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computer from the table beside the bed. “With any luck at all, the recently departed used this for something other than games and porn.”
    Paco quickly completed his search of the bureau’s drawers. “Nothin’, man, nothin’ other ’n some ’spensive silk shirts.” He held up what looked like the bottom to a woman’s bright red bikini. “An’ these.”
    Jason put the computer under his left arm. “We can discuss Alazar’s taste in underwear later. Right now, we’re history. Make sure the woman isn’t getting out in the next few minutes. You can tie the door. . . .”
    There was a soft knock at the door to the passageway and muffled words Jason didn’t understand.
    A quick look around affirmed what he already knew: that door was the only exit from the stateroom. He pointed toward the bath, then the door. Paco understood. As Jason pressed himself against the bulkhead, Paco pulled the woman from the bathroom. Keeping her body and himself concealed behind the door, he opened it, pushing her head around the edge. His weapon rested along the back of her neck.
    There was a murmured conversation.
    Through the crack between the door and its frame, Jason could see a young man in a white jacket carrying what appeared to be a bottle of champagne like the two on the floor beside the bed. Alazar, it seemed, did not include bubbly in the prophet’s injunction against alcohol.
    In a single fluid movement, Jason stepped from behind the door, shoved the woman aside, and grabbed the astonished wine server’s jacket with one hand while jamming the SIG Sauer between his eyes. The man offered no resistance as Jason snatched him into the room and gently closed the door. The only casualty of the maneuver was the champagne, which toppled from its tray. It had not been opened. Paco stooped.
    â€œLeave it,” Jason said. “Off vintage, anyway, I’ll bet. The sort of crap the French would sell Arabs.”
    Paco picked the bottle up and stuffed it neck-first into his pants. “Mebbe off vintage, but th’ fookin’ price’s ho-kay. Whatcha gonna do with ’em?”
    The woman’s fear-widened eyes were trying to avoid the body sprawled across the bed. The man could not tear his stare away.
    â€œRip the sheets into strips and tie and gag both of them. Let’s hope nobody is scheduled to bring the caviar.”
    While both captives cowered under Jason’s automatic, Paco tore strips from the bedsheets. Minutes later the man and woman were trussed like bucks slung over the hood of a pickup truck. Jason rummaged around the top of a bedside table until he found a set of keys, one ofwhich he used to lock the stateroom once he and Paco were outside in the passageway.
    They listened.
    Silence is an absence of sound. But to someone whose adrenaline is pumping, someone whose life depends on his hearing at the moment, silence becomes a sound of its own, the sound of the heart thumping, of breaths taken deeply, and, loudest of all, the sound of emptiness and space that create a pressure upon the ears.
    Jason’s employer was going to be less than happy with a dead rather than captive arms salesman, but Jason and Paco hadn’t formulated the contents of the deadly syringe. Maybe someone had planned for Alazar to die, lying to Jason for fear he would refuse to administer a fatal dose. If so, no one should have been concerned. Ridding the world of its Alazars was what Jason had sworn to do—kill all of them.
    He would never be even for what they had done.
    Alert to the possibility of being discovered, they began to move, to return the way they had come.
    They had almost reached the anchor locker when they heard shouts and the sound of heavy and hurried feet. Jason and Paco traded stealth for haste.
    Splinters, as deadly as bullets, flew from the ceiling over his head. He ducked reflexively as he and Paco stepped over the coaming and