desk.

"Buddies of mine," he began.  "Other grunts.  Sonny Lofton, Maxie Craig,
Tyffell Jefferson, Chris Schuyler.  You might have known some of them."

They were only names to Brian.  Familiar, one or two, but only names.
"What about them?" he asked.

"Dead," Davis intoned.  "All of them dead."

"In Nam, you mean."

"No.  Recently."

Brian leaned slowly back in his chair.  "How?"

"Different ways," said Davis.  He opened up his green fatigue jacket and
carefully extracted a worn manila envelope.  He opened it and produced a
half dozen newspaper clippings.

Brian read them grimly.  One of the articles detailed Anthony "Sonny"
Lofton's death when his automobile careened over an embankment on the
San Bernardino Freeway at high speed.  The Los Angeles County coroner's
report noted a high blood alcohol level.  Two of the pieces referred to
Tyffell Jefferson's suicidal plunge off Washington's Calvert Street
bridge, with strong implications that drugs were involved.

The remaining articles reported that Christopher Schuyler had been lost
in a sailboat off Sakonnet Point, in a waterway he had sailed often, and
Maxwell Craig died in a hunting mishap near Lake Wallenpaupack,
Pennsylvania.  He had been hunting alone; there were no witnesses.

Brian looked up at his visitor.  "These are all accidents," he said.

Davis carefully gathered the newspaper clippings and put them back in
the envelope.  "Yeah.  You can call them accidents, Doc," he said.  "But
I've tracked four buddies who've died within a couple of weeks of each
other.  Doesn't that seem a little strange?  All guys from the Third
Division, all from the Seventh Amphibious Unit.  And the next one could
just as easily be me."

To the list of other symptoms Brian now added acute paranoia. It was
going to be difficult separating the physical from the mental problems
in this case.  "Look, Mr.  Davis ...  Rad.  The nurse was right.  You
actually should be seen in a Veterans Administration hospital.  But I
think we can get around that.  I'm going to order up a series of tests,
and we'll see what they tell us. In the meantime, I'm writing out a
prescription for something that'll help you relax.  And that should help
more than anything."

"These tests-will you be doing them?" Davis asked.

"No.  I'm a surgeon.  But I promise you, as soon as they're back I'll go
over them myself " Brian stood and ushered him to the door.  For a
moment he watched Davis walk down the corridor. Then he closed the door
and settled into the first solitude he'd had all day.

The meeting had gotten him thinking about the past and what he'd lost.
And that made him think about Lizzie.  He'd found himself doing that a
lot since the split.  He'd saved a photograph of them together, taken
back in San Diego-on the beach, just up the Silver Strand from the naval
amphibious base where he'd taken his SEAL training.

The picture showed two young, attractive people, both California beach
blond, though both were in fact from the Midwest: the man lean and trim
and looking somehow taller than his six feet; the woman shapely and
slightly freckled-everyone's dream cheerleader.  Brian still had the
picture in his office, tucked away in the lower drawer of his file
cabinet.

But there was another photograph, standing at the far corner of his
desk, where he could always see it, and this one would never be put away
or relegated to memory.

Katie.

It was a recent likeness: five glorious years old; cute as the
proverbial button, in her blue sailor dress and white tights, smiling
that radiant dimpled smile that said "I love you" unconditionally. Since
the breakup Brian had measured his life by the times he got to spend
with his daughter.  Out of the darkest moments of his marriage had come
the brightest light of his life.

THE two men who waited by the elevator as the ex-marine came out of Dr.
Thorpe's office were dressed in nondescript civilian clothing.  Some
thought had initially been given to putting them in hospital maintenance
uniforms.  But that option involved name tags and the possibility of
challenge by a superior.

Photographs, via telephoto lens, had been discreetly obtained before the
subject's consultation with Thorpe.  The corroborating fingerprint would
involve a more delicate procedure, which was why the two men were now
following him into the elevator.

As expected, Radley Davis pressed the L button, and the three of them
rode silently down to the lobby.  The two men stayed on for the trip
back up and were not overly concerned that other passengers came on as
well.  None of them was likely to touch the lobby button during an
ascending trip.

When the final passenger had left the elevator cab, the two men
immediately went into their drill, spreading white powder over a strip
of cellophane tape and lifhng a perfect print from the L button.  The
operation had been carefully rehearsed to require no more time than the
interval between two floors.

Chapter Two

Atlanta, Georgia There was a large magnolia tree growing just outside
Diana Keegan's window, and looking back, it was probably the main reason
she had taken the apartment.  The logic at the time was that if she were
going to live in Atlanta at all-a city she knew primarily from Gone With
the Wind and which seemed such an unlikely location after Washington,
Palo Alto, and Boston-she ought to get the full effect.

But now, every day, as she turned off Houston Mill ]Road and walked up
her building's flagstone path, the tree continued to remind her of her
own strangeness in this strange land.  And for some reason, today the
feeling was worse than usual.

To be honest, she had never been thrilled with the prospect of living in
any southern city-progressive reputation or no.  The South was still the
South.  And for a young woman nurtured on the liberating polities and
social consciousness of the late '60s and early 70s, Atlanta was one
giant step backward.  But she had come here for a purpose, she kept
telling herself Ever since she was a little girl Diana had wanted to be
a doctor. And now a labyrinthine route through medical school,
internship, residency, and the Public Health Service had brought her
here, to the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the national Centers for
Disease Control.  At the CDC she was convinced she was doing something
useful.  The location was a small price to pay.

As she came through the door of her apartment and into the small foyer,
Diana glanced briefly at the mail, then went into the kitchen and
evaluated the meager contents of the fridge.  Nothing exciting.  She
promised herself that this weekend she was going to go out and do a
proper shop for sure.

Sharon wasn't home yet.  She almost never was when Diana arrived.  Young
associates in the big law firms worked longer hours than interns.  In a
way that made Sharon Mobray the ideal roommate.  But she was much more
than that, and Diana was sorry they didn't get to spend more time
together, especially on days like this, when Diana was feeling so lonely
and detached.

She went into her bedroom to change.  But before finding the pair of
jeans she wanted, her eyes fixed on a large corrugated box resting on
the top shelf of her closet.  She'd packed it the day after she
graduated from George Washington University, and she'd dragged it with
her from place to place, never opening it but knowing she would never
get rid of it either.

Today felt like the day to open it.

She found her jeans and changed quickly.  Then, standing on her tiptoes,
she managed to pull the box down and set it on her bedroom floor.
Sitting cross-legged beside it, she peeled off the plastic strapping
tape and pulled up the top flaps.

Instantly a flood tide of wistfulness and longing enveloped her. The box
contained what at one time Diana had considered her most treasured
possessions.  First, there was the yellowed plastic hospital bracelet
from when she'd had her tonsils taken out-her first in-depth experience
with doctors and medicine.  She brought out the string of tiny
little-girl pearls her aunt Josephine had given her for the junior high
school prom.  The varsity letter from Briarcliff Manor High still held
her field hockey pin.  And, of course, she'd saved her high school ring.

Next, symbolizing the rapid and crazy transition from high school to
college during a turbulent era, came a newspaper photo of her in front
of the White House.  The name of a dead GI was on a card around her neck
from the 1969 November moratorium march.  And finally, wedged against
the side of the box, was her George Washington diploma.

She had needed to see all these things again.  But now she really did
feel like a foreigner.  She wondered sadly whether she'd ever fit in
again as completely as she once had.

Diana stood up and padded out of the bedroom and into the living room.
She put a record on the turntable, then settled back in the sofa with a
glass of wine and let the music flow over her.

A few minutes later the telephone jarred her out of her reverie.

"Hello?"

"Diana?"

"Yes?"

"It's Bill.  Bill Eschenberger."

Diana's mouth went dry.  Was this really happening?  Or was it a mental
segue to the next phase of her longing for things past?

"Diana, are you all right?"

"Yes.  Yes-how are you?" Exactly how many years had it been?  "Ah, where
are you calling from?"

"Houston." So he was still there.

"Listen, Diana- Oh, I guess I should ask you first.  How are you? How're
you getting along?"

"I'm okay.  Great," she lied.

"Gosh, it's good to hear your voice.  Are you as beautiful as I remember
you?"

"I don't know how you remember me."

"Still the same old Diana."

And probably still the same old Bill.  That was what she had to force
herself to keep in mind as that voice transported her back to medical
school at Stanford, to quiet, intimate weekends at Big Sur, pizzas and
subs in the interns' lounge at three a.m., and the summers of roses and
the Krug pinot chardonnay she had always loved.  They had met in her
third year.  He was an internal medicine resident, and she had rotated
through his service at Stanford Medical Center.  From that point on she
gave herself wholly over to him.  He had been her mentor and her guru,
and was he completely to blame for the fact that she had finally
outgrown the need for such a relationship?

"Listen, Diana, as it turns out, I'm going to be in Atlanta for a
conference in two weeks, and I'd love to see you."

She let this sink in for several seconds.  "Will you be with ... your
wife?"

This time the silence came from his end.  Then, "No.  We're separated,
Diana.  Have been for months now."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks.  But it's okay.  Even at its best there was never the passion
there that-that we had."

Why is he telling me this?  she wondered, but not for long. Come on,
Diana, you're a big girl.

"Well, look," he said.  "Why don't I call you back in about a week?
Meantime, I'll book a nice room.  What's a good hotel?"

"Oh, the Ritz-Carlton, I guess," she said distractedly.

"And can you get any Krug pinot chardonnay?" She could imagine his
self-satisfied wink on the other end of the line.

"We'll see," she said as noncommittally as she could manage.

As she hung up the receiver her final argument with Bill flashed back
through her memory.  He had received a cardiology fellowship in Houston,
and she had refused to move to Texas with him.

In the years since, she had often thought about whether she'd made the
right choice.  By the time the string was finally played out, it hadn't
been any different with Jeff Harmon, who'd been in the Public Health
Service with her and who had been as dedicated as she.  So maybe the
fault was within her.  Maybe she should just stay away from other
doctors altogether.  Well, the real maybe" was maybe it was time to make
some compromises.

When Sharon came home a little later, she found Diana still sitting on
the living-room sofa, clutching an empty wineglass with both hands.  She
listened attentively as Diana related the events of the evening.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know," Diana replied.

"Well, you're going to have to decide something before Bill shows up on
your doorstep."

Diana's large blue eyes lit up.  "Maybe I'll be out of town," she said,
blowing an errant wisp of hair from between her eyes.

Bethesda, Maryland.  Gregory Cheever lay gasping on the floor of the
racquetball court.  His face was ashen and dripping with sweat.  His
voice was weak and raspy.  "I'm dying," he said.  "I can feel it. You're
responsible.  It'll be on your conscience."

"You are not dying!" Brian Thorpe retorted.  "Now get up and stop
whining."

Slowly Cheever took Brian's extended hand and picked himself up off the
court.  "Why do you keep doing this to me?" he panted.  "I'm a doctor. I
know what happens when you make too many demands on the body."

"And I know what happens when you don't make enough."

"Sure, easy for you," Gregory said as they walked back toward the locker
room.  "Everyone knows SEALs are crazy anyhow. While you were
squandering your youth, running and swimming and jumping out of
airplanes, I was refining my mind into a highly developed entity."

Gregory Cheever was in his late thirties, a few years younger than
Brian.  He was of medium height, with thick, curly hair and even thicker
glasses, and just sufficiently overweight to be considered cuddly by the
ladies.

A peacetime naval recruit, he had never seen combat or sea duty.  After
college he went on to Columbia University's College of Physicians and
Surgeons, where he distinguished himself with a minimum of effort.
Gregory joined the navy to avoid the rigors of private practice and
because, as he readily admitted, "unlike the army, they can't stick you
anyplace too out of the way." He chose to specialize in radiology for
its intellectual challenge.

They entered the locker room, showered, and dressed.  "I'm going down to
the radiology reading room," Gregory said when they were finished. "I'll
go as far as the elevator with you."

"They both headed for the door.  "Oh, hang on a minute." He went back to
his locker and took out a pack of cigars from the top shelf.  He held
out the pack to Brian.  "Want one?"

Brian shook his head.

By the time they were halfway down the hall Gregory's head was
enshrouded in a cloud of gray smoke, which Brian kept trying to fan away
from his own face.  "Why do you smoke those things?" Brian demanded.

"I like 'em," Gregory answered, savoring another puff.  "Think they make
me look important?"

"I think they make you look stupid," Brian stated.  "I don't understand
it.  You're a radiologist.  You deal with chest films every day.  You
know exactly what that stuff does to you."

"No, it's not like cigarettes.  I never inhale, so the smoke doesn't get
into my lungs."

"Yeah, well, it gets into my lungs," Brian said, and prodded his
companion along toward the elevator.

"Bri, I don't get it.  Back when I was in high school chasing girls, you
were in Vietnam playing SEAL-sea, air, land-finest elite troops in the
world.  Then, when I was in college trying to evade the draft and
chasing more girls, you were back in Nam with the marines in the DMZ,
putting them back together every time they got bulldozed.  After all the
times you risked your life, I can't believe you're worried about a
little smoke."

"Maybe I figure I've used up my chances," Brian replied as the elevator
door opened.

They stepped inside the cab.  As they waited for the doors to close a
tall figure clad in the dark green uniform of a Marine Corps officer
strode toward the elevator.

"For heaven's sake, ditch the cigar," Brian whispered to Gregory.  "You
know we can't smoke in the elevator."

Gregory looked around but saw no receptacle.  "Oh well." He shrugged and
dropped the smoking butt on the floor.  The marine reached the elevator
just as the doors were closing.  As soon as Brian saw the man's face a
jolt of recognition stabbed at his gut.

The marine sniffed, glanced down at the floor, and shot the two doctors
a stern expression.  "Is that your cigar, Lieutenant Commander?" he
snapped, pointing to Gregory's feet.

"No, General," Gregory shot back.  "You saw it first; you take it."

The elevator came to a stop, and Brian pulled his friend out the door
before the general's glare had a chance to develop into anything more
audible.

"You are certifiably insane!" Brian said, making sure they were out of
earshot.  "Don't you know who that was?"

"Yeah.  Some marine general."

"Right.  General John Winthrop Blagden, to be specific."

"Well, that explains that strange look in your eyes back there.

Your unit commander in your last tour of Nam, right?"

"He's the man."

"So that's old 'Black jack' Blagden," Gregory mused.  "The one true
strategic genius of the Vietnam War.  Or so they say.  They also say he
may be the next commandant of the Marine Corps."

"A lot of marine grunts who served under him think the world of that
guy," Brian felt obliged to say.

"A lot more who came home in body bags won't be asked for their
opinions.  What about the guys at Eagle's Talon?"

Good old Gregory, who could speak with the luxurious certitude of one
who had not gone.

"You weren't there," Brian said, tersely.  "And you don't know what
happened.  None of us does."

RADLEY Davis was as nervous as the first time Brian had seen him.  He
shifted his weight constantly in Brian's orange plastic chair and kept
running his fingers through his hair.

"How have you been feeling, Rad?" Brian asked.

"I think it's getting worse," he replied.

"Well, I'm happy to tell you that things look pretty good here."

Brian glanced down at the reports clipped to the file folder on his
desk.  "Your test results are all encouraging.  Blood pressure's fine.
Normal EKG.  Nothing unusual indicated by your chest X ray.  It shows up
some shrapnel fragments, but we already knew about that." Brian looked
up from the file.

"If I'm so healthy, why do I feel so bad, Doc?"

"There can be a lot of reasons," Brian explained.  "We use lab tests to
try to screen out what we call organic causes of distress. Then we can
begin thinking about ...  other causes."

Davis stared down at the floor.  "You think I'm crazy."

"No, not at all.  I don't think that way."

"What about my side?  The pain's there all the time."

"There are several possible explanations.  You've got to remember that
the human body is a very sophisticated organism.  And it's controlled by
the most sophisticated organism of all-the brain. Now, the brain gives
us all kinds of messages.  And sometimes, if we ignore those messages or
for some reason don't recognize them, they come through the body in the
form of aches and pains. As I say, that's why we did the tests first."

Davis was not convinced.  "Look, Doc, you can take as many of those
things as you want, but I'm telling you how I feel!"

Brian fought hard not to become irritated.  This is a stress disorder,
he told himself.  You can't expect him to be rational.

"I'm trying to help you," he said.  "And I think the best way to do that
is to get you to talk about what's bothering you."

"Then you do think I'm crazy!" Davis shouted.  "We'll just have a nice
little chat, and his pains will go away."

" Listen, Radley, be reasonable about this."

Davis shot up from his chair and began pacing a tight circle in front of
the desk.  "I've been reasonable long enough," he said explosively. "And
look where it's gotten me.  Nowhere!" He stopped cold in his tracks and
leaned forward over Brian's desk. "If it was just for me, I'd forget
about it," he said.  "But it isn't.  It's for all those other guys, too.
Those guys I told you about from our unit.  They're dead and can't stick
up for themselves, so someone's got to.  I was hoping you'd be the one."

Brian's stab of irritation was quickly replaced by a wave of sympathy.
Ultimately this case was going to the shrinks.  That much was now
painfully plain to see.  But before he consigned Davis to being just one
more psychiatric statistic of the war, Brian knew he had to convince
himself he had done everything he could, that he had gone the last mile
for this man, just as Davis had done for the Marine Corps-and for his
country.

"Let's keep on it and try a few more tests, Brian said finally. "Take
some more detailed X rays.  We have a very good radiologist here.  If
there's anything there, he'll help us find it."

Washington, D.C.

In Andrey Stoltz's opinion the best thing about the new Soviet embassy
building was the view.  Even though the darkly tinted windows were
little more than glasscovered arrow slits, from his office he commanded
a spectacular panorama of the city.  It stretched from the National
Cathedral to embassy row, to Georgetown and the Potomac waterfront, to
the rolling green hills of northern Virginia.

Dmitri Stepanoy, the embassy's information attachs, had asked to see
Andrey first thing this morning.  He knocked on Stoltz's door at eight
sharp, looking nowhere near as dour and dyspeptic as he normally did
this time of the morning.  He carried a sheaf of computer printouts
jutting out from an open diplomatic pouch.

Stepanoy ignored his host's offer of the visitor's chair and moved to
spread his papers across the desk.

"And what have we here, comrade?" Stoltz asked jovially.

As was his custom, Stepanoy got right to the point.  "These are
printouts of American newspaper articles," he explained.  "They were
picked up by our clipping service." Stepanoy pushed the articles toward
Stoltz.  "Individually there is no special significance to any of these.
In each case the only element that attracted attention was that the man
in question had served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam.  But it was the
computer that noticed that these four random deaths occurred within a
relatively short period of time.  All were level-two demises-sudden
accident.  Victim alone and unwitnessed."

"Hmm, that is suggestive," Stoltz commented.

"That was why the matter was referred to my office," Stepanoy said.  "So
I decided to find out a little more about these men.  This is what I
discovered.  Point number one: all the victims were members of the Third
Marine Division at the same time.  Point number two: all were assigned
to the Seventh Marine Amphibious Unit."

Stepanoy looked up and waited for a reaction.  But Stoltz merely crossed
one leg over the other, took off his glasses, and said, "I'm sorry,
Dmitri, but I fail to grasp the significance."

Stepanoy appeared undaunted.  "I don't think you will if I give you
point number three.  Remember the Corporal Scourge affair?"

Stoltz thought for a moment.  "Yes, of course.  Eagle's Talon. Involving
the very unit we are talking about, if I'm not mistaken."

"You are not mistaken," Stepanoy assured his superior. "Maybe it is only
coincidence, but these men were all from Corporal Scourge's unit."

"Maybe it is all coincidence," Stoltz said, "but if not, comrade, you
have come across something of considerable interest."

Chapter Three

Bethesda, Maryland.

The second round of tests was probably more than BRadley Davis had
bargained for-upper- and lowergastrointestinal series, a gallbladder
study, and an intravenous pyelogram among them.  But Brian wanted to
make sure he covered all possible bases.  And he wanted BRadley Davis to
know it, too.

Brian was now sitting in Gregory Cheever's office.  He'd gone over all
the test results himself, and none of them appeared any more conclusive
than the first set.

"The upper and lower GIs were a big, fat zip," he explained.

"So what else've you got?" Gregory asked, propping his stubby legs up on
the corner of his desk.

"The pain on the right side sounded like it could have been a kidney. So
we did an IVP on him."

Brian handed him the manila envelope containing the pyelogram films.
Gregory planted his feet back on the floor, came from around the side of
his desk, and fixed the X rays onto the wallmounted light box.  He stood
there studying them in silence.

"I got a consult from urology," Brian stated.  "They didn't see anything
noteworthy."

"That's why we have radiologists, my friend.  Because everybody thinks
he can read X rays."

"What is it?" Brian said, suddenly alarmed.  "What are you looking at?"

"I'm not sure," Gregory said.  He was squinting at the image on the
light box.  "It's what we would call a corner finding.  It's not the
main subject of any of these films.  But look up here in the corner on
this tomogram." He took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and used it as a
pointer.

"Piece of shrapnel," Brian declared.  "We already knew he had shrapnel
wounds."

"Ye,&, but I've never seen any shrapnel exactly like this."

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't know.  Let me get a few more pictures.  There is something very
strange ibout this."

As SOON as the new films came out of the processor in the radiology lab,
Gregory put them up on the motorized viewer.

"Very interesting."

"I don't see anything," Brian said.

Again Gregory held out a pen and pointed.  "This fragment here, about
three quarters of a centimeter long.  It looks like it's wedged between
the liver and the peritoneum."

"What about it?"

"I think there's something inside it."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's some sort of hollow chamber inside it."

"What!" Brian looked long and hard where Gregory was pointing.  "We've
taken a zillion films of this guy.  How come no one ever noticed it
before?"

"Because they weren't looking," Gregory said.

"What other tests can you do to let me know what it is?"

"None, as long as it stays in there."

"He's got maybe fifteen-odd pieces of shrapnel in him.  This is the only
one that's hollow?"

"That's the way it looks, Bri."

"And you think that could be causing the side pain?"

Gregory shrugged and smiled.  "Could be.  You know the old radiologist's
hedge: consistent with ...  suggestive of .  .  ."

"Okay, forget all that.  What do you think I ought to do?"

Gregory rapped lightly on the film surface with the tip of his pen, then
said, "Go in there and take that thing out.  Then we'll both sit down
and take a nice long look at it."

Normally Brian would have had interns and medical students in to watch
an operation like this one, involving a vital organ.  But until he knew
what he was dealing with, he didn't want to attract undue attention.  He
didn't expect it to be an extremely risky procedure, so he was able to
get by with just an anesthesiologist and Gregory serving as his first
assistant.  Radley Davis required less explanation than anyone.  He was
a perfect patient.

The surgery was, fortunately, uneventful.  The shrapnel fragment turned
out to be even more accessible than they had hoped from the X rays.  It
was only slightly imbedded in the liver.

When the operation was finished, Gregory took the gauzewrapped fragment
down to the radiation safety department for a Geiger counter test.  No
radioactivity.  Then he x-rayed it along its axes to make sure he
duplicated the view from which he had first detected the tiny interior
chamber.

"I can't tell you much more than before, he reported to Brian the next
morning in the physicians' locker room.  "All I know is that it has a
hollow cylinder and it's filled with some homogenous substance that
isn't air.  More like the density of water."

"Well, that rules out nerve gas, I guess," Brian said.

"I'd say so.  By the way, how's Davis doing?"

"Fine.  He's reveling in all the attention from the nurses."

"Well then," Gregory said, "why don't we continue this later tonight?
I'm having dinner with Jill.  Like to join us?"

"No," Brian said.  "You go ahead.  I'll meet you in the pathology lab at
nine.  No one else should be there by then."

BR= got off the elevator near the lab a couple of minutes before nine.
There was light shining through the small windows in the double steel
doors, so someone was still using the lab. Maybe he and Gregory would
have to come back later.

Then he began to hear sounds coming through the door.  Indistinct at
first, they grew into dull thuds as he got closer.  Then a faint moan
and a raspy gasp.  "No! Please.  Not again." Then another thud.  "I
can't take any more." It sounded like Gregory.

Brian burst through the double doors.  Gregory, his clothing all askew,
was bracing himself against the wall, wheezing and shuddering.  His
girlfriend, Jill Timberlake, had her hands beneath his armpits and was
forcing him into a one-legged crouch.  She withdrew, struck another
pose, and ordered, "Now bend your knee and grab hold of your foot from
behind, like this."

"Have I interrupted something?" Brian asked.

"We were just doing our exercises," Jill explained.

"She was trying to kill me," Gregory asserted.  "Just like you tried on
the racquetball court."

"We want you to be fit and healthy, she said sweetly.  "You're going to
be amazed how much better you'll feel once you've done these exercises.
Look how fluidly I do them."

"You can get into these positions with that Earbie-doll figure of yours.
I can't."

Acknowledging defeat, Jill slipped her sandals back on.  From one of the
lab counters she picked up a bulky gray sweater.  She was a very pretty
girl with long, blondish hair, and tonight she was wearing one of her
basic uniforms: a blue leotard top and tight, straight jeans.

Jill worked as a civilian in the hospital's data processing department,
where she had developed a reputation for being a computer genius. Anyone
who needed interference run with the navy's intimidating machine
bureaucracy had to get on Jill's good side. Brian had first required her
services when two sets of orders had arrived one day directing him to
report simultaneously for officer development orientation in Meridian,
Mississippi, and Honolulu. Jill had said she would have the machine
crunch one set and earned his eternal devotion by giving him his choice
of which set that would be.  He still wasn't quite sure what she saw in
Gregory but was happy for his friend that he'd landed such a catch.

"Well," Gregory said, bringing Brian's mind back to the issue at hand,
"have you got the goods?"

Brian produced the wad of gauze, unwrapped it, and placed the fragment
from Radley Davis' liver carefully on a glass slide.  He walked over to
the microscope and positioned the slide flat on the scope's viewing
surface.  Then he went to the supply closet and retrieved three sets of
paper surgical masks and gowns, which they all put on.

"We don't want to contaminate whatever's in there," Brian said.  "More
important, we don't want it to contaminate us."

With Gregory and Jill looking on, Brian peered through the lens,
manipulating the fragment with microtweezers while he probed and poked
at it with a surgical needle.

"Well, what do you see?" Gregory asked impatiently.

Brian kept examining the object as he spoke.  "It's an irregular, pitted
surface.  It's covered with very fine hairlike metal spikes or
projections that look to have been caused by the initial fragmenting
explosion."

"Do you see a way inside?"

"No, not so far.  My guess is that the explosion was supposed to break
it up and release whatever's inside.  I'm going to clamp it with the
tips of two hemostats, then.  .  ." Abruptly Brian's fingers stopped
moving.  He squinted into the lens.  "Hold on a minute! I've got
something here."

"What is it?" Gregory had to restrain himself from crowding Brian away
from the microscope.

"There's a tiny indentation on one end.  Some kind of plug."

"What's it made of?"

"I can't tell, except that it isn't metal.  But it's wedged in there
pretty tight.  See if you can dig up a twenty-seven-gauge needle."

Gregory rummaged through the drawers and cabinets until he finally found
the minutely * thin instrument Brian had requested. He carefully placed
it in Brian's hand.

Brian grasped it firmly.  With the tweezers he bent the tip of the
needle just enough to form a slight hook.  He picked up the fragment
again and braced it within the tweezer tips so it couldn't move.
Gingerly he pressed the needle into the microscopic plug.

"Okay, it's in."

He gave the needle a half twist and drew it back out.  With it came the
plug.  Brian took his head away from the microscope and held the needle
up to his face.  The plug was practically invisible to the naked eye.

"Break the needle off from the handle, then seal it in a test tube," he
instructed, and handed it to Gregory.  Then he went back to the
microscope and shook the tweezers.  "Nothing's coming out of the
fragment.  It must be pretty viscous.  Have you got another
twenty-seven-gauge needle?  Get me a sterile slide, too."

He inserted the needle into the infinitesimal chamber and worked it
around, as if he were foraging for the last bits of peanut butter in a
nearly empty jar.  At last he coaxed a tiny droplet out onto the sterile
slide.  He and Gregory looked at each other triumphantly.

ON THE fifth morning following Hadley's surgery Brian released him from
the hospital.  He told him to wait until his postoperative discomfort
had fully subsided and then come back and let Brian know if the other
symptoms had gone away.  The answer to that question, Brian was
confident, would come as much from what the fragment turned out to
contain as from anything Davis told him. But the ex-marine's main
problems, Brian kept reminding himself, were not primarily physical.

In the cafeteria that afternoon Gregory gave him the less than
conclusive news.  "Once we ruled out nerve gas, I figured maybe we were
dealing with a botulism or some sort of toxin.  So I brought a bit of it
over to microbiology and had them plate it out."

"And?"

"Nothing.  The petri dish is still clean.  Didn't grow a thing. Then I
figured, psychotropic chemical maybe?" He shrugged. "So I ran another
bit through the mass spectrometer.  What you've got, Brian, is water."

"Water?  But that doesn't make sense."

"Tell it to the machine."

Brian shook his head.  "Could it be something that affects the liver
specifically, or is it just there by chance?"

"The biopsy shows the liver's clean.  And anyway, it's a piece of
shrapnel.  How do you explode a fragmentation device and aim for a
specific organ?"

"have no idea."

"Well, it was a nice try," Gregory concluded.  "But if there was
anything there to begin with, it's long gone by now.  I think this is
the end of the show."

Not quite, Brian decided when he was back alone in his office. If the
fluid contents provided no ready explanations, then perhaps the fragment
itself might.  The question was where to begin looking.

There were probably artillery specialists who knew something. Maybe some
of the marines at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, had seen it before.  A lot of
them had been in Nam.  And there were probably manuals he could get from
the National War College.  But there had to be a more direct approach.
He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk surface, and as he
casually stared down at the star sapphire on his right ring finger,
Brian knew what it was.

Hugh Stanway.

Stanway was the man the other SEALs always considered first among them.
He was the one who had organized and led the raid on November 22, 1970,
that had freed forty-eight South Vietnamese prisoners of war from a
Vietcong POW camp.  Stanway, four teen other SEALS, and nineteen
Vietnamese militiamen broke into the camp, fought a running gun battle
with the guards, and finally forced them to flee for their lives.  That
raid became near legend in special-warfare circles.  The Stanway image
was fixed in iron.  And he never stopped capitalizing on it.

Brian picked up the phone and dialed San Francisco information.  "Can
you give me the number of Men of Action magazine, please?"

He put through the call, and when the receptionist came on the line, he
said to her, "Let me speak to the top man."

A momentary pause.  Then a deep, extremely seductive voice announced,
"Mr.  Stanway's office.  May I help you?"

"Is himself in?" Brian asked.

"May I say who's calling, please?"

"Tell him it's someone who knows the location of his SEAL tattoo."

The voice was obviously flustered.  "Ah, one moment, sir."

There was a click as Brian was put on hold.  A few seconds later Hugh
Stanway said, "Brian Thorpe!" The voice was rousing and robust.  "It had
to be you.  All the others who knew where my SEAL tattoo was are dead!
How've you been?"

"I'm still around, Hugh."

"That's saying something, with all the nonsense we've been through.  You
still playing doctor?"

"Yeah."

It was good to talk to Hugh again.  The dependable, predictable
camaraderie from the old days was something Brian would never forget and
always miss.  "Are you still the chief guru of gun nuts, nationalist
zealots, and professional killers?" he asked.

"Well, we prefer to call our readers serious adventurers," Stanway said
proudly.

It had been at least a year since Brian had picked up a copy of Men of
Action.  But he was Okay now, let's finish getting dressed, We don't
want to hold Mommy up."

As usual, Brian waited with Katie at the front door of the apartment
house.  Lizzie would soon drive by and collect her there.  They would be
cordial with each other, smile, and exchange pleasant greetings.  And
the woman and the child would drive off together, leaving Brian alone
for another two weeks.

This morning Lizzie looked lovely, even better than usual. There was a
lustrous quality to her hair, to her eyes, her skin, her entire being.
As traumatic as their parting had been, it had not given him reason to
wish her anything but the best.

"Hello, Brian," she said.

"Good to see you, Lizzie."

"Him, Mommy!" Katie screeched.

"Hi, honey." Lizzie smiled.  "Hop in the car, please.  Mommy's in a
hurry this morning."

After Katie had gone, Brian returned to his apartment to let the impact
of her departure weaken.  The phone rang just as he was finally about to
leave for work.  "Commander Thorpe?  This is Radley Davis.  I called
your office, but they said you weren't in yet."

"Well, what can I do for you?"

"Have you looked at today's Post yet?"

"I've glanced at it.  Why?"

"There's a small article about this place up in Montana.  West Deer
Creek, it's called.  The article says they had an outbreak of cattle
plague there.  People found all these dead cattle lying around, probably
dead a long time."

" so?  "

"They found the rancher who owned them.  And he was dead, too.  Same
thing."

"I'm sorry," Brian said curtly, "but I'm still failing to see why you're
telling me all this."

"The rancher's name was Sam Hardesty.  He was in our marine unit in
Nam."

Atlanta, Georgia.  The guiding principle and informal motto of the
Epidemic Intelligence Service was framed on the wall above Diana
Keegan's desk:

COMMON THINGS OCCUR COMMONLY.

UNCOMMON THINGS DO NOT.

WHEN YOU HEAR HOOFBEATS, DON'T THINK OF ZEBRAS.

