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back. In the moonlight he saw a Russian who had been placed there to stop him from escaping by sliding back down. The man was holding what looked like a gun, and he was smiling up at Stanley; a very ugly smile, Stanley thought.
    Stanley hung on the side of the nearly vertical rise and felt tears forming in his eyes as he realized that, after all this crap, he wasn’t going to make it.

 
     

6
    A few cars behind Karl Roth’s deli van, a gray chauffeur-driven limousine also edged through the traffic on Dosoris Lane.
    Katherine Kimberly, sitting in the rear, regarded the young Englishman at the opposite end of the long seat. Marc Pembroke was undeniably good-looking, though in a slightly sinister way. He possessed all the charm and breeding of his class, but also its cynicism and affected indifference. She remarked, “It ought to open up a bit once we get past the Russian place.”
    Pembroke replied politely, “It’s just as well Mr. O’Brien didn’t come with us. At his age the flu
can
lead to complications.”
    “He has a cold.” Katherine thought she detected a tone suggesting that Patrick O’Brien, senior partner in the law firm in which she was a partner, had simply begged off. She studied Pembroke for a moment. He was dressed in a white flannel pinstripe suit, a straw slouch hat, white silk shirt, and red silk tie with matching pocket handkerchief. He wore black-and-white saddle shoes. He might, thought Katherine, have been on his way to one of the surrounding mansions to play a role in a 1920s movie. She didn’t think George Van Dorn would appreciate such foppishness. Yet, in some indefinable way, Pembroke still radiated a hard masculinity. She said, “Mr. O’Brien is usually in excellent health. Last May Day he parachuted from a helicopter and landed on George’s tennis court.” She smiled.
    Pembroke stared at the blond-haired woman. She
was
extremely pretty. She wore a finely cut simple mauve dress that complemented her pale complexion. Her sandals were on the floor, and he noticed her feet were callused, and he remembered that she was an amateur marathon runner.
    Pembroke glanced at her profile. She had what they called in the army a command presence. He had heard she was rather good in the courtroom, and he could easily believe it.
    She looked up and their eyes met. She did not turn demurely away, as women are taught to do, but stared at him in the same way he was staring at her. Finally he said, “May I give you a drink?”
    “Please.”
    Pembroke looked at the attractive young couple in the facing jump seats. Joan Grenville was dressed in white slacks with a navy blue boat-neck top. Her husband, Tom, wore a blue business suit of the type favored by his law firm, O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, for its employees. Pembroke, who was not an employee, wondered if Tom Grenville intended to make points with Van Dorn, a senior partner in the firm, and wear the depressing thing the entire weekend. Pembroke said, “May I give either of you a drink?”
    Joan Grenville replied, “If you’re giving, I’m taking.”
    Tom Grenville forced a smile and said to Pembroke, “My wife only understands Manhattan idiom.”
    “Really?”
    Grenville said, “I’ll make the drinks. Scotch all around?” He busied himself at the small bar.
    Joan Grenville addressed Katherine in a petulant voice. “We should have gone in the helicopter with Peter.”
    Katherine replied, “Even by helicopter, Peter will undoubtedly manage to arrive late.”
    Marc Pembroke smiled at her. “That’s no way to speak of your betrothed.”
    Katherine realized she had been a bit too candid, and that Pembroke was baiting her. She replied, “Actually I usually arrive too early, then accuse him of being late.”
    “The Theory of Time’s Relativity,” said Pembroke, “was first discovered by watching men and women waiting for each other.”
    No,
thought Katherine,
not baited, but led,
and she wasn’t going to be led by this charmingly