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By Root 1083 0

for him in Pescara that Elena was not the kind of woman who could continue to live the lifelong, cloistered, contemplative life required of her. That she should fall in love with his brother, of all people, was something he could never have foreseen under the wildest circumstances. And these—he half-grinned in the dark—were, far and away, the most turbulent circumstances that anyone could have ever foreseen. Turbulent and—the grin abruptly faded—terribly, terribly tragic. In his mind he saw the man with the gun on the bus to Assisi, felt again the explosion. Remembered the fire, the screaming, the confusion, the bus swinging wildly out of control. Remembered his reflex reaction of getting up, sticking as much of his identification as he could in the gunman’s jacket. Abruptly that vision left, and he saw Marsciano through the wire mesh of the confessional, heard the pained sound of his voice. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned…”

Abruptly Danny turned away, put his head to his pillow, trying to drown out the rest of it. But he couldn’t. He knew every word by heart.

ADRIANNA STIRRED at the sound and looked up. Eaton was getting out of the car, straightening his beige summer suit jacket, then walking off along the sidewalk toward where Scala was parked. She saw him sidestep the throw of a streetlight, all the while looking up at the dark loom of the apartment building partway down the street, then he disappeared in the darkness. Immediately her eyes went to the dull orange illumine of the dashboard clock and wondered how long she had been dozing.

2:17 A.M.

Now Eaton came back, sliding into the seat beside her.

“Scala still there?” she asked.

“Sitting in the car, smoking…”

“No lights on in the apartment building?”

“No lights.” Eaton looked over at her. “Go back to sleep. You’ll know when something happens.”

Adrianna smiled lightly. “I used to think I loved you, James Eaton…”

“You loved the office, not the man…” Eaton looked back at the apartment building.

“The man, too, for a while.” Adrianna pulled her loose-fitting denim over-shirt around her, then curled up on the seat. For a long time she watched Eaton watch the building, then finally she drifted off.

135

Beijing, China. Still Friday, July 17. 9:40 A.M.

“JAMES HAWLEY. AN AMERICAN HYDROBIOlogical engineer,” Li Wen said in Chinese. His mouth was dry and he was soaked with sweat. “He… he lives in Walnut Creek, California. The procedure came from him. I… I… didn’t know what they were. I… thought they were a new test… for wa… water toxicity…”

The man in the army uniform who stared at Li Wen across the hard wooden table was the same man who had demanded he confess what he had done six hours earlier in Wuxi. The same man who had handcuffed him and accompanied him on the military jet to Beijing and taken him here to this brightly lit cement-block building somewhere on the air base where they had landed.

“There is no James Hawley of Walnut Creek, California,” the man said softly.

“Yes, there is. There has to be. I did not have the formulas, he did.”

“I repeat… , there is no James Hawley. It has been confirmed by the American authorities.”

Li Wen felt the breath go out of him as suddenly he realized he’d been played for the fool the entire time. If something went wrong he alone was the one who would pay for it.

“Confess.”

Slowly Li Wen looked up. Just behind the man at the table was a videocamera, its red light on, recording what was happening. And behind the camera he could see the faces of a half dozen uniformed soldiers—military police, or, worse, men like his interrogator, members of the Ministry of State Security.

Finally he nodded, and looking directly into the camera, told how he had introduced his “snowballs”—the deadly, nonmonitored constituent polycyclic, unsaturated alcohol—into the water systems. Explaining extensively and in scientific terms the details of the formula, what it was designed to do, and how many it was expected to kill.

As he finished, wiping sweat from his forehead with the palm of his hand, he saw two of the uniformed men