Her boss, Herb Sectest, had given it to her on her first day as a vital
lesson in interpretation.  When one is primed for the pursuit of strange
and exotic diseases, there is always a tendency for the young doctor to
overlook the fact that a presentation of influenzalike symptoms is, in
all likelihood, influenza.

She had been staring at the sign all morning, not getting any work done,
trying to apply the same reasoning to the business with Bill.  All he'd
said was that he was coming to town and would like to see her.  Two old
friends reminiscing about times past. What made her so sure he wanted to
pick up right where they'd left off.?  Well, the fact that he'd left his
wife, for one.  And then there was that comment about the old Krug pinot
chardonnay. The zebra tracks ran pretty deep.  But what did she want?
That was what had been torturing her the entire time since he'd called.

And here it was Wednesday.  He'd be in Atlanta on Friday.  Again and
again she mulled it over in her mind, setting the last moment before
lunch as her deadline for some decisive action.

She caught Herb Sectest just as he was coming out of his office for
lunch.  "Can I see you a minute?" she asked.

Herb shrugged and with his outstretched hand usherdd her back into the
room.  She sat in the large, battered walnut visitor's chair as he
leaned against his large, battered walnut desk and folded his arms
across his chest.

"So what can I do for you?" He seemed cool and unruffled, completely in
his element.  As much as Diana liked him, she couldn't help feeling that
there was always an air of being called to the principal's office about
her meetings with him.

"Have you got any place I can go for you?"

"When?"

"Oh .  .  ." She tried to be casual, but it didn't work.  "Today,
tomorrow, Friday at the latest."

"Why?" He smiled.  "You suddenly need to get out of town?"

"N-not exactly," she stammered, knowing it wasn't the truth.  "I just
thought I'd like to get back to the field."

Herb walked around to the working side of his desk and sifted through
the small jumble of telegrams lying in his important box.  "I do have
one thing," he said after a moment.

She perked right up.  "Is it far away from Atlanta?"

"Couldn't get much farther.  Apparently there's been an outbreak of some
sort of cattle plague.  One human fatality-the rancher who owned them.
By the time they found him, he'd been dead a week.  Local coroner called
us in.

"Any other reported outbreaks?"

He shook his head.  "Uh-uh.  What you'll be able to find this long after
the body's cooled is beyond me," he said.  "But we have to check it
out."

"No problem," Diana said cheerily.  "So where am I going?"

"West Deer Creek, Montana," he answered dryly.  "Have fun."

Bethesda, Maryland.  So where in the devil was Rad Davis?

Brian wanted to know.  On the phone he had insisted on coming out to
Bethesda to talk, and Brian had cleared a half hour to see him.  Now it
was the middle of the afternoon, and Davis hadn't even called.  He'd
give him another five minutes.  That was it.

Brian knew it was typical of a paranoid to make crazy connections.  He
never had quite understood the supposed relationship between Davis'
pains and those random marine deaths.  You could probably find similar
statistics from a lot of outfits if you wanted to.  And Hugh Stanway had
called back yesterday to say that his people couldn't find anything on
the shrapnel fragment either.  None of it added up to anything.  That's
what Brian would have told Davis had he bothered to show up.

THE next day Brian was making his way to the hospital cafeteria for
lunch when he passed Gregory at the entrance.  Gregory saluted him with
a rolled-up newspaper.  "Ironic, isn't it?" he said.  "I mean, after
getting through Nam and all.  And then this."

Brian stopped.  "What are you talking about?"

"Didn't you see the Post this morning?"

"No.  I got called in to crack a chest in the middle of the night.

Haven't been out of the OR since.  What's going on?"

The radiologist unrolled his newspaper, folded it back to the second
page of the Metro section, and handed it to Brian.  "Who'd want to hold
him up?  Probably didn't have ten bucks on him."

"Who?  I don't know what you're-" Brian's eyes focused on the small item
below the fold.  It froze the next word in his throat.

Ex-MARINE KILLED

IN HOLDUP ATTEMPT

Radley J.  Davis, a former marine staff sergeant and Vietnam veteran who
had recently moved to the Washington, D.C., area, was shot and killed
outside the residential hotel in which he was staying.  While there were
no witnesses to the shooting, police are citing robbery as the probable
motive.

It was as if a land mine had just exploded underneath Brian. "Hey, are
you okay?" Gregory asked.

"Can I have this?" he asked blankly in return.

"Sure.  But you don't look so good all of a sudden."

"I'll catch you later," Brian said stiffly.  He made an abrupt detour
from the cafeteria entrance.  His only idea was getting back to his
office as quickly as he could.  Once there, he sat rigidly still for a
long time, staring straight ahead into shattering silence.

All his adult life Brian had had other men's lives dependent on his
actions.  And always there was an accounting for those actions. And now
Radley Davis was dead.  How had it come to this?  What could he have
done differently?  Brian hadn't taken Radley's paranoia seriously.  If
he had, would it have changed anything?

He retraced every step in his mind, went back over everything Davis had
told him and every conclusion he'd drawn from it.

After a while Gregory came to check up on him.  Brian continued staring
silently ahead.  With little fuss Gregory sat in the same orange plastic
chair Davis had recently occupied and said nothing until Brian was ready
to talk.

Brian stood and turned toward the window.  Gazing out into the Maryland
countryside, he began enumerating the facts: Four random, unrelated
deaths.  And now a fill.  A sixffi, if you included the rancher in
Montana.  And why not, since he shared the one crazy thing they all had
in common?

"And what about the fragment?" he said, turning back toward Gregory.

"The paper said it was a holdup, Brian."

"And the papers also said the first four were accidents," he snapped
back.  "But six accidents are no longer accidental."

"You're starting to sound like Davis now."

Brian came back to the desk and stood behind it.  "Doesn't it strike you
as odd that all six of these men were alone when the accidents happened?
No, witnesses, nothing."

"That doesn't tell you anything for sure."

True.  He couldn't be sure of anything.  But Brian knew that if there
was even a chance he had caused Davis' death by his own indifference,
then he had to do something.  What that would be, he had no idea.

Chantilly, Virginia.

The two men were known to each other only as Contact and Background.
They met on the observation deck of Dulles International Airport, Dulles
being a convenient rendezvous spot for Background.  The airport was one
of his key courier drop points, so he could be there during the late
afternoon-when it was most crowded and therefore safest-without arousing
the suspicion of his superiors.

Contact positioned himself near Background at the safety rail.

He had been at the airport for several hours already, surveying the
-area to make sure the meeting would be "clean" and that nothing,
however seemingly inconsequential, felt wrong to him. With his hands
tightly gripping the rail he stared straight toward the runway as he
spoke to the man at his side.

"What news from our rivals across the sea?"

Background's eyes followed the Concorde, taking off gracefully from the
west.  "There is reason to believe some of my comrades may have joined
you in your special hunt."

Contact was too experienced to react outwardly.  "How were they put onto
the scent?" he asked calmly.

"Routinely, I understand.  The information came up through channels.
Then someone was bright enough to recognize it for what it was.  Someone
with a long memory."

"Do they have the quarry in their sights, then?"

"I am not sure they even recognize the quarry they seek as yet."

Background's voice was deep and resonant, with the crisp, clipped accent
the Soviets favored in their diplomats.  "But let us say this: after
years of cooling off, the trail is once again heating up."

Bethesda, Maryland.  A plan was forming in Brian's mind.  He began, as
he had in the old days, by mentally organizing the initial steps and
marshaling his resources.  He went down to data processing, timing his
visit to coincide with Jill's afternoon break. When she came out, he
took her arm to lead her in the direction of the cafeteria.  "Hi there,"
he said.  "How about letting me buy you some coffee?  Better yet, how
about an ice-cream cone?"

She scrutinized him with mock suspicion.  "You've got that look in your
eyes, Thorpe.  I feel a bribe coming on."

"Am I that transparent?" He frowned.

She nodded emphatically, then took his hand.  "Come on, then. Buy me an
ice cream and tell me what you want."

"I'm going away for the weekend," he explained to Jill when they had
purchased the cone and were seated in a secluded corner of the
cafeteria.  "I may not be back by Monday, and if I'm not, I want to be
covered by annual leave for as long as I'm gone."

"So what's the problem?  just ask your supervisor."

"Crowley?  He'd turn me down for the fun of it.  Anyway, I think it'd be
better if I don't let anyone else in on this."

"I think you just want to go back to playing SEAL." Her tongue trailed
playfully along the edge of the ice cream (rum raisin) as she turned the
cone in her hand.

"Actually I'm not sure what's involved yet so I don't want to send up
any red flags.  I want it to look like I have official orders to be away
for a few days.  And after the way you pulled off that Hawaii business,
I figure you can do anything with that computer."

"Not quite." She smiled.  "What you're asking for here is to generate
data that isn't already in the system.  But I can probably do it.  The
question is, Is it really important?"

"It's important enough," Brian answered.

Jill took another mouthful of ice cream and looked at Brian.  "Is there
anything I wouldn't do for you?  You have but to ask."

"Thanks," he said.  "I'll call you Sunday night and let you know how
long I'll be gone."

Chapter Four
West Deer Creek, Montana.  Brian and Diana met on a windswept plain of
shimmering tawny grass that reached as far as he could see and made him
understand for the first time what the term Big Sky Country really
meant.

The Hardesty ranch house, where the introduction took place, was in fact
little more than a ramshackle cabin set in the midst of this plain.  It
stood by itself at the end of a long dirt lane.  When Brian pulled up in
the jeep Cherokee he had rented, Diana was already there, standing next
to a man in front of the house.

"You must be Dr.  Thorpe," the man said, extending his hand.

"Yes.  Dr.  Wilcox?" It had been explained to him on the phone that out
here the local physician also doubled as county coroner.

"Call me Elmer.  And this is Dr.  Diana Keegan, who's come up from the
Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta."

Brian focused on her for the first time.  She was wearing an old khaki
bush jacket, rolled up at the sleeves, and matching hiking shorts that
accentuated long, trim legs.  She carriedherself with an air of
confidence and gave him a crisp handshake and a smile. He returned it
with a simple

"Brian Thorpe.  Pleased to meet you."

But, oh boy, he thought.  That's all I need, some bureaucrat snooping
around and looking over my shoulder.  It had never occurred to him there
might be someone else poking into this business. Of course, the CDC did
have more legitimate reasons to be here than he did.  Still, this
complicated things.

In spite of everything, though, he found himself furtively staring at
the intruder.  He couldn't deny that she was strikingly beautiful.  Her
face was made up of clean, distinct features: high, prominent cheekbones
that highlighted dimples when she smiled, a strong chin, and a nose the
English would describe as patrician.  Dark, rich hair, the color of
polished walnut, blew sorry in the breeze against her neck.  Brian
couldn't help being charmed.

"As you know, Sam and his animals had been dead more than a week before
anyone knew about it," Wilcox recounted.  "Probably wouldn't have known
even then except that Bonnie Baskin down at the service station came out
here to deliver four new tires Sam had ordered.  First person Ronnie
called was me."

"So then what did you do, Dr.  Wilcox?" Diana questioned.

"Elmer, remember?  I came out straightaway." Wilcox shook his head
slowly from side to side.  "It was horrible.  The cattle were almost all
together in one of the close-in fields.  He was lying out here, just
about where we're standing.  It was the worst thing I ever saw:
grotesque skin lesions, horrible contortions, you name it."

Diana asked, "What was your initial diagnosis?"

He shrugged helplessly.  "I didn't know.  Whatever it was, I knew it
wasn't something I was set up to handle.  So after we got things cleaned
up around here, I called the state health department and suggested they
might want to call in the CDC.  Thaes why you're here." He turned to
Brian.  "Though I have to admit, I was surprised the navy'd want to send
someone, too."

Diana perked up.  "You're with the navy, Dr.  Thorpe?"

"Ah, that's right," he replied.

"Commander," Wilcox offered, clearly impressed.

"You're here on official business?"

"Umm, you might say that."

Brian caught the look on her face.  He recognized it immediately.  He
had seen it a hundred times before, especially from women.  The first
time at a civilian party.  The first time he went out with a girl since
he'd gotten back from Nam.  That look of superiority and contempt that
said, You're military.  You went over there.  It all figured.  She had
instantly calculated how old he was, what he would have been doing back
then.  She herself looked about thirty-three-just old enough to have
been part of the movement.  just old enough to be fashionably radical.

"Well, I suppose you'll both want to be getting settled before starting
anything serious," Wilcox said.  "The actual town of West Deer Creek is
about fifteen miles from here.  There's only one place to stay, and I'm
afraid it ain't exactly the Waldorf-Astoria. But they'll take care of
you best as they can."

The Roundup Motel occupied a prime spot just on the outskirts of West
Deer Creek.  It was a one-story red brick affair bent around three sides
of a dusty gravel parking lot.

After giving them time to settle in and change, Wilcox met them for
dinner at Carson's, where he dissuaded Diana from the chef's salad-which
no one to his knowledge had ever actually ordered before-and strongly
recommended they both follow his lead in choosing the steak and home
fries.  "It's that kind of place," he explained.

As host, Wilcox considered it his role to keep the conversation going.
"So, what do you do for the CDC?" he asked Diana.

"I'm with the Epidemic Intelligence Service," she said.  "And -I work
closely with the Special Pathogens Branch."

"Intelligence service?  Sounds kind of like spies."

"Well"-she laughed pleasantly-"we like to think of ourselves more as
disease detectives than spies, although the service was originally
established along those lines, I have to admit. Congress authorized the
division as a standing defense against a possible biological warfare
attack."

"I didn't realize we worried much about that sort of thing in this
country," Wilcox said.  "Never happened that I know of."

"There's been more of it than you might realize," Diana replied quickly.
"A long tradition, really, and not a very proud one. During the Civil
War, for instance, the Union army used to put the corpses of diseased
cattle down Confederate wells.  And closer to home here, during the
fighting on the Great Plains, the cavalry gave the Indians supplies of
blankets infected with smallpox.  just one more example of this
country's systematic war against its own population."

Wilcox's facial features suddenly dropped.  "Is that a fact?" he said
somberly.  Brian knew immediately that Diana had stepped into trouble,
branding herself as both an outsider and a liberal.  If you had to pick
two topics to watch what you said about in Montana, he would guess
they'd be cattle and Indians.

Diana bit her lip in embarrassment when she saw the reaction she had
caused.  The conversation had stopped dead, with no sign of revival. She
looked to Brian in a mute appeal.

He decided to rescue her.  "So, what did you do your residency in?" he
asked.

It didn't matter what he'd said.  The relief shone in those endearing
blue eyes.

"Internal medicine," she replied, taking a deep breath.  "I was up in
Boston at Mass.  General."

"I spent a lot of time there when I was in med school," Brian said.

"Oh, really?  Where was that?"

"Harvard."

That was certainly a surprise.  Her first instinct this afternoon had
been that he reminded her of an overage surfer: dark blond hair, blue
eyes, clean, square features.  "And your field?"

"Surgery."

That was maybe not as surprising.  His hands were strong and steady.
Yes, definitely surgeon's hands.  The surfing image disappeared.  It was
frivolous, and whatever this man was, he was not frivolous.  Brian
directed his next question at Wilcox.

"What kind of evidence do you still have?"

"Well, we preserved some blood and tissue samples from the body," Wilcox
said.  "They're in my office.  And then we saved the carcass of one of
the steers-got it in a meat looker we rented. They burned the rest of
the herd."

Brian turned back to Diana.  "Can you do anything with that?"

"Well, the Hardesty tissue's got to be decomposed by now.  And since
bacteria grow postmortem, a culture's going to be useless. We can spin
down the blood-I've got the equipment with me but I wouldn't count on
finding anything there either.  Our best shot may be to go with the
cow."

"Steer," Wilcox corrected.  And then the waitress came and set their
dinners down in front of them.  "Just like what you're eating."

WHAT WAS HE DOING HERE?

Why had the navy sent a surgeon out to investigate an isolated outbreak
of cattle disease in Montana?  This wasn't even the kind of thing the
CDC normally got involved in.

Diana sat on the bed in her motel room.  It had been hot during the day,
but now that the sun had gone down, the air was cold. She had put on a
sweatshirt, and sat with her bare legs drawn up close to her chest as
she tried to rub the chill off them.

She wasn't ready to go to sleep.  She was tired but restless.  Bill was
in Atlanta by now.  She wondered what he was doing and how he'd reacted
when he found out she wasn't there.  He'd phone, and Sharon would tell
him she'd been unexpectedly called out of town on business.  An icy wave
of loneliness came over Diana and brought back the chill.  She shivered
and reached for a blanket.

She thought of Brian Thorpe in the next room.  just like her, he was
alone.  But she was sure it didn't bother him as much.  He didn't look
the type.  But what was the type?  She couldn't figure him out.  He was
in the navy, and he was a doctor, like her.  But not really like her. He
was part of what she'd spent more than half a decade of her formative
years protesting and fighting.  And what was he doing here?

Then suddenly it all came together.

She knew what had killed Sam Hardesty and his cattle, and it wasn't
natural causes.  And she knew why Brian Thorpe was here. Why hadn't she
thought of it before?  Back in the late 1970S the CDC had been called in
to study people who had been exposed to atomic testing in the Nevada
desert in the 1950s- SO the government must have resumed secret testing
up here in this out-of-the way place.  It all would have been swell if a
reclusive rancher hadn't stumbled into the test area and died of
radiation sickness. And that would explain what a military doctor was
doing poking around up here.

And that would also explain what she was doing here.  The military's job
was to make sure it was kept quiet, and the CDC's job was to see if
there was any public health threat.  But why hadn't Herb Secrest briefed
her?  He'd seemed so casual about the whole thing.  Diana pulled the
blanket tight around her and shivered again.  just like poor Sam
Hardesty, she had maybe stumbled into something incredibly sinister.

Duna AND BRW WERE KNEELING next to each other in a dirt clearing about
forty feet behind the building containing the meat lockers.  The
preserved steer was lying on the ground in front of them.  They could
study it and work on it for one day, they were told.  Then it had to be
burned, like the others.

Actually a butcher would have been more useful in this procedure than a
surgeon, Diana decided.  Neither one of them knew much about the inner
workings of cattle.  Since Brian mentioned' that there'd been a lot of
farms near where he'd grown up in Indiana, and since he was obviously
the stronger of the two, he got the physical part of the job.  Most of
the instruments they were using had been obtained from the local
hardware store.

But Diana didn't need much formal knowledge of bovine anatomy to know
that this animal had suffered greatly before it died. The girl who had
spent her childhood taking in stray dogs and cats and mending the wounds
of other small and vulnerable creatures broke into tears when she saw
it.  Even Brian looked pale.

As Elmer Wilcox had said, it was a horrible sight.  There were huge
boils covering the hide, and the steer's head and neck were contorted,
as if it had flailed about wildly, gasping for breath.

"What do you think it was?" Diana asked Brian.

"I'm not sure," he said without looking up from the carcass. "But I'll
tell you one thing.  This was an incredibly fast progression of
symptoms.  A matter of hours."

Throughout the examination she watched Brian for signs that he was
looking for something specific.  But she could come up with nothing.  He
methodically went about the task of cutting the carcass apart and
probing around inside it.  With each step he paused and glanced over at
her to see if she had any new conclusion to draw.

Finally he said, "We've gone as far as we can on this.  We'll have to do
a post on Hardesty."

"An autopsy?" The idea took a moment to register.

"We've got so little to go on; it's the only way," he stated.

"But will they let us?"

"Maybe.  Wilcox says no one has come to claim the body.  It's still
there in the morgue."

"So what are we going to tell him?" she asked.

"Not we." Brian smiled.  "You."

"What!" She felt her heart drop.  "Why me?"

"You have an official reason.  You can say it's a required part of your
investigation."

"What about you?  You've got the entire military establishment behind
you."

"Not really," he said quietly.

"What are you talking about?"

"Let's just say this is something better handled by you."

Suddenly Diana decided she'd had enough of this secrecy. "Suppose you
tell me exactly what it is you're up to, Dr.  Thorpe."

She held her gaze firmly on him.

"I'm here somewhat informally," he said after a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"I knew Sam Hardesty.  We served together in Vietnam."

So that confirmed one thing about him, she noted.  He had been over
there; he had taken part in that horrible war.  "Was Hardesty a doctor,
too?" she asked.

"No.  Neither of us was.  He was a marine, and I was a medic assigned to
his unit."

"I'm sorry.  I didn't know he was your friend."

"He wasn't, really," Brian said cryptically.

But she had started to reevaluate him.  Medics in Vietnam didn't kill
anyone; they only saved lives.  Many had been conscientious objectors
who had agreed to accept noncombatant status because they thought they
could do some good.  Maybe there was more to him than she'd suspected.

"So how am I supposed to get Elmer to agree to the autopsy?"

"I don't know," he said.  "But you seem pretty resourceful.  I'm sure
you'll think of something."

"And if I refuse?" she asked, testing him further.

"You're in the Public Health Service, aren't you?" he said.

"That's right."

"That makes you a commissioned officer of the United States."

He looked at her appraisingly.  "What's your grade?"

"Oh three," she responded proudly'

"That's the equivalent of a lieutenant in the navy.  I'm a commander in
the navy," he said with a smile.  "That's an oh five.  So I could order
you to do it."

THE MORGUIE FOR WEST DEER CREEK was actually nothing more than a
refrigerated closet and tiny examining room in the back of Elmer
Wilcox's medical office.  He was anxious to have it cleared out before
there was another need for it, preferably one resulting from natural
causes.  If it hadn't been for that, Diana was sure, he wouldn't have
been as agreeable about the autopsy.

They had to work at night, when Elmer wasn't using his office. It was
just the two of them, formally distanced from each other by surgical
masks and gloves.  The body of Sam Hardesty lay on the table, seeming
almost to fill the small room.  Since there was no recording equipment,
Diana agreed to take notes as Brian spoke.

"This is Dr.  Brian Thorpe.  I am performing a postmortem' examination
on Mr.  Samuel Hardesty in West Deer Creek, Montana." He began with the
standard opening.  "We will be examining each organ and system in situ.
I am entering with a Y-shaped incision from both shoulders to directly
below the breasts." Moments later he was exposing the heart and thorax.

"Circulatory system looks okay," he reported.

"Any gross sign of infiltration?"

He probed with the scalpel for several minutes.  "I can see pronounced
lumps in the armpits along with large abdominal nodes.  I'd say you can
put down a marked lymphadenopathy. Also note that I've run across
several small bits of shrapnel-"

He stopped talking in the middle of the sentence, as if he'd just gone
into a trance.  Diana looked at him.  It was several long seconds before
he began again.

"I'm going to take a look at the liver now," he told her.  Then, after a
moment, "I can detect clear-cut morphologic changes to the liver," he
stated.  "It is deep red in color, and there is evidence of acute
hemorrhaging, and the tissue is soft and flabby."

Diana had never seen anything like this, not even in textbooks.

She couldn't imagine what could do that to human tissue.

Near the surface of the liver Brian seemed to run into something with
the knife.  "What's that?" she asked.

"Oh, another shrapnel fragment," he said.  There was a chilling
objectivity in his voice.  He continued cutting.  It was a tiny piece of
steel, not half as large as the nail on her pinkie.  And she noticed
that instead of just setting it aside or tossing it into the trash can,
he casually deposited it into his pant pocket.

Painstakingly, methodically, he worked his way through the rest of the
body, Diana taking down his descriptions.  After a while her hand began
to cramp.  "What else do we have to do?" she asked wearily.

"One more thing." He smiled.  "Look at a kidney.

Diana nodded.

Brian said nothing for a few minutes.  Then, "This is interesting.  I've
cut the organ in half, and I can see very characteristic necrotizing
papillitis."

Diana peered at the sectioned kidney.  Down its center were the six
pyramid-shaped projections, known as the papilli, that drain into the
ureter.  They were a dark reddish purple, almost black: "Diabetes?"

"That's what I think.  And judging from the severity of these lesions, a
pretty pronounced case.  I'm going to take some kidney slices." He
snipped off several small pieces of tissue and laid them out on glass
slides.  "Do you have a microscope with you?"

"Uh-huh," she replied.  "Not a great one.  But it should be okay for
most things."

"Good." He turned away from the table to face her.  "Then, how'd you
like to spend a quiet, intimate evening in your room?

just you and me ...  and a little bit of Sam Hardesty."

By THE time they finished the postmortem, it was after midnight, and
Diana yearned for a long, hot shower.  The muscles in her left hand were
twitching from the unaccustomed rapid writing, and her feet and legs
ached.  Surgeons were used to working while standing up for hours on
end.  Epidemiologists were not.

But she was caught up in the puzzle, and so she sat crosslegged on the
bed with her portable centrifuge and testing kit in front of her.  Brian
sat at the combination desk-dresser, preparing tissue slides for her
microscope.  There was a quiet intimacy in the room.  Maybe it was only
because she was physically wiped out and her normal defenses were down,
but she was beginning to feel around Brian a sense of ease that she
couldn't recall having felt with any other man, particularly after so
brief a time.

"How's it coming?" Brian asked, startling her out of her half dream.

"What?  Oh.  The blood's not going to tell us anything.  It's too
coagulated to spin down.  But I think we may have some luck with the
urine sample.  Give me about five minutes."

She removed several test strips from her kit, then dipped them into the
sample.  She held them up to the light.  There was no mistaking the
dark, almost blackish green color.

"Well, I think you may be on the right track," she announced. "Four plus
for glucose.  This guy was spilling sugar all over the place.  And I've
got a four-plus reading for ketones, too."

"Spin it down," Brian said.  "Let's take a look at it under the
microscope."

"Sure." She emptied the fluid into the centrifuge, turned it on, and let
it spin for seven and a half minutes.  Then she prepared the glass
slide.  She positioned it on the specimen plate and adjusted the optics.
Fuzzy double-bordered round shapes came gradually into focus.

"You see any white cells?"

Plenty, she said.  "Too numerous to count."

",#.II right, let's take it one more step," Brian said.  He grasped her
lightly by the shoulders and moved her to the side, then slid himself in
before the microscope.  "Pay close attention," he gently chided. "You're
going to learn something." He peered intently through the microscope
lens, then muttered, "Very interesting.  Nodular scarring on the
glomeruli of the kidneys."

"So we're talking about chronic diabetes."

Brian nodded.  "I suspected it might be." He removed the first slide and
put in a second.  He studied it for a minute.  "Okay, you have to look
closely at this.  It's very subtle.  What do you see?"

It was vaguely familiar.  She tried to summon up long-ago pictures she'd
seen in body atlases.  Finally she shrugged.

"Don't worry about it.  A lot of people would miss this." He patted her
on the shoulder.  "Unless you're a surgeon or a pathologist, you'd
probably never have seen it.  It's an Armanni-Ebstein lesion.  A
specific sign that the patient died in diabetic coma."

"But none of the other symptoms have anything to do with diabetes or
ketoacidosis-the liver, the lymph nodes."

"That's true," Brian admitted.  "But there's something else to consider.
Humans aren't normally highly susceptible to things like cattle plague.
But in severe diabetic shock the immunologic function of the body's
white cells starts getting impaired."

"Which means Hardesty may have had no immunological defenses.  He was
just unlucky enough to go into diabetic shock at the same time that his
cattle came down with some horrible bacterial infection."

"You get your gold star back."

Brian stood up abruptly, signifying that the night's work was through.
Diana waited expectantly, wondering if he'd make the first move and what
she'd do about it if he did.  But the only move he made was to the door.
"Sleep well," he said.

Duna opened the door and took a deep breath.  Despite the late night she
felt good this morning, much better than she'd felt for a long time. The
air was crisper and cleaner than it ever got in Atlanta and cool enough
that she just wanted to revel in it.

She spotted Brian about ten minutes later, as he was coming back from
breakfast and she was coming out of her room dressed in a T-shirt and
shorts and exercise shoes.

He asked, "Where are you going?"

"I've really been missing my aerobics class since I've been here, so I
thought I'd go out for a jog.  Want to come along?"

"Sounds like a good idea," he said.  "I wish I could motivate myself to
go with you."

"The navy doesn't make you stay in shape?" She bent over with her arms
extended and touched the ground.

"Not anymore."

She wondered what that meant.

"How far do you go?"

"I try to do about two and a half or three miles."

"So that's what?  About twenty, twenty-five minutes?"

"By the time I cool down, make it at least a half hour."

"Which way are you headed?" She pointed up the road.  He looked into her
eyes and squeezed her on the shoulder with what she took to be a hint of
fatherly concern.  "You be careful, then."

"Don't worry.  I'll be fine," she assured him.

"Okay.  If you're not back in half an hour, I'll come out looking for
you." She watched as he inserted the key into his door and closed it
behind him.  She resumed her stretching.  She had to admit that his
attention was flattering.  Whatever else he was, he could be very sweet.

BR= WARCHED THROUGH A CRACK in the curtains as she jogged off down the
road.  There was a fluid, athletic coordination to her stride and the
rhythmic motion of her long, glistening legs.  As she disappeared out of
sight he thought it was a ghame they hadn't met under different
circumstances.  Maybe there'd have been a chance.

He glanced at the black-faced diving watch on his wrist.  Thirty
minutes, she'd said.

He peered out through the curtains.,There was no one in sight. He picked
up the screwdriver he'd taken from the jeep's tool kit. He went out and
closed his door behind him and walked briskly over to hers.  Holding the
doorknob firmly, he inserted the tip of the screwdriver into the key
slot.  He jiggled and rotated the tool delicately until he felt the
resistance give way inside.  There now. He tried the doorknob.  It
turned easily in his hand.

Brian slipped inside the room and locked the door behind him. He
surveyed the area quickly, then crossed over to the desk, on which the
microscope still rested.  From his pocket he extracted the tiny fragment
he'd found in Hardesty's liver, then a pair of surgical tweezers and an
ultrafine needle probe.

The fragment was wrapped in gauze.  He unrolled it and laid it on the
scope's viewing platform.  Holding it with the tweezers, he rotated it
obliquely to view its full length.  Then he twisted his fingers just
enough to turn it on its end.  With the tip of the needle he braced the
specimen and looked straight down the end.

Nothing.

He turned the fragment to the other end and looked again.  This time he
saw it.  A microscopically tiny chamber hollowed out of the center of
the steel.  just like the one from Radley Davis' liver. Only this one
had no stopper at the end.

It was empty.

BRIAN was back in his room with minutes to spare when he saw Diana
returning from her run.  Now there was just one more thing to check out
before the morning was over.  Leaving the fragment behind, he got into
the jeep and drove out to Hardesty's ranch.

The place was deserted, as he'd hoped and expected it would be.  The
front door was unlocked.

Brian walked slowly through the house, looking generally at first to see
if anything shouted out to him.  Then he went into the kitchen and
opened the refrigerator.

He found what he was looking for on the shelf of the refrigerator door:
three glass vials arranged in a row.  Behind them were the disposable
syringes in sealed packages.  He picked up the first vial of colorless
liquid and read the label:

SHIPLEY PHARMACEURICALS
INSULIN INJECTIONS USP (REGU=)

So Hardesty had known he was a diabetic and was under treatment.  Well,
at least that took care of one part of the puzzle. There was another
question, though.  Had Hardesty intentionally taken his own life by
purposely not using his insulin?  Or had he perhaps gotten a bad batch
of the drug?  If that was the case, the manufacturer would have to be
notified.  Brian put all three vials in the pocket of his field jacket
and left.

When he returned to the motel, he put through a call to Gregory.

"So when are you coming back?  Bethesda is awfully lonely without you."

"Soon.  I'm just about finished up here."

"And how do you like playing cowboy?" the radiologist asked jovially.

"Actually it's more like spy versus spy.  I'm not the only one snooping
around here." He told Gregory about Diana and the CDC, then mentioned
the cattle and the postmortem on Hardesty.

"Diabetic ketoacidosis, huh?"

"No question.  And that reminds me.  Get a pencil." He read off the
insulin label and the lot number.  "See if Shipley's got any other
reports of bad insulin.  That'll be your good deed for the day. I'm
bringing a sample home, and we'll put it in for assay as soon as I get
back." He then outlined his theory on the diabetic coma.

"Sounds good.  Anything else?"

"I've saved the best for last.  I found another hollow fragment.

And in the same part of the liver."

"You're jokingly"

"Only this one was empty."

"Does anyone else know about this, Brian?"

"No, just me."

"I thought you said there was a woman from the CDC."

"That's right But all she knows is that the guy had shrapnel."

"So what do you make of it all?"

"I don't know.  But the number of coincidences has just exceeded the
laws of probability.  It's time to start looking for a pattern."

"You may be right," Gregory said.  "We'll talk about it when you get
back.  And by the way, old man, be careful."

Brian hung up the phone and lay down on the bed.  Now that he had
finally stopped moving, he realized how incredibly tired he was.  A
half-hour nap would do him a world of good.  He settled more comfortably
on the bed and felt the tension draining away.

He didn't know how long he'd been lying there when in the stillness of
his room he sensed someone ...  or something.

He sat up and listened.  There was no sound.

Planting his feet stealthily on the floor, Brian stood up and went to
the door.  He peered through the keyhole.  There was no one on the other
side.

He looked around the room.  The closet door was slightly ajar, and he
could see into it from where he was standing.  Nothing. But someone had
definitely come in.  He tiptoed to the bathroom door, extended his foot
as far out in front of him as he could, and lightly pushed it open.

