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cooed. ' Three Picassos?'
    'It was Roland's collection. Ethan and I just picked out the wine.'
    They lifted their wine glasses in salute . Wolfe said in English, 'The wine is great , Kate.' His eyes cut mischievously to Ethan.
    'How were the Pyrenees?' Renate asked.
    'Pure,' Kate whispered. 'There are places that haven't changed in a thousand years. And caves! You wouldn't believe what we saw in the caves!'
    'What did you climb?' Wolfe asked her.
    Kate smiled serenely. 'Absolutely everything.'
    'Leave the ropes at home?' Reto asked.
    'What do you think?'
    Kate was a free climber as much as possible. She liked to say it was the only way up a mountain. She trained with ropes sometimes, and some mountains required it, but when she wanted to summit most peaks, she took it as a free climber if it was possible and sometimes even if it wasn't. Ethan usually tagged along with dreadful notions of his mortality nagging at him, but he always made it - close call or not. With Kate it just was not possible to hang back or hesitate. And at the top, you had done it with your own hands and feet, and that was a feeling that took the teeth out of every fear.
    'That attitude is going to get you killed someday, girl!' Renate told her.
    'Not Kate,' Reto laughed. 'Ethan maybe, but not Kate!'
    Kate looped her arm into Ethan's and said, 'I want you to meet someone. Do you have a minute?'
    'Bartoli,' she whispered when they were alone.
    Ethan stopped. 'Giancarlo or Luca?'
    'The old man. Watch yourself, Ethan,' she added. 'Giancarlo can read minds.'
    Giancarlo Bartoli was standing at the lake with his back to them as they walked toward him. When Kate called to him, he turned and tossed his cigarette aside. Bartoli was somewhere in his mid-seventies, tall and gaunt with a mop of white hair, deep lines creasing his red face, and pale, grey, merciless eyes that missed nothing. Like Ethan he wore a tuxedo. Against the wind he also wore a yellow cashmere coat.
    Roland had considered Giancarlo one of his closest friends. Kate had told Ethan she had vivid memories from her childhood of visits from Giancarlo when her parents were living in Hamburg - long nights in which the two men drank and talked about art and politics and history. About everything, really. Roland would send her off to bed and then laugh at her when she would sneak back and find a seat on her father's lap again. As she listened to their talk - always in Italian - Kate had always imagined that the two men controlled all of the important things in the world.
    Ethan could understand the friendship between the two men. Kate's father had been an affable man with a salesman's instincts for putting people at ease. He had also possessed a razor-sharp intellect - to keep things lively. As a young man he had been like Kate - audacious and always searching for new challenges. By the time Ethan knew him, Roland had settled into a world of his own making. He was getting grey, but not so much slowing down as savouring things.
    For his part Giancarlo Bartoli was a good deal more than a shrewd businessman. Like Roland, his passions were varied and complex. He loved art, opera, and history above all else, but he was well versed in languages and law. At university he had toyed with a career in higher mathematics before settling on the more practical aspects of that discipline. As a young man he went often to the mountains - skiing nearly at the level of an Olympian and climbing with the same enthusiasm as Roland had in his prime. As an older man Bartoli had taken up sailing, circumnavigating the globe once on a twelve man team that he captained.
    Shortly after Kate was born, Giancarlo Bartoli had stood with her parents to take his vow as her padrino - godfather - at the christening. Kate was not Bartoli's only godchild, of course, he probably had twenty or so, but she was his favourite, and he made no attempt to disguise his special affection. Every year at her birthday - at least until she was completely