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the next line underneath with the rest of the letters.” As the small class watched and took notes, she did as she was told. “Fill out the columns with the rest of the alphabet. Remember, the I and J share the same slot.”
    When she finished, she had five letters across and five letters down:

    She printed
Got key. Must meet at five
. She returned to her seat.
    He showed the class how to break the letters into pairs, eliminating punctuation and spaces between words:
    go tk ey mu st me et at fi ve
    Then he used the first pair of letters to form the corners of a rectangle on the Playfair square. He chose the replacementletters from the rectangle’s opposite corners, taking the one on the same line as the first letter first. The first pair, GO, became EB.

    â€œAfter you’ve encrypted the message,” he instructed, “put the letters into five-letter groups.”
    Following his formula,
Got key. Must meet at five
became EBCDG WLRPB AFDOH OGMWD.
    She stared at the letters. My God, it worked.
    As the class manipulated ciphers, Liz paused. She had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. She forced herself back to work, but her gaze kept returning to the blackboard and the word Hamilton.
    It was a peculiar choice for an exercise in ciphers, she decided. A person’s name, like American statesman Alexander Hamilton, or Lord Nelson’s mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton. It was odd how the mind made connections. Those historic figures were part of her recent memory; she’d read about them in history books she’d checked out of the Ranch library.
    But she had a feeling the word on the blackboard referred to someone—or something—else. It lingered in her brain, beckoning like a half-remembered song. She stared at the name again and felt strangely, dangerously happy.

Chapter 5
    A white August moon glared hot and naked over Washington, D.C. At short intervals after midnight, four men wearing business suits despite the oppressive heat and late hour arrived on the deserted street outside a large neoclassical building a few blocks from the Potomac River. Their cars were ordinary American sedans of the kind driven by almost everyone in the Federal bureaucracy, but each had a driver who stepped out to survey the dark street, then nodded to his passenger, who hurried into the building.
    The four men were in their early sixties. Inside, each took an elevator down six levels into the bowels of the building. There they entered a boardroom and sat at a polished conference table. The room was bomb-proof, climate-controlled, and had cutting-edge video and audio equipment. It had been swept for bugs and isolated against electronic intrusion.
    Out in the corridor a security guard pressed a button. But a few seconds before the sound-proof door swung shut, a fifth man entered and strode to his seat at the head of the long table. His erect bearing radiated power and authority. His face was patrician, with hollow cheeks and a prominent, thin nose. His flat gaze was fixed in its usual unreadable lines. He was Hughes Bremner, board chairman.
    â€œGentlemen,” he said, “M ASQUERADE will soon enter its final phase.”
    The faces of the other four showed no emotion, but tensionhovered in the secret boardroom like an uninvited sixth member. M ASQUERADE ’s success was essential. Its failure would destroy them.
    â€œIs the operation any less risky?” the oldest asked.
    â€œWe
are
still trying to eliminate him before he comes in?” It was mandatory the assassin never surface alive in any country.
    â€œOf course,” Bremner said in his detached voice. “But he’s gone to ground, and our contacts are coming up empty. There’s little chance of neutralizing him while he’s out there now. More than ever we need M ASQUERADE .”
    Lucas Maynard was a heavy man, the group’s number one. He sat on Bremner’s right and considered the situation: Three months ago the