The shower curtain was drawn closed.  He didn't rememberleaving it that
way.  He saw a slight flutter at the base of the curtain.  He froze and
waited to see if there was any further movement.  At the same time he
took a deep breath, wiggled his fingers and arms for flexibility, and
bent his knees slightly.

Then he sprang.

He sailed diagonally across the bathroom, approaching the tub area from
the rear.  He spread his hands out wide to take in the entire expanse of
curtain, thrust forward when he hit, and clinched his arms tightly
around the human form behind it.  He ripped down the curtain from the
aluminum rod and clamped his left hand tightly over the intruder's
mouth.

Diana Keegan tried to bite through Brian's fingers.

He backed off.  "What are you doing here?" he roared.

"Ah, taking a shower?" Her eyes were wide with terror, and there was a
scream still stuck in her throat.  She bit her lower lip. "I guess I-was
eavesdropping."

"Spying.

"I guess so."

"How'd you get in here?"

She pointed to the window.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to spy on people?"

She sort of half shrugged.

"Weren't you ever punished for things like that?"

She half shrugged once more, and Brian muttered something about
permissive upbringings.

"What ...  what are you going to do?"she asked.  Her eyes were still
wide.

"I'm going to have to kill you," he replied.  His voice was absolutely
dispassionate.

She started to scream.  Brian instantly clamped his hand over her mouth
again.  "Don't scream.  I'm not going to kill you." He sighed, then took
her sharply by the arm and marched her unceremoniously into the bedroom.
He sat her down roughly on the edge of the bed.  "Now, suppose you tell
me what you were doing in here."

She looked squarely up at him looming above her.  She had quickly
regained some of her spunk.  "I was trying to find out what you were
doing here," she said defiantly.

"And what did you find?"

"Well, I found this." She reached into her jeans pocket and fished out
the small ball of gauze with the fragment inside.  He snatched it from
her.  She pointed in the direction of the telephone.  "And now I know
what it's all about."

She had turned the tables on him, the former campus radical beating out
the former SEAL.  He had underestimated her, that was for sure.  And in
spite of everything, he couldn't deny the humor in the situation.  She'd
basically done the same thing he'd done to her.

But the fact was that the situation was now altered.  She knew too much
for him to just let her go.  He stuck his hands into his back pockets,
paced, then stopped pacing, turned, and faced her directly.

"So what are we going to do about this?" he asked.

"Well," Diana said with a careful smile, "I guess we're going to have to
start trusting each other, aren't we?"

Chapter Five
THEY decided to go to the Moose Head Bar in the center of town for
lunch.  It was a rustic-looking place with knotty pine paneling,
shotguns on the wall, and a long, polished wood counter.  The namesake
of the establishment, the largest stuffed head Diana had ever seen, was
mounted on a walnut base just opposite the front door.

They were sitting in a secluded part of the bar, and he was telling her
the full story as he knew it-from Davis' coming to see him to the two
hollow fragments.  While he talked, she rested her chin on the heels of
her hands and studied his face.  The face was serious, sometimes grim
and sad, she decided, but the eyes looked as if they could be happy if
only someone had known what to do.

"So are you going to notify the police?" she asked him. "What would I
tell them?  They've already investigated the Davis case.  And Sam
Hardesty was clearly just unlucky."

"What about the fragments?"

"I don't know.  It's no coincidence that they both came from the river.
But the first one had absolutely nothing of interest in it, and the
second one was open and empty."

"Well, someone must have put them there on purpose."

"Good chance.  And as soon as I get back to Washington I want to check
into it.  But why would someone go to all the trouble of planting
something like that in two men?"

"Since Hardesty's was empty, do you think it had anything to do with the
disease outbreak?"

"thought about that, but I don't see how it could.  The evidence for how
and why he died is pretty substantial.  He was definitely in diabetic
coma."

"The CDC thinks that's a good explanation, too, by the way.  I phoned
them when I went back to my room.  They also ran a computer check of
symptoms and evidence and didn't come up with any other incidents."

:"Then you've done your job," Brian said.

"But I want to help you do your job," she stated.

Brian looked up at her.  "If I only knew what it was."

The bar was gradually filling up.  Men in cowboy hats and jeans, checked
lumbeback shirts and string ties drifted in and sat together in what
were obviously long-established patterns.  Suddenly Diana became aware
that conversation at the other tables had quieted. At the same time she
became aware of something else: she was the only woman in the room.  She
felt as if she'd somehow wandered into a men's locker room.

The lumberjacks were the dominant group in the bar.  When they went
silent and began to stare, so did everyone else.

The largest of them broke out into a broad, leering grin.  It was one of
the scariest looks she'd ever seen.  He was at least six feet six, with
a full, bushy red beard that obscured most of his face.  He stood up
slowly and ambled over in Brian and Diana's direction.

Oh, no, she thought.

He came to their table and stood looming above where Brian sat.  The man
spoke to Diana.  "You know, you're kind of cute. Don't believe I've had
the pleasure of seeing you here before."

She didn't look up.  "Folks call me Tom.  Whata they call you?"

She didn't answer him.

"I don't believe I caught that," he insisted.

"Diana," she said in a low voice.

"You must not be from around this way."

"No, ah, we're visiting."

Brian didn't say anything.  He didn't move.

"From where might that be?" the man asked.

"Atlanta."

"Is that a fact?  And him, too?"

"Washington, D.C."

"Well, you've certainly both come a long way to be with us.  So how
about you let us show you a little local hospitality?"

I Ah, thank you, but ...  that's okay."

"Oh, no trouble.  I insist." Tom waved back in the direction of his
table.  "I'd like to have you come over and say hello to my friends. I'm
sure your friend here wouldn't have any objections now, would you?" He
glared at Brian, who still said nothing.

"Look, why don't you just leave us alone?" Diana said sharply. The
lumberjack grinned and pulled her jerkily to her feet.  No one in the bar
made a move as he dragged her away from her chair. Diana looked
desperately back to Brian, sitting at the table.  His expression was
strangely calm and placid.

"Leave her alone," he said quietly.

The lumberjack stopped in his tracks.  "Did someone say something?" he
asked.

Slowly Brian stood up.  "Leave her alone," he said again.

Without letting go of Diana, the apelike man turned and marched back to
where Brian was standing.  He towered over him and must have weighed a
hundred pounds more.  He put a huge palm on Brian's shoulder and forced
him back into his chair.

"I think you need a lesson in respect," he growled.

It happened before Diana could register it all.

Brian suddenly pushed back in his chair, extended his leg straight out,
and sent his foot crashing into the lumberjack's kneecap.  As the man
reached down to grab it Brian spun out of the chair and from a crouch
whipped his leg out to the side, connecting squarely with the larger
man's midsection.  The lumberjack gasped in pain and surprise.  His eyes
were wild with anger.  He lunged for his attacker's neck, but Brian
dodged out of the way and landed a fist on Tom's jaw.  The man staggered
backward and hit the deck with a thud that shook the floorboards.

Three other lumberjacks now clambered to their feet and rushed over to
help.  One grabbed Brian's arms from behind while another punched him in
the face and stomach.  The third went for Brian's throat, but the force
of his lunge was enough to make the man holding Brian loosen his grip to
avoid the impact himself. Brian wrestled them off with surprising speed
and was suddenly unstoppable-fighting with incredible skill.  He threw
each man in turn against the wall, where they collapsed in a heap.  When
it was over, his three attackers stared at him in disbelief.

Brian took a handkerchief out from his pocket and slowly wiped his face.
All eyes in the room were on him.  He walked over to his first
assailant, the biggest lumberjack, who was now standing and rubbing his
bloody jaw in obvious pain.

"I think you ought to see a doctor about that," Brian said and walked
with Diana in the direction of the door.

"Where'd you learn to do all that?" she asked, taking his arm and making
no attempt to keep the admiration from her voice.

The bartender walked over to where Tom was standing, still stunned and
silent.  "Didn't you see his star-sapphire ring?  Anyone who'd been in
Nam woulda known he must be a navy SEAL. And you shoulda known better
than to mess with a SEAL."

"Now STAY STILL," DUNA ORDERED as she held Brian firmly by the chin and
swabbed disinfectant across the corner of his mouth. He recoiled when
she first touched him with the swab.  "I know it stings," she said, "but
we have to clean it off"

She was standing and facing him as he sat on the edge of her bed, the
first-aid kit from her equipment case opened beside him. He wasn't too
badly off, considering the pounding he'd taken.

"You don't think those men were put up to hurting you, do you?" she
asked.

"To hurting me?  Possibly, to give me a warning. But I tend to be very
dense about that sort of thing, so I'm afraid it didn't do any good."

"Take your shirt off," she instructed.

"Why?"

"To see if you need any attention."

He smiled, then stood up and removed the torn and wrinkled shirt.  He
sat down on the bed again.  She moved over next to him and spread her
fingers out across the expanse of his midsection, trying to think back
to her emergencyroom rotations and recall the proper technique for
palpating for possible subsurface trauma.

The skin had already turned a deep purple where the lumberjack had
punched him, and Brian reacted when she pressed in on it.  She could
have cried thinking of him being beaten like that. But his muscles were
exceptionally tight and hard.

She didn't know exactly when it happened.  It didn't matter really, but
gradually, by slow and leisurely stages, the examination became a
caress.  She felt his hand smoothing the back of her thick, brown hair.
He kissed her nose, her mouth, and in another moment they were in each
other's arms.  She could not believe that a man who could fight so
savagely could love so tenderly and expressively.

Later that evening Diana announced, "I want to come back to Washington
with you."

"I don't think that would be a good idea.  At least not until I find out
what's going on."

"I can help you."

"You can help me more from Atlanta," he said.  "You have computer files
there.  We need to come up with a definitive diagnosis for Hardesty's
disease."

"As long as I have the access codes, we can tap into the computer by
telephone.  Anyway, there are more important things to be followed up.
Like the fragments.  Brian, you can't keep it to yourself anymore.  The
puzzle belongs to both of us now."

He frowned.  "Yes," he replied sardonically.  "I know.  But what are you
going to tell them at work?"

"As you said before, I'm resourceful.  I'll think of something."

He seemed to mull this over a moment, but finally he said, "No.

You could be in danger if you're with me."

She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head once,
emphatically.  "I don't care."

"Look, Diana, you're not in college playing campus protester any longer.
This isn't a game."

"I know.  But I think I can help.  And I want to be with you."

Washington, D.C.

It was the first time Diana had been back in the city
since college.  On the ride in from the airport, as the cab crossed the
marble span of Arlington Memorial Bridge, Diana saw the Lincoln
Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol dome beckoning in
gleaming white against the evening sky.  Everything looked in order,
just as she had left it more than a dozen years before.

It was after dark when they arrived at Brian's apartment.  The building
was uptown, in a part of the city she'd never had much to do with. Brian
unpacked while she wandered.

The second bedroom, where she put her things, had been fixed up for a
little girl.  From the picture on Brian's nightstand she was absolutely
adorable, with his blond hair and strong features.  Her room was all
done in yellows and blues, with puppy dogs and pandas on the walls.
Diana went to the closet.  She opened it and examined the collection of
little-girl dresses hanging there.  She thought of Brian in the bar in
Montana, then tried to imagine him shopping with his daughter and buying
her these frocks.

She walked over to the dresser.  There were crayon marks on its white
Formica surface, where the young artist had gone off her paper.  A
photograph on a small table caught her eye, a framed picture of a
younger Brian, standing in a dense jungle and dressed in mud-covered
tiger-stripe camouflage utilities.  A matching tiger-stripe heret was
flopped over his left eye.  He was grinning at the camera from a face
blackened with camouflage paint, and he carrieda slide-action 12-gauge
shotgun.  All in all, Diana thought, not the kind of guy you'd want to
mess with.

Engraved on the edge of the frame was a gold eagle perched on a crossed
anchor and trident and clutching a flintlock pistol, which she took to
be the navy SEAL insignia.  It was ironically similar to the anchor and
winged caduceus of the Public Health Service emblem.

This confirmed what the man in the bar had said: he had been a navy
SEAL.  One of a group of the most elite, highly trained secret commando
killers.  Back when she was in college, when the Vietnam War was at its
worst, Diana had decided that she could never love a man who had taken
lives.  Did it mitigate in his favor, she wondered now, that the man in
question had subsequently saved many other lives?

"I'm sorry," Brian said.  He'd come up quietly behind her.  "For some
reason, that happens to be Katie's favorite picture of me."

"Oh, that's okay," Diana replied.  The photograph still held her
attention.  "But I can't believe that's really you,"
"it's really me,
all right."

"Well, you certainly weren't mean-looking, were you?"

"That's the image we SEALS were trying to cultivate."

It was late by now.  Diana hurriedly unpacked her duffel and realized
she had no clean clothes left.  When she'd packed, she hadn't planned on
staying away longer than the weekend.

:, Have you got something I can sleep in?" she asked Brian.

"I'm sure I can find something," he said.  He went to his room, rummaged
through his closet, and came back with an army-green T-shirt.  "Here,"
he said, tossing it to her.

She unfolded the shirt and held it up.  It was large-his size would fit
her like a nightie.  On the middle of the front in fuzzy lettering was
embossed a large C4- Above it was the translation of the symbols: COMBAT
CASUALTY CA= COURSE.  Beneath the C4 was written camp BULLIS, TEXAS, and
the slogan "war HAS No WINNERS, ONLY SURVIVORS."

"This place is full of pleasant little reminders," Diana said.

THERE wasn't much surgery scheduled for Brian at the hospital the next
morning, and he was grateful for that.  He was still fatigued from the
trip.  He was in his office, concentrating on the forms and documents on
his desk, when Gregory knocked once on the door and then slouched in.
They had talked earlier that morning, when Brian gave him the insulin
samples from Montana.

Gregory ambled over to the orange plastic chair and sat in it sideways,
his leg slung over the metal arm.

So the girl from CDC came back with you, huh?"

"Yeah.  I couldn't stop her." Knowing Gregory wouldn't be offended,
Brian went back to the paperwork.

"It's your irresistible charm, I guess.  How's it working out?"

"I don't know what that means."

"Jill and I are anxious to meet her."

This time Brian looked up.  "Let's wait awhile on that one."

Gregory shrugged.  "Suit yourself By the way, I thought you'd want to
know that the assay on that insulin bottle came back from the lab just
now."

"And?"

"Well, the good news is that we don't have to worry about the company
having sent out adulterated insulin.  The bad news is that it wasn't
insulin at all."

"What?"

"That bottle from Shipley was nothing but water.  Brian, somebody went
to a lot of trouble to change it on him."

By THE time Brian left for the day, his head was reeling.  Over and over
again he imagined someone stealing into Sam Hardesty's house and
replacing his life-giving prescription with a worthless liquid.  By the
time Hardesty could have noticed anything was wrong, it would have been
too late.

Brian crossed the pedestrian bridge to the parking garage where he'd
left his car.  Since it was rush hour, he wanted to avoid Wisconsin
Avenue.  Instead, he went out the hospital's side entrance and onto
Jones Bridge Road, a good shortcut.  The light was with him, so he
pulled right into the flow of traffic.

Almost as soon as Brian made the turn a kid in a pickup truck came
whizzing by and suddenly cut in front of Brian's Volvo.

Brian slammed on the brakes.  Nothing happened.  He pumped them
furiously.  Still nothing.  The pedal hit the floor.  He jerked up the
hand brake.  It slowed him slightly, but not enough.

There was no time to do anything else.  He saw an expanse of grassy hill
just up ahead on the right that led to a chain link fence by a golf
course.  He quickly maneuvered into the right-hand lane and swerved the
car off the road and into the bank.  The Volvo bounced violently, and he
cracked his head on the ceiling.

He hit the chain fence with his right front wheel and heard the sound of
metal ripping.  The car dug a trench of several hundred feet as he was
thrown from side to side.  Thank goodness he was wearing his shoulder
belt.

Finally the car came to a stop.  Slowly, carefully, Brian tested the
various parts of his body to see that nothing was cut or broken. He'd
been extremely lucky.  He threw his weight against the door and forced
it open, then staggered from the car.

GREGORY Cheever had just gotten home when the phone rang.

"Can you come get me?" Brian asked.

"Where are you?" Gregory said.

"The Volvo place on River Road.  They just towed my car."

"Is everything all right?"

"Sort of I'll explain when you get here."

"My Godly" Gregory exclaimed when he arrived at the dealer's and saw the
car.  "What a strange thing for the brakes to give out all at once, and
with no warning."

"Stranger than you think," Brian said.  "Volvo uses a dual braking
system.  It's one of the reasons I bought the car.  If one system fails,
the other should still deliver the braking power.  Both systems don't
fail at the same time, not on their own."

"So then .  .  ."

"That's right," Brian said.  "And look at this."

He brought Gregory around to the front of the car, had him kneel, and
pointed up behind the bumper.  There was a little box wrapped in tape
with wires coming out of it.

"What is it?"

"That's a blasting cap.  Don't worry, I've already defused it. And this
is a container of Composition C-three.  It's a highly effective plastic
explosive that catches fire easily.  We used it a lot in Nam."

"What sets it off?  A timer?"

"it can, but not in this case.  Look closely over here.  A tiny plunger
attached to the blasting cap, whose head rests directly against the
inside of the bumper.  If I'd made a head-on contact with anything, it
would have been 'kiss me good-bye."'

"SOMEONE'S just tried to kill you!" Diana exclaimed.  "Why aren't you
upset?"

"I am upset," Brian quietly assured her.

"Then why aren't you showing it?"

"What good would that do?  It wouldn't change anything.  Some one would
still be trying to kill me, and I'd be out of control." He stood up,
walked across the room, and stared out the window.

"Sometimes I really don't understand you," Diana called after him from
the sofa.

They were in the living room of Brian's apartment.  The reflection of
evening traffic and the streetlights on Connecticut Avenue moved gray
shadows across the ceiling.  Gregory and Jill were there with them.
Diana had spent the day writing her field report on the Montana case.
She was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and Brian's C4 T-shirt, since
she'd been in the middle of doing laundry when they all showed up. Brian
had introduced her quickly. And after that, no one had said anything for
a while.

"What about going to the authorities?" Diana suggested.

"The police interviewed me after the accident," Brian replied. "If they
come up with anything, fine.  But I don't think they will."

"Probably not," Diana agreed.  "You haven't given them anything to go
on.  Did you say anything about the fragments?"

"No," he replied testily.

"Why not?  Why do you insist on playing secret agent?"

He came back to the sofa and sat sideways, facing her.  He put one hand
on her shoulder.  "Look, Diana, I'm not making a game of this.  Whoever
fooled around with my car is pretty sophisticated and obviously has good
sources of intelligence.  The local police aren't set up for this kind
of thing."

She stared straight at him.  "What about the FBI?"

"You can't just call up the FBI.  There's no motive, no suspects.
There's no evidence of anything within their jurisdiction."

Up until this point the two visitors had been mere spectators, but now
Gregory sat forward in his chair.  "I understand what you're saying,
Brian," he said, "but Diana's right.  You can't just sit back and do
nothing."

"I never said I was going to do nothing," Brian replied.

"I mean, they failed this time," Gregory continued.  "But whoever it is,
won't they try to get you again?"

"Could be," Brian said.  "But they'll realize they've blown one
well-planned chance.  The greatest risk for professionals is exposure.
So the odds are they won't try again right away."

"Somehow I'm not taking much comfort from those odds."

"Neither am I," Brian agreed.  "But one thing is for sure.  If they know
who I am and what I've been doing, they know who I've been associating
with.  Anyone close to me is no safer than I am."

Gregory blanched.  "So what do you think we ought to do?"

"I'm not sure," Brian replied.  "But whatever we do, we're going to need
help."

"Who do we know who'd be willing to help us-someone we can trust?" said
Diana.

It was a question Brian Thorpe had thought about deeply.  In his
experience he had come across only one group of people he knew he could
absolutely depend on.

He stood up, removed his wallet from his back pocket, and hunted for the
slip of paper on which he'd written down the unlisted home telephone
number of one member of that group.

Chapter SIX
San Francisco, California

Hugh Stanway was tall, broad, and
barrel-chested.  He had dark, nearly colorless eyes and a square jaw.
His hair was steel gray, midway between curly and wavy.

The Men of Action editorial offices occupied several floors high up in
one of the modern steel towers of the Embarcadero Center.  Stanway's
private sanctum was a large, glass-walled corner suite that overlooked
the entire bay.  In his mind it was the most magnificent urban vista in
the United States.

Every morning at o830 hours Stanway met with his executive assistant,
Cassandra Melville, for a "situation briefing." He sat behind a massive
oak desk, while Cassie sat opposite in one of the steel-frame lounge
chairs upholstered in tiger-stripe camouflage canvas.  All the chairs in
the suite were covered with it.

"Okay, what have we got today?" Stanway asked her.

She studied the clipboard balanced on her knee.  "The story on the
political instability in Africa has come in."

"How is it?"

"Good.  A real action piece.  It's slugged African Trouble Spots. We
were thinking of using that for the headline, too."

"Okay.  What's next?"

Cassie looked down at her list again.  "We've got an investigative
report on the Mlas.  Does Congress or the Department of Defense know
more than they're letting on?"

"Good.  Let me see it as soon as you can.  I want to write an editorial
to go along with it."

"Fine.  There's nothing else that can't wait."

"I've got something, then," Stanway said.  "Take down these names:
Anthony "Sonny' Lofton, San Bernardino, California

Maxwell Craig,
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Christopher Schuyler, Little Compton, Rhode
Island

Tyrrell Jefferson, Washington, D.C."

"Who are they?" Cassie asked.

"They're all former marines with the Seventh Marine Amphibious Unit out
of Dong Ha in 1969.  They were one of the last marine regiments to be
pulled out of Vietnam.  I want a background done on each one of them."

"Is it all right if we talk to them personally?"

"It's all right, but you can't do it," Stanway replied.  "They're all
dead."

Moscow, U.S.S.R.  The black Volga sedan with official plates pulled up
to the guard station in front of Two Dzerzhinsky Square.  Alone in the
back seat was Andrey Stoltz, trying to look nonchalant while the driver
handed over his credentials.  He had worked in this building for years
at the beginning of his career and had reported back countless times
since then.  But there was something about the ornate edifice that never
failed to intimidate.

This meeting was to be chaired by Anatory Nikolayey, deputy chief of
Directorate S, Stoltz's immediate superior.  Directorate S was
responsible for all committee clandestine operatives throughout the
world.

Inside the meeting room Stoltz was greeted by familiar faces.

"I believe you know Aleksander Kuznetzoy of Service I and Boris
Polyakovsky of Directorate T," Nikolayey said as he ushered Stoltz to
his assigned place at the table.  Stoltz wasn't surprised to see someone
from Directorate T at the meeting.  After all, this matter could be said
to fall under the general heading of technology.  "And we've also asked
Dr.  Yury Mironenko of the Zagorsk Scientific Research Institute to join
us."

Stoltz extended his hand to the scientist, who shook it formally.

Nikolayey quickly called the group to order.  "Let us review the
information thus far," he began.  "Comrade Stoltz will be returning to
Washington this evening, and I do not want to detain him any longer than
is absolutely necessary.  At the same time, I very much wanted him here,
since without his close attention to detail this episode might have
slipped between our fingers."

Stoltz acknowledged the congratulatory nods bobbing around the worn
oaken table.

"We have two significant pieces of intelligence to work with,"
Nikolay4py went on.  "First, we have now made sufficient observation to
conclude that Commander Brian Thorpe of the United States Navy has
become involved in the case.  Recently he was sent to the state of
Montana to investigate the incident there."

A series of photographs taken of Commander Thorpe, obviously with a long
telephoto lens, appeared on a screen at the end of the room.  In some of
the pictures Thorpe was seen with an attractive woman with long dark
hair.  When Nikolayey had clicked through the photographs, he continued
his commentary.  "It is not clear whether Thorpe is reporting through
traditional command channels or whether he is on special assignment.
There is some evidence of interagency cooperation here."

Aleksander Kuznetzoy removed his tortoise-rim glasses and began cleaning
the lenses with a crumpled handkerchief.  It was the signal that he was
prepared to make a pronouncement.  Everyone looked in his direction.

"If my aging memory does not fail me, comrades, there was discussion
earlier in the course of this enterprise as to whether Commander Thorpe,
or anyone else who strays too close to the fact, might be physically
enjoined from further inquiry."  Leave it to Kuznetzoy to bring that up,
Stoltz thought.  That was always the way with the old guard.  When in
doubt, purge.

"There are two important considerations in that regard, Aleksander,"
Nikolayey answered.  "The first is the workability of such a scheme
without tipping our own hand to the other side. And second, there is the
question of whether he might not lead us in the direction we wish to
pursue-that is, to fill in the critical gaps in our own knowledge.  This
brings me to a significant piece of information.  Thorpe has enlisted
the services of Hugh Stanway, his former comrade in the navy SEALS.  If
you check the background dossiers provided to each of you, you will note
that Stanway is a professional adventurer who has been repeatedly
employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.  So I think you can grasp
the implications."

Stoltz settled back in his chair.  Soon they would be getting into his
field of expertise.

"Now, before we engage in any further discussion," Nikolayey said,
"perhaps we should hear from Dr.  Mironenko for the practical
considerations."

Atlanta, Georgia.  "So what happened was he actually showed up here at
the door.  Didn't call or anything, just showed up with a big bunch of
roses in his hand.  I guess he wanted to surprise you. Well, the
surprise was definitely on him when I said you were in West Deer Creek,
Montana!" A huge grin spread across Sharon Mowbray's face.

"What did he say?" asked Diana.

"He didn't say anything.  just stood there with his mouth open.

Finally I said, "You must be Bill,' and then he nodded."

"I suppose I really should feel guilty," Diana admitted.

"I suppose you should," Sharon replied, and they looked straight at each
other, barely suppressing giggles of conspiracy.

"I'm sorry I put you in such an awkward position," Diana said, growing
serious again.  "I had no idea he'd just come over like that.  But
that's the way he's always been.  Likes to keep the other person off
balance."

They were sprawled out on the living-room floor.  Diana had only gotten
back into town that afternoon.  In fact, her appearance at the apartment
had been as much of a surprise to Sharon as Bill Eschenberger's had
been.  Diana hadn't wanted to come back to Atlanta at all just then. But
there was nothing more she could do in Washington.  She and Brian both
had to admit to that.  More to the point, as Brian explained to her,
there was the danger.

"But when can I see you again?" she had asked him as he dropped her off
at National Airport.

"I'm not sure," he had responded.  "We're going to have to let things
cool off for a while."

Cool off.  She hadn't had the heart to ask him how he meant that. "He
really was good-looking," Sharon was saying.  "From the way you talked
about Bill, I didn't know what to expect."

Diana's mind drifted while Sharon was talking.  She thought about Brian.
It was strange that he and she were so similar in such different ways.
Last night they'd gotten to musing over things, talking about the war
that represented such a gulf between them and that at the same time
represented the experience they had most vitally in common. He'd told
her about some of his combat experiences.  How anyone could go through
that and come away sane was incredible.  And yet, in a moment of
extraordinary candor, he'd admitted to her, "I'd be lying if I said it
wasn't the most thrilling experience I've ever had."

And then, when she went on to tell him about what she was doing in the
antiwar movement at the same time, she found herself saying, "I've never
felt as fully alive as I did then."

Suddenly Diana realized she didn't know if she'd ever see Brian again
or, if she did, whether any of the closeness would still be there.  All
she could do for the time being was go about her business.  Tomorrow,
when she went to work, she'd clean up her report on the trip and follow
up the specific symptomatology on the computer to see if anything else
kicked out.  Getting back to a normal routine was what she most needed
now.

Washington, D.C.  It was a week during which every car running a yellow
light was bearing straight down on him, every tray dropped in the
cafeteria was a gunshot, each corner turned held the threat of ambush.
It was like being back in the jungle again, having to live constantly at
the top of his senses.  Only things had been different then.  He had
been a lot younger.

Brian was alone in his apartment.  It had been his weekend to take
Katie, and the emptiness of not having her was as great inside him as it
was in the air around him.  But he knew he couldn't risk it.  He had
called Lizzie and told her he might have been exposed to something at
the hospital this past week, so it would probably be best if she kept
the child.

What a life, he thought, in which the way you protect people close to
you is by keeping them far away.  And that was when he began thinking
about Diana.  Actually, he'd been thinking about her all along, he
realized.  She was so unusual.  Such a strange, unpredictable
combination of spunk and independence and vulnerability.  And it came
across in everything she was.

Not that it Was a perfect mesh.  Far from it.  And no matter what
happened, it probably never could be.  But that was probably what made
the chemistry work between them.  With Lizzie, he realized, he'd always
been looking for the formula for perfect love and harmony, the magic
answer that was finally going to make it right between them.  Anything
that jarred the fragile domestic equilibrium represented a material
threat to the marriage.  And when it dawned on them at last that they'd
never find their ideal peace, there turned out to be no fallback
position for them.  There was nowhere to grow but apart.

The phone rang once.  Less than a complete ring, really, as he snatched
the receiver off its cradle.  His heart was pounding.  No question, it
was all getting to him.

"Hello?"

"Brian, it's Stanway.  How are you?  You hanging in there okay?" The
voice was comforting-firm, deep, and steady.

"Sure, Hugh.  But I hate it."

"Of course you do.  Only dumb kids, like we used to be, like it."

"I'm glad you called," Brian said, a sense of calm returning. "It's good
to be able to talk to someone."

"Well, let me tell you what I've got here, son." Stanway naturally took
control.  "I want you to know, I put my best people to work on this for
you, Bri-people you can trust.  Let me give you the rundown one at a
time.  We've got a number of suggestions."

Brian picked up a notepad next to the phone.  "Go ahead, Hugh."

"Right.  First, this guy Christopher Schuyler.  An accident at sea
doesn't give you much to go on.  Weather and water conditions around
there are unpredictable.  Technically speaking, anything could have
happened.  On the other hand, from all reports this Schuyler was an
experienced sailor.  People who have sailed with him say there wouldn't
have been many situations out there he couldn't have handled.  "Still,
I'd have to call this one a wash.

"Let's go on to Tyffell Jefferson in D.C.  As far as we could tell, he
wasn't the kind of guy who'd ever take his own life.  Nothing at all in
his background points to suicide.

"Now, here's where it gets a mite touchier.  Maxwell Craigthe great
white hunter.  I don't know if you've ever been deer hunting up in
Pennsylvania, but those woods are crawling with gunners.  It's real
strange that no one saw anything.  What's even stranger is that the
hunter who shot him was never seen or heard from.  Through our own
contacts we managed to obtain the bullet that was removed from Craig's
body.  It was a 165-grain match bullet, and it was fired from a
Steyr-Mannlicher SSG."

"I didn't know you could identify a weapon without having it to match up
with the bullet."

"There are ways, my friend, if you know what you're doing. Anyway, the
SSG is not the kind of thing you'd bring along to take out your average
deer.  Strictly for people."

"Well, this puts things in perspective," said Brian.

"There's more," Stanway added.  "Anthony Lofton.  We checked out the
California highway patrol accident report.  Nothing suspicious shows up.
He was definitely intoxicated.  But according to his wife, he'd started
complaining of abdominal pains not too long before the accident.  He'd
gone to his regular doctor, who didn't find anything.  So then he came
here to Palo Alto to see a Dr.  Calvin Chandler Harley, at Stanford
Medical Center."

"Cal Harley," Brian intoned.

"I thought the name might ring a bell.  He'd been a surgeon with the
Third Marine Division while you were a medic."

"That's right.  He operated out of the headquarters at Phu Bai.  I can't
tell you how many times I came in and out of there.  I even scrubbed
with him a few times.  The guy was one first-rate surgeon.  Kind of cold
and abrupt personally.  By all accounts he's the leading light of the
department at Stanford now."

"Apparently the late Mr.  Lofton held the same view.  Because when he
didn't get any satisfaction from his own doc, he said Harley was the
only one he trusted.  Lofton's wife said he'd been wounded over in Nam,
and Harley had been the one who put him back together."

"Did Harley treat him when he went to Stanford?"

"Yes.  He performed a procedure called a laparotomy."

"That's just a general term for an operation through the abdominal wall,
usually exploratory.  I wonder what he came up with."

Brian thought for a moment.  "Hugh, let me take it from here."

"Whatever you say, buddy.  You know best."

"I don't know how to thank you for what you've done," Brian stated
simply.

"Don't worry about it," Stanway replied.  "Just remember one thing: the
pledge we took years ago was a pledge for life, and none of us treats it
lightly.  We're still a team.  Always will be."

"I'll remenber that, Hugh.  And I'll talk to you soon."

"See that you do, cowboy," said Stanway.

Atlanta, Georgia.  Diana was sitting at the desk in her small, cramped
office when the telephone rang.  It was Brian.

"Can anyone hear you?" he asked.

She didn't think anyone would bother, but told him to hold on, got up,
and closed her office door just to be sure.  She came back to her chair
and cradled the telephone receiver comfortably against the side of her
face as he explained his proposition.

"My first thought was to go see Dr.  Harley myself about Lofton," Brian
said.  "But I got to thinking that no matter what I say, one military
surgeon questioning a former military surgeon about a patient who was a
marine has got to seem like a challenge.  He could call the chief of
surgery here and start asking questions."

Then a silence. "With your CDC credentials," he went on, "you could come
up with a legitimate-sounding reason for interviewing him."

