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his pocket and handed it over. The woman dialed a number and looked surprised.
    “Seems O.K.,” she said. “Sir, can you spare us five minutes?”
    “Maybe,” Eugene said. “If you tell me what for.”
    “We have an FBI assistant director a mile up the road, needs to speak with you. Something urgent, I guess, or we wouldn’t be here, and something pretty important, or we’d have been told what it’s all about.”
    Eugene pulled back his cuff and looked at his watch.
    “I have an appointment,” he said.
    The woman was nodding. “We know about that, sir. We took the liberty of calling ahead and rescheduling for you. Five minutes is all we need.”
    Eugene shrugged.
    “Can I see some ID?” he asked.
    The woman handed over her wallet. It was made of worn black leather and had a milky plastic window on the outside. There was an FBI photo-ID behind it, laminated and embossed and printed with the kind of slightly old-fashioned typeface the federal government might use. Like most people in the United States, Eugene had never seen an FBI ID. He assumed he was looking at his first.
    “Up the road a-piece?” he said. “O.K., I’ll follow you, I guess.”
    “We’ll drive you,” the woman said. “There’s a checkpoint in place, and civilian cars make them real nervous. We’ll bring you right back. Five minutes, is all.”
    Eugene shrugged again.
    “O.K.,” he said.
    They all walked as a group back toward the Crown Vic. The driver held the front passenger door for Eugene.
    “You ride up here, sir,” he said. “They’re listing you as a class-A individual, and if we put a class-A individual in the backseat, then we’ll get our asses kicked but good, that’s for damn sure.”
    They saw Eugene swell up a little from his assigned status. He nodded and ducked down and slid into the front seat.Either he hadn’t noticed they still had his phone, or he didn’t care. The driver closed the door on him and ducked around the hood to his own. The tall fair man and the woman climbed into the rear. The Crown Vic eased around the parked Benz and pulled left onto the blacktop. Accelerated up to about fifty-five.
    “Ahead,” the woman said.
    The driver nodded.
    “I see it,” he said. “We’ll make it.”
    There was a plume of dust on the road, three or four miles into the distance. It was rising up and dragging left in the faint breeze. The driver slowed, hunting the turn he had scouted thirty minutes before. He spotted it and pulled left and crossed the opposite shoulder and bumped down through a depression where the road was built up like a causeway. Then he slewed to the right, tight in behind a stand of brush tall enough to hide the car. The man and the woman in the rear seat came out with handguns and leaned forward and jammed them into Eugene’s neck, right behind the ears where the structure of the human skull provides two nice muzzle-shaped sockets.
    “Sit real still,” the woman said.
    Eugene sat real still. Two minutes later, a big dark vehicle blasted by above them. A truck, or a bus. Dust clouded the sky and the brush rustled in the moving air. The driver got out and approached Eugene’s door with a gun in his hand. He opened the door and leaned in and jammed the muzzle into Eugene’s throat, where the ends of the collarbones make another convenient socket.
    “Get out,” he said. “Real careful.”
    “What?” was all Eugene could say.
    “We’ll tell you what,” the woman said. “Now get out.”
    Eugene got out, with three guns at his head.
    “Step away from the car,” the woman said. “Walk away from the road.”
    This was the tricky time. Eugene was glancing around as far and as fast as he dared move his head. His eyes were jumping. His body was twitching. He stepped away from thecar. One pace, two, three. Eyes everywhere. The woman nodded.
    “Al,” she called loudly.
    Her two partners jumped away, long sideways strides. Eugene’s head snapped around to face the woman who had called