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conceivably have told Shen about both Howard Horner, the defense contractor, and Chu, the Chinese triad leader. Under his breath he says, “Fucker.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I said ‘Fucker,’ ” Rafferty says to the mirror. “But it wasn’t aimed at you.”
    “Well, I’m sure that whoever it is, he’s shaking in his boots. Anyway, to get back to our business. We’re concerned with this man and what he might have said. You’re the person he said it to, and I have to observe that you’re leading an interesting life here. In times of crisis, we tend to clump interesting people together, at least to the point of asking them polite questions, but—”
    “You know what’s
really
interesting?”
    “—but sometimes mistakes are made,” Shen finishes.
    “Meaning sometimes you’re not so polite to people who haven’t done anything.”
    The remote shrug again. “I’d be lying if I said it never happened.”
    “I’ll remember that for when the press talks to me.”
    Major Shen smiles. “The press will not talk to you.”
    Rafferty listens to the statement several times in memory. It has the effect of sobering him up. He nods.
    “The woman’s name,” Shen says.
    Rafferty sits back. “I don’t remember it.”
    “Why ‘Helena’?”
    “I have no idea. It’s probably where she lives, whoever she is.”
    Tented fingertips. “So your hypothesis is that he was asking you to contact this woman?”
    “I don’t have a hypothesis. For all I know, Helena, or Montana, is his Rosebud.”
    Shen leans forward a quarter of an inch, and for such a small move it’s immensely unfriendly. “But it isn’t his Rosebud. It’s a city. He gives you a name and a city. A who and a where, so to speak.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “But you don’t remember the name.”
    Rafferty raises a hand to stop him and shuts his eyes. Pictures the fallen man, feels the chill of rain on the back of his neck, sees again the jolting, out-of-focus chaos in the background and the brilliance of the TV crew’s light. Forces himself to concentrate on the man’s lips, thinking of the close-up in
Citizen Kane
when Kane says “Rosebud.” But the man’s lips barely move at all.
    He opens his eyes. “No, I don’t.”
    Major Shen sighs and then says, “So what you’re
willing
to tell us is that he said three words: a name you can’t remember and a city in Montana.” He nods as though something has been confirmed. “You
have
been to Montana, haven’t you? You’ve been all over. You spent quite a bit of time in Manila, for example, and Jakarta. Denpasar. I could name some more if I looked at my notes.”
    Rafferty knows where this is going, and it makes him very uneasy. “That’s not exactly a secret. I wrote books about both the Philippines and Indonesia.”
    “You have to admit, you’ve got an unusual profile.”
    “I don’t have to admit shit.”
    “This is not a constructive atti—”
    “What happened today had nothing to do with me. Your crowd was chasing his crowd, or the crowd he got caught up in. He got shot, he had to grab onto someone, and I was there. Are you suggesting that I went to Indonesia and the Philippines because I’m involved with Muslim separatists or terrorists of some kind? Because if you are, I want my embassy here now.”
    “My, my,” Major Shen says.
    “My, my yourself.” Poke looks back at the mirrored window with its unspoken threat. Whatever else this is, it’s bullying, andhe learned long ago that giving in to bullies just signals weakness. “I’m finished talking. Arrest me or something.”
    “Please, Mr. Rafferty.” Shen does that glance over Rafferty’s shoulder again, as though there were a teleprompter back there. “You grew up in California, isn’t that right?”
    “You know it is.”
    “And so did I. Orange County, whereas you were in …” He seems either to be searching for the name or giving Rafferty a chance to supply it, but Rafferty doesn’t. “Lancaster,” he