Diana realized how difficult it must be for Brian to ask her for
something like this.  Back when they were in Montana arguing about
whether she would come to Washington with him, she had convinced him by
saying she could help him.  But he had never taken her up on it.  Now he
was opening the door to her, however slightly.  And whatever it took,
she was determined not to give him the chance to close it again.

"I'll take care of it," she said.  "I'll get on it right away and call
you as soon as I've got anything."

"Okay," Brian replied.  "I'll talk to you."

She hung up and immediately began considering the functional elements of
the plan.  Saying yes to Brian's request was one thing, but figuring out
how to accomplish it was another.  There was the matter of traveling out
to California and back.  How was she going to account for her absence?
Was Herb, her boss, going to chew her up when he found out?  There had
to be a way.  She prodded herself.

Well, what she had going for her was that Stanford had been her med
school and Harley had already been affiliated with the hospital by the
time she got there.  All the Epidemic Intelligence Service people were
expected to do independent research, so she could say she was going out
to Stanford for consultation.

Yes, the research gambit would be the one she'd have to go with.  And
then hope for the best.

Palo Alto, California.  It was good to be back at Stanford, unong all
those romantically Romanesque buildings with their red tile Spanish
roofs and gracefully arched colonnades.  The campus was bright with
spring.  Flowers were everywhere she looked, in the courtyards and along
the miles of walkways.

Calvin Chandler Harley had agreed to meet her at noon in his office in
the medical center.  She had purposely told him very little about the
reason for her visit, other than that she was conducting an
investigation for the Centers for Disease Control.

"I appreciate your taking the time to see me on such short notice,"
Diana said.  "I know how busy you are."

"Not at all," the surgeon said.  "I'm always happy to help when I can,
especially a Stanford alumna."

Harley had a spacious, stylish office with a separate reception area,
which was where he had conducted her for the interview.

"We're doing a longitudinal follow-up study of posttraumatic stress
disorder in Vietnam veterans," she informed him.  "We're focusing
specifically on individuals who were injured in combat."

Harley nodded silently as she spoke.  He was a fairly small man,
immaculately dressed, but beginning to show his age, with thinning gray
hair and heavy owllike glasses.  Still, there was an air of confidence
and intensity about him that Diana recognized immediately as the mark of
a first-rate surgeon.

"One of the subjects assigned to me was Anthony Lofton," she explained.
"According to his service record, he was injured in combat and then
operated on by you.  His wife told me that he was experiencing
considerable discomfort and came in to see you-"

"His wife?" Harley said.  He arched his heavy eyebrows.

"That's right.  He was married.  No children."

"Yes, I know he was married.  I'm just a little confused as to why this
information would come from his wife and not him."

Suddenly she realized.  There would be no reason he would know anything
beyond the time he last saw Lofton.  "I'm sorry," she stammered.  "Mr.
Lofton is now deceased."

Harley's brow instantly creased, and the color drained from his face.
"What! When?  How did this happen?"

"Not long after you treated him here.  An automobile accident on the San
Bernardino Freeway in Los Angeles.  I'm sorry to have to be the one to
tell you this.  I know it's never easy to lose a patient, especially one
you've known this many years."

"Sometimes it's less easy than others," Harley said quietly, shifting
his gaze to the floor.  He looked back up after a time.

"Since the matter is now, ah, somewhat academic because of what's
happened," Diana said, "do you mind if I ask you about the specific
procedure you used with Mr.  Lofton?"

"Anything you like," Harley answered.

"My understanding is that he was suffering from intermittent but severe
abdominal pain.  How was he behaving when he came in?" she inquired.
"Was he agitated?"

Harley thought for a moment.  "Not, particularly.  He was in pain, but
under the circumstances he was quite rational and pleasant.  We did a
series of X-ray tomograms, and from these we decided that his pain had
something to do with his shrapnel injuries in Vietnam."

Diana felt her pulse quicken and worked hard not to show it.

"So we did a laparotomy.  Turns out it was the shrapnel itself."

At this Harley sighed.  "We took out three good-sized chunks of metal,
one from the liver, one from the colon, and one at the base of the
stomach.  As far as I knew, that took care of it for him. Recovery was
quick and uneventful."

"Was there ...  was there anything at all unusual about the shrapnel
fragments you removed?"

"How exactly do you mean?"

"I don't know," Diana said, trying again to be casual.  "It's just that
when you mentioned fragments, it reminded me that we've had a couple of
reports in this study of peculiar varieties of shrapnel, odd shapes and
the like."

"I saw a lot of shrapnel during my two years in Vietnam," Harley stated.
"And I can tell you it comes in all shapes and sizes, so I can't say
that one piece would stand out over another to me. Anything that was
large or threatening, we always took out right away.  The rest stayed in
unless or until it started causing problems, which is apparently what
happened with Mr.  Lofton."

"No, this didn't have to do with size or shape so much as what you'd
call structure." Diana thought for a moment.  "The shrapnel pieces you
removed from Mr.  Lofton, did you examine them closely?"

"Reasonably so, I should think."

"And did any of them look as if they'd been hollowed out or closed on
one end with a tiny stopper?"

"No, I don't think so," Harley said, disquieted.  "You've found others
like this?"

"Ah, those are only the reports I've received," she said.

"Well, I'm sure I would have studied Mr.  Lofton's shrapnel in the
operating room, and I certainly didn't notice anything there."

"Do you still have the fragments, by any chance?"

"No.  I threw them out, just as I did back in Vietnam.  Sorry."

"Please don't be.  I'm sure it's nothing." She closed her spiral
notebook and put it back in the bag by her feet.  Then she rose and
shook his hand.  "You've been very kind to talk to me, Dr.  Harley, and
I hope I may call on you again if necessary."

"By all means," he said.  "Whatever I can do to help."

Harley watched in silence until Diana disappeared through his door. Then
he walked casually over to the window and waited until she emerged into
view on Campus Drive, passing by the anatomy building.  When she was
finally out of sight, he went back over to his desk.  He pressed the
last button on the telephone console, waited for the tone, then punched
in the code that had been given to no one else.  There were two rings,
then a beep.

"Yes?" came the voice at the other end.

"We're in trouble," Calvin Chandler Harley quietly announced.

Chicago, Illinois.  By the time she'd booked her flight home, there were
no nonstops available, and Diana had had to take a routing through
O'Hare.  That airport was always such a busy mess.  Today was no
exception.  Now, as she walked down the crowded concourse to her
connecting plane, a minor epiphany occurred to her.  She did not want to
go home.

Stanford was still very much with her.  She would like to have stayed
there as long as she could, and the prospect of going back and facing
her apartment and then Herb and even Sharon filled her with
free-floating anxiety.  It didn't take her long to decide.

She walked over to the first airline counter she saw, found the flight
she was looking for, then exchanged her ticket Once she had the new
ticket in hand, she felt a strange sense of liberation.  She found a
bankof telephones, stepped into a booth, picked up the receiver, and
dialed, using her credit card number. She anxiously hoped he'd be home.

"Hello?" she heard Brian say after the second ring.

"Hello, yourself," she replied with flooding relief.  Then, snuggling as
best she could into the phone booth, she said, "I've got the report from
Palo Alto.  How'd you like it delivered in person?"

Chapter Seven
Alexandria, Virginia

She didn't spot him until he came right up behind
her and put his hand on her shoulder, but that didn't really surprise
her, because he was good at not being seen when he didn't want to be.
And airports were always a good place to get lost in the crowd.

"My own personal commando," Diana said teasingly.

"Could have had you there," Brian said playfully and gave her a light
kiss on the lips.

She latched onto his arm and nuzzled her cheek tenderly against his
shoulder.  She had thought he might be angry that she'd come back to
Washington on a whim like this.  It had been impossible to tell from the
phone conversation.  But now that they were together he seemed as glad
to see her as she was to see him. It hardly mattered that she hadn't
thought beyond tonight and that tomorrow morning she'd have to think up
some powerfully good excuse for not being in Atlanta.  Herb was going to
cream her.

"Were you able to get all the information I asked for?" she inquired.

"I think I've got it all," he said.  "I told Jill what you needed after
you called, and she was going to try and figure out a way to pull as
much of it as she could out of the computer.  She and Gregory are coming
over tonight after dinner, and we'll start wading through the data."

"So my timing in coming here was actually pretty good."

"Yes, I'd say your timing was pretty good indeed." He leaned over and
kissed her again.

Atlanta, Georgia.  Sharonfelt strange being alone in the apartment while
it was still light out.  It had been so long since she'd spent an
evening by herself like this, she hardly knew what to do. First, she
decided to luxuriate in a bath.  Then she put on her bathrobe and sat
cross-legged on her bed to do her nails.  Tomorrow morning she would be
back to the grind, back to being a serious high-pressure lawyer.  For
tonight she was determined to pamper herself completely.  She had had
her annual review today, and it had gone splendidly.

She took off her robe, hung it on the hook on the bathroom door, and
went over to the closet to leisurely select fresh clothes for the
evening.  She settled on a blue chiffon blouse and matching skirt.

Diana should be home anytime now, she thought as she dressed.  Actually
she should have been here already.

The doorbell rang.  That was funny.  Who would be calling on them at
this time of night-and without using the intercom from downstairs?

She looked through the peephole in the door.  There wasn't anyone there.
It was probably a neighbor, just dropping off some mail that had ended
up in the wrong box.

She opened the door.

Instantly two hands grabbed at her shoulders, spun her around, and
pushed her back inside the apartment.  The door slammed behind her.  She
jerked her head around.  The man was wearing a ski mask and tight rubber
surgical gloves, and there was another man behind him who wore the same
thing.  She froze in terror.

"What do you want?" she gasped, although she knew there weren't many
possibilities.

The first man held her tight around the neck and pulled her to the floor
while the other ran into the bedrooms.  He came back carrying something
in his hand.  Sharon couldn't tell what it was.

Then the first man took something out of his pocket, put his gloved hand
tightly over her nose and mouth, and the world went black.

Washington, D.C.  The computer printouts-heaps of wide, dull green
perforated pages, compressed into tight little stacks that made their
contents seem even more formidable-were spread across the dining-room
table.  Jill had been running queries on the computer all afternoon,
arranging telephone hookups with navy data bases across the country.

"Getting in wasn't as hard as you might think," Jill said.  "Remember,
even though personnel files are classified, a whole lot of people have
access to them.  They have to, so people can be paid, processed,
reassigned, and so on.  The bigger problem is figuring out what to ask
for, so you don't get overwhelmed with material."

She paused.  "Even so, we've got our work cut out for us."

They had spent the first half hour hearing Diana's report from Stanford.
Now they prepared to correlate it with what Jill called the raw data.

"Let's begin with what we know," Jill said.  "All of the subjects were
enlisted-grade marines serving with the Third Division. They were all
serving in the same part of Vietnam during the same period in 1969,
which happens to be the time that Brian was over there with the Third
Division as a medical corpsman.  Further, they were all assigned to
Colonel Blagden's unit.  Now let me show you all how to read these
things.  It isn't difficult, but you've got to get the hang of it."

They all gathered around Jill, and she instructed them in the finer
points of reading computer files.  Then she handed around the files,
keeping two for herself The room was silent for many minutes, the only
sound being the occasional scratching of pen or pencil on a yellow legal
pad.

"Look at this," Diana said finally.  She held up her printout.

"I've got a note of a combat injury for Christopher Schuyler."

"What kind of injury?" Gregory asked.

"It doesn't say," she replied.  "But he got a Purple Heart for it.
That's how I found it, through the citation."

"I wonder if it was a fragmentation wound," Brian said.  "Look up the
date."

She scanned the printout, then compared it to the notes she'd taken on
Sonny Lofton's file at Stanford.  "The same date as Lofton."

A hushed silence fell over the room.  All four looked tentatively at one
another.  Then Brian, who was studying Tyrrell Jefferson's file, and
Jill, who had Maxie Craig's, looked reflexively back down at their
printouts.

"I've got an entry here," Brian stated solemnly.  "Jefferson also has a
Purple Heart."

"Craig's got one, too," said Jill.  "So does Schuyler.  And the dates
match up perfectly."

And again they all looked up, and their eyes met in silence.  Six
marines, including Davis and Hardesty, from the 3rd Division. Six
injuries at the same time.  And more than fifteen years later, six
deaths.  Somehow the first two facts had to relate to the third.

How serious had each of the wounds been?  Brian wanted to know.  And
were they all from shrapnel?  Once they knew what they were looking for,
the corroborating information was readily available in the personnel
files.  Each marine showed a medical leave entry for surgery at the base
hospital at Phu Bai.  But none of them showed discharge or reassignment
after the procedure.  In fact, each man returned to combat shortly after
the surgery.

"Does that make sense?" Jill inquired.

"Sure," Brian answered.  "Most fragments are tiny and don't penetrate in
a vital spot.  There are a lot of men still walking around today
carrying a load of World War Two shrapnel."

The inquiry continued.  Calvin Chandler Harley had operated out of the
Phu Bai base.  But had he performed all the operations?

The file didn't contain that information.  But if he did-and Brian said
there was a good chance of it-Harley must have been an iron man.  This
had been a period of intense action for the marines near the
demilitarized zone.  Fighting had been almost constant and combat
casualties high.  With luck they could get the information from the
individual medical files.  He'd request them through channels.

"Then there's the liver finding," Brian went on.  "I took a closed
fragment capsule from Radley Davis' liver and an open one from Sam
Hardesty's, up in Montana.  That placement is certainly more than
coincidence."

"And one of the fragments Harley removed from Sonny Lofton was from the
liver," Diana added.  "Is there anything about liver involvement in any
of the other records?"

"No," Jill replied, scanning once more to be sure.

"There wouldn't be," Brian affirmed.  "If you got any specific medical
note at all, it would only be on the pieces taken out, not the ones left
in."

"Okay, then," Diana said.  "We should be going one step further now in
identifying other subjects who fit the case definition: members of this
Third Marine Division who served at the same time and who were also
wounded by shrapnel.  And then go out and find them."

"To see if any of these men have strange capsules in them?" Gregory
inquired.

"Exactly."

"Sounds like a good idea," Brian said.  He turned to Jill.  "Can it be
done?"

"Just about anything can be done," she said.  "The question is, Can it
be done manageably when you've got so much data to cull from?  Bxit
we'll see what we can do." She and Gregory got up to leave.  "First
thing in the morning," she told Brian.

"That reminds me," Diana said.  "First thing in the morning I've got to
call in sick to my office."

Brian stood up with Jill and Gregory anawalked them toward the front
hall.  When he closed the door behind them, he turned around to find
Diana standing in front of him.  She put her arms around his neck.  "So,
are you glad I'm here?" she asked.

"Of course I am." He laughed and held her tight.

just then the telephone began to ring.

Diana sighed as Brian went to answer it.  "Hello," he said into the
receiver.

A sobbing voice filled the line.  "Is-is Diana there?"

Diana saw his face turn suddenly grim.  He handed her the phone.  "Yes?"

"Diana?" The sobbing continued.  "It's Sharon."

"Sharon! What's wrong?  Where are you?"

"I'm-I'm at home.  I ...  When you didn't come back, I thought maybe you
were there."

"Sharon, what happened?  Are you all right?"

"I guess ...  I don't know.  They attacked me."

"Who did?" Diana demanded.  She motioned for Brian to get on the
extension in the bedroom.

"Two men.  They just broke in."

"Okay, tell me exactly what happened."

Sharon told her the story, and Diana listened as patiently as she could,
trying to contain her own sense of terror.

"Did you call the police?"

"Uh-huh.  They came and looked around, took pictures, and then they took
me to the hospital."

"Were "You ...  Sharon, were you ...  raped?"

"No.  No, I wasn't.  I thought I was going to be." Diana could feel her
roommate shuddering on the other end of the phone. "One of the men had
me down on the floor until-"

"Until what, Sharon?"

"Until the other one came in from the bedrooms carrying something.  He
showed it to the one holding me down.  They both stared at me.  It
seemed like a long time, and I thought they were going to kill me right
there.  But then they put something over my face, and I passed out."

"What was it that he showed him?"

"I couldn't see it at the time.  When I woke up, they were gone, and it
was on the floor beside me.  The glass was broken," she said sadly. "I'm
sorry, Diana." She wept openly again.

"The glass was broken on what?" Diana asked firmly.

"That picture from your dresser.  The picture of you."

Upperville, Virginia.  The man known as Contact to some was called
Michael Swansea by those with whom he shared a more traditional
relationship.  The house he occupied was a colonial mansion set on
eighty acres in the midst of Virginia's most exclusive hunt country. But
the five men invited to the meeting today were unable to take advantage
of the expansive house.  They had assembled in an underground room below
a small brick structure that had once been the estate's smokehouse.

The names of the men at the meeting weren't necessary in this context.
For the sake of clarity and precision, colors had been assigned.  Two of
the men-Red and Green-were still blearyeyed from travel.  They'd only
had time to change their clothes and briefly freshen up in the facility
built into the barn.  Their knitted ski masks were still in their
briefcases.

"Well, it was almost a model operation," Swansea began, wasting no time
on pleasantries.  "We did everything right, everything by the book. Only
one thing went wrong.  It was the wrong girl."

"There was no way to predict that," Red commented.  "All the
intelligence was sound.  Our information said that Dr.  Keegan would be
returning home that evening and the roommate almost always works late at
her law office."

"We'll review the entire mission in due course, as we always do,"
Swansea said.  "But for now we have to deal with the realities.  Reality
number one: Dr.  Keegan should have been home by the time we got there.
Who knows why she wasn't?  Reality number two: we expected the Centers
for Disease Control to become involved with the incident in Montana.
That would be routine. But is it merely coincidence that they are now
engaged in a study of posttraumatic stress in veterans and that Dr.
Keegan chose to interview Dr.  Harley?  These, gentlemen, are the issues
we have to deal with at the moment." He removed his glasses and drummed
them lightly on the tabletop.

"How serious is it that we didn't get the girl last night?"

Orange asked.

"That's what we've got to determine," Swansea said.  "Quite clearly Red
and Green's mission was to intercept her before she had a chance to
report.  They didn't accomplish that.  Potentially this situation could
have become almost unmanageable.

"But it didn't." Swansea stood up at this point for emphasis. "Why?
Because our intercept of CDC project listings contains no such
posttraumatic stress project."

"So then Keegan is free-lancing?" Purple asked.

There was silence around the table as the implications of this
conclusion sank in.  "I'm afraid that's what we have to assume," the
chief said.  He did nothing to hide his displeasure.

Blue put up his hand.  "How much do we think she knows?"

"Potentially as much as Thorpe."

"And how much is that?"

"We're not sure.  But to the extent he's already involved,,he can cause
us extreme problems."

"So are we going to try another operation on him?"

Swansea sat back down again.  "No.  For the time being we'll have to be
flexible."

He was about to go on to the next point when he saw the pained
expression on Green's face.  "What's the problem?" he asked.

"I was just thinking," he said.  "Under the circumstances, when we found
out we had the wrong girl last night, do you think we should have gone
ahead?

"Absolutely not," Swansea declared.  "Under the unfortunate
circumstances you did the right thing.  Once we start killing people
unnecessarily we're no better than our enemies."

Washington, D.C.  Sending Diana back to Atlanta was out of the question,
Brian had quickly decided.  The threat was no longer theoretical.  Had
she gone straight back home as she had originally planned and not come
to Washington instead, she would now be dead.  It was that simple.

Diana's own first instincts were to get back home as soon as ,possible
to be with Sharon.  But after a long go-around that lasted for most of
what was left of the night, Brian managed to convince her that the best
thing for the time being was for neither of the women to stay at the
apartment.

So Diana spent much of the next morning on the telephone to Atlanta. She
had a long, emotionally draining conversation with Sharon, trying to
convince her that with all she'd been through, she should move out for a
while.  At last Sharon had glumly agreed.

Diana hung up the phone with a sad and empty feeling in her stomach.  At
least Sharon would be all right if she stayed away from the apartment.

The second call was even more difficult.  She needed an excuse not only
to be away from her office but also out of town.  The first thing that
came to her was the "sick mother" explanation.  But it was such an
obvious cliche, she didn't think she could deliver it straight, even
over the telephone.  Furthermore, Herb probably wouldn't buy it anyway.

Instead, she decided to be sick herself.  That made much more sense.
She'd caught some kind of flu bug out in California, she would tell him,
and it had really decked her.  So instead of coming straight back to
Atlanta, she'd flown on to New York, where her mother could take care of
her until she felt better.

"How was California?" Herb asked a few minutes into the conversation.

"Terrific," she said, trying to balance enthusiasm with an aura of brave
fluey weakness.  "It was really nice to be back after all this time."

"Stanford, wasn't it?  Palo Alto?"

"Yep.  My old stomping grounds."

"How long did you manage to spend?  It was only for a couple of days,
wasn't it?"

"That's right," Diana said.  "No more than that."

"You caught a bug out there, and it's already decked you?  My, my.  As
an expert on infectious disease, doesn't it strike you a little odd that
the virus would incubate that quickly?"

Uh-oh, Diana thought.  "Well, yeah, I guess so," she said.  "I guess
maybe I picked it up back in Atlanta."

"Maybe." There was a.  long pause.  "All right, you just rest up, take
it easy, and get yourself back in shape as quick as you can. Tell you
what, why don't you give me the phone number at your mother's house in
case I have to get in touch with you?  That's Westchester County.  Area
code 914, right?"

"Right." Now she had to call her mother and have her cover for her.
Precisely what she didn't want.

"Oh, and Diana, one other thing." Herb took another one of his dramatic
pauses.  "What exactly were you doing in California?"

Diana stumbled through some response, hardly knowing what she was
saying, and got off the phone as soon as she could.

THE next two days were endless for Diana as she and Brian waited for the
responses to come back from his "official" inquiries.  He went to work
in the morning, pursuing his normal routine, leaving her all alone
during the day.  He had forbidden her to -leave the apartment under any
circumstances, to answer the door in his absence, or pick up the
telephone without his ring, hang-up, ring calling code.  She hadn't
brought any work with her, and she found it impossible to get into any
books.  There was little for her to do while he was at the hospital
except watch soap operas.

It was late evening of the third day when Brian came home with what
they'd been waiting for.

"I had to put a rush request on it," he explained.  "I figured we just
didn't have the time to let bureaucracy take its course." He held up
copies of the medical reports on the dead marines.

They settled onto the sofa in the living room together.  Diana crossed
her legs under her and faced Brian solemnly.

"This is what I found out," he reported.  "All the wounds were from
shrapnel.  From the X rays it's pretty certain that wherever else they
had fragments, each man had one in the liver, none of which was
surgically removed at the combat hospital.  And that's another
interesting thing I found out.  All the initial surgery at the Phu Bai
battalion hospital was done by the same man.  Not just Sonny Lofton but
all of them were operated on by Calvin Harley.  "He's certainly turning
out to be a key player in all this," Diana commented.  "Any other
notable coincidences?"

"If you want to call them that." His voice had suddenly grown distant.
"Every one of the men fought at Eagle's Talon."

Eagle's Talon.  Where had she heard that before?  It was a name from a
long-ago newspaper story or television broadcast.

"What happened at Eagle's Talon?" she asked.

Brian took a long time before saying anything.  He hunched over with his
forearms resting on his legs.  "Eagle's Talon was a marine engagement,"
he began somberly.  "One of the last important ones of the war.  It took
place in -a little crescent-shaped valley in the western end of the
demilitarized zone.  That's how it got its name.  From the air the
cleared land is supposed to look something like an eagle's claw.  It
happened to be in direct line with one of the major staging areas of the
Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and Cambodia.

"One day late in '69 an intelligence report came in from marine recon
saying that a large concentration of Vietcong and North Vietnamese
regulars would be assembling in the valley for a massed troop movement.
There was no time to plan a major assault, and the location made Eagle's
Talon a logistical nightmare.  So that's when they decided to send in
Colonel Blagden's Seventh Amphibious Unit to confront the North
Vietnamese and hold the position until the main units of the Third
Division could be concentrated in the area.  Pulled off properly, it
could've meant a speedup to the end of the war."

"And did they do it?" Diana asked.

He shook his head bitterly.  "Not exactly.  When the Seventh arrived
early in the morning, there were no North Vietnamese regulars to be
seen.  But a detachment of Vietcong was already there, heavily armed,
waiting.  I don't know how they slipped past recon, but they did." He
stopped and thrust his hands deep into his pockets, extending his feet
straight out in front of him on the floor.  "It was a slaughter.  No
contest."

"And how do you know so much about it?" Diana asked, afraid to hear his
answer.

"I was there.  I was the only medic to come out 'of it alive."

It required little imagination to guess what was going through Brian's
mind.  Diana felt her skin grok tense and her throat tighten. She stood
up abruptly and announced with enthusiasm that was only half forced,
"It's time to get on with things!" She knew the only thing that would do
them any good, and there was no sense waiting.

"And what things did you have in mind?" Brian asked, looking at his
watch.  It was after eleven.

"We have a tremendous amount of work to do," she replied. "First, call
Jill.  See if she'll meet us at the hospital."

"Now?"

"Now's the best time.  There won't be a lot of other people around to
ask questions.  We can sneak out of here through the garage.  I'll stay
low in the car until we get to the hospital."

They called Jill, and she sleepily agreed to meet them at the hospital.
Diana explained her plan to Brian on the drive over.

With Brian's new data they now had what amounted to a detailed case
definition: men who were in the 3rd Marine Division, 1969, 7th
Amphibious Unit, fought at Eagle's Talon, wounded by shrapnel, had a
fragment lodged in the liver, operated on by Calvin Harley at Phu Bai.

"Now," Diana explained, "we put together our control groupthat is, men
who could be described by the same set of characteristics, with one
addition: they're still alive."

It's going to take a while," Jill said when they were all together at
the hospital's data processing department.  "The computer files aren't
set up for it, so we're going to have to begin with the entire division
and work our way through."

Diana and Brian stood behind her and watched as Jill typed in the
queries one by one.  The first produced a list on the phosphorescent
screen of all the men who'd served in the 7th Unit.

From that they narrowed it down to another list, of those who took part
in Eagle's Talon, and another, of those who'd been wounded in action
that month.  There was no computerized list of Dr.  Harley's Phu Bai
patients.  Brian would have to request it in writing and hope for the
best, unless Hugh Stanway's people could get their hands on the names.
After that he would have to match up and then request another set of
individual medical records to see if the men under consideration had
actually had shrapnel wounds to their livers.

And so, Diana realized, she was condemned to an additional sentence of
house arrest in Brian's apartment, of sleeping late and watching daytime
television.  This last was the most unbearable part of all.

"I'M GOING to go Out Of my head crazy if I have to sit here another
day," Diana announced to Brian in the morning.  He was getting ready to
leave for the hospital.

Brian put his arms around her.  "Look, I know it's been hard for you,"
he said.  "But we'll have something to go on soon, maybe even today. And
anyway, we're only following your plan." He kissed her on the forehead,
then went out the front door.

Diana stewed about her situation through a morning's worth of soap
operas.  She continued stewing as she went meticulously through the
newspapers.  And she was still stewing when she went into the kitchen to
fix herself the last grilled cheese sandwich she ever hoped to eat.

Not surprising, cheese and bread were all that was left in the
apartment, since neither of them had been to the food store in the last
couple of days.  Suddenly she got angry with herself for putting up with
it all.  Who was Brian Thorpe to regulate her life and tell her where
she could and could not go?  It was time to take control back, even if
it only meant going out to buy some food.

As soon as she hit the sidewalk Diana felt as if she'd been freed from
prison.  The Washington weather was beautiful.  She quickly surveyed the
scene on Connecticut Avenue.  Everything seemed fine.  There was
absolutely nothing to worry about.  So then, with a lilt in her walk and
her handbag swinging briskly on her shoulder, Diana proceeded
triumphantly down the block toward the grocery store.

"YEP, that's her," said Green as he peered through the binoculars from
his vantage point in the apartment building diagonally across the
intersection.  They'd been occupying the top-floor flat for several days
now.

"We knew she had to come up for air eventually," said Orange. He took
the field glasses from Green and held them up to his own eyes for
confirmation.  Green picked up his notebook and entered the time and
specific location of the sighting.

Then Orange picked up the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG that had been leaning
against the wall and brought the weapon up to his shoulder.  He sighted
down the scope until he picked up the young woman walking down the west
side of Connecticut Avenue.

"Be careful with that thing," said Green.

THE three men had registered at the hotel under the sponsorship of the
Ukrainian Chess Federation.  One of them had made it very clear he
wanted a room high up in the building, with a northern exposure.  "In
the morning I don't want the sun in my eyes," he had explained to the
desk clerk.  His companion liked to rise early and so requested a room
facing east, overlooking Connecticut Avenue.  And the third visitor
liked to watch all the Americans going to work in the morning, so he
wanted a room looking downtown on the south side.  The desk clerk was
happy to comply.

Between them they had all the necessary vantage points covered.  And as
soon as they carried their bags to their respective rooms and set up
their practice chessboards for the benefit of the chambermaid, they each
assembled their tripod-mounted telescopic sights and began scanning the
areas outside their windows.

It was the man with the north-facing room who found what they were
looking for.  He called his two associates in, positioned his sight, and
had them each look through it.  "There they are," he said.  "Top floor
of that apartment block."

"You could figure they'd come here looking when they lost track of the
girl in Atlanta," one of the associates said, staring through the sight.
"One of them's got a high-powered rifle.  Do you think he's prepared to
use it?"

"I noticed that right off.  I would hope they wouldn't be so
precipitous," the first one said.

"Keep watching and pay close attention," said the third member of the
team.  "I don't want them out of our sight.  There are too many
variables all the way round now, and we don't know who knows what That
is always the most difficult phase." Then he picked up the phone, dialed
in the scrambler code, and rang up the Soviet embassy to file his
report.

As DUNA returned from the food store she mn into Brian on the elevator.
He had gotten on at the garage level and was standing there in the open
cab when she came on at the lobby, merrily swinging her plastic grocery
sack.  "Where have you been?" he shouted.

She felt her knees turning to jelly.  "I, uh .  She held the white sack
out timidly in front of her.  "We needed some things in the kitchen,"
she stammered.

"I thought I told you not to go out!"

"What do you mean, you told me!" she exploded as the frustration of the
past week poured out of her.  "Where do you get off telling me anything?
This isn't the navy or the marines."

"If I ordered you around, it was for your own good," Brian said tersely.
"I have some experience with orders.  I know why they're given.  And I
know that disobeying them can get people killed."

Diana held out her arms, as if to demonstrate that her body was still
intact.  "Well, I went out and nothing happened to me and it felt great.
No one was lurking out there to get me!"

Brian seemed unmoved.  Inside the apartment they retired to neutral
corners until they felt they'd punished each other sufficiently.  During
the uneasy truce Diana sat on the bed in Katie's room behind a closed
door.  She knew she was taking this whole thing too seriously and that
one of them should make some gesture of reconciliation before too much
time went by.

It wasn't long before she heard a knock.  Then Brian opened the door. He
asked, "Are you ready to talk?"

"Yes," Diana answered solemnly.  "What do you have to say?"

He held -up a manila folder he'd brought home with him.  "I think I have
the information you wanted." He opened the file and showed her a single
page printout.

Jill's search had yielded eight names, eight men who conformed neatly,
category by category, to the profile Diana had established.  Only two,
however, could be readily located.  Roger. Moreland was an insurance
executive living in New York City. Tim Dantley, the other name, was in
someplace called Sylvester, West Virginia.  The whereabouts.  of the
other six men were unknown.

Brian looked down at the printout.  "No one seems to know what Tim
Dantley does," he reported as he read it.  "But he's had a peck of
trouble since getting back from Nam.  History of depression, a bad skin
disease, which he claims is the effect of Agent Orange.  And"-Brian
paused-"uh-oh, suicide attempt.  At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial no
less." He shook his head. "Sounds like this guy's got enough grief
already.  Let's start with the other one.  What's his name?" He glanced
down again at Jill's list.  "Roger Moreland.  Now, what is it you want
to do with him?"

So now it was Diana calling the shots and Brian apparently willing to
follow them.  She wanted to make sure she sounded authoritative and
completely in control when she spoke.  "Well, the first thing we have to
do is interview him-extensively.  And then we have to go one step
further."

"What do you mean?"

"We've got to look inside him," Diana explained.

"What are you talking about?" Brian pressed her.

"Of all the factors we've come up with, what's the strangest single
thing?" she quizzed him.

Brian thought for a moment.  "It'd have to be the hollow capsules in the
livers."

"Right," she confirmed.  "So we do the same sort of X-ray tomograms that
made the capsule show up in Davis."

"And then?"

Diana stared back hard at him.  "And if the films show the same thing,
we go in and take it out.  It's our only possibility of finding out what
these capsules were intended to do."

Two days later Gregory picked them up before work to take them to Union
Station.  He brought with him the X rays he'd requested from Roger
Moreland's file.  He had tracked them down to the hospital at the Camp
Pendleton Marine Base, Moreland's last posting.

Gregory held one of the films up to the window.  "This is part of an
abdominal series done shortly after Moreland got back stateside.  I
asked them to send the preop films, too, of course.  But I got back a
note saying they weren't in the file.  At first I thought everything
must have gotten lost, in the shuffle when Vietnam fell. But then I
thought, Didn't the marines pull out long before the fall of Saigon?"

