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he reexamined his hand. She was right, of course. Angela Yates usually was. He couldn't go on like this, and he wouldn't. It was a miserable job; it was a miserable life. The palazzo's front door opened.
    Bald Nikolai opened it, but remained inside, his tailored jacket arm holding the bloated wooden door so that the pregnant woman-- who Charles could now see was very beautiful, her bright green eyes flashing across the square--could step over the threshold and onto the cobbles. Then came Dawdle, touching her elbow. He looked every one of his sixtytwo years, and more. The bodyguard closed the door behind them, and the woman turned to say something to Dawdle, but Dawdle didn't answer. He was looking at Angela, who had emerged from her doorway and was running in his direction. "Frank!" she shouted.
    Charles had missed his cue. He began running, too, the Walther in his hand.
    A man's voice shouted from the sky in easy English: "And her I love, you bastard!" Then a rising wail, like a steam-engine whistle, filled the air. Unlike the other three people in the street, Charles didn't look up. Distractions, he knew, are usually just that. He hurtled forward. The pregnant woman, eyes aloft, screamed and stepped back. Frank Dawdle was stuck to the ground. Angela's flared jacket dropped as she halted and opened her mouth, but made no sound. Beside the pregnant woman, something pink hit the earth. It was 10:27 A.M .
    He stumbled to a stop. Perhaps it was a bomb. But bombs weren't pink, and they didn't hit like that. They exploded or crashed into the ground with hard noises. This pink thing hit with a soft, wretched thump. That's when he knew it was a body. On one side, spread among the splash of blood on the cobblestones, he saw a scatter of long hair--it was the pretty girl he'd spotted on the terrace last night.
    He looked up, but the terrace was again empty. The pregnant woman screamed, tripped, and fell backward.
    Frank Dawdle produced a pistol and shot wildly three times, the sound echoing off the stones, then turned and ran. Angela bolted after him, shouting, "Stop! Frank!"
    Charles Alexander was trained to follow through with actions even when faced with the unpredictable, but what he saw--the falling girl, the shots, the fleeing man--each thing seemed only to confuse him more. How did the pregnant woman fit into this?
    His breathing was suddenly difficult, but he reached her. She kept screaming. Red face, eyes rolling. Her words were a garbled mess. His chest really did feel strange, so he sat heavily on the ground beside her. That's when he noticed all the blood. Not the girl's--she was on the other side of the hysterical woman--but his own. He could see that now. It pumped a red blossom into his shirt.
    How about that? He was exhausted. Red rivulets filled the spaces between the cobblestones. I'm dead. Off to the left, Angela ran after the dwindling form of Frank Dawdle.
    Amid the indecipherable noises coming from the pregnant woman, he heard one clear phrase: "I'm in labor!"
    He blinked at her, wanting to say, But I'm dying, I can't help you. Then he read the desperation in her sweaty face. She really did want to stay alive. Why?
    "I need a doctor!" the woman shouted.
    "I--" he began, and looked around. Angela and Dawdle had disappeared; they were just distant footfalls around a far corner.
    "Get a fucking doctor!" the woman screamed, close to his ear. From around that far corner he heard the three short cracks of Angela's SIG
    Sauer.
    He took out his telephone. The woman was terrified, so he whispered,
    "It'll be all right," and dialed 118, the Italian medical emergency number. In stilted, too-quiet Italian from just one painful lung, he explained that a woman on the Rio Terra Barba Fruttariol was having a baby. Help was promised. He hung up. His blood was no longer a network of rivulets on the ground; it formed an elongated pool.
    The woman was calmer now, but she still gasped for breath. She looked desperate. When he gripped