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Brothers had made a jump from a tree like that? None. He was sure of that. And Claudio had witnessed the leap. He was sure of that as well.
    Now all he had to do was get out of the house and the grounds without being stopped, or better, noticed. He left the dressing room thinking that his best chance was not to sneak out, but to just walk straight out the front door, act as if he did work there, convince the kid parking the cars to open the front gate, and he would be gone.
    Robin returned to the master bedroom, gave it all a quick glance before stopping short. Hanging on the wall directly facing the bed was the painting Claudio had told him to steal.
    *   *   *
    â€œWhere are you, Kitty Vicious?” the man called in a hoarse slur. “Come out! Come get your lamby!”
    The lion turned its head toward the voice, panting, drooling.
    Then Monarch heard a squeal of fright, followed by a thump. The lamb began screeching in pain. The lion leapt away, became a bounding shadow until the trembling light found it biting into the lamb at back of its neck and shaking the poor beast until it hung limp and bleeding from his mouth.
    â€œGood Kitty Vicious,” the man purred. “Daddy’s best Kitty Vicious.”
    Monarch leaned slightly away from the wall and peered back up and along the fence until he found the source of the beam and saw the man holding the torch. Uday Hussein was weaving on his feet, light in one hand, a fresh bottle of whiskey in the other, a leer smeared across his face as he watched the lion tear into the lamb.
    Monarch pressed back into the shadows, hearing Saddam’s eldest son’s voice change, become almost melancholy. “Kitty will stay with Daddy, won’t she?” he asked before his tone turned bewildered. “Or will you be like all the other pussies? Bitches … cunts … that’s all they…”
    The light fell with a clatter and bounced off the bottom of the pit, but did not die. The beam cut away from Monarch, away from the lion, shone tight on the wall. Not far away, the antiaircraft guns opened up again, and bombs began to explode once more. The sky flashed with reddish light and Monarch plastered himself against the wall for fear that Uday would spot him.
    But then he heard wood—a cane? a staff?—strike above him followed by that shuffle, strike, shuffle, and then the sound of a man choking against tears.
    Twenty seconds later, he heard a gate clang shut, and the dictator’s son scream, “Why?”
    In the glow of the flashlight Uday had dropped, Monarch saw the lion still busily feeding. He went straight across the pit and found the door in the wall. Maglite in his teeth, he quickly picked the lock, levered the door open, and exited into a short tunnel that climbed and exited behind the pit and the fence.
    He checked his watch. Thirty-four minutes until the bombs came to lay waste to the palace. He scanned the compound, seeing a second, smaller residence by the main one. The windows were dark. He was about to circle toward the big palace when a light went on in a window on the first floor of the smaller residence. He thought he saw Uday walking around inside.
    Better yet, Monarch thought, and began to jog in a loop around the lion pit, alert for any movement. But there was none, and it was becoming apparent to him that the dictator’s son had been abandoned by his guards.
    Uday Hussein was alone here, drunk out of his mind, clinging to the last vestiges of his power and grandeur.
    Better yet, Monarch thought again.
    *   *   *
    Robin’s heart began to pound. That had to be the painting there locked inside a glass case hanging on the wall. He walked closer and saw, exactly as Claudio had said, that it was signed in the lower left-hand corner, “Xul Solar.” The painting depicted in gaudy watercolors the shapes of a distorted city, with orange and red buildings that curved and