"That's right," Brian confirmed.  "The last of the land-based guys were
out in 1971-"

"Right," Gregory said.  "So you would have thought that as each man was
processed back home all his records would have come with him.  I mean,
the whole military moves on bureaucracy.  I've seen records all the way
back from World War One.  Now don't you think it's kind of interesting
that we can't locate the preop films of any of our little group of
marines?"

He pointed to a spot on the X-ray plate.  "But this is the important
thing for you right now." Brian and Diana closed in around him.  "On
this film we see an array of shrapnel fragments in a basically circular
pattern.  This is what you'd expect as a result of a device exploding,
say about fifteen yards from the victim."

"Makes sense," Brian said.

"But there's one fragment that stands out a little bit.  It is slightly
out of the pattern.  This one right here in the liver." He held his pen
next to the spot.  "Look at it closely, Brian.  That's the one you've
got to get for us."

Chapter Eight
"SO HOWD YOU arrange for us to see Moreland?" Diana asked Brian.  They
were on the New York Metroliner, some where between Baltimore and
Wilmington.

"I called him and said we'd like to come in and talk about insurance."

"We?"

"My wife and I."

"I see," she said, summoning up her best reproving glower.

"I told him he'd been highly recommended by a friend," Brian went on,
"and that I'd be in New York and would like to see him. He said that his
wife was away somewhere, and he was going out to his house at Sag Harbor
for a long weekend.  So we got to talking a little, and when I told him
I had served with the Third Marines while he was there and that I'd been
at Eagle's Talon, he invited me and my 'wife' to come out to the house
with him, talk over old times and such.  He said he'd been a POW and had
escaped. Interesting.

"I figure this way we'll have him alone for a couple of days. We'll have
time to build up a trust relationship with him, and if things go well,
we really can level and tell him what we want."

"I don't know." Diana looked doubtful.

"Listen, it's the best chance we've got," Brian countered.  He nudged
her on her shoulder.  "Besides, don't you think it'll be kind of fun
spending the weekend there?  We'll have a room to ourselves in a fancy
house, wake up with the sun coming up over the trees.  It's not exactly
the Plaza, but .  .  ."

"Now I see why you brought me along," she said.

Langley, Virginia.  Michael Swansea didn't like to brief operatives in
his office at CIA headquarters.  He preferred being completely out of
the agency compound for meetings.  Ever since he'd started here, in the
mid-1960s, he had operated as a loner-an agent whose assignments
involved such sensitivity that no one else could be permitted to know
about them.

But something had come up, and it had come up quickly.  There had been
no time to get everyone together at the safe house.  So he had
reluctantly summoned them to Langley.

His office was a large, functional room, sparsely furnished.  He stood
in front of his desk, with his hands balled up into fists in his jacket
pockets.  "As you know," he began, "we've been lying low on Subject
Moreland because of his relatively high profile in the business and
social communities as well as the danger of a pattern beginning to
emerge from too many seemingly random deaths. But we've just learned
that Commander Thorpe is at this very moment on his way to New York to
see him.  We can only surmise what the results of this meeting would be.
I am not at all sanguine about the possibilities."

Yellow glanced at his watch.  "Presumably Moreland is already in his
office now.  It would be tough to get a man up there and then out again
without being detected.  Maybe we could leave a change of clothing in a
janitor's closet."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to try to take him out on the street when
he goes for lunch?" Blue suggested.

"I wonder if we have time to stage a suicide," Purple speculated.

Swansea listened to the discussion for several minutes, not wanting to
cut it off lest he stifle some inspiration.

The telephone on his desk buzzed.  The room grew quiet. Swansea punched
the last button on the console and lifted the receiver to his ear.  He
listened wordlessly for more than a minute.  "I see," he said finally.
He pressed the hold button and turned back to the group.

"it's Amber, calling from Manhattan.  Moreland is not in his office
today.  He's at his weekend home on Long Island.  Moreover, his wife and
two children are out of town, so he is expected to be alone.  Since the
weekend plans were made in advance, according to his secretary, it is
Amber's belief that Thorpe and Keegan are going out to Sag Harbor as
house-guests.  I'm putting Amber on the speaker." Swansea pressed
another button.

"He must have a car out there, doesn't he?" Yellow asked.

"He does," the static-charged voice said.  "The secretary specifically
said he was driving out."

"How complicated would it be to rig it up?"

"Not complicated at all," Swansea stated.  "But an automobile explosion
very definitely calls attention to itself."

Purple raised his finger for recognition.  "What about the surprised
burglar scenario?"

"That's the one I have been most strongly considering," said Swansea.
"You're the closest to it, Amber.  How do you feel?"

"Sounds like a winner," came the metallic voice.

"Does it matter that Thorpe and Keegan will most likely be the ones to
discover the body?" Blue asked.  "We could wait a little while longer
and take them all out at the same time."

"We can't risk it," Swansea said.  "We can't take a chance that
investigators would draw connections among the three of them. Things
could begin to unravel."

"So who's going to do the job?" Yellow asked.

"We could certainly get Amber to Sag Harbor before Thorpe," said
Swansea, pacing around the group.  "But I don't like the exposure.  So
unless anyone has any objections, I'm going to farm this one out to a
free lance."

The color-coded operatives nodded their approval, and Swansea signed off
with Amber.

When his men had gone, Swansea leaned back in his chair and thought
about his meeting with Background several months ago. It was a
rendezvous at a German restaurant in Georgetown, and it had confirmed
Swansea's worst fears and set the wheels in motion.  At a secluded booth
in the rear Background had whispered to him, "Ratsbane is alive."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," Background replied.  A trace of annoyance had crept
into his voice.  Like Swansea, he was not a man to mince words.

"Do the Russians know?"

"They've probably always known.  Or at least suspected.  But now they
have a chance to prove it.  And if they do, they'll expose it to the
world."

Then Swansea cast his mind back farther, almost two decades farther, to
the inception of Ratsbane.  The progrwn had started out with such bright
potential, he recalled.  The simple, elegant solution to a losing,
intractable mess.  But now, long after it had been dismissed and
forgotten by the few who even knew of its existence, Ratsbane was
threatening to swallow up the best and brightest this country had to
defend it.

Sag Harbor, New York.  From the Bridgehampton train station it was an
easy cab ride to Sag Harbor.  Along the way the taxi driver kept up a
running commentary on his principal patrons, the slick city people who
had taken over the Hamptons as their playground of choice.

"To tell you the truth, I don't understand what they see in this place,"
he confided to the outsiders.  "It's full of rich people from Manhattan
who spend hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get out here every
weekend, and when they get here, they wait in long lines at expensive
restaurants, where they all see the same people they saw during the
week.  Huh?"

They turned from the Sag Harbor Turnpike onto Main Street and from there
onto a half-paved lane where the homes were large, well spaced, and
secluded.  "Nice place your friend's got," the driver commented as they
pulled up in front of an imposing Cape Cod-style house.  As soon as she
opened the car door Diana could smell the crisp salt air.

They got out of the cab and paid the driver.  Moments later Brian rang
the doorbell, and they stood on the front porch waiting.  He rang again
and then knocked.  "Maybe he's not here yet."

He looked around.  "But there's a car in the driveway."

"Try the door," Diana suggested.

Brian tried the doorknob.  It turned easily in his hand.

He opened the door, and they both stepped cautiously inside. "Anybody
home?" Diana called out.  They looked up at the carved oak balcony that
ran along the entire length of the entrance hall.  They saw no one.

Then they looked down at the polished oak floor and saw a man about
Brian's age lying in a pool of blood.

"Oh my God," Diana gasped.

Brian quickly crouched down and cradled the man's head in his hands.  He
ripped the man's shirt open and pressed his ear to the chest.  Then he
shoved his fingers into the man's neck.

"Found it," he hissed.  "Weak pulse, still alive."

"What is it?"

"Shotgun, I think.  Find a neighbor," he ordered.  "And hurry!"

Diana ran from the house.  Brian worked feverishly over the unconscious
body, trying to stem the bleeding.  "Hang in there, buddy," he urged.
"Don't leave me now!"

She came back within minutes.  A middle-aged man with thinning gray hair
and a paunch was with her.  "Good Lord," he said.

"Brian, this is-"

"Phil Rosenfield.  Just tell me what you want me to do."

Brian didn't look up.  "We've got to get him to a hospital.  No time to
wait for an ambulance."

"My car's right outside."

"Okay, let's go.  You take his legs.  I'll get him under the arms.
Diana, put your hands on the back of his head.  Don't let it fall back;
he's already in shock."

Rosenfield drove like a demon to a hospital in Southampton, twenty
minutes away.  There the emergency-room team swarmed around the
prostrate body as Brian explained what had happened. Within seconds they
had shoved a tube down Moreland's throat, inserted three large-bore IVS
and a chest tube.  Phil Rosenfield and Diana stood by, looking on with
horrified attention.

The nurse monitoring blood pressure shouted, "He's hypotensive, fifty
palpable.  He's bottoming out."

The resident dissected down into the chest wall, and a fountain of
bright blood spurted out.

"Pericardial tamponade," Brian said.  "His heart can't pump with all the
blood that's filled in around it."

The resident looked up at him with annoyance.  "Suppose you just leave
this to me, and we'll take care of your friend."

"Then stop fooling around and do a pericardiocentesisl He's going to die
if-you don't!"

The resident looked down and muttered something inaudible. "Syringer" he
demanded.  The nurse slapped a large needle into his hand.  The resident
inserted it into Moreland's naked chest. He drew back on the plunger,
and it came out frill of the blood that had filled in between the heart
and its surrounding sac.  He filled two more syringes.

The improvement in Moreland was dramatic.  The nurse reported all the
vital signs on the way up.  The resident looked over at Brian.  "That's
what it was, all right.  You must be a doctor."

"Good guess," said Brian.

"We've called the attending surgeon," the resident told him with
suddenly increased respect.  "He's in the building and should be down
any minute.  The OR's all set."

The attending surgeon's name was Bryce Chambers.  He was white-haired
and distinguished-looking in his surgical greens, and clearly nearing
the end of his career.  When he saw Roger Moreland lying on the table,
the color drained from his face.

"It's been a long time since I've had to do a trauma," he announced,
shaking his head.

"Are you saying you're not qualified to perform this surgery?"

Rosenfield asked, bearing down on him.

"Well, I'll do my best" he said.  "But you have to understand-"

"I'll do it," Brian said abruptly.

The resident's eyes flashed.  "Out of the question.  You're not
credentialled here.  We don't know that-"

"We don't know anything except that your man here can't do it by
himself," Rosenfield broke in.  He held up his hand toward Brian.  "And
that so far this man has saved your patient's life."

"But he doesn't have privileges," the resident said.  "We can't just let
anyone in here.  The legal implications of this are-"

"I'm a lawyer," Rosenfield said.  "And I'll tell you what the legal
implications are if this man dies because of your incompetence. Now get
him into that operating room!"

The resident looked around helplessly, as if seeking out higher
authority.  Finally Chambers said in a voice that bordered on pleading,
"Doctor-I don't know what your name is-if you could assist me with this
procedure, I'd be most appreciative."

"My name's Thorpe," Brian said.  "And this is Diana Keegan. She's a
doctor, too, and I want her in there with us." Diana had been looking on
from the side, and her eyes went wide with surprise.

"Whatever you say," Chambers replied.

"WHY do you want me in there?" Diana asked as they left the scrub room
for the surgical suite.

"You're the only one I can trust," Brian said.

"But I haven't scrubbed on any surgery since med school."

"I need you in there," Brian said firmly.

Diana's eyes were bright with the sudden realization.  "I just figured
out what you're talking about," she said.

"Clever girl," said Brian.

In the operating room Brian worked quickly.  He couldn't afford to waste
a second of his patient's life.  Moreland's wounds were as close to
combat trauma as anything Brian had seen in civilian life. A shotgun can
do horrifying damage, and at close range it is as devastating as a
fragmentation bomb.  Brian opened up a large midline incision to explore
the extent of the damage.

The first priority was the lungs.  Then he stanched the bleeding of the
mesenteric artery.  He repaired the ravaged spleen, stitched up holes in
the large bowel, and canterized the entrance wounds that perforated the
diaphragm.  All the while Bryce Chambers stood behind him, closely
observing, so that as surgeon of record, he could summarize each step in
his postop report.

Brian glanced over at the anesthesiologist.

"Stable so far," the man stated, meeting Brian's look.

Then this would be the time.

Brian resected the muscle and connective tissue around the liver.  He
caught Diana's eye, and she nodded back to him.  As she subtly
maneuvered herself into position next to him, he palpated the liver with
his fingers until he felt a hard spot.

", m now repairing a perforation across the surface of the liver, he
explained for Chambers' benefit, while Diana blocked Brian's hands from
the view of the others around the table.

Diana felt every inch of her body running with nervous sweat. She
watched carefully as Brian's scalpel sliced into the liver, just as it
had done in the autopsy in Montana.  And her heart skipped as he pulled
the firm reddish tissue aside and uncovered a tiny metal fiaginent. With
his index finger and thumb pinched together he pried it loose and
transferred it to the inside of his fist.

MORELMD'S condition remained critical, but there was no question in
anyone's mind that without Brian's intervention he would have been dead.
The resident conceded that it was one of the finest examples of trauma
surgery he'd seen.

The Suffolk County police, keeping in mind what Brian and Diana had been
through, tried to inconvenience them as little as possible.  A detective
took their statements, and they stuck to the story that Brian had told
Moreland.  Brian gave his phone number in Washington, then excused
himself to call Jill and have her report him on sick leave.

"Now let's get the heck out of here before someone catches up with us,"
he whispered to Diana when the policeman had left.

Atlanta, Georgia.  The headquarters of the national Centers for Disease
Control sprawl along Clifton Road, just on the edge of the Emory
University campus.  They are housed in a large cluster of modern
concrete and red brick buildings that, appropriately enough, resemble a
hospital.  There is a little garden in front.

Diana and Brian arrived late in the day.  They strode purposefully
through the impersonal and rather lifeless elevator lobby in the main
building, then went up to the fourth floor, When Brian and Diana reached
the end of one hall, there was a gray metal door.  On the wall beside it
was a sign that read:

WORK ON ALL SPECIMENS WHICH MAY BE
OF CLASS IV POTENTIAL MUST BE CARRIED OUT IN MAXIMUM CONTAINMENT LAB
ONLY!

"What's a class-four specimen?" Brian asked.

"It's a designation primarily applied to viruses," Diana explained.
"Viruses with no vaccine and no known cure."

"I see," Brian replied soberly.  "And that's why we're going to this
maximum containment place?"

"In this oudit we take no chances," Diana responded.  "We're both
soldiers, you know.  The only difference is that my enemy is more deadly
than yours."

She opened the outer door of the lab.  It led to a hallway and another
door.  Next to this second door was a slot in the wall.

Diana rummaged around in her purse.  The card she came out with looked
to Brian much like a credit card except that it carried a thumbprint.
She inserted it halfway into the slot.  There was a whirring sound, then
something like the clicking of gears; then the solid door slid to the
side, allowing them entry.

She led him to a small room designated PERSONNEL CHANGING.  "Leave your
clothes on this side of the air lock, inside the locker," she said.
"This isn't like an operating room.  Here you have to get really clean.
I'll see you after we both shower.  You'll find a lab suit in the
cabinet as you come out."

Brian and Diana emerged from their respective showers into the air-lock
chamber, a room that kept the atmosphere of the lab separated from the
outside and contamination-free.

"Isn't this a bit much?" Brian asked.

"Folks here don't seem to think so," Diana answered.  She ushered Brian
into the animal lab room.  "They've got everything here from rats and
white mice up to human-size primates." She walked over to the sterile
glass-walled cages and selected a small white rabbit.  She picked up the
furry bundle with rubber-gloved hands and cradled it lovingly in her
arms.  "What's your name, bunny?" she purred while she carried it over
to the counter-high laminar flow work station. Like the animal cages,
the work station was completely encased in glass. Along its side, four
holes gave access to flexible hand-and-arm gloves that allowed the
researcher to reach into the case almost up to his shoulders.

The maximum containment lab was designed so that dangerous materials
could be moved from one work station to the nextfrom microscopy to
centrifuge to incubation to culture platingwithout being removed from
behind their protective glass barrier. All one needed to do was move
down to the next set of gloves.

Diana unfastened the door at one end of the work station and placed the
rabbit inside.  It scurried around the perimeters once and then huddled
in the corner.  From the pocket of her lab suit she took a plastic bag
fastened with a tie band.  In it was the metal fragment Brian had
removed from Roger Moreland's liver.  Inside the other end of the work
station, separated by a movable partition, was a microscope and a full
set of instruments.  Through a fiber-optic lens system the scope's
objective came through the glass wall and could be adjusted to a
comfortable height.

Diana placed the fragment on the microscope's viewing surface and slid
it behind the glass wall.  "It's all yours," she said.

Slowly-and awkwardly at first, since he wasn't used to working through a
glass barrier-Brian repeated the procedure he had performed at Bethesda
on the fragment from Radley Davis' body. Peering through the lens, he
used tweezers to angle the metal sliver into place on its side, and then
noted that the rabbit didn't die from a poison gas or toxin.  That much
is clear.  If it hid, the reaction would have been nearly instantaneous.
Bacteria would be the next most logical possibility, but I don't know of
a single bacterium in the world that reacts so decisively within a
matter of hours."

"So it's too slow for toxin and too fast for bacteria," Brian said
grimly.  "That means .  .  ."

"Yes," Diana said.  Her voice was still shaking.  "Only one logical
possibility.  It has to be a virus.  We'll culture out the secretions to
be sure."

Virus, she repeated to herself.  The tiniest, simplest, most primitive
of organisms, and the strangest.  Too small to be seen under anything
but an electron microscope.  Not alive like bacteria, but not inert
either; occupying that hazy world between life and nonlife.  Unable to
survive on its own, yet remarkably proficient in invading living cells,
taking them over, and altering them to its own mysterious purposes.

Because many are insignificant and benign, she thought, the term itself
holds no fear to the general public.  Yet those who know shudder when a
new virus is uncovered.  Unlike bacteria, a virus that does not limit
itself can only be vanquished in two ways: through the introduction of a
vaccine made up of the virus's own genetic components or through the
death of the host organism.

"How long will it take to culture?" Brian asked.

"A couple of weeks, probably.  Viruses don't grow in the lab overnight,
like bacteria."

"Well, we obviously can't wait that long."

"No, we can't," Diana agreed.  "We're going to have to alert the people
here right away.  I'll write up a memo now."

"You can't do that," Brian said.

"what?" Diana looked stunned.

"Not yet."

"I don't think you understand."

"I understand what will happen if this is made public," Brian declared
innly.  "We still don't know who we're dealing with."

"But we now know what we're dealing with!" Diana replied.

"And it ain't good.  The incubation period is incredibly short, only a
matter of hours.  As far as we know, the attack rate is a hundred
percent, and so is the mortality rate.  The method of transmission could
be anything-airborne, fluid, who knows?  Brian, there are thousands,
possibly millions of lives at stake."

"Yes, and what worries me is that they may be in even greater danger if
we let this information out."

"Why?" Diana demanded.

"We don't know where the virus came from, who put it there. We don't
know why or how desperate they are.  The one thing we do know is that
it's been in those capsules a long time, ever since Eagle's Talon.  And
so far it's contained.  But if we suddenly let on what we've found and
gear up the entire Centers for Disease Control, there's no telling what
the people responsible for the capsules are going to do.  They could
suddenly get desperate and release the virus.  We have to find out more
about them."

Diana brought her fists to her hips, squared her shoulders, and faced
him.  "So you're suggesting a cover-up?  I guess that would be the
standard military response, wouldn't it?"

For a split second she saw violence flash through his eyes.

"We just need to know more," Brian replied, controlling his temper.
"What this does is give us one more clue.  More than that, it gives us a
direction."

"How do you mean?"

"Now we know that those shrapnel capsules did something."

"What about the first one, the one you took out of Radley Davis?  That
didn't seem to have any effect."

"I know," Brian said.  "But there has to be an explanation. Something
that not only explains the cattle plague but also the random deaths of
the other marines, the attack on Roger Moreland, the rigging of my car,
and everything else."

"That's a pretty tall order, Commander."

"We'll figure it out," Brian told her.  "We have to.

Diana walked over to a cabinet and found a laminated slate and grease
pencil.  She put her name and department number on the slate and
underneath wrote in large letters: DO NOT DISTURBING Then she placed the
slate in a metal mounting on the work station.

She decided to take one more crack at Brian.  "Look," she said, I can
understand that you're squeamish about a full-scale alert. So how about
if I just tell my boss?"

"No," said Brian emphatically.  "There's too much at risk."

"You're not saying that Herb is one of them, I hope," she said
incredulously.

"No, I'm not.  I'm just saying that I don't know him at all and you
don't know him well enough to predict how he'll react."

"So you're not willing to rely on anyone in a position of authority on
this?" she asked.

"I didn't say that.  We'll have to eventually."

"But one of your people."

Brian hesitated a moment.  "In a manner of speaking."

"All right." She capitulated.  "We'll do it your way.  But we've got to
hurry.  If the disease breaks out now, it wins."

Chapter Nine
Diana  arrived at the CDC the next day shortly before lunchtime,
stopping first at the containment lab to see if there was any change in
her experiment.  During the several minutes it took to shower and suit
up, she worked on steeling herself to face the dead, contorted rabbit.

She was terrified by the commitment she'd made to Brian to sit on the
evidence, terrified that that commitment left her bearing the
responsibility for potentially one of the greatest health threats this
country had ever seen.  She wanted nothing more than to turn the whole
thing over to the heavy hitters, sit back, and let someone else worry
about it.  You better come up with something from that fragment, Diana
dear, or your life in medicine is about to come to a screeching halt.

When she reached the work station, her experiment was gone.

The rabbit was no longer there; the petri dish was missing; there was no
sign of the shrapnel fragment.  The laminated slate with her name
written on it had been removed.

Her first instinct was fear.  Someone had to be on to them.  But that
didn't make sense, at least not inside the containment lab. The
sensation smoothly transformed into anger.  This violated the most basic
principles of science.  Every CDC officer was encouraged to follow his
or her own leads and instincts.  Nobody had a right to mess with someone
else's work.  Something had to be done right away.

She quickly reversed the lab entry process, stripping off her lab suit,
showering again, and putting her own clothes back on.  She moved as
rapidly as she could through the air lock and stormed up to the fourth
floor and into Herb's office.

He looked up calmly from the stack of papers in front of him and said
pleasantly, "Welcome back, Diana.  How are you feeling?  You look a
little tired."

"I...  I guess I am," she replied impatiently. She wasn't in the mood to
play games this morning, however well meaning her boss was trying to be.
"Herb, do you know about this business in the containment lab?" she
demanded. "I certainly do." His sense of calm hadn't broken. "Then I
hope you're prepared to chew somebody out over it."

"I certainly am," he told her with equanimity.  " You."

It took her a moment to realize her mouth had dropped open. "What did
you say?"

"That's right, Diana.  I'm suspending you.  Starting right now, you're
relieved of all your duties until further notice.  Leave your ID and key
card with me on your way out."

"But-but why?" She began biting her lower lip.  "Who threw out my
experiment?"

"No one threw it out," Herb stated.  "Since we didn't know what it was,
I had the lab technician move it to the lockup area, where you can't get
at it."

"You-you have no right-" she stammered.

Herb rose to face her, glaring.  "No, Diana.  You have no right. You
should know you had no business using the containment lab without
authorization.  It's not only an abuse of privileges, but you weren't
even supposed to be in the building.  You were on sick leave.  And a
nother questionable sick leave, I might add."

"But still, why did you do it?"' she protested.  "You could have let it
go through.  My work's always been first rate."

" it always has been," Herb said.  "Until recently.  Diana, I don't know
what you're trying to pull here, but you've got some highly questionable
substance that's killed a control animal-which you also took without
authorization by the way-and you're treating it like your private
chemistry set."

"So you're suspending me without hearing my explanation?"

"I expect you to give me your explanation," Herb, replied coolly. "We're
going to culture out all the animal's fluids and follow all the
protocols, and it would certainly help if we had some idea of what we
were looking for."

"I don't know yet," she lied.

"How did you come by this substance?"

She considered her promise to Brian.  "I can't say."

"I find that quite incredible coming from you."

"I'm sorry." Diana shrugged.

"Does it have anything to do with that trip to Montana?"

"Not really," she lied again.

Herb eyed her skeptically.  "I'm not sure I believe that," he muttered.
"Why didn't you just come to me in the first place?"

"I'm afraid I can't explain that right now either."

"And I'm afraid I can't tolerate that kind of response."

"Then that's why you're suspending me," she said bitterly.

"Diana, anyone else would have fired you outright.  I still might, once
I have time to think about it.  Where do you want to start?
Insubordination?  Dereliction of duty?  Withholding information?  I've
always covered for you in the past, because I like you and respect your
ability.  But this time you've gone too far."

Diana shifted her weight uneasily and dug her hands into the back
pockets of her skirt.  "So I have to go stand in the corner until I
decide I'm ready to come out and be good?"

"Until I decide," Herb corrected.  "And I don't feel a change of heart
coming on anytime in the near future."

Alexandria, Virginia.  Michael Swansea met his asset at the New York
shuttle gate at National Airport.  Amber emerged into the concourse
looking indistinguishable from the hundred other business types to whom
the shuttle has become a lifeline.  The two men shook hands and
exchanged small talk, as if they were casual friends.  They conducted
the meeting as they walked.

"So what have we come up with?" Swansea asked.

"Nothing good, I'm afraid," Amber replied.  "Our man hit okay. But
Thorpe got there too soon.  Moreland's in the hospital.  He's probably
going to make it."

"Damn! What hospital?"

"It's in Southampton.  A little place.  We could get in easily if we
wanted to."

"No.  Better lie low on him for a while; the exposure's too great at the
moment.  More important to deal with Thorpe first.  Where is he, by the
way?"

"Gone."

"Well, that was to be expected.  But he'll surface again in time,"
Swansea said with confidence.

Atlanta, Georgia.  Diana returned directly home from the CDC, marching
up the hill on Houston Mill Road with defiantly exaggerated strides. She
was still steaming when she plopped down onto the living-room sofa to
tell Brian her tale of woe.

"And what about the fragment?" he asked urgently.

"They've taken it away from me."

"I don't understand."

She told him what had happened, emphasizing how she'd probably just
blown her entire career by stonewalling her boss.

"Doesn't it seem a little odd to you," he said, "that your work
efficiently disappears from the highest security lab the very morning
after you put it there and you're not even consulted about it?"

"It's because it's the highest security lab.  And they tried to consult
me on it.  But because of what you made me promise, I couldn't tell them
anything.  I'm sorry, Brian," she concluded. "From their standpoint it's
totally logical to handle it this way."

"Well, the suspension does make one thing a little easier for us," Brian
said.

"What do you mean?"

"Someone is still looking for us.  You can be sure of it, especially
after Sag Harbor.  The first place he's going to look is Washington." He
paused.  "This is the second."

"So what you're saying is-"

"We've got to get out of here."

"To where?"

"That's a good question."

She gave him a wry smile.  Okay.  She'd blown this round, whether it was
her fault or not.  It was up to her to make up for it. She tucked her
knees under herself on the sofa, bouncing slightly on her heels to get
comfortable.  It was one of the signs Brian had come to recognize in her
whenever she was becoming excited or intrigued.  "We don't have the
evidence anymore, so we're just going to have to figure it out on our
own," she announced.  "Now, the key piece of information in this whole
puzzle has to bel How did those hollow capsules get inside those men?"

"Presumably they were in shrapnel fragments," Brian replied.

"But shrapnel is just random bits of exploding metal.  You don't explode
a bomb or a hand grenade and have it break up into even, predictable
pieces of metal, do you?"

"No," Brian replied.

"And then on top of that, what would be the chance that all these guys
at one battle could be wounded by these random bits of metal which all
just happened to have hollow chambers and embedded themselves in the
same parts of the livers?"

"Pretty farfetched," said Brian.

She folded her arms across her chest in triumph.  "So even though the
little bits of metal look like shrapnel fragments, they haven't behaved
like them."

They stared at each other for several seconds.  "Somebody put them in
there," Brian said at last.

"That's incredible.  But it's the only possible explanation," she
agreed.  "Now the question is, Who?"

"Someone who wanted to wipe out a lot of people in a big hurry," said
Brian.

"Like an enemy population, for example?"

"That's generally the idea behind germ warfare." He stopped. Germ
warfare.  The term itself made him inwardly cringe.  Of all the horrible
outgrowths of war in the twentieth century, this was perhaps the most
horrible.

"So the North Vietnamese implant these capsules of deadly virus in the
livers of American marines," Diana went on.  "But where does this virus
come from?"

"The Russians would be my guess.  The North Vietnamese wouldn't have had
the technology."

"And why the liver?"

"It's not too hard to get to," Brian replied.  "And it's highly
vascular.  The bloodstream would carry the virus throughout the body."

"Good point.  But the virus is encased in a capsule.  How does it even
get to the blood supply?"

Brian sat back and thought for a time.  "I don't know," he said. "It
must have something to do with the little stopper."

"And all That's been put out of our reach in the maximumcontainment
lab," Diana said sadly.

"That's true," said Brian.  Then he smiled.  "But some of us took
precautions.  When Gregory and I examined the Radley Davis fragment, I
had him save the stopper.  I'll call him."

"Good for you," Diana said.  "I am impressed.  Okay.  Now, assuming the
North Vietnamese did do this, how could they get to these marines to
implant the capsules and make them look like shrapnel?"

"Somebody had to operate on them."

"You said Roger Moreland was a POW who escaped.  Maybe they took
captured soldiers, operated on them, implanted the capsules, then let
them escape and come back to infect their own people."

"No, that doesn't pan out.  Not all of these marines were POWS," Brian
said.  He put his hand out to her.  "But they definitely had real
shrapnel wounds.  It seems likely they were simply surgically given one
more piece."

"But why this particular group of men?" Diana questioned. "What else did
they all have in common?"

"Eagle's Talon," Brian grimly replied.

"Then whatever was done to them, whatever happened, happened at Eagle's
Talon."

"Yes .  .  ." he said, and from his eyes Diana could tell that for a
moment Brian was once again back there, part of the horror that the name
still conjured.

"Just a secondly" His finger shot up.  "No! Not at all! That was the one
part that didn't make sense.  Until now."

"What are you talking about?"

"Think about the dates from the printouts Jill got us," Brian said.
"Those men all fought at Eagle's Talon but were wounded beforer" Diana
wrinkled her nose.  "I don't understand."

"I'm not sure I do either," Brian said.  "But it's almost as if this
were all done in preparation for Eagle's Talon."

They settled back onto opposite ends of the sofa, staring at each other
and trying to reason out what they had just detailed.

"There's only one person I know of who had access to all of the marines
before Eagle's Talon," she said.

"I was thinking the same thing," said Brian.  "The old professor. Calvin
Chandler Harley."

Palo Alto, California.  Calvin Harley's house had been designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright in the mid-1930s- It lay on the edge of the Stanford
campus, on land owned by the university.  In typical nothing more
provocative than the fact that Harley had been named outstanding
clinical professor by the senior medical students three years in a row.
Everything was right up front.

The mission had been a bust.  Diana sensed that Brian was almost glad,
at least relieved, that he had been unable to pin anything on his
surgical idol.

He had been drawn over to the far wall, where Harley had displayed some
mementos of his military service.  Against the wall was a small table
with a green marine helmet displayed inside a Lucite case.  The helmet
was dented and marked by the impact of glancing bullets.  And stenciled
onto the side was the message DON'T SHOOT me.  I'M THE Doc!

Next to the display case was a flagpole, topped by a brass eagle,
bearing a battered and frayed Stars and Stripes.  The flag had obviously
flown over some military installation under siege.  The eagle standard
had a wide, majestic wingspread.  Its head was turned fully to the side,
and it was perched boldly atop a sphere that looked like a cannonball.

"That's a pretty fearsome-looking bird," Diana said.  "I'd hate to be
grabbed by those claws."

Brian smiled.  "They're called talons in the business."

"Talons, you say?"

They looked at each other.  "Eagle's talons," Brian said.

It was as if a lightning bolt had just struck the room.

He grabbed the top of the flagpole and pulled it over on its side.  He
and Diana knelt down on the floor and studied the standard closely.
Three of the talons on each foot wrapped tightly around the cannonball.
The fourth protruded aggressively outward.  Brian played around with
both of the odd talons, twisting and pulling.  As he clutched the left
one between his thumb and forefinger it seemed to give a little, then
visibly moved.

Diana jumped back in surprise.

"The sinister talon is what the Romans called the one on the left,"
Brian said.

He continued twisting.  It took about thirty turns before the brass
talon came loose.  He peered into the hole it had left in the standard.
Something was sticking out.  He reached in with two fingers and
carefully withdrew a small wad of paper, onionskin, yellowed and shiny
with age.  Diana held her breath.

The paper crackled as Brian unfolded it.  Dark, straight lines were
ingrained where it had been creased.  It was a single sheet, typewritten
on an old, uneven manual.

