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doorbell rang.
    "Excuse me," said Jim. "I'd better get that."
    As the priest left the room, Thomas put his hand in his pocket and found the note he had written earlier. He drew it out, read it once, and then crumpled it and dropped it in the trash can by the door. He wouldn't be leaving just yet. He was still standing there when Jim reentered the room. There was something in his face, a hunted, anxious quality that hadn't been there before.
    "What's up?" said Thomas. "Who is it?"
    "It's for you," said Jim, and his voice was unnaturally low, almost a whisper.
    "For me? Who is it?" Thomas repeated.
    The question was answered by two men in dark suits who entered the room behind Jim. One brandished a badge in a flip wallet.
    "Mr. Thomas Knight?" he said.
    Thomas nodded, absorbing something very like panic from Jim.
    "We're from the Department of Homeland Security. We'd like to ask you some questions about your brother."
    CHAPTER 8
    It was turning into a very strange day. Emotionally, Thomas had run the gamut from the dull shock of his brother's death, through the strangeness of dealing with the residue of his life, to the fury and humiliation of the battle with the man who had called himself Parks. Now he was even more baffled, even more defensive and outraged, but he was also scared.
    "You don't fool with terrorism," said Jim after they had gone. "Not anymore."
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    He was right. One day in the not too distant past this might have been the subject of a thousand sardonic cracks about the absurdity of what he had been asked by these men, but not now, not with the country flinching every time someone left a bag unattended. Thomas muttered his irritation and exaspera
    tion at the craziness of it all, but inside he was badly alarmed. They were both in their fifties, sober suited and careful. One of them, a guy with narrow eyes who introduced himself as Kaplan, seemed tense, always looking around, a coiled spring physically and mentally. The other did most of the talk
    ing. His name was Matthew Palfrey, and he smiled all the time, as if to reassure, though the result managed to be the op
    posite. Maybe that was the idea.
    They had asked him about his brother's "sympathies," and whether his religious sensibility had ever led him to connect with religious leaders from outside Catholicism. They asked him if Ed had known friends or associates of Arab descent, and if he had a copy of the Qur'an in his bedroom. They asked if he had access to large sums of money or had ever had any weapons training, a question so thoroughly wrong that in any other circumstance Thomas would have howled with laughter. They asked how much Thomas knew of his brother's where
    abouts over the last six months and whether he had letters or e-mails from him, whether Ed had suffered what they called
    "a crisis of faith." Thomas recalled the scribbled " De Pro
    fundis! " on the postcard with its overtones of despair, but he shook his head.
    Then, very politely, always calling him sir in that formal way some officials have that somehow reinforces the impres
    sion that they are in control, they started on him. He had, they observed, a history of "dissident opinions" and "countercul
    ture beliefs." Had he ever been approached by people who avowed violent solutions to the issues close to his heart? Had he ever been to the Middle East? Did he maintain connections with people who had?
    The whole encounter had been surreal, and a couple of times Thomas had wanted--again--to laugh, but there was 35
    O n t h e F i f t h D a y
    another part of him that wanted to curl up until they went away, though whether that was because he was afraid for him
    self, or for what his brother might have been involved in, he couldn't say.
    Except that there was no way that Ed was involved with ter
    rorists. No way at all.
    Did he really know that? Did he know anything substantial about his brother over the last half-dozen years?
    The only time he did actually laugh was when they rose