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the gates did not move.
    'Open the gates!' he shouted.
    Bremmer pulled forward and tried the key pad. 'Jammed!' he called.
    Corbeau swore angrily and killed the motor. 'Call the police!'
    While Bremmer spoke on the phone, Corbeau cursed his folly and paced the deck. For days he had been waiting for another attempted kidnap, never imagining the real danger.
    And now it was too late.

CHAPTER TWO

    New York City
    October 3, 2006.

    Because she had never gotten the field out of her blood, Jane Harrison came in from the west side of the park and took a piece of high ground for no better reason than to observe Thomas Malloy reading his newspaper. Malloy did his best not to notice. Jane had been his boss too many years for him not to play to her vanities.
    He was seated under a canopy of golden leaves by one of the roads running through Central Park just off Fifth Avenue. Malloy had boulders at his back, a stream and woods covering his left flank. The weather was cool and cloudy and it was early, so there were not too many people in the park yet. At precisely the moment he had indicated they should meet, Jane walked down the hill, crossed a piece of pavement and sat beside him. Looking like an Upper West Side matron she arranged herself comfortably and began to work on a fairly impressive piece of needlework. It was a skill Malloy had not known she possessed. 'You've become a trusting soul since retirement, T. K.'
    Jane Harrison was sixty-two years old, as trim and plain as the day Malloy had met her. She had not changed her hair in twenty-five years. Even the colour, a dull salt-and-pepper, remained a constant. Jane had been at Langley so long everyone imagined it was where she had started, but Malloy's father had told him years ago that Jane began her professional life playing the part of a disaffected expatriate wandering through Europe.
    Following a series of raids and bloody assassinations of the Italian Communists, who were 'knee-capping' American tourists among their other victims, Jane transferred quietly into Langley, trading in her beads, long hair, and free love credo for the bureaucrat's uniform. She worked for a while as an analyst, then crossed the hall and rejoined operations at a supervisory level. Malloy had never confirmed the story, but legend had it that Ted Kennedy in his younger days had struck out with her at a party. Complaining bitterly about it, he had called her the Iron Maiden. True or not, the moniker attached itself, and that was still how most people referred to her. At least behind her back.
    Malloy had met Jane shortly after Reagan began his second term. A young operative, Malloy's first tour of duty overseas had ended disastrously. He was expecting a life sentence inside Langley, probably as the Iron Maiden's Boy Friday. To his astonishment, Jane offered him a chance to redeem himself with the most coveted overseas assignments in the agency, a three-year tour of duty in Switzerland as a NOC, a NOC being any officer operating with No Official Cover. Years later Malloy realised what kind of courage it took for her to do that, but even as a young man he had been impressed by her confidence in him.
    'I'm meeting the deputy director of operations for a notoriously paranoid government agency in Central Park, Jane. That means we've got guardian angels all around us. Why shouldn't I take advantage of the extra security and enjoy my newspaper?'
    'Assume nothing, my friend. Didn't I teach you that?'
    Malloy folded his paper and began scanning the classifieds. Jane's message to him was running again. So was his response.
    The last time Malloy had seen Jane Harrison had been at his retirement party. Jane had told him when the time was right she would be able to offer him all the contract work he could handle, but for a while he was on his own. It was not the kind of promise supervisors offered at the typical thirty and thirty-five-year retirement parties. Malloy wasn't an old warhorse turned out to pasture and