EYES ONLYII DO NOT COPYII DO NOT SAVEII PROJECT RATSBANE
DELMERY FORCE

Abraham, Pfc.  David M.
Craig, Cpl.
Maxwell J.
Dantley, Pfc.
Timothy S.B.
Davis, LCPL.  Radley J.
Fine, Cpl.  Harold A.
Fletcher, Pfc.  Arthur M.
Hardesty, Sgt.  Samuel (NMI) Jacobs, Cpl.  Harold A.
Jefferson, Sgt.  Tyrrell L.
Lofton, Pfc.  Anthony R.
Moreland, Cpl.  Roger T.
O'Brien, S' Sgt.  Matthew T.
Santoya, Pfc.  Luis J.
Schuyler, It.  Christopher P.
Shapiro, Pfc.  Nathan S.
Washington, Pfc.  Maurice (NMI)

COUNMRDELMERY FORCE Bui Minh Cau Dang Duc Hoa Duong Thi Bac Hoang Thanh
Tinh Nguyen Tien Truong
"Look at the names in the first group," Diana said.  "All the dead
marines, the two guys we were able to locate from Jill's list, and the
six others that we couldn't."

"Plus two more," Brian added.  "Fine and Santoya.  We'll have to check
them out.  But there's no doubt, we're on the right track."

"And Harley is right in the middle of it."

"I'm afraid so." Brian took a tiny camera from his breast pocket. He
carried the sheet of onionskin over to the desk and laid it down under a
light.  He leaned over above it and snapped several pictures.  Then he
brought the paper back to the flagpole and reinserted it in the base of
the standard.

As he was screwing the talon into position Diana asked, "Why would
anyone keep that kind of incriminating information?"

"Probably to protect himself," Brian responded.  "This is obviously an
official document.  It's his insurance if the nasty thing ever gets
out."

"Ratsbane.  Isn't that a rat poison?"

Brian nodded.  "Arsenic trioxide."

Diana shuddered.  "What a disgusting name."

"But a fitting one."

"So you think Harley really was working for the enemy?"

"I do," Brian said.  "But one thing bothers me.  Why would the North
Vietnamese have an English code name?"

"You've got me," Diana said.  "But it probably means Harley wasn't
acting alone."

"It most definitely means that," Brian told her.  He righted the
flagpole and restored it to its original position.  "Project Ratsbane
was an inside job."

Diana placed her hands firmly into the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt.
"Brian," she said, "when I asked you back in Atlanta whether we could
trust anyone in authority, you said we would have to.  Did you have
someone particular in mind?"

"I do now," he said quietly.

Chapter Ten
Arlington, Virginia.  Staying at the apartment was out of the question,
Brian had decided.  Even coming back to Washington was risky enough in
itself.  But what had to be done next could only be done from here.  So
he had checked them into one of those anonymous little 1950s-style
motels along Route 50, adjoining Fort Myer.  They registered under
made-up names and brought only enough luggage to suggest two people just
passing through.

Brian wouldn't take a chance on the phone in the room.  Instead, he
walked out to a phone booth at the end of the parking lot.  As he dialed
he thought of Diana in the room watching one of the zillion cable
television channels heralded on the motel's neon sign.  He sure knew how
to show a girl a good time.

His call was to Gregory at home.  "Where are you?" the radiologist
inquired.

"It's better if I don't say," Brian answered.

"Okay.  Look, now that I've got you here, Jill's gone to work on those
other two names you asked about-Fine and Santoya, the marines who didn't
kick out of the computer.  They were both listed MIA, later confirmed as
taken prisoner."

"So was Roger Moreland."

"That's right," Gregory said.  "The difference was that Moreland got out
alive.  Santoya and Fine didn't."

"I see," Brian said quietly.

"Now let me tell you about that little stopper from the fragment
chamber," Gregory said after a moment.  "I had our best pathology guy
look at it, and it appears to be some sort of organic compound.
Definitely carbon based.  But a very dense material."

"So is it porous?"

"Not under any circumstances we've been able to duplicate.' "But if the
capsule has a stopper rather than a hermetic seal, it has to be so the
stuff inside can get out," Brian reasoned.  "Maybe it's supposed to
interact with something."

"Excellent analysis.  I agree completely.  But we saw what was inside
Radley Davis' capsule.  Water.  H-two-O."

"I know," Brian said.  "But we also know what was inside Roger
Moreland's capsule.  And we have to assume the same thing was inside Sam
Hardesty's and all the others."

"And someone out there is very nervous about them."

"Yes," Brian agreed.  "Which leads me to my next requests.

First, can you have Jill cover me for a while longer?"

"We'll try." Gregory sighed.  "But there comes a point when even the
computer starts getting suspicious.  What's second?"

"I'm coming into Bethesda tomorrow," Brian said.  "Don't tell anyone.
I'm only coming for a few minutes and for one reason. That is, if you
can arrange something for me."

FOR General John Winthrop Blagden of the U.S.  Marine Corps early
morning was usually the only quiet time before the crises of the day
began in earnest.  He arrived at the Pentagon most mornings at six, took
forty-five minutes of vigorous exercise in the basement gym, showered,
dressed, and was seated in his office by seven.

His secretary, Miss Thornton, had been well schooled in the distinction
between an ordinary cause for interruption during the precious first
hour of the day and an extraordinary one.  So Blagden knew that
something extraordinary was taking place when from the corner of his eye
he saw her standing in his doorway, waiting to be recognized, at seven
thirty-eight a.m.

He looked up from his desk.  "Yes?  What is it?"

"General, a call just came in from Bethesda Naval Hospital," Miss
Thomlfyn reported.  "About the tests you had done there. They want to do
some follow-up."

"What kind of follow-up?"

"They didn't say.  just that it was of a delicate nature and that they
would like you to come back over as soon as possible."

Blagden sighed.  They must have picked up something serious on one of
the tests and wanted to tell him in person.  Well, if that was what it
was, there was nothing he could do about it.  "Clear away the first
block of time you can," he calmly instructed.

"I already have," Miss Thornton declared.

Bethesda, Maryland.  Two hours later John Winthrop Blagden proceeded
through the lobby of Bethesda Naval Hospital, up the elevator, and
directly to the room specified for him.  He was met there by a nurse who
told him the doctor would be right with him.

Here, away from his desk, cut off from his environment, Blagden finally
found it impossible to restrain his thoughts.  If it were to be the
worst case, he only hoped it would be something that wouldn't be wasting
or drawn out or rob him of his dignity.  The door at the other side of
the room opened.  A man of medium height and dark blond hair came in
wearing a white lab coat.  He looked vaguely familiar, but Blagden
couldn't quite place him.

"General Blagden, I'm Commander Thorpe.  Brian Thorpe.

Thank you for coming here."

"The question is, Commander, Should I be thanking you?"

Blagden said tersely.

"I'm sorry to have had to bring you here under these circumstances, but
I felt it was the only way." Blagden nodded stoically. "I also want to
apologize for any mental anguish my request to see you might have
caused.  But let me assure you, sir, that there's nothing physically
wrong with you."

Blagden let out a pent-up sigh of relief, then looked perplexed.

"I had to talk to you, sir," Brian went on, "and this was the quickest,
safest way of getting to you."

Blagden continued staring at him, his stone-cold noncommittal stare.
Finally he said, "Are you really a doctor?"

" Yes, sir, I am," Brian replied.  "A surgeon here at Bethesda. But
before that I was a medical corpsman with the Seventh Amphib.  I was at
Eagle's Talon." First test, he thought.

Unblinking, Blagden said, "Not many of you boys made it back."

:"No, sir.  Not many of us did."

"Then, for that at least, Commander, I owe you something." He took
another long pause.  "Now, does this meeting have anything to do with
that?"

" In a way I suppose it does." Second test.  And this was the critical
one.  It was a calculated risk, he knew, opening up to Blagden.  But it
was a risk that had to be taken.

"General Blagden, does the name Calvin Chandler Harley mean anything to
you?"

Blagden regarded him impassively.  "The surgeon from Stanford.  He was
one of our division medical officers."

"That's right," Brian confirmed.  He removed a photograph from the
pocket of his lab coat and gave it to Blagden.  "This is a picture of a
document I found in Dr.  Harley's possession."

Blagden scanned the photograph.  His face turned instantly grim.  "How
did you come by this?" he asked.

"It's a long story," Brian said, and gave him the short form of it. The
general listened, silently and somberly.

" Then it's true," Blagden finally said, raising his head, as if looking
back into his own memory.

"What's that?" Brian asked.

"We'd heard rumors about this back then.  But since nothing came of it,
I was always inclined not to believe them."

"I'm not sure what you're referring to, sir."

Blagden looked him squarely in the eye.  "Can you come to my office at
the Pentagon tomorrow morning-say 0930?"

"Yes."

Blagden took another scrutinizing glance at the photograph, then looked
up at Brian.  "You showed me something I hadn't seen.  Now I want to
show you something that presumably you haven't seen.  Then we'll talk."

Arlington, Virginia.  "This could be a trap," Diana said.  She
watched from behind as Brian put on the tie of his uniform in the
bathroom mirror.

"It could be," Brian said in acknowledgment.  "But I hardly think he's
going to try to assassinate me in the bowels of the Pentagon.  This
isn't Dzerzhinsky Square."

"Come on, Brian.  I'm serious.  You won't let me breathe one word to my
people at the CDC, and yet you're spilling your guts to some general
you'd never even talked to before yesterday."

" It's different," Brian replied.  "Blagden was my commanding officer.
He was the CO for all the marines on our list."

"So?  We still don't know anything about him.  We don't know if he can
be, as you so quaintly put it, trusted.  Has it ever occurred to you
that he may be the one behind all this?"

"Of course it's occurred to me," Brian stated.

"This man was the perpetrator of Eagle's Talon,',' Diana continued. "The
last person I'd trust."

"We don't have any choice.  Blagden was at the center of things," he
replied.  "He's the only one who can put the information together for us
so we can use it."

"And what if it is a trap?  What if he's the one who killed all the
marines?"

"I seriously doubt that" He turned around so he could wrap his arms
around her waist.  "Now, I haven't mentioned your name in his presence.
As far as I can tell, he doesn't know you exist."

"So what are you saying?" she asked.

He placed his hands squarely on her shoulders.  "You know what I'm
saying.  If anything happens.  to me, it's up to you.  If for any reason
I don't come back, call Hugh Stanway."

THERE was something strangely incongruous to Brian about John Winthrop
Blagden's imposing, wood-paneled office.  The only prop that felt right
in the entire room was the green metal helmet, similar to the one he'd
seen in Harley's house, that was lying on the end table next to the
luxurious sofa.  That had some relationship to the real Black jack
Blagden, the one Brian rememhered in open-collar fatigues and dusty
combat boots, in an office that consisted not of a corporate suite but
of a field tent and a map-covered folding table.

When Blagden's secretary closed the huge double doors behind her, Brian
confronted his former commanding officer alone on his own territory.  He
felt as if he had taken one crucial step farther in his journey of no
return.

"I will assume your word of honor as a soldier," Blagden began quietly,
"not to speak of this to anyone inside traditional channels." He
motioned Brian to the wing chair opposite his desk.

"I understand," Brian said.

With no small talk and without further discussion Blagden handed a
two-page stapled document across the desk.  Both pages were photocopies.
The first Brian recognized as Vietnamese, typed on an ancient typewriter
with several broken letters.  The second page was in English.

"This document came to me in 1969, in the field, shortly before Eagle's
Talon," the general explained.  "It appears to be the second or third
page of something, but we don't have the rest.  I saved it, as you can
see, in my personal files."

Brian glanced at the Vietnamese copy, to see if he could make anything
out of it with the few words he still remembered.

"There was a translator's report along with it," Blagden continued,
"saying that he believes the Vietaamese version itself to be a
translation, that the grammatical usage is typically Russian."

Brian folded over the first sheet and scanned the second, containing the
English translation.

Demonstration trials have verified a mortality rate of a hundred
percent.  Within seventy-two hours of the first transmission of the
PRIMARY AGENT, the projected effect should be achieved.

.  When the PRIMARY AGENT has reached the appropriate level of
saturation in the target population, the COUNTERDELIVERY AGENT will be
introduced through the repatriation of the CARRIERS.  Owing to the
specific nature and placement of the capsules within their bodies,
interaction with the PRIMARY AGENT should be nearly instantaneous and
neutralize the PRIMARY AGENT before it can cause them ill effects.  The
effects of the COUNTERDELIVERY AGENT itself to the CARRIERS will be
limited to standard influenza symptoms.

Brian laid the pages down on the desk and looked up.

"As you can imagine," said Blagden, "as soon as I read this, it scared
the hell out of me."

Brian nodded.

"All I knew was that the enemy had worked out a germ warfare offensive.
When it was coming, under what circumstances, our people had no idea."

"And nothing else turned up?" Brian asked.

"One thing did.  A map with coordinates marked off that made it pretty
clear this offensive was to be directed at the Third Marines.  But
beyond that, nothing.  Could be a fake, I thought, intentionally leaked
to us.  It wasn't likely the North Vietnamese had this kind of
scientific capability."

Brian nodded again.

"But about the same time, a highly classified CIA report was forwarded
to me.  It said that the Soviet Union had tremendously stepped up their
biological weapons R and D.  So we-I specifically-sweated for quite a
while till long after Eagle's Talon.  But then nothing happened, so I
figured it was all a sham." He sighed and looked straight across the
desk at Brian.  "But from what you told me yesterday, I see I was
wrong."

Brian asked, "How many people knew about this?"

Blagden shrugged.  "I don't know.  It was a CIA operation, so there's no
way to be sure.  My only discussions were with the agency liaisons.  No
one else in the corps talked to me."

"And you never suspected Harley?"

"No," Blagden replied adamantly.  "There was never any reason to. Harley
was saving lives for us."

Brian had said very little so far.  He had been listening carefully,
feeling out this war hero who, at the President's pleasure, was about to
take over the entire Marine Corps.

"And before yesterday," Brian asked, " you hadn't heard about the recent
deaths of any of the marines from the unit?"

"No." Blagden shook his head.  He picked up the document Brian had left
on the desk and said, "Well, Commander Thorpe, you're a doctor.  How do
you analyze this?"

"That's a tough one," Brian responded, then stared up at the ceiling for
several seconds of silent speculation.  "Immunology is extremely
complex, and it's far from my field.  But this counterdelivery agent
would seem to be some substance that counteracts or somehow neutralizes
the original virus."

"A vaccine?" Blagden questioned.

"No, I wouldn't think so." Brian wished he had Diana here to consult. "A
vaccine would have to be administered before the virus infected the host
to be effective.  This is something that works afterward.  Maybe some
greatly attenuated form of the original virus, reacting with the
stopper-some kind of biochemical lock-and-key situation."

"I see.  And do you have any ideas about where we go from here?"

Brian pulled his chair up and leaned in closer to the front of the desk,
his forearms resting on his knees.  He weighed his answer carefully
before he spoke.  "Personally, General, I'd like to find out who is
behind this and get to him before he gets to me and the people close to
me.  But I'm afraid there's an even larger concern. We've got the
potential for a major epidemic on our hands.  There were sixteen names
on the list I found in Harley's house.  Two died as POWS.  Six more are
recently dead.  Then there's Moreland, the shooting victim that I took a
capsule from.  And there's Tim Dantley, who we discovered is living in
West Virginia.  We can put our hands on him quickly if we have to.  But
that leaves six we can't locate.  If even one of them is alive and the
contents of the capsule he's carrying around gets out, it could
literally kill everyone in North America in weeks."

"That is indeed a sobering thought," Blagden commented.  He paused a
moment, then said, "I think we both know the only alternative.  Wherever
they are, we've got to get our hands on one of those counterdelivery
folks."

Neither man spoke for several minutes.  Finally Blagden leaned back in
his chair and said, "Since our meeting yesterday morning I've looked up
your service record.  You told me you had been a medic.  You didn't say
you were also a SEAL."

"That was a long time ago," said Brian.

Blagden nodded.  "Perhaps.  But I don't consider that particular
specially so much a job description as an approach to life."

Brian said nothing.  But the idea seemed to come to the two of them
simultaneously, the way two field commanders cut off from each other in
the heat of battle can conceive of the same plan and move their forces
in concert without ever communicating.  Was it at all feasible?  he
wondered.  A thousand questions of strategy, reconnaissance, logistics,
all converged in his brain.

"As I'm sure you can appreciate," Blagden went on, "I am somewhat
hamstrung by my position here.  Any order I give is instantly public
knowledge.  Under normal circumstances this is the kind of thing that
should be turned over to military intelligence.  But since we don't kno
who we're facing, we can't take a chance on alerting anyone.  We don't
know how high this goes."

Brian nodded his agreement with the logic.

Blagden fixed him once again in his gaze.  "You're not on the inside.
You can operate independently, without alerting anyone."

"Up to a point," Brian said.

"And one of the things I can do is cover for you, fix it
administratively so that you're not missed for a while."

Brian wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.

"I can also provide you with some degree of financial backing without
raising any eyebrows.  And upon completion of the mission I will see to
it that in some form you receive recognition."

"What about the people trying to kill me?" Brian asked.

"I don't know who they are.  But I can do some digging.  Once we
identify them, we can deal with them.  Plus, once we've recovered one of
the counterdelivery capsules, we can go after them without pulling any
of our punches."

Brian took a moment to answer.  "This would all be contingent upon being
able to locate one or more of the names on the counterdelivery list."

"Yes, of course.  But I wouldn't be surprised if some discreet inquiries
to the agency, properly phrased, might render the information we need
without tipping our hand.  That is something else I can do that you
cannot."

Brian hesitated.  Like everything else, it all came down to a matter of
trust.  "I could recruit whoever I needed?" he asked.

"I don't think this is the type of thing you could pull off on your own,
even with your resources," 131agden answered.

"Give me a number where I can call you," Brian said.

Blagden scribbled the numerals on a blank sheet of notepaper.

He handed it to Brian.

Brian rose to his feet and extended his hand across the desk. Blagden
stood and reached over to take the proffered hand.

Brian saluted, waited for Blagden to return it, then strode quickly out
of the office.

Big Sur, California.  From the Highway they could see Stanway's house,
several miles away, perched on an outcropping above the Pacific as if it
had grown there.

Diana had come this way often when she'd been at Stanford.  To her the
Big Sur coast was the perfect meeting of land, sky, and water.  For as
many miles as she could see in either direction the pine-covered slopes
of the Santa Lucia Range swept down for nearly a thousand feet to reach
their sharp, crooked fingers out into the ocean.

They were driving Stanway's green Range Rover, which had been left for
them at the Monterey Airport.  Brian wore a blue blazer and had loosened
his tie.  Diana, who had on her traditional traveling outfit of light
sweater and skirt, leaned her head as far out the window as she dared
and cast her eyes down to the serpentine shoreline, where the sea was
always white and foamy against the jagged rocks.

They turned off the narrow highway at a spot where the pine trees
parted, and found themselves on a one-lane ridge along the crest of the
hillside.  just beyond the tire rims the earth fell off steeply on
either side.

Stanway's house was an A-flame with a soaring rooffine of weathered
cedar, and walls composed of large expanses of glass. It perched on the
edge of one of the sweeping Big Sur cliffs.  Even from the road it was
easily the most exciting house Diana had ever seen.

They parked the car in the second slot of the garage that had been
chiseled out of the cliff.  The first slot was occupied by a gleaming
metallic-brown Rolls-Royce Comiche convertible.  A discreet Men of
Action crest adorned the door.

Brian picked up their two small suitcases.  Together they headed down a
stone path into the tropical garden that led to the front door.  Diana
was the first to see the tall, robust figure emerge into view from the
other side.  He wore tan khakis and a matching bush shirt with epaulets.
Brian spotted him.

The two men approached each other with measured strides.

Wordlessly they threw their arms around each other and slapped their
hands hard on one another's shoulders, hard enough to hurt. Diana stood
back silently.

"It's been too long, you old water rat!" Stanway bellowed.  He gazed at
Brian, beaming.  "So you still have your farm-boy looks.  I swear, you
could have modeled for cornflakes ads."

Diana watched them with fascination, and the emotion she observed in
each pair of eyes she could describe only as love.

Then Brian turned toward her.  "And this is Diana," he said.

Stanway stood back for a moment to take her in.  "Diana, goddess of the
hunt," he proclaimed.  "Well"-he slapped Brian on the shoulder again,
then reached out and squeezed Diana's hand hard-"let's get to hunting!"

Inside, a short stone hallway led to the living space and den.

that composed the primary part of the house.  Soon they were lounging in
front of the towering stone hearth, drinking brandy. The sounds of the
evening were starting to assemble.  Chirps, hums, and buzzes surrounded
them, hidden in the shrubs and trees just outside the house.

"I want to thank you for sending your car out for us," Brian said.

"Yes, that was extremely gracious of you," Diana added.

"Don't worry about it," said Stanway.  From him it sounded like an
order.  He stood up and warmed his hands in front of the fire. "So,
Thorpe, you've obviously gotten bored playing doctor and yearn for the
life of action."

"It has nothing to do with that," said Brian.

."Then let me get this straight.  You want to somehow stage a raid into
Vietnam to capture one of five men who may be there, although no one's
heard from any of them in a decade and a half, and bring that man back
unharmed with the intention of taking a metal capsule out of his gut. Am
I stating this fairly?"

"That's essentially it," Brian answered.

"Who's going to finance this thing?"

"Blagden said he'd try to get me some funds."

"Is he going to get you personnel, too?"

Brian took a sip of his brandy.  "No."

"Okay, let me ask you another question.  How much time would we have for
planning, training, and recon?"

"Realistically?"

Stanway nodded.  "Yes."

"None."

Stanway tossed off the remainder of his drink and swallowed hard.
"Great.  I see you've thought this out very carefully."

Brian rose and came over to stand next to his host, resting his hand on
the rough-hewn stone of the chimney.  "I haven't thought it out, Hugh.
And I know it isn't very practical.  But I- also know it's something
that's got to be done.  That's why I came to you."

Stanway stared at him for a long time before he spoke.  "You're serious,
aren't you?" he said at last.

"I'm afraid I have to be."

Stanway crossed over to a bar near the hearth, put down his glass, and
stood facing Brian and Diana.  "Thorpe, ower the years we've learned to
play high-stakes poker with very few chips, you and I.  But you know
there's a reason the SEALS were the most effective unit in Vietnam." He
continued looking straight at them, almost staring them down.  "It's
because we were the best, because we knew and understood our
capabilities, and because, unlike the poor suckers in the army and
marines, we never got into situations without a firm idea of what we
were trying to do."

As Stanway spoke, a montage of images-memories of countless ill-fitted
missions that twenty years later could still make him shudder-came
rushing back to Brian.

Several minutes passed.  The sounds of the night seemed to grow louder
to fill in the silence.  Finally Stanway picked up his glass again,
turned, an* (I slung it into the hearth.  It shattered against the
jagged rock, making Diana jump from her place. "Thorper" he roared. "You
know I'm not going to let you do this on your own.  You're good, but you
aren't that good.  If you're that determined to get shot at, I'm going
to be there to watch it happen."

"Then you're in?"

Stanway returned a sour expression.  "You know I'm in.  You knew it
right from the beginning."

Brian fell silent.  As he had throughout their friendship, he knew
better than to try to thank him.

just then a phone rang in the den.  Stanway left to answer it, and
returned a few minutes later, looking serious.

"We just got a whole new can of worms," he announced.

Brian gazed at him, perplexed.  "What's happened?"

My people have located one of the carriers on your list.  Nguyen Tien
Truong.  And he's not in Vietnam.  He's in Paris.  We have to start
planning first thing in the morning."

Brian lifted his glass in salute.  "You got it, chief."

There was a long silence, broken finally by Diana.  "I'm going with
you!" she said.  Her tone was aggressively insistent, but her bright
blue eyes were wide with pleading.

Brian and Stanway exchanged glances.

" You have to take me with you," she went on, her eyes darting from one
to the, other.  "You can't deny a girl a trip to Paris!"

REVEMLE was at 0600, or, by Diana's bleary-eyed calculation, six a.m.
The sun was still low in the sky and shimmered the calm surface of the
Pacific like a sheet of silver.  Wearing Brian's C4 shirt and a pair of
hiking shorts, she stumbled into the kitchen, where Stanway was serving
a breakfast of mountain trout, thick slab bacon, and huge buttermilk
biscuits.  He and Brian seemed full of unnatural morning cheer, and her
first instinct was to bite off the head of anyone who so much as offered
her a goodmorning.  But she sensed that she'd pay for it.

"She looks like she gets dangerous around feeding time," Stanway teased.

Diana stifled the urge to respond and instead smiled back as sweetly as
her morning face would permit.

She attacked everything set out on her plate.  She knew it wasn't
ladylike to eat with such abandon, but the combination of the sea breeze
with the cool, crisp mountain air had made her ravenous. When she
finally looked up from the last of her fish, she was sure she detected
admiration on the faces of her two companions.

"I see you approve of the chow in this outfit," said Stanway.

She swallowed the last bite.  "Yes.  Thank you.  It's very good."

"Finel Now that you've got your strength, let's go to work!"

At the end of the hallway was a circular staircase that Diana hadn't
noticed before.  Stanway led them both down and into a room with no
windows.  From the one unfinished wall, she could see that the room had
been carved out of solid rock.  In the center was a heavy oak table.  A
pin map of the world covered one wall.

"I call this the situation room," Stanway explained.  He gave them a
brief tour, supplemented with commentary primarily aimed at Diana.
"Special operations aren't like normal exercises,' he said, It and can't
successfully follow the normal command structure. Usually the man who
plans the mission also leads it."

"What Hugh's telling you," said Brian, "is that he's in charge. Once
we're in the field you're allowed to voice your own opinion, but voice
it short and sweet and do what you're told."

"Yes, sir." She saluted.

Stanway turned his attention to Brian.  "I'd prefer to do this op with
SEALS.  Since for obvious reasons we can% I'll take the next best thing:
former SEALS like you."

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door.  "Enter," Stanway ordered.
Two men appeared.  Diana wondered how they had gotten into the house.
Before she had time to wonder anything else, the two of them embraced
Brian and hugged him tight.

They were both handsome, she thought; probably in their early forties
and about Brian's height and build.  One had green eyes, a strong,
triangular-shaped jaw, and moderately long, wavy brown hair.  The other
was a black with angular good looks, whose hair was clipped into a neat,
moderate-length Afro.

" ' Hi.  Mark Epstein." The first man extended his hand.  "And this is
Ernest Rowland."

"Pleased to meet you," Rowland said, offering his hand.

"The pleasure is mine," Diana said.

"These guys both served with us," Brian told her.

"But in the real world," Stanway said, "Rowland, here, is my personal
accountant.  And since he got out, Epstein has owned and run a printing
business in San Francisco.  Among his many clients is Men of Action."

So this is how it's done, Diana said to herself.  That sense of loyalty
and interdependence extended even to here.  Whenever possible deal only
with the people you know you can trust.

"I asked Rowland to pick up some ordnance maps of Paris and
surroundings," Stanway said.  He spread the first one out on the table.
"Before we do anything else, let's get oriented."

The three other men gathered around him.  Diana followed.

"Not you."

Her feelings were instantly stung.  She looked at Stanway, but his
expression was neither domineering nor unkind.

"We can't make up completely for some thirty misspent years in
twenty-four hours," he said, "but I want you to read and study this.
There'll be a quiz at 1730."

He handed her a thick, tan paperbound volume.  The heavy black lettering
on its cover spelled out:

UNITED STATES NAVY
SEA-Air-LAND FORCES
COMBAT MANUAL
The sacred text.  Her first step into the brotherhood.  She opened the
cover and scanned the table of contents.

With mock solemnity Stanway said to her, "Keegan, you're neither an
officer nor a gentleman.  But you've got to swear on your word of honor
that if you ever go back to protesting against the U.S.  government,
you'll never use any of these techniques."

"I swear," she answered.

While the four men stood around the table, Diana retired to a corner to
immerse herself in the manual.  Her nose buried in the text, she
overheard Stanway saying, "Working clandestinely in a friendly country
places us under certain constraints.  Any overt incident blows us out of
the water."

He walked over to a flip chart on which he'd drawn a time line down the
side of the first sheet.  Along the top axis he'd written each of their
names.  "I will arrive at Le Bourget on my private plane.  The rest of
you will travel commercially, two to Orly and two to Charles de Gaulle.
Epstein will use his Swiss passport. Rowland will carry a Belgian
passport.  Keegan carries her passport with her, so she'll use her own.
Thorpe will travel under an assumed name, with identification to verify
it."

They worked until lunch, which they ate out on the deck overlooking the
Pacific, six hundred feet below.  In the afternoon the focus in the
situation room shifted to the specifics of their target.  Diana, Brian,
and their two companions sat in a row of folding chairs.  Stanway dimmed
the lights and turned on a slide projector.  A fuzzy image of a blown-up
newspaper photograph appeared on the screen at the end of the room.

"This is the only photograph we could locate of Nguyen Tien Truong,"
Stanway lectured.  "Unfortunately, it's about ten years old." It showed
a slim, benign-looking man in his mid-forties.  He had a high forehead
and heavily lidded eyes.

While the others stared at the screen, Stanway briefed them. "In a way
Truong was an extraordinary choice to be one of the counterdelivery
carriers, in that his political orientation was always questionable."

"How do we know this?" asked ]Rowland.

"Agency documents," Stanway replied.  "One of my sources over there
briefed me early this morning.  Truong comes from a prominent Vietnamese
Catholic family and was well educated. According to the records, he was
a prosperous restaurateur in Saigon, with ties to both the South
Vietaamese and Hanoi governments.  However, he was also known to be an
independent. He served a brief jail term in 1962 for activities opposing
the Diem regime.  It's not clear how or why he got out.  There were also
strong rumors that at the time of our interest-namely the late
sixties-he was a counteragent for the North Vietnamese. These rumors
were never confirmed, but it's likely neither side trusted him much.
Around the time of Ratsbane there are reports of him being briefly in
both North and South Vietnamese prisons."

"Figure that one out," Rowland said.

"Shortly before the fall of Saigon," Stanway continued, "Truong smuggled
himself out of the country.  Two years later he turned up in Paris."

Stanway clicked the projector.  A second image appeared on the screen-a
building facade, three stories high, with a glass-fronted ground floor
and a bright awning.  Cafe tables and chairs were crowded onto the
sidewalk in front.  "This picture is more recent. It's a restaurant
Truong runs, called La Fin du Tunnel, not far from Notre Dame
Cathedral.,It is known to be a meeting place for Southeast Asian
refugees and expatriates of all political stripes. It's quite possible
that he's using his place and influence to organize something from the
outside, much the way Ho Chi Minh did when he was haunting the Left Bank
in the 1920s.

"Maybe that's our key," said Brian.

"That's what I'm thinking," replied Stanway.  "Whenever you find a weak
spot, exploit it for all it's worth."

By DINNER TIME Diana was again famished.  Porterhouse steak, baked
potato, broccoli, and garden salad had been laid out on the antique
refectory table in the dining room.  But as she approached the table to
pick up her plate Stanway put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"Not so fast."

"what's wrong?" she asked, suddenly alarmed.

"The quiz."

"Oh, no.  You're not serious, are you?"

"I can't afford not to be serious when lives are at stake," Stanway
replied.  "And I can't tolerate insubordination."

Diana sighed, and a few minutes later the four men were seated on both
sides of the table with their heaping plates in front of them.  Diana
stood at one end, hands clasped behind her back.

Stanway motioned to Brian.  "Professor .  .

Brian looked squarely at Diana, doing nothing to alleviate her
awkwardness.  "What is the prime SEAL mission?"

"To get behind enemy lines, disrupt operations and communications,
gather intelligence, and organize resistance."

"What are the method and technique when facing a larger unit?" asked
Epstein.

"To combine superior training and discipline with the element of
surprise, to annihilate or deplete its ranks, and then withdraw before a
greater enemy response can be organized."

"What are the four key components of hand-to-hand combat?" Stanway
called out.

Diana closed her eyes and silently counted off on her fingers. "Making
use of any available weapon, attacking aggressively by using your
maximum strength against your enemy's weakest point, maintaining your
balance and destroying your opponent's, and using your opponent's
momentum to your advantage."

"Very good!" he exclaimed.

Diana breathed a sigh of relief.  The questions went on, mostly from
Stanway, who, she noticed, wasn't using any text for reference.  Finally
he pronounced himself satisfied and handed her a loaded dinner plate.

"Congratulations, Keegan," he said.  "We might just make a commando out
of you yet."

Rowland and Epstein broke out in spontaneous applause.  Brian came over
and kissed her.

Diana wasn't quite sure whether to swell her chest with pride or go
drown herself in the Pacific.

Chapter Eleven
Langley, Virginia.  It was the best time to work, late at night when it
was finally quiet.  Of course, the agency never really shut down. But at
least most of the staff had gone home.

Michael Swansea sat at his desk and stared at the list in front of him.
It was the original of which Calvin Harley had been given a copy.  In
retrospect, Swansea wished he could have controlled all the tangible
evidence.  But then, he always did.

With a blue pencil he had checked off the various names and organized
them into the proper categories.  Abraham, Fletcher, Jacobs, O'Brien,
Shapiro, Washington: unaccounted for, despite Swansea's best efforts.
Craig, Davis, Fine, Hardesty, Jefferson, Lofton, Santoya, Schuyler:
dead.  Dantley, Moreland: accounted for.  Too bad about Moreland. They'd
almost neutralized him.

Then there was the counterdelivery force.  That was a tougher one.  You
had to expect that, though.  They weren't our own people, and the
control over them was tangential at best.

