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"You know, we need to get the twins out of Dodge quicker," Tom Davis remarked.

"If they're covert, it's not necessary," Hendley said.

"If somebody spots them somehow or other, better that they should not be around. You can't interview a ghost," Davis pointed out. "If the police have nothing to track, then they have less to think about. They can query the passenger list on a flight, but if the names they look for-assuming they have names-just go about normal business, then they have a blank wall with no evidence hanging on it. Better yet, if whatever face might or might not have been spotted just evaporates, then they have gornischt, and they're most likely to write it off as an eyewitness who couldn't be trusted anyway." It is not widely appreciated that police agencies trust eyewitnesses the least of all forms of criminal evidence. Their reports are too volatile, and too unreliable to be of much use in a court of law.

"And?" Sir Percival asked.

"CPK-MB, and troponin are greatly elevated, and the lab says his cholesterol was two hundred thirteen," Dr. Gregory said. "High for one his age. No evidence whatever of drugs of any sort, not even aspirin. So, we have enzyme evidence of a coronary incident, and that's all at the moment."

"Well, we'll have to crack his chest," Dr. Nutter observed, "but that was in the cards anyway. Even with elevated cholesterol, he's young for a major cardiovascular obstruction, don't you think?"

"Were I to wager, sir, I think prolonged QT interval, or arrhythmia." Both of which left little postmortem evidence except in a negative sense, unfortunately, but both of which were uniformly fatal.

"Correct." Gregory seemed a bright young medical school graduate, and like most of them, exceedingly earnest. "In we go," Nutter said, reaching for the big skin knife. Then they'd use the rib cutters. But he was pretty sure what they'd find. The poor bastard had died of heart failure, probably caused by a sudden-and unexplained-onset of cardiac arrhythmia. But whatever caused it, it had been as lethal as a bullet in the brain. "Nothing else on the toxicology scan?"

"No, sir, nothing whatever." Gregory held up the computer printout. Except for reference marks on the paper, it was almost entirely blank. And that pretty much settled that.

It was like listening to a World Series game on the radio, but without the color-commentary filler. Somebody at the Security Service was eager to let CIA know what was going on with the subject about which Langley clearly had some interest, and so whatever dribs and drabs of information came in were immediately dispatched to CIA, and thence to Fort Meade, which was scanning the ether waves for any resulting interest from the terrorist community around the world. The latter's news service, it appeared, was not as efficient as its enemies had hoped.

"Hello, Detective Willow," Rosalie Parker said with her customary want-to-fuck-me smile. She made love for a living, but that didn't mean that she disliked it. She breezed in wearing her visitor's badge and took her seat opposite his desk. "So, what can I do for you this fine day?"

"Bad news, Miss Parker." Bert Willow was formal and polite, even with whores. "Your friend Uda bin Sali is dead."

"What?" Her eyes went wide with shock. "What happened?"

"We're not sure. He just dropped down on the street, just across the street from his office. It appears that he had a heart attack."

"Really?" Rosalie was surprised. "But he seemed so healthy. There was never a hint that anything was wrong with him. I mean, just last night "

"Yes, I saw that in the file," Willow responded. "Do you know if he ever used drugs of any sort?"

"No, never. He occasionally drank, but even that not much."

To Willow's eyes, she was shocked and greatly surprised, but there wasn't a hint of tears in her eyes. No, for her, Uda had been a business client, a source of income, and little more. The poor bastard had probably thought otherwise. Doubly bad luck for him,