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him for the agent’s death. If I know them, they’re going to move heaven and earth to get him.”
    The agent’s death was totally unimportant to Étienne, who dismissed it by refusing to comment on it. “Moving heaven and earth can be exhausting as well as frustrating. Anyway, you’ve been informative.” Not really, thought Étienne, but Clayton Harger was important, and one had to be polite to him.
    Clayton Harger was also greedy. However, his greed has its uses, thought the thin, quiet Frenchman. We use it well.
    Clayton Harger, forty-six, bald pink skull framed by thick white sideburns, his short, plump body far from the muscular collegiate football player he once was, squirmed uncomfortably in the telephone booth. He was an investigative lawyer, working for the United States Justice Department on narcotics cases involving foreign drug dealers.
    Clayton Harger, frightened, in debt from poor investments in an uncertain economic climate, was the Corsicans’ Mr. In. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Count Lonzu, for copies of confidential files on United States government cases involving Corsican heroin dealers, had passed into Clayton Harger’s hands over the past two and a half years. None of that money had stuck to his fingers.
    Still in debt and frightened, greedy and secretly sensing that his limitations would never make him as rich as he would like to be, Clayton Harger had been bought and paid for. By a man he had never met.
    Licking his dry lips, Clayton Harger cupped both hands around the mouthpiece of the receiver, lowering his voice. “Uh, do me a favor, please? Don’t phone me at the office anymore. Too risky. Christ, you know we gotta be careful, right?” Fucking skinny French bastard had pissed him off, phoning like that and asking for information on U.S. constitutional law for a French newspaperman.
    Maybe the Frenchie thought he was being clever, but as far as Clayton Harger was concerned, office phone calls were dangerous as hell. Harger didn’t want calls from Étienne to the Justice Department. Calling him at home, O.K., that’s fine. Forget that office shit. Jesus, these days everybody in D.C. was uptight about reporters, investigators, congressional committees, and shit like that.
    You shouldn’t buy a box of Girl Scout cookies in this town unless you X-rayed the cookies first.
    Étienne Abbé leaned back in his black leather chair at the French consulate, staring down at the polished and manicured nails of his right hand as though seeing them for the first time. His English was almost without an accent and he spoke in a level, even voice totally devoid of any emotion.
    “I recognize your situation, Mr. Harger. However, you must understand mine. Our friend is concerned about his brother. And there are other matters at stake here. So I must have exact information when I report to him.” Étienne Abbé, a twenty-six-year-old clerk at the French consulate, thin, with a long sad face and dark hair he paid twenty-five dollars to have styled every two weeks, was Count Lonzu’s contact at the French consulate in Washington, D.C.
    Étienne, extremely intelligent, cold, given to detached sexual encounters with whores and women working in massage parlors, had to talk with Clayton Harger. Immediately.
    Clayton Harger coughed, clearing dry fear from his throat for brief seconds. He stared at the black teen-agers in the hamburger joint, but he really didn’t see them. He spoke slowly, hoping it would hide his fear and at the same time make Étienne see things his way.
    “Uh, look, Étienne, I’m not trying to give you people a hard time, believe me, O.K.? I mean, you pay me well, right? But damn, man, you know what I’m trying to say, right?” He stopped, hoping the thin Frenchman would say he understood. Yeah, Clayton would sure feel a hell of a lot better if the skinny Frenchman would say he understood.
    Silence.
    Étienne Abbé smiled, a cold gesture from his lips. His eyes didn’t