Swansea had been crunching those five names through every available data
bank in the entire intelligence community.  No one had any idea where
these five people were today ...  if they were, today, anywhere at all.

Finally, this morning, a Teletype printout had been left on his desk. It
was a standard response to a request for information he'd filed with
Interpol in St.-Cloud, outside Paris.  They had no line on four of them.
But on the fifth he struck gold.  Nguyen Tien Truong was right there in
Interpol's backyard, in Paris.  Swansea wouldn't have been surprised if
Thorpe was on his way there right now.  It was going to be a race
against time.

He picked up the secure phone and dialed Amber.

"What's up?" Amber asked his chief.

"You've been working hard lately," Swansea told him, "and I think you
could use a change of pace.  So you and I are going to take a little
trip."

Paris, France.  Diana hadn't been to Paris since she was seventeen,
fresh out of high school and aching for romance.  Since then she had
grown up and grown older.  And so, she thought, had the world.  She had
traveled all over it for the CDC, but Paris was clearly still magic.

Hugh Stanway had told her she was free to wander randomly about the
city, pretending to be a tourist.  If anyone was following her or
tracking their movements, he wanted to know about it before they moved
in on their target.  "Epstein and Rowland will be trailing you," he had
said.

just to be on the safe side, he had also given her a homing device to
plant in her bra.

Her first stop was the gleaming white church of Saerd-Coeur. Then she
took the Mdtro to Cite.  She liked the trains.  They were clean and
quick and crowded.  This was the original M,Etro, the one for which
Washington's subway was named.

She came up the steps into the ialye de la Citd, the island in the
center of the Seine that is the original city of Paris.  She walked to
the center of the Place du Parvis and gazed at the perfect Gothic facade
of Notre Dame.  From time to time, out of the corner of her eye, she
caught a glimpse of either Rowland or Epstein, lurking somewhere in the
crowd.  She walked around the cathedral and crossed over the Pont
St.-Louis to the island of the same name.

It didn't take her long to find La Fin du Tunnel.  It looked just like
it had in Stanway's photograph, with its deep-blue window shutters and
bright yellow awning.

She sat down at one of the small round tables outside.  A white aproned
waiter came over and asked what he could bring her.

She asked for a daiquiri.  The waiter gave her a questioning glance,
then shrugged.  As soon as he was gone she got up and went inside the
restaurant, with the ostensible purpose of visiting the ladies' room.
But the main purpose was to case the joint, as Stanway had instructed
her.

"Notice everything you can," he had said, "particularly escape routes.
Find a way to get us out of the building unseen."

Inside, Diana found the place quite charming, an interesting mixture of
belle Opoque and Left Bank bohemian.

By the time she returned to her table, the daiquiri was waiting there
for her.  She took a tentative sip.  The other tables were beginning to
fill up, and strains and snippets of French conversations floated by her
in the air.  just beyond the tables young lovers held hands and kissed,
mothers strolled along pushing prams, and cyclists rode by transporting
long loaves of French bread.

She sat for a while taking in the scene.  Atlanta, Washington, even Big
Sur seemed a lifetime away.  She had to struggle with herself to keep
sight of why she was actually here.

At her final sip of the daiquiri the waiter returned.

" Could you tell me if Mr.  Truong is here, please?"

"You wish to see him?" She nodded.  The waiter left without saying
another word.  A few minutes later Nguyen Tien Tmong came to her table.
He was considerably older than he appeared in the fuzzy newspaper
picture she'd seen.  His skin was wrinkled, and he had less hair.

"I am Nguyen Tien Truong," he announced with effusive cordiality.  He
put his heels together and bowed his head slightly in greeting.  Diana's
heart quickened.  Don't jump the gun in your excitement, she cautioned
herself

"How may I be of service?"

"I'm-I'm most pleased to meet you," she said.  "You have a very lovely
establishment here."

Truong said effusively, "The lady is most kind to say so.  And might I
have the pleasure of knowing your nane?"

"Diana Lane." She beckoned him to sit with her, but without seeming
impolite he remained standing.

"Tell me, how did you happen to stop at our cafe? "

Diana hesitated for a moment, then said, "I have been informed that you
have been known to make your restaurant convenient to certain people who
might be in need of-"

Truong stiffened almost imperceptibly.  "Perhaps you would like to
accompany me to a-a more private setting." With a wave of his hand he
indicated the interior of the restaurant.

"Thank you." Diana rose and silently followed him.  Again she tried to
take in the surroundings.

Next to the kitchen entrance at the end of the corridor was a door.
Truong pushed it open and went through.  Diana was about to follow him
when she felt two sets of hands stopping her.  Her pocketbook was jerked
away.

.k stab of panic shot through her as one set of hands held her rigidly
by the shoulders from behind.  The other set belonged to a young
Oriental man who was crouched in front of her and had begun roughly
searching her, from the ankles on up.  When he had completed the
frisking, he nodded to his companion, indicating that she was clean.  He
motioned for her to go through the doorway Truong had just entered.  The
second man smiled and gave back her handbag.

She let out her breath and paused a split second to recover her form.
What if they discovered the homing device?  She could feel the
perspiration heading around her hairline.

The room to which Truong had guided her was small and plain. There was a
simple wooden table and chairs, an old sofa, and a bureau that didn't go
with the rest of the furniture.  There was a window in the center of one
wall, but it was boarded up.

"I'm sorry to have had to put you through that little indignity," Truong
said solicitously.  "But a stateless person such as myself can never
afford to be too careful."

She glanced around the room.  "Such a lovely view you have outside.  A
pity you can't enjoy it yourself in here.  Even your window is boarded
up, I see."

" Were it not, it would do me little good,".  he explained.  "When the
building was first constructed, I understand that it looked out over a
courtywd.  Now, I'm afraid, it only leads to the sewer."

The famous sewers of Paris," Diana said.

"The amne.  I wanted to plaster it over, but the municipal people insist
it must remain to give them access." Tmong sat down at the table and
motioned for her to do the same.  "Now, what may I do for you?"

She came right to the point.  "In the circles I travel, you have been
known to offer temporary haven to certain people."

Truong nodded noncommittally, waiting.

" I'm sure you don't know who I am," she said.  "I'm a doctor now.  But
at one time I was deeply involved with the underground movement against
the Vietnam war in the United States."

Stick to the real story as much as possible, Stanway had counseled.

She continued in a hushed voice.  "I have a friend who is wanted by the
authorities for certain things they say he's done. He has been
underground more than ten years." Though well rehearsed, she tried to
make her narrative sound rambling and disjointed.  "I have not seen
him in those ten years.  But I desperately want to see him now.  If
things work out, maybe we will be back together again.  Who knows?  He
is afraid to meet me in any public place.  But he says he will meet me
here, that he has heard you are supportive of people in his situation."
She stared at Truong imploringly.  "His name is-"

Truong waved a hand.  "I need not know his true name.  Tell me only, How
will he make himself known to me?" '

"He will call himself Peter Quint." She managed to squeeze a tear out of
one eye.  "Then you'll help?"

"There is little I can do for you in my position, despite what you might
have heard.  But I will provide a meeting place.  That is perhaps not
too much to ask of any sympathetic person."

She reached across the table and placed her hands on his.  "Oh, thank
you," she cried.

"When shall I expect this Peter Quint?"

"It should be anytime now," Diana said.  "Maybe today.  I hope by
tomorrow.  I will return here tomorrow evening."

He took her hand again in his.  "I will look forward to it."

HUGH Stanway had set up headquarters on a side street near the Are de
Triomphe, in a building occupied by a small French film company.  It was
one of those typically Parisian structures, built around a small
stone-paved courtyard.  Large wooden double doors provided access to the
street.

Before any of them did anything else, Stanway had Diana draw a floor
plan of the restaurant.  He had already obtained detailed municipal maps
of the city, which he correlated with her drawing.  Then the five of
them sat around a conference table, and Diana related the particulars of
her conversation.

"He'll be expecting you to use the name Peter Quint," she told Brian.
"Any time tomorrow after dark will be fine.  Oh, and he'll have you
frisked , she added.

"I figured as much," said Brian.  "When you come back tomorrow, will he
frisk you again?"

"I don't think so."

This prompted a good deal of debate around the table.  The fact was,
everyone admitted, they couldn't go in there completely empty-handed.
The instrument under consideration was both small and narrow.  In the
end it was decided that Diana's bra still provided the best possible
hiding place.

"All right, so we meet in this back room of his," Brian went on.

"Unless he decides to walk outwillingly, we've got to get him out of
there.  And we can't just saunter out the front door.  So what are the
alternatives?" He looked to Diana.

"Only one boarded-up window."

"Do you know what's on the other side?"

"Yeah, he told me.  The sewer."

Stanway and Epstein immediately shifted to the public utilities
schematic map.  "Okay, I found it," Epstein called out.

Stanway tapped the map with his finger.  "That's our extraction point,
then.  The sewer leads into the Seine.  By the way, what can you tell me
about what's covering the window?"

"Wooden boards, just like on an abandoned building."

"Nailed shut or screwed?"

"Nailed, I'm pretty sure."

"Be very sure."

Diana closed her eyes a moment and tried to visualize the entire room.
She opened them again.  "I'm very sure."

"Good.  Make a note of that," he said to Rowland.

Everyone was getting up from the table when Stanway added, "Oh, and
Keegan ...  congratulations.  You did good today."

MICHell Swansea presented his cover identification to the marine guard
outside the American embassy on the Avenue Gabriel.  When he was
admitted, he went up to the third floor to the special-interests
section.  Behind that department's locked door he told the deskman that
he needed a secure line.

Once in the soundproof booth Swansea dialed the code for the deputy
director of operations' direct line.

"I'm in Paris," Swansea explained to the voice that answered. "I need a
status report.  Last name, Stanway.  First name, Hugh. He is here in
Paris at the moment according to a flight plan his pilot filed.  I need
to know if he is currently on agency business."

"Hang on," the deputy director said.  Swansea could hear him punching in
names and codes on his desk console.  Finally he said, "No.  He's not
doing anything for us right now."

"Thanks for your time," Swansea said.

And now I know what Stanway is here for, Swansea said to himself as he
replaced the phone in its cradle.  He would somehow have to get to the
target before Stanway did.  And that wouldn't be easy, Swansea knew,
because Hugh Stanway was a pro.

THIS TIME DUNA WENT DMECTLY inside the restaurant, where dinner was in
full swing, and told the maitre d' she'd like to speak with Mr.  Truong.
Instantly he showed her down the corridor to the back room.

The frisking wasn't as complete as it had been yesterday.  It was just
to let her know they were still taking precautions.

Inside the back room Truong was sitting at the table.  Everything seemed
the same as it had been the day before.  Diana made a quick show of
glancing around the room, put on her most concerned expression, and
said, "He isn't here yet?"

"No, mademoiselle.  Are you certain he is still coming?"

"Yes," she said, a touch of desperation in her voice.  "I'm sure of it.
Can I wait here for him?"

"As you wish.  You will excuse me, though, if I resume my working.  I
have accounts to balance." He opened the top drawer of the bureau and
brought out a pocket calculator.

She sat quietly across from him, letting her eyes drift idly about the
room.  When they lit on the boarded window, she checked again to make
sure she had reported accurately to Stanway.  Yes, she had.  Nails, not
screws.  Thank goodness.

They continued sitting in silence, Tmong apparently deeply engrossed in
his accounts, Diana deeply engrossed in nothing. The longer she sat like
that, the more she had to think about all the things that could go
wrong.

Twenty-five minutes later there was a knock on the door. Truong stood up
and crossed the room.  He opened the door, and the man who had frisked
Diana was standing there.  He stepped aside, and Brian came in.  His
clothes were slightly disheveled.

"I presume we are having the honor of Mr.  Quint," Truong said, closing
the door.

Brian nodded tentatively, as if he were still cowed by the ordeal of the
frisking.

Brian and Diana locked eyes from across the room.  They ran for each
other.  She threw her arms around his neck.  He embraced her tightly
around the waist and lifted her off the floor.

"I didn't believe it was possible." She wept, still clutching him.  Of
all the parts she had to act, this was the easiest.

"I told you it would happen," Brian whispered.

Truong watched the reunion discreetly.  Then he said, "I'll give you
some time to be by yourselves." He put his hand on the doorknob to open
it.

"No, please." Brian stopped him.  "Please stay.  What I have to say
concerns you, too.  We need your help."

Tmong regarded him quizzically.  Without saying anything, he crossed
back behind the table and reclaimed his seat.

Good, they'd gotten through that stage convincingly.  Diana looked
intently at Brian.  The next step would be critical.

"Mr.  Truong, I'd like to talk to you about your time in prison," Brian
said.  "In North Vietnam." That was the plan, Diana knew. Throw him off
balance.  Don't give him time to think.

Truong's sallow face drained of all color.  "What is going on here? What
is the meaning of this?" He stood up.

"Please, hear me out," Brian said.  "Millions of lives are at stake, and
you are the only one who can save them."

Truong listened in stunned silence as Brian described the capsule
implanted in his body.  "I assure you we wish you no harm.  Your
political views are of no interest to us.  But, please, you must go with
us back to the United States.  For the surgery."

""This is nonsense," Tmong declared.  "The war is over.  Let it stay
that way."

"Mr.  Truong, I'm afraid I don't have time to argue with you."

Brian glanced at his watch.  "I'll ask you one more time.  Will you help
us?"

The Vietnamese faced Brian directly.  "How many times have people asked
for my help?  What has it ever gotten me?  Where is my country now?  I
ask you.  What has become of it?  No!" he shouted as he slammed his fist
on the table.  "You have both betrayed my confidence.  Now get out!
leave!"

Brian hung his head sadly.  "All right, I'm sorry.  I did my best."

He put his hand on the doorknob, then turned to face Tmong. "Thank you
for your time," he said, and behind his back he turned the key in the
door to the locked position.

Pushing off his left foot, Brian charged across the room.  In one leap
he had Truong from behind, one hand cupped over his mouth, the other
across his chest and pinning both his arms.

Diana quickly reached into her blouse and withdrew a thin plastic
syringe of sodium pentothal.  She plucked off the cover as Brian pulled
Truong's right forearm straight out in front of him.

Diana grabbed it firmly at the wrist and jabbed the needle into Truong's
arm.  Brian held him rigidly for a few seconds.  Then Truong collapsed
in Brian's arms.

Brian checked his watch a second time.  just as he did they saw the
nails holding the window boards in place pushing outward.  One by one
the boards clattered to the floor.  Rowland and Epstein climbed through
the opening, in wet suits and scuba gear.  They carried -a utility case
with Emerson bag and vest assemblies for Brian and Diana.

"As soon as Truong's employees notice he's missing there'll be a police
alert out for us," Brian said.  "So let's get out of here."

Rowland gave him the thumbs-up.  Still carrying the utility case, he led
the way back out the wall opening, with Diana right behind him, and
Brian and Epstein carrying Truong.

They soon found themselves in a narrow tunnel.  There was almost no
light, and the flowing sewage at their feet was knee deep.  As they
slogged through the muck Rowland shined a penlight on a card on which
he'd marked the escqpe route.  "Okay there should be a turnoff in about
forty feet," he stated.

They pushed on.  The flow became heavier and deeper.  It was lapping up
toward their waists.  Epstein and Brian changed their grip on Truong to
a dead-man's carry.  The sounds of labored breathing bounced off the
close arched walls.

The tunnel ended up at a hole in the stone retaining wall that
surrounded the ile St.-Louis.  Rowland stuck his head out to make sure
they couldn't be seen from any passing boats.  In the dark of night it
was difficult to judge, but Diana figured the drop to the river to be
about fifteen feet.  The water was absolutely black. Rowland opened the
utility case and handed out the Emerson equipment.  Then he threw the
case into the water to judge the drop.  "Everybody ready?" he asked.

Brian helped Diana into her gear.  He adjusted her mouthpiece and opened
the valve.

Rowland stepped out of the tunnel and plunged into the water. It was
Diana's turn next.  She hit the water with a loud splash. When she
surfaced and looked up, she saw Epstein holding Truong under the
armpits, lowering him down as far as he could. Then he let him go.
Rowland rescued him as soon as he hit the water.  Epstein followed. Then
Brian climbed into his own wet suit, jumped in and swam back to the
group.

They formed a small circle, treading water to stay afloat.  Rowland
fitted a face mask securely on Tmong's head.  Then he clipped a long
nylon line onto a band around his own wrist.  He pulled it out to the
next clip, which he attached to Diana, then the next to Brian and the
final one to Epstein, who were both responsible for carrying Truong.
Without a connecting line under the dark, unfamiliar water there was too
great a risk of separation.

Diana had forgotten what hard work swimming can be, especially in the
dark, in cold, black dirty water with someone possibly pursuing them. It
was like swimming through ink.  She fought with herself not to panic.
That would only fatigue her more.  It couldn't be that much farther. She
had to make it.  They all did. Think how much harder it must be for
Brian and Epstein, who were dragging another body in addition to
themselves.  Everything in her ached.  All her muscles begged for
release.  Don't stop.  Don't think.  just keep, going, she told herself
Finally she saw it.  They wore there-the embanlanent under the Pont de
Sully.  It was quiei and eerie, and the shadow of the massive iron
bridge kept it pitch dark.  She looked up the eight feet to ground
level.  During the day the promenade would have been crowded with
painters and strollers and sunbathers.  Now it was deserbed except for
Hugh Stanway.  Stanway was right there.

He threw a line down.  It had a large loop at the end.  Rowland grabbed
it and handed it to Diana.  She held on for dear life as Stanway began
hoisting her up out of the water.  He was incredibly strong.  Only when
she was up on the embankment did she realize that the other end of the
line was attached to a power winch on the bumper of a Land-Rover.

Diana threw her arms around Stanway, and instantly she began sobbing
uncontrollably.  She sobbed from the cold and the fright and the
exhaustion and from the exhilaration of pushing herself beyond the
limits of her imagination-just like a SEAL.  He helped her out of her
equipment and threw a blanket around her.

Within minutes everyone else was up on the embankment. There was a brief
round of hugging and handshaking.  Then they all piled into the car.

"I want one person with Truong at all times," Stanway directed when they
had returned to headquarters.  "We'll drink a toast when we're airborne.
But right now we've got to hurry.  His buddies probably know he's
missing, and this town is going to be crawling with cops.  I want us out
of here pronto."

THE Land-Rover screeched to a stop on the edge of the tarmac, next to
Stanway's jet.  The engines were already running.  Stanway was standing
on the stair ladder waiting for them.  Diana stepped out of the car,
followed by Brian, then Rowland and Epstein, who, together, carried
Truong up the airplane steps.

When they were settled in and ready for takeoff, Diana asked Brian,
"Well, were you scared?  Tell the truth."

"of course," he said off handedly.  "But I had faith in Stanway. By the
way, that was some pretty fancy acting back there."

"Thanks," she said.  just then Rowland came over to her seat and told
her to stand up.  Stanway and Epstein stood behind him.

Diana did as she was told.  Rowland was holding something small and
shiny.  It looked like a brass pin of some sort.  When he moved closer,
she recognized it as the eagle with anchor, trident, and flintlock (,,'
the SEAL insignia.

"Hold still," he ordered her.  Then he pinned it onto her shirt, just
above the brest pocket.  "You've earned this," he said.  "We all think
so."

She looked down at the badge.  Then she looked at the four men, who had
formed a circle around her.  Wordlessly Diana hugged every one of them
in succession as the inner circle closed around her.

Chapter Twelve
Washington, D.C.  The hut was constructed of bamboo and thatch, like the
hooches they'd known in Nam.  From Sylvester, West Virginia, they had
brought the materials one night and put them together on the grass just
beyond the sidewalk on Constitution Avenue, right next to the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial.  And when it was finished, Timothy Dantley had
climbed inside.  He had tried everything he could think of to get their
attention, and nothing had worked.  So now he was staging a fast, right
here next to the memorial, where no one could ignore him.

Dantley was dressed in his old jungle fatigues.  His face and hands were
still mottled with the deep, festering red sores, the effects, as he had
tried to tell them time and again, of exposure to Agent Orange, the
chemical defoliant used in Vietnam.  He'd been up in the demilitarized
zone, one of the most heavily defoliated areas of the country.  Now, in
addition to the disfiguring skin condition, he suffered a painful
stiffness in his joints, so bad it hurt just to get up in the morning.
It was only a matter of time for him, he knew.  Tim Dantley wasn't
afraid to die.  But he was determined that his death would mean
something.

Outside the hooch his buddies were standing a continuous vigil, pledging
to remain there until one of two things happened: the disgraceful
insensitivity of the government toward the Vietnam veteran was redressed
or he was carried out feetfirst.

It had been five days now, and Tim Dantley was determined that he would
not eat again until those in high places finally heard his voice.

Atlanta, Georgia.  The speed of the postabduction operation turned out
to be justified, the way Hugh Stanway saw it.  During the race to the
airport Epstein had managed to snap off a photo with his spy camera of a
BMW that was following them.  And Stanway was able to identify the
driver as Michael Swanseacode name Contact--a deep-cover agency
operative whose very existence was known to only a handful within the
entire intelligence establishment.

"There's no way we can pin anything on him," Stanway said. "But it's
interesting to know he's in the picture."

"A CIA operative?" Brian had said.  "What's going on?  Ratsbane is a
North Viet ploy."

Stanway shook his head.  "I don't know.  But I have a funny feeling
we'll find out."

They had taken Nguyen Tien Truong to Emory University Hospital, only a
short walk from CDC headquarters.  With at least one counterdelivery
agent safely in their control, Brian agreed to let Diana give an
expurgated briefing to Herb Seerest, which had the twin effect of
placing the hospital completely at their disposal and getting her
suspension lifted.  Herb seemed both shocked and genuinely moved by
Diana's narrative.  He assured her he would remove from her file the
letter of reprimand that had accompanied the suspension and replace it
with a letter of commendation.

just to be certain there were no incidents at the hospital, Stanway,
Epstein, and Rowland made sure the patient was never alone.  The
repeated doses of sodium pentothal had long since worn off.  Brian had
explained to Truong the bizarre chain of events that had brought them to
this hospital room.  But despite assurances that he would be returned as
good as new once the operation was completed, the Vietnamese was
definitely not pleased by his circumstances.  He refused to respond in
any way. He simply glared at his captors.

The timing of the surgery was most critical.  Since it was likely that
the countervirus could not live away from its host, a "body surrogate"
had to be established in a CDC lab that would provide the virus with the
proper environment while it was cultured and reproduced.  A transport
medium made from Truong's own blood was created for this purpose.

While he was waiting for all the elements to come together, Brian phoned
Gregory in Bethesda.

"I'm still working on the capsule for you," Cregory reported.

"And what have you got?"

"Well, once we knew the stopper was made of some organic compound, I
thought it would be simple to figure out what it was designed to react
to." He y aused for emphasis.  "That turned out not to be the case.  We
tested it against all the nominal stuff we could think of, but there was
never any reaction.  Then I started thinking that we've only got one
example where the stopper actually did erode and open up."

"Sam Hardesty, in Montana."

"Exactly.  So I said to myself, What do we know about him?

Well, the main thing was that he was in a diabetic coma when he died, a
state of ketoacidosis."

"So you think that had something to do with it?"

"It sure seemed logical," Gregory said.  "When the body can't break down
its own sugar for energy, it starts manufacturing ketones.  So I
implanted the capsule and the remainder of the stopper in a test animal
and pumped it full of alpha-butyric acid. And you know what happened?"

"I have great faith that you'll tell me," Brian said.

"That little stopper dissolved." -But why would they design something
that reacts to a dramatic rise in ketone levels?"

"Search me," Gregory said.  "Anyway, that's your answer."

Washington, D.C.  The television news trucks were all assembled; the
local stations, cable, even the networks were there.

A fairly good-sized number of people had gathered on the sidewalk,
though as one commentator pointed out, it was probably the presence of
the television equipment, more than the event itself, that had attracted
the crowd.  They watched as six District of Columbia policemen carried
Timothy Dantley out of the bamboo hut that had been his home for ten
days and placed him in the blue-and-white paddy wagon.

As the door slammed closed, there was a chorus of jeers and boos from
the crowd.  The police authority on the scene explained it away by
saying that this was not an arrest; rather, Dantley was being removed to
a Veterans Administration hospital, where he would be kept under
observation.  for his own welfare.

"Would an attempt be made to force-feed Mr.  Dantley?" a woman from ABC
asked.

The police authority's understay ding was that there would be.

Atlanta, Georgia.  It was the evening before the surgery.  When Brian
got to Truong's room, Rowland was sitting in the visitor's chair. "I
just want to spend a few minutes with the patient," Brian explained.
Rowland nodded and left the room.

Brian took the chair and brought it up close to Truong's bed. The
Vietnamese followed him with his eyes, saying nothing.

"How are you feeling tonight, Mr.  Truong?"

"Better if I expect to be feeling tomorrow," he replied acidly.

"I apologize for everything that's happened," Brian said.  "I wish there
were some other way.  And Dr.  Keegan has spoken to some of her
associates.  They've assured her that the government will do whatever is
possible to compensate you."

"That was very generous of her."

"I just wanted to go over the surgical procedure with you to reassure
you that it's not a risky one."

Truong shook his head.  "Perhaps you are forgetting that I have already
had this operation once before.  Though at the time I thought I was
being operated on to repair my wounds."

"I'm not forgetting that," Brian said wearily.  "I just thought it was
important to let you know that everything will be all right."

Truong regarded him with skepticism.  "That is the precise thing your
people said to me the first time," he replied.  "Just before your Dr.
Harley performed the surgery."

Brian felt his heart turn over in his chest.  "Dr.  Harley?"

"Of course.  Who else would have done it?"

"But weren't you  in a North Vietnamese prison?"

Truong smiled jubilantly.  "Not when I had my wounds.  At that time I
was in South Vietnamese prison.  No matter what a person did in the few
days, it could end one up in jail ...  or dead. You see, perhaps, why I
left when I could."

"But you mean to tell me you were operated on in South Vietnam by
Americans?"

"Doctor, I am an educated man.  I know English.  I heard your great
leader speaking to the doctor.  The doctor was timid, hesitant.  But the
commander said this would help quickly end the war.  They thought I was
only a humble peasant."

"My leader?" Brian continued, trying to make sense of his confusion.
"You mean President Johnson?"

"Of course not." Truong spit back the words at him.  "I mean the leader
of the doctor who did the surgery on my wounds-the leader of the
marines."

"Do you remember anything about him?"

He regarded Brian as if he had just delivered the ultimate insult.  "I
remember everything about him: what he wore, how he looked, the name
upon his uniform."

" And that name would be?"

"Colonel John Blagden."

Tyson Comer, Virginia.  The last formal meeting between the two men had
taken place on the edge of the airstrip one cold and rainy dawn in 1970,
as units of the 3rd Marine Division prepared to leave Dong Ha.  Neither
man was much given to emotional demonstration.  But as they solemnly
shook hands and surveyed the fields of frosty mud they were leaving
behind, each recalled a sense of completion without fulfillment.

Now, more than fifteen years later, John Winthrop Blagden sighted down
the length of the massive regional mall and surveyed the seemingly solid
mass of Saturday-morning shoppers. He was wearing civilian leisure
clothes, in an effort to look like one of the thousands of retired
military personnel in suburban Virginia.  He and his companion casually
drew together and melded into the crowd.

Without introductian Blagden said as they walked, "So I see you've
resurrecter'.  Ratsbane."

"Not by choice, Michael Swansea replied.

"What happened?"

Swansea stopped in front of a video store.  "Look, Jack, I agreed to
meet you out here.  But I thought we'd also agreed that the less you
knew about this, the better."

"But people have died," Blagden stated rigidly.

"People die in wars.  It's one of the unfortunate side effects."

"But this isn't war any longer.  Hasn't been for years."

They continued walking.  Swansea picked up his pace, making sure no one
in the crowd heard any of the conversation.  "Isn't it war?" he asked
challengingly.  "What has changed to make it not war, other than the
incidental fact that we no longer have ground troops in Vietnam?  Has
anything been resolved?  In one way or another we're still fighting the
same battle and will be for a long time to come."

"You told me the capsules would go inert after six or seven weeks," he
said.

"We thought they would.  But when we found out they didn't, we
couldn'tjust sit by and let nature take its course.  No one's sure why
the virus stayed active." He regarded Blagden with regret. "I was trying
to insulate you from all this, especially in your new position.  How did
you find out we'd reopened the file?"

Blagden remained silent.

"Must have been Thorpe.  We hadn't figured on someone like him getting
involved ...  and getting this far."

"You obviously hadn't planned on a lot of things." He didn't look at
Swansea.  "I assume you were responsible for the deaths of the marines
from my unit."

"What is it they say, jack?  It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do
it."

Blagden's expression made it clear that he failed to see the humor.
"You'd better tell me exactly what happened."

"The less you know, the better," Swansea said.  "Leave the dirty work to
me, just like in the old days."

"I want to know what happened," Blagden quietly demanded.

The man known as Contact took a deep breath, stopped, and stared idly
into the window of a sporting-goods store for several long seconds
before he spoke.  "A couple of months ago-actually it's been a little
more than that by now-one of the men from the original delivery force
named Anthony Lofton stopped in at Stan ford to see Harley.  He was
having gut pains and such and went to see a doctor he knew and trusted."

Blagden was amazed that not a touch of irony had entered Swansea's tone
of voice.

"Harley immediately suspected what it might be.  Pain from shrapnel
fragments years later is not uncommon." Swansea resumed walking, heading
in the direction of a big department store.  "In what I gather was a
fairly simple operation Harley took out several fragments from Lofton's
body, including the one he knew contained the Ratsbane capsule." He
turned briefly to his companion.  "I can still stop at any point, and
this conversation never happened.  Beyond this it gets ...  unpleasant."

"Go on," Blagden directed.

"Harley took the capsule, and under completely secure laboratory
conditions he opened it and tested the contents.  He discovered that the
Ratsbane virus was still alive.  That's when he hit the panic button."

"And he called you?"

"He called me.  Because Lofton's scars were, in effect, evidence, we
suggested he get Lofton back for follow-up surgery, during which the
patient would unfortunately expire on the operating table.  But Harley
refused."

"So instead?"

"So instead, we sent people down to L.A.  Since Lofton turned out to be
a frequenter of bars, the task was not overly complex."

"And that's what happened to the others?"

La

"More or less.  The ones we could still locate.  One by one, over
time, so as not to arouse any undue suspicion.  The ones with the
highest profiles-like Roger Moreland-we preferred to wait on until they
could be handled with some delicacy.  But sometimes, as you know, a
situation requires quick and decisive action."

"Did you have to kill them?" Blagdin asked through clenched teeth.

Swansea shrugged.  "We thought so."

"It could have been handled differently.  Why didn't you just round up
all the people and operate on them?"

Swansea's expression bordered on bemusement.  "And tell them what?  That
we had turned them into walking time bombs and now we wanted to undo the
damage?"

"Something like that," Blagden said.

"Admittedly, jack, it would have been the humane thing to do. It's nice
and clean and symmetrical ...  in theory.  But in practice the risks
were too great.  Can you imagine trying to operate on eight or more
men-all of them civilians now-without telling them what you're going in
for?  Or the other alternative: take them all into our confidence.  We
might as well take out an ad in The New York Times.  Can you conceive of
the hue and cry! The protest over Agent Orange becomes a Sunday school
picnic by comparison." Swansea paused, as if preparing a summation. "All
in all, I considered this an acceptable sacrifice."

An acceptable sacrifice.  Those words had come back to haunt Blagden. In
his worst nightmares, and there had been plenty of them, he never
thought it could come to anything like this.  "You didn't have to kill
them," he said insistently.

Swansea put his hands in his pockets and looked down at his feet as he
walked.  "How much does Thorpe know?" he asked. "Enough," Blagden
replied.

"You didn't spill to him, did you?"

"I considered it ...  but no."

Swansea looked visibly relieved.  "Has he traced it to Harley?"

"Yes."

"Is he going to try to talk to him?"

"I don't think so."

Swansea rubbed the back of his neck as he thought.  "Okay, good.  I
presume you showed Thorpe document C."

,,, I did," Blagden said.

"I assumed you would.  I'm glad we generated that cover.  I wasn't sure
at first, but it turned out to be the right thing."

They strolled past a central plaza.  Blagden shifted his tone to casual.
"I thought a stockpile of the countervirus was supposed to be
maintained," he said.

"It was.  But only for a while.  Once they didn't think they needed it
anymore ...  You know, no sense keeping evidence."

"So there is none of the countervirus still in existence other than
what's inside the five carriers?"

"That's right," said Swansea.  "No one thought we'd need it again."

"I guess not." Blagden reflected somberly.  He looked Swansea squarely
in the eye.  "What do you intend to do about Thorpe?"

"Please don't ask.  Leave yourself the deniability."

"I'm not going to let you free-lance this thing anymore."

Swansea pulled him to the side, close to a bookstore window, where
they'd be out of the direct flow of traffic.  "I hope you're not
thinking of anything foolish, jack."

"I don't think I am," Blagden answered decisively.

"And I hope you're not losing your nerve at this late date."

"I am more concerned with you having lost your soul," the general
rebutted.

Washington, D.C.  Visiting hours at the hospital were over, and the
attendant in the lobby told the three men they'd have to come back
tomorrow.  But they told her they were Tim Dantley's best friends and
wanted to try to convince him to start eating before the force-feeding
began in the morning.

