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that!”
    “You will live in luxury for the rest of your life. Beyond the reach of any laws.”
    “God knows I deserve it, after living with that bitch!”
    “You certainly do. Hurry up now.”
    Lady Alicia’s second husband raced out of the library, weeping copiously. He plunged down the circular staircase, nearly losing his footing, his tears apparently blinding him, as he kept wailing, “I’m
sorry
, I’m
sorry!
I should never have
done
it!” He reached the huge polished hall, rushingpast the Brewster children, to the front door. He crashed the door open and ran outside.
    “Mother must have read him the riot act,” said Roger Brewster.
    “Mum told you to check on his getting into the Jag. Make sure it’s safe for him to drive.”
    “Fuck him, little sister, I’ve got the keys. That bastard’s
out
of here.”
    On the curb in Belgravia, the taxi was waiting for Gerald, the yellow handkerchief dangling below the driver’s window. He leaped into the backseat, breathing furiously. “
Hurry!
” he shouted, “I can’t be
seen
around here!” Suddenly, Gerald was aware of a man sitting next to him.
    No words were spoken, only the sound of two silenced gunshots. “Drive to the ironworks north of Heathrow,” said the man in shadows. “The fires burn all night.”

chapter 3
    I n an off-limits strategy room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, two men faced each other over a conference table. The older man was the First Deputy Director of the CIA, the younger an experienced case officer named Cameron Pryce, a veteran of the new Cold Peace, with posts in Moscow, Rome, and London entered into his service report. Pryce was multilingual, fluent in Russian, as well as French, Italian, and, naturally, English. He was a thirty-six-year-old product of Georgetown University, B.A.; Maxwell School of Foreign Service, Syracuse, M.A.; and Princeton University, objective, Ph.D.—the last abandoned in his second year. The doctorate was aborted when Langley recruited him before he could complete his studies.
    Why? Because Cameron Pryce, in a predoctoral Honors thesis, recklessly but adamantly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union within four months of its collapse. Such minds were valuable.
    “You’ve read the max-classified file?” asked Deputy Director Frank Shields, a short, overweight former analyst with a high forehead and eyes that seemed perpetually squinted.
    “Yes, I have, Frank, and I didn’t take any notes, honest,”replied Pryce, a large, slender man whose sharp features could best be described as marginally attractive. He continued, smiling gently. “But, of course, you know that. The gnomes behind those hideous reproductions on the walls have been watching me. Did you think I was going to write a book?”
    “Others have, Cam.”
    “Snepp, Agee, Borstein, and a few other gallant souls who found some of our procedures less than admirable.… It’s not my turf, Frank. I made my pact with the devil when you paid off my student loans.”
    “We counted on that.”
    “Don’t count too high. I could have paid them myself in time.”
    “On an associate professor’s salary? No room for a wife and kids and a white picket fence on campus.”
    “Hell, you took care of that, too. My relationships have been brief and movable, no kids that I’m aware of.”
    “Let’s cut the biographical bullshit,” said the deputy director. “What do you make of the file?”
    “They’re either disconnected events or a great deal more. One or the other, nothing in between.”
    “Take an educated guess.”
    “I can’t. Four internationally known very rich folk are killed along with lesser mortals. The trails lead nowhere and the killers are out of sight, vanished. There’s no cross-pollination that I can see, no mutual interests or investments or even any apparent social contact—it would be odd if there were. We have a titled Englishwoman, who was a philanthropist, a Spanish scholar from a wealthy