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Across the street in the surveillance room looking down on Wright's apartment, he talked to Nordmann. Nordmann had brought a cardboard box full of medical supplies - syringes, needles, bottles of liquid. He was frowning down at it. 'This is the best I could manage on short notice,' he said.

'Will it work?' Graves said.

'It's the standard therapy,' Nordmann said. 'But we haven't got much. This quantity will treat two or three people for exposure, that's all.'

'Then let's make sure it doesn't come to that.'

Nordmann smiled slightly. 'It better not,' he said. 'Because you need somebody alive and well to administer it.'

'Is it hard to administer?'

'Tricky,' Nordmann said. 'There are two different chemicals, atropine and parladoxime. They have to be balanced.'

Graves sighed. 'So the antidote is a binary, too.'

'In a sense. The two chemicals treat different effects of the gas. One treats the peripheral nervous system, the other the central. The chemicals are dangerous in themselves, which makes it all much harder.'

'Fighting fire with fire?'

'In a sense,' Nordmann said.

The two men stood staring out the window at the apartment opposite. Phelps was in a corner using a walkie-talkie. 'You in position?'

A response crackled back. 'In position, sir.'

'Very good.' Phelps clicked off the walkie-talkie. 'We've got two cops stationed outside the door to that apartment,' he said.

'Fine,' Graves said. 'Just so they don't get too close to the door.'

'I have them ten feet away.'

'That should be fine.'

In the hallway outside Wright's apartment, officers Martin and Jencks of the San Diego Police Department stared at the closed door and leaned against the wall.

'You understand any of this?' Jencks said.

'Nope,' Martin said. 'But they said not to get too close to the door.'

'That's right.'

'You know why?'

'I don't know nothing,' Martin said. He took out a cigarette. 'You got a match?'

'Maybe we shouldn't smoke...'

'Who's going to know?' Martin said. Jencks gave him a match.

Graves stood with Nordmann in the surveillance room across the street.

'Wright booby-trapped the apartment?'

'Elaborately,' Graves said. 'He told me some of it. I'm sure he didn't tell me everything.'

'And it goes off at five?'

'Yes.'

'Forty-five minutes from now,' Nordmann said. 'Is the Navy sending people with protective suits? Because protected people could just walk right in.'

'Nobody can walk right in,' Graves said. 'He's wired the room with explosive. That's why we've got the guards over there.'

Nordmann grimaced. 'Explosive?'

'Twenty pounds of it.'

The TV in the corner of the room showed the Convention. A monotonous voice was saying, 'Mr Chairman... Mr Chairman, we request the floor... Mr Chairman. . .' There was the loud banging of a gavel.

'Turn that damned thing off,' Graves said. Someone turned it off.

At the window two men grunted as they lifted a huge lens onto a heavy-duty tripod. It was screwed into place and adjusted. 'Ready, Mr Graves.'

'Thank you.' Graves went to the window. 'What's that?' Nordmann said. 'A fifteen-hundred-millimeter telephoto,' Graves said. 'It's the best look we can get.'

He peered through the giant lens. The view was so enormously magnified that at first he didn't know what he was looking at. Using a fine-knurled knob, he moved the lens and saw he was focused on a crack in the floor. He moved across the floor to the boxes. He shifted the lens upward, examining each box in detail.

'Take a look at this,' he said, stepping away.

Nordmann squinted through the lens. 'Three stacked boxes,' he said. 'I can't make out much. . .'

'Neither can I.' Graves folded his arms across his chest and stared out the window. He tried to think logically, but he was having trouble; Wright's death had unnerved him, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

And the system seemed so complicated. Staging sequences, timers, vibration sensors, explosives... His head ached. How the hell would he unravel it?

'Let's work it