The attendant thought she recognized them from the newscast. She called
upstairs to the ward, explained the situation, then told them they could
go up if they stayed only a little while.  She pointed to the elevator
and watched them walk off.  All three were wearing sweat socks and
tennis shoes and carried large gym bags.

When they reached the room, the three men made their respectful
greetings to the weakened patient and closed the door behind them for
privacy.  Then they opened their gym bags.  Two of them pulled out
matching M16s, kept clean and functioning ever since Vietnam.  The third
took out a Remington M 700 boltaction rifle with a telescopic sight.
They all put on flak jackets and grouped their ammunition cache into the
center of the room.  The man with the Remington established himself next
to the window, while the ones with the M-16s positioned themselves next
to the bed and by the door.

The one next to the bed put his hand on the shoulder of the man lying
there.  "Ain't nobody going to make you eat if you don't want to," he
promised.

Timothy Dantley nodded weakly.

Atlanta, Georgia.  Brian walked back to Diana's apartment in a state of
shock.  His worst fears had been confirmed, the ones so unthinkable he
had never permitted himself to voice them.

So Ratsbane was an American project.  And John Winthrop Blagden was a
traitor-and about to become the commandant of the Marine Corps.  Brian
felt his stomach heave.  As soon as he finished the surgery - tomorrow
and delivered the antivirus capsule to the CDC, he would have to
confront Blagden.

Diana had been right all along.  Blagden was the enemy.  It was still
unbelievable.  He must have been the one responsible for killing the
marines.  That explained this Michael Swansea-the CIA guy Stanway had
spotted in Paris.  Vietnam was crawling with CIA men in those days,
Brian recalled.

Brian opened Diana's apartment door, not knowing how he was going to
face her.  When he came into the living room, she was sitting
cross-legged on the sofa, watching television.

"Hi," he said dispintedly.

"Hi," she replied without taking her eyes off the screen.  She didn't
seem to notice his despondency.  She stood up, still watching.  "Come
over here."

"What is it?"

She pointed to the screen.  "Tim Dantley, the other guy from Jill's
list."

Brian was suddenly alarmed.  "What about him?"

"He staged a fast near the Vietnam Memorial.  After ten days the police
took him to the VA so they could force-feed him.  Then tonight three of
his friends went up to his room with rifles, and they're holding off the
world."

Brian came over and stood next to Diana in front of the television.  He
listened in stunned disbelief as the reporter detailed the situation.
"As you can see behind me, the hospital has been cordoned off, and
patients in nearby rooms have been moved to safety.  We understand a
SWAT team has been called in.  The gunmen have apparently made no
demands, other than to stress they are not holding Mr.  Dantley as a
hostage.  They are simply preventing the hospital staff from ending his
hunger strike against his will.  If he wants to eat, or leave, or
whatever, they say they will not stop him."

"How many days did you say he's been fasting?" Brian asked. Diana
finally looked at him.  "Ten.  Why?"

:job my God," he said quietly.  His face turned white. "What is it?"

"Diana, what happens during starvation?"

She looked at him quizzically.  "Well, the body goes through its sugar
and its stores of fat.  Then it starts metabolizing protein to keep
itself alive-"

"Creating an elevated level of what?"

Her mouth dropped open.  "Ketones.  Oh, no, Brian."

"Ketones," he repeated.  "Just like in diabetic coma.  And Gregory said
that the capsule stopper eroded at high ketone levels."

"If Dantley's capsule ruptures- Brian, he's in the middle of a crowded
hospital, and no one can get to him."

"I know.  Okay, now listen.  Call Herb Secrest.  Tell him I'm not going
to do the operation on Truong, but they've got to get someone else to do
it-tonight.  Don't wait till morning.  They've got to get that antivirus
cultured as quickly as possible."

"Right." She dashed over to the phone, rang up Herb at home, and
urgently explained the situation.

As soon as she put down the receiver Brian picked it up again. He called
Stanway at the Peachtree Plaza.  Stanway answered gruffly.  "Hugh, it's
Brian.  Can you get your plane ready to fly to Washington tonight?"

:"Absolutely necessary, Thorpe?"

"Absolutely necessary."

"Then meet me at Hartsfield Airport in an hour."

When Brian hung up, he turned to Diana.  "We have to operate on Dantley
as soon as we can."

:"But how are you going to get to him?"

"I'm going to have to go through friends in high places," Brian replied
caustically.  From his wallet he pulled out the slip of paper bearing
the unlisted home telephone number of John W.  Blagden.

Chapter Thirteen
Washington, D.C.  Goncharoy, the best man the KGB had to offer, had just
arrived back in town that day.  Andrey Stoltz asked him to come to his
office in the embassy for a debriefing that evening.

There was no need to waste time exchanging pleasantries. Stoltz motioned
for Goncharoy to sit down.  "I understand the mission in Paris was
aborted at the last minute," he reviewed.

"Correct," Concharoy said.  "It was well planned and on track. Then our
friends from the agency managed to get into the act. They were very
close.  Too close."

"Yes, very unfortunate," Stoltz said.  "But the reason I called you here
tonight is this: despite the setback, Moscow believes we still have one
more chance-at this point, our last-to avail ourselves of the
opportunity that has been presented.  I assume you have been apprised of
the drama currently playing itself out at the Veterans Administration
hospital."

"Yes, we have."

"I have just received a report that Commander Thorpe has unexpectedly
departed from Atlanta and is on his way here."

"And the two events are related?"

"What else would make Thorpe rush to Washington, unless Mr. Dantley was
one of those affected?"

"The same personnel will be working on our behalf?"

"That is my understanding," Stoltz informed him.

Goncharoy stood up.  "That being the case," he told his superior, we
will be ready."

A military staff car met Brian's plane at Andrews Air Force' Base and
brought him directly to the VA hospital.  Diana and Stanway followed
separately.

When Brian arrived, John Winthrop Blagden, in full uniform, was standing
at the joint military-police command center that had been set up in the
lobby.

"This is Commander Brian Thorpe-Dr.  Thorpe," he said to the captain in
charge of security.  Brian caught the name James Lindsay on his tunic.
The hospital's chief of medicine, Dr.  Howard Meridor, was also there.
"You're to give him whatever he needs and wants," Blagden directed.
"Please alert your staff."

", understand," Dr.  Meridor replied.  He waited for Brian's first
reques% but Brian merely stood there, his eyes riveted on Blagden. "I
owe you an explanation," the general said.

"I'm not the one you owe," answered Brian.

"Sir, Commander, what can we do for you at this point?" Meridor broke
in.

Brian turned back to the chief of medicine.  "I want an OR readied.
Essential personnel only."

"Certainly," the doctor replied.  "When would you like to begin?"

"As soon as I can convince the patient."

"Sir, things are at a very delicate stage," Captain Lindsay said.
"They've threatened to kill anyone who comes within sight of the door."

"I'll have to take that chance."

Lindsay glanced quickly around the assemblage.  "Come with me, please,"
he said.

Brian followed silently down a corridor and into one of the elevators.
The door closed.  When it opened again, Brian saw that police had taken
over the nurses' station.  Snipers in blue flak jackets were pressed
into doorways all the way down the ward. The officer sitting behind the
counter said, "We called the room and said you were on your way up to
talk, but they said to stay away.  These are all Vietnam combat
veterans, sir.  I'd take them at their word ", he advised.

"Which room is it?" Brian asked.

"Four oh two east." He pointed.

"Have you got a bullhorn?" The officer handed one over.  Brian pressed
the button on the handle and said, "Tim, my name is Brian Thorpe.  I'm a
doctor.  I have to see you.  I'm coming in."

A strong voice that couldn't have been Dantley's called from down the
corridor.  "Stay away!"

"I'm sorry," Brian responded.  "I can't.  This has nothing to do with
Tim's fast.  If you'll let me in, I'll explain what it is about."

"If you come any closer, we'll blow your head off!"

"I'd really prefer you didn't," Brian announced back.  "I'm unarmed.  My
hands will be in the air.  I'm coming now."

He handed the bullhorn back to the officer at the counter, took a deep
breath, and stepped around the corner.  With his hands raised he walked
slowly down the hall, one pace at a time.  From the corners of his eyes
he could see the snipers readying their rifles into position.

The barrel of an M 16 stuck out from the door of Dantley's room. The
same voice called out, "We told you! One more step and you're dead."

Brian continued walking.  "I'm not with the VA or the cops or anybody.
And I was with Tim in Nam."

The rifle coming out from Dantley's door drew aim on Brian's head.  His
heart was pounding.  He continued walking.  He heard the ominous click
of the rifle's safety.

Suddenly he was in the room.  All three weapons were trained on him.  He
gazed down at Tim Dantley, lying in the bed.  He was pale and thin.  And
he had one of the worst skin diseases Brian had ever saw.  But there was
a deep determination in his eyes that no amount of fasting or hardship
was likely to erase.

"Tim, I'm not here to force you to eat.  I'm not even here to ask you to
give up your principles.  I understand what you're doing and respect you
for it.  But there's something you don't understand.  And you've got to
let me explain it to you."

"Who are you?" Dandey rasped.  "What are you doing here?"

"I told you.  I'm a doctor.  And you have to let me operate on you.
Tonight Right away."

Dantley's half-closed eyes grew wide with amazement.  His mouth actually
formed a smile.  "I think you must be crazier than they say I am."

His three buddies said nothing.  They watched and listened warily, their
rifles still trained on Brian's head.

"Can I tell you the story?"

Dantley shrugged.  "You're here.  Talk."

"We have to talk alone.  Your friends are going to have to step out into
the hall."

"You must be crazy"' the one nearest the door exclaimed.  "The minute we
step out of here, those SWAT boys are going to blow our heads off Don't
listen to him, Tim."

"Look, I know there's no reason to trust anyone after what's been done
to you," Brian said.  "And even more's been done to you than you know.
That's what I have to tell you about.  And when you've heard me out, I
hope that somehow you'll find it in yourself to trust me.  Because
there's a Whole lot riding on it, Tim. More than you could possibly
know."

He stopped to catch his breath.  His eyes darted among the three
standing men.  "All right, how about two of you go out into the hall?  I
promise nothing will happen.  The third one can stay in the bathroom as
insurance.  If anything happens-anything at all-he can shoot me."

The gunmen seemed to consider this.  Brian turned back to Dantley. "Tim,
Radley Davis came to me a while ago.  That's what started all this for
me.  I know he was a friend of yours.  He told me the story I'm about to
tell you.  I let him down.  And he's dead because of it.  Please, let me
make it up to him ...  through you."

Dantley raised his head weakly so he could look squarely at Brian.  Then
he motioned to his buddies.  "Do like he says."

They exchanged glances among themselves.  Brian picked up the telephone.
He was automatically connected to the command center in the lobby.  "Two
men are coming out into the hall," he said.  "Nothing is to happen to
them.  Leave them alone.  Either of them gets the least bit spooked, the
third one kills me and anyone else he can take with him.  Understood?
...  Good.  And another thing.  If Dantley agrees to come out of here
with me, nothing happens to his three friends.  That's the deal, and I
want your answer now." He waited about ten seconds.  "Good.  We have an
understanding." He put down the phone and nodded to the three men.
Warily two of them began making their way into the hall. The third one
eased into the bathroom and closed the door.

Fifteen minutes later Brian Thorpe was wheeling Timothy Dantley's bed
down the corridor toward the elevator.

BRIAN hurried into the scrub room to prepare for the operation. John
Winthrop Blagden appeared in the doorway.  He sat down on the bench
opposite the washing facilities and watched as Brian removed his running
shoes and then stripped off his shirt. "I guess by now you know," the
general began.

"Know what?" Brian retorted.  "That you betrayed your country?"

Blagden seemed stung by the words.  "No, sir," he stated emphatically.
"You may, if you wish, interpret that I betrayed the trust of certain of
the men under my command.  But everything I did was always with my
country's greatest interests at heart."

Brian stepped out of his trousers and slipped on the bottoms of his
surgical greens.  "It would take a rather twisted logic to convince me
that helping the enemy wipe us out with germ warfare was in your
country's greatest interests," he said bitterly.

Blagden regarded him grimly.  "Please, bear with me a moment while I set
you straight.  What I told you in my office about the Soviet biological
warfare threat was true.  A CIA report did come down in the late sixties
detailing their renewed interest and research.  So, in response to this,
our own scientists began gearing up, too.  Ratsbane was one of the
things they came up with.

"Now, put yourself back in 1969, when you were with my unit. It had been
a long, grim, ugly war.  Then the Pentagon began pulling the marines
out.  You could see we had lost the will to win.  And from that point
on, it would become nothing more than an expensive holding action to
save face.  It was going to take years more and get thousands more
people killed.  And for nothing.  Absolutely nothing." He looked Brian
straight in the eye. "That's why I did it."

Brian pulled on the shirt of his scrub suit.  "Did what?"

Blagden hadn't moved from his place on the bench.  "Decided to implement
Ratsbane.  But the brass rejected it, afraid of what the politicians and
the media would do with it.  So I implemented it on my own authority,
using only the covert action CIA men in my region for support."

"What exactly did you do?" Brian wanted to know.

As Brian replaced his running shoes Blagden spoke haltingly. "There were
all kinds of options-dropping canisters from airplanes, poisoning the
drinking water, that sort of stuff.  None of them seemed very practical.
This one did.

"From my own unit Calvin Harley and I identified a profile that we
called the delivery force.  These were men who'd been wounded by
shrapnel but who would return to combat in relatively short order.
Harley implanted the capsules while the men were in for their shrapnel
surgery.  The virus was supposed to remain vital for about six or seven
weeks.  If nothing happened after that, it was supposed to go inert, to
die.

"We knew approximately where the prison camps were in the area.  They
were far away from our own installations but close to Vietcong training
areas and North Vietnamese population centers." Blagden took a deep
breath and frowned.  "We also knew that POWS were subjected to
starvation-level diets."

It came to Brian like a bleak inspiration.  "Which would raise the
ketone levels, erode the stopper, and release the virus-" Sweat beaded
on his forehead and ran down his face.

.  "Into the enemy population." Blagden completed the thought. "And
since the virus kills so quickly, the distances from the population
centers would preclude any carrier from bringing it back to our side.
Once the host dies, the virus dies with him, which makes the disease
self-limiting.

"Then, of course, we had protective measures-the counterdelivery
carriers, who would be introduced into the target population to
counteract the original virus.  North Vietnamese prisoners of war whom
we'd had to operate on for battle injuries were selected.  Harley
operated on them, too.  At a certain point the POW countercarriers were
to be released.  Eventually they'd 'infect the remaining population with
the new, harmless virus.  And eventually this second strain would have
taken over, and Ratsbane would be dead ...  having done its job for all
of us, and with all evidence erased from the face of the earth."

Blagden paused.  "This was a last-ditch stab at ending the war, winning
the war, at a very small cost in American lives."

Brian walked over to the sink and stepped on the foot pedal. "So you
purposely sent men off to be captured."

"No.  But I knew that in certain types of engagements there was a high
possibility of capture."

Brian released the pedal, and the water stopped.  "Eagle's Talon."

He practically whispered the name.  "Then you knew it would be a
massacre.

"I had an idea." The general sighed.  "I sent my men in there with a
specific military objective in mind.  And in a certain circumscribed way
that objective was achieved.  Three of the sixteen carriers were
captured."

"Fine, Moreland, Santoya," Brian said.  "Only Moreland made it back. And
then you tried to kill him."

"I had nothing to do with that or with any of those later deaths.

I give you my word of honor.  I was as appalled as you were when I found
out about them."

Brian turned around and looked at Blagden over his shoulder.

"And what about the others?" he asked harshly.  "The ones who managed
not to be captured or killed?"

"Well, as I said, there was a fail-safe built in."

"But evidently the capsules didn't go inert."

"Some did, I understand."

That must have been what had happened with Radley Davis, Brian thought,
the one who brought him into all this.  It seemed like such a long time
ago.  "And after all that, it didn't work," he declared.

"It did, actually," Blagden said.  "In a very limited way.  We learned
of a disease outbreak in an isolated POW camp; the description matched
the Ratsbane symptoms.  We received word shortly after this that both
Fine and Santoya were dead.  Roger Moreland had already escaped."
Blagden paused, lookng at Brian as if he were imparting an article of
faith.  "Needless to say, if the world community found out about this,
they'd have our heads."

"And if I talk, you'll have me terminated," Brian said tauntingly.

"No," Blagden said.  "Despite what you might think, that's not the way I
operate.  You have the story.  You're on your own." He watched Brian
turn and go quickly toward the swinging door. When he was almost there,
the general said, "Just another minute, Thorpe."

Brian turned back around.

"What's your beef with me specifically ...  other than your wounded
sensibility?" He seemed suddenly less reflective, more combative, the
Black jack Blagden Brian had always known.

.  Brian stood staring at him, holding his hands in the air to avoid
contamination.  "I just don't understand how you could send loyal,
unsuspecting men to their deaths."

"Every combat commander since the beginning of history has sent men to
their deaths.  We call it a sacrifice.  When Eisenhower sent the troops
out to storm the Normandy beaches, he knew a large number of them
weren't coming back."

"No, this is different," Brian said.

Blagden continued.  "What is the difference, Thorpe?  Was it that I
didn't play by the rules?  No one played by the rules in Vietmam.  I
sacrificed a handful of men in hopes of saving an entire army.  .  .
plxis the national honor of the United States.  Okay, it didn't work. In
retrospect, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, it turns out I
made a mistake.  But those could have been the best odds of that whole
lousy war."

Brian remained rigidly still.  Blagden took a step closer to him and
said, "There is no honor in war, only results.  What has happened since
then, in civilian life, that is a different story.  I would not have
condoned the killing of my men in that case, no matter what the cost."

"And yet you were willing to lie to me," Brian said accusingly.

"You purposely led me to think it was a North Vietnamese plot."

"That's true," Blagden said.  "I wanted to contain the damage as best I
could, but not at the expense of endangering the country. And that's why
I pushed you to do something I couldn't do-go after the counterdelivery
agents, even though I knew it might ultimately come back to me."

A torrent of responses, of conflicting sensations and emotions, cascaded
through Brian's mind.  He took a step toward Blagden, then another one
back away.  Finally he said simply, "I have to get to my patient."

"Yes-yes, you do," Blagden impassively remarked, and watched him stride
out of the scrub room.

THE entire area inside the surgical suite was blocked off The viewing
gallery was locked.  If contact was necessary, an intercom had been set
up to communicate with a new command post in the office of the suite.
When Brian entered the operating room, a surgical team was in place,
waiting.  So were Hugh Stanway and Diana, standing away from the table,
garbed in scrub suits.

"What are you doing here?" Brian addressed them both.

"We're staying with you," Stanway declared.

"I specifically stated that I wanted as few people in here as possible,"
said Brian.  "Only essential personnel."

"We decided we're essential personnel," said Diana.

This was just exposing two more people to the danger, Brian knew, two
people very close to him.  But there was no time to argue.  Besides,
Brian found himself touched by their gesture.

Two orderlies, accompanied by an anesthesiologist, wheeled Dantley into
the operating room.  Brian, a resident, and a scrub nurse transferred
him to a table.  A metal box in which the capsule was to be sealed stood
in easy reach next to the instruments.

Brian took a deep breath, and when he was sure his head was reasonably
clear, he called for a scalper.

Meticulously he operated to expose the liver.  When he had the liver's
left lobe firmly in his grip, he studied the surface for any swellings
or scar tissue that would help him determine the exact placement of the
capsule.

It wasn't long before he found his spot-a slight protrusion that looked
almost like the stitching on a football.  He cut carefully into the
outer surface of the organ.  He held his breath as he probed with the
tip of the scalpel.

Then he felt it.  With a needle in one hand and the scalpel in the other
Brian delicately splayed the liver tissue apart so he could reach the
fragment.  He called for a magnifying glass.  With one hand still on the
scalpel he held the glass close to the surface of the liver and squinted
into the surgical field.

What he saw made his blood freeze.

He addressed the resident next to him.  He strained to keep his voice
steady.  "Give me the box." The resident quickly handed it to him.  "Now
get out of here!" Brian shouted abruptly.

"What is it?" Diana called out from the back of the room.

"The capsule stopper's already started to disintegrate! Get out!
Everyone!"

The scrub nurse and the resident backed away from the table.

"I can't leave," the anesthesiologist protested.  "What about the
patient?"

"Start bringing him out," Brian said.  "By the time he's fully off the
gas, I'll be through.  This is going to be the fastest close in surgical
history.  Turnthe gauges toward me.  Then all of you, get out of here!"

Stanway grabbed Diana by the arm and roughly yanked her out through the
double doors.

Brian spoke into the microphone for the intercom that connected them
with the office in the surgical suite.  "Shut the air off!" he directed.
"Do whatever you have to, but keep the air in here from getting out!"
Brian set the metal box on the edge of the operating table.  He pulled
the capsule free of the liver and deposited it in the box.  Then he
began furiously stitching up the wound, just as he would have done in a
battlefield hospital.

He looked up to make sure everyone else had left the room.

Hugh Stanway was standing there next to him.

"Hugh, get out of here! Didn't you hear what I said?"

"Give me the capsule," Stanway calmly said.

Brian ceased his stitching a moment.  He looked up at Stanway
incredulously.  Then he glanced at the anesthesia gauges to make sure
Dantley was getting the proper supply.

Deliberately Stanway stepped over to the intercom microphone and ripped
it out of the wall.  "Brian, give me the capsule.  I need it for my
clients."

Brian looked up again.  "Your what?"

"Don't worry.  No one will know.  You'll make enough off this to spend
the rest of your life on the beach in Tahiti."

Brian reacted to Stanway's words as if they were hammerblows, but he
forced himself to continue concentrating on the surgery. Without taking
his eyes from the surgical field he said, "What are you talking about?"

"My clients need the capsule.  They've known about it all along, but
they needed the proof.  It's a real coup.  Should take some of the heat
off them for the poison gas in Afghanistan, too."

Brian stared at him incredulously.  "The Russians?" he gasped. "You've
been working for the Russians."

"Only this one assignment.  It's no big deal.  just hand over the
capsule, and we'll both be rich."

Brian gazed at Stanway, utterly stunned.  They both had become part of
some bizarre dream.  This was a man he'd more than once been ready to
die for.  "I can't believe it.  I can't believe you'd betray your
country, your friends.  After all we've been through!"

"We were going to turn the other capsule over to them in Paris, too,"
Stanway went on.  "But then the agency boys came in and messed that one
up.  They were the ones who wanted to kill you, Thorpe, not the Soviets.
How does that make you feel?"

"But your own country, Hugh....  You're a Communist." Brian leaned over
Dantley's body and tried to close the cavity.

"I am not," Stanway answered with annoyance.  "This was a contract, same
as I'd do for South Korea or our own CIA.  I'm an individualist, just
like you.  That's what Men of Action has always preached.  Survival of
the fittest."

"I can't believe this," Brian muttered, trying to keep the hysteria out
of his voice.  "How long have you been involved with Ratsbane?"

"Ever since you first called me about that fragment.  When I couldn't
find out anything, I called my Soviet contacts to see what they knew.
They hired me on the spot."

Brian quickly thought back over Stanway's involvement.  He'd trusted
Hugh at every stage.  And at every stage he'd played right into his
hands.

"They uncovered the first evidence in Vietnam itself The North
Vietnamese took an empty capsule out of a dead POW named Fine, who'd
been in a remote camp that had come down with some horrible plague.
There were no survivors.  The North Viets called it the Corporal Scourge
affair.  They handed it over to their Russian masters, who licked their
lips at it.  But they could never get any further evidence.  Until now."

Brian was still standing above Dantley's prostrate form.  Stanway came
over and put a hand on his shoulder.  "Now come on. Stop playing hurt.
Give me the box, and let's get out of here."

Brian moved to block Stanway's path.  "I can't let you take it."

Without warning Stanway lunged at Brian and grabbed for the box.  The
two men fought for it.  Brian got hold of it, but Stanway tackled him
around the knees.  The box flew from his hands and crashed to the floor.
As it did, the impact knocked the lid off.  The fragment skidded across
the room.

"Hugh!" Brian gasped.  "You just killed all three of us."

Suddenly Stanway charged Brian as both men staggered to their feet.
Brian instinctively stepped to the side, and Stanway landed on Dantley's
chest.  Surgical instruments clattered to the floor.  Dantley gave out a
moaning gasp.  Then he was silent.

Stanway turned around and lunged for Brian again, burying his fingers in
Brian's throat.  Brian broke Stanway's grip, and then Stanway spied the
scattered surgical instruments.  He nimbly bent down and reached for the
largest scalpel he saw.

He approached Brian from a low crouch.  He thrust the scalpel up toward
Brian's throat.  Brian jumped back but not before the blade grazed the
surface of his skin, drawing a thin bead of blood.

Stanway leaped forward and thrust the scalpel once again.  This time
Brian managed to kick the weapon out of his hand.  The scalpel flew
across the room.  Both men darted for it.

Brian got to it first and fixed the weapon securely in his grasp.
Ducking out of the way, Stanway came at him.  Brian anticipated the
evasive move.  When Stanway bent over into a crouch, the scalpel was
waiting for him.  It glided easily into his heart without touching bone.

The fragment was lying on the floor just beyond Stanway Is outstretched
hand.  Brian retrieved it and held it to his eye, squinting.  It was his
worst fear.  The impact of hitting the floor had dislodged the eroding
stopper.  The disease was loose and by this time had undoubtedly found
its way into the one living host left in the room.

Brian staggered away from the corpse and collapsed on the floor in
exhaustion.

A long- time later, when he opened his eyes, he looked up and saw Diana
watching him from the glassed-in viewing gallery above.  Tears were
running down her face.  Painfully he propped himself up and slid over so
he could lean against the wall.

"I don't want you to see how I'm going to be," he said.

The hospital people had rigged up a new intercom to take the place of
the one that Stanway had ripped out.  Somehow they'd managed to patch it
through into the operating room.  Diana held the microphone in her
hands.

"I can't leave you," she responded, and found more tears she didn't know
she had.  "I don't want to stay up here.  I want to come in there and be
with you."

"Don't even talk like that."

"I don't want to live without you."

She thought she saw Brian give her a slight smile.  "That's a beautiful
sentiment.  But it's stupid."

"No, it's not!" She sobbed.  She stood up.  "I'm coming in."

Gregory Cheever held her in place.

"I'd let you do it, but you can't open the door," Brian said. "There's a
chance some of the virus could escape." He smiled weakly again.  "So
I've got you."

The smile quickly faded.  "Diana, listen to me.  We've just fought a
battle together.  We won.  It's too bad that we all didn't make it back.
But we won.  Please go away now.  Please."

"I can't leave you."

"You have to." He closed his eyes in weariness, then, in a little while,
opened them again.  "I wish we could have spent our lives together.
But-but just remember, I love you, Diana."

BRIAN didn't know how long he'd been asleep when he heard the sound that
woke him.  He searched the operating room for the source of the sound.
It was the door.  Someone had opened it! Maybe someone in a radiation
suit was coming in with a syringeful of barbituates.  That would be the
easiest way to go.

The doors swung open.  Calvin Chandler Harley walked in. Brian's mouth
dropped open.  "What are you doing here?"

"I came as soon as I heard," the surgeon announced. "Now you're going to
die!"

Harley gave him a bemused smile.  "No, I'm not.  And neither are you.

"What are you talking about?"

"How do you feel?"

Brian stopped to consider this odd question.  "Okay ...  so far."

"There's a reason for that." Harley walked over and leaned casually
against the operating table.  He looked regretfully at Tim Dantley's
body, stiffened by rigor morns.  He bowed his head in silence for a
moment.  Then he explained.  "Whatever you might think about the wisdom
of Ratsbane, we did understand the deadliness of the viral agent we were
dealing with.  That's why I insisted that anyone who had access to the
field hospital at Phu Bai while I was doing the implants-that meant
doctors, nurses, medics-all receive a vaccination against the virus.  We
didn't tell any of them, of course.  I think we said it was for
cholera." He walked over and rested his hand on Brian's shoulder.  "You
did valuable work getting that countervirus capsule back to protect the
rest of the population.  But in your particular case you'll die of old
age before Ratsbane will get you."

"THE President wants to meet with you tomorrow," Gregory triumphantly
informed Brian as he greeted him outside the door to the operating room.
"Something about a promotion and a medal.  The medal will have to be
given in secret, though.  None of this can get out."

"I'll give him an earful," Brian responded darkly.  "Especially about a
certain gentleman in Langley.  It'll be my last act as a SEAL."

" Incidentally," said Gregory, "Jill came up with addresses for the six
men on her list we couldn't locate.  Harley says we should get the new
vaccine to them as soon as it's ready." He smiled at Brian.  "So, now,
how does it feel to come back from the dead?"

"It feels great," Brian responded automatically.  At least that was how
it was supposed to feel.  But somehow it didn't feel that way.  Maybe he
was too tired to think.  Maybe he'd been through so much that he could
no longer feel anything.  No, that was wrong, too.  Because he was
definitely feeling something now.

Emptiness.  Everything was gone.  He was overwhelmed by an all-embracing
sense of loss.  Loss of his people and loss of his trust.  His medical
hero, Harley.  His military hero, Blagden.  Rad Davis, all the other
men, the marines ...  Tim Dantley.

"I couldn't even save Tim," Brian said.

"You tried," Gregory told him.  "It was Stanway who killed him.  You did
everything you could.  Even at the risk of your own life you stayed with
your patient.  No one will forget that.  They also won't forget that in
the end he died for something."

And Hugh Stanway.  Hugh.  "I killed Hugh Stanway."

"No, Brian.  He tried to kill you.  It was self-defense.  Come on, let's
get out of here." Gregory clapped a hand across Brian's back and guided
him toward the recovery room.

When he came through the door, Diana was standing there, waiting-waiting
for him.

They stood there and gazed at each other with looks bordering on
amazement, as if they were discovering within each other something new.
She didn't say anything.  Neither'did he.  But then, as she rushed
toward him and they threw themselves into each other's arms, Brian
Thorpe felt the emptiness begin to close with the tears of mystical,
wordless, all-knowing love.

The door at the opposite end of the room opened.  Diana took one
discreet step away.  Brian looked up.

Katie.

She was dressed in a blue sailor suit and white knee socks. With her
little hands outstretched she raced across the floor and hurled herself
into his arms.  "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

He swept her up, high into the air.  His tears came in a torrent as his
kisses smothered her.  "Oh, Katie, Katie, Katie.  I've missed you so
much!"

She grasped him with one arm around the neck.  He supported her firmly
with a forearm under her bottom.  He felt the smooth, soft skin of her
face against his cheek, and the touch of her hair. And he sensed the
emptiness vanish completely with the radiant magic of her childish
laughter and delight.

Brian looked from the one woman in his life to the other.  He was crying
as he said, "Katie, this is Diana.  Diana, this is Katie." Diana took
the beautiful, smiling child into her own arms.  She turned her so that
they were face to face, and she said, "Hello, Katie.  I've been wanting
to meet you for a long time."

EPILOGUE
BLAGDEN TO LEAVE MARINES In a surprise announcement Pentagon sources
today revealed that Marine Corps General John Winthrop Blagden is
resigning. Blagden sent his letter of resignation directly to the
President, who, according to a White House spokesman, accepted it "with
regret."

The timing of the announcement was peculiar.  At the time of the
resignation the President had on his desk Blagden's nomination to become
commandant of the Marine Corps, which is the highest post in that branch
of service and one of the four joint Chiefs of Staff.

There was no official explanation cited for the sudden and unexpected
resignation.  A source close to the President, however, has revealed
that the general is expected to participate in a forthcoming justice
Department investigation into certain unauthorized CIA activities linked
to the infamous Eagle's Talon raid during the Vietnam War.  Calls to
Blagden's Pentagon office as well as his home in Arlington were not
returned.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"I try to put a lot of realism in my books," declares novelist Mark
Olshaker.  And as readers of Unnatural Causes know, he's as good as his
word.  In fact, the book's opening scene is based on an actual event.
"Something very close to that happened to one of the people I
interviewed while researching the book," he says.  "Only it took place
in Okinawa during World War Two.  Just like Brian Thorpe, the man
performed a leg amputation on the battlefield.  He then carriedthe
wounded soldier off the field, and the soldier saved his life by taking
the bullet for him."

A Washington, D.C., native, Mark 01shaker has been surrounded by doctors
for all of his thirty-five years.  His father, his father-in-law, and
two younger brothers are all physicians.  To create the authentic
medical scenes of his novel, the author says he watched surgeon Mark
Olshaker friends perform numerous delicate operations-including coronary
bypass surgery-"until I knew exactly what I was talking about." He also
worked closely with a pathologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital to
understand autopsies.  Did he ever want to be a doctor himself?
Interestingly enough, no.  "I wanted to be a lot of things as I was
growing up-among them a baseball player and an FBI agent-but never a
doctor."

What Olshaker has become is a prolific author.  He has written and
produced numerous films for television and has one previous novel to his
credit, Einstein's Brain.  In 1974, while working for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, he was part of a team nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for
its work in reporting the Watergate crisis.

Today Mark Olshaker still lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife,
Carolyn, an attorney.  He is currently at work on his third novel,
which, not surprisingly, will be a mix of politics, science, and
adventure.