“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know!” Monnet cried. “He just said he’d found an ‘absolutely foolproof means of disposal’ and we’d never have to worry about him again. That’s all I know; I swear!”

You bastard! Jack thought, aching to pull the trigger. You rotten lousy bastard. He’d bet all he owned that Oz’s foolproof dispose-all had yellow eyes and a scarred lower lip.

“And Nadia? What about her?”

Monnet closed his eyes.

“Only one second left on your clock,” Jack said, then held his breath, pretty damn sure he wasn’t going to like this answer.

Monnet nodded. “The same.” His voice seemed caught between a whisper and a sob.

“Aw, jeez.”

It now seemed a possibility that the suddenly healthy rakosh hadn’t lunched on Bondy as Jack had first thought. Oz must have fed it Gleason… and Nadia was probably next on the menu.

He backed away, trying not to give in to the increasingly insistent urge to redecorate the room with this son of a bitch’s brains. That was too good for him. Too good for all of them.

“All right,” he said. “I want all pockets emptied onto the table. Everyone. Now. Do it!”

The three executives got to it with gusto. Jack could see relief on their faces: Emptying pockets meant robbery. They understood that, and it sure as hell beat getting shot.

Dragovic didn’t move. He simply sat there pressing a hand to his thigh and glaring at Monnet. Jack remembered his shouts about liars and traitors a moment ago. Looked like this little business arrangement was falling apart. He let Dragovic be—he already had what he wanted from him.

“Hurry!” Jack shouted, and meant it. Gleason was probably gone, but maybe he still had time to save Nadia. “I want all pockets turned inside out.”

He didn’t care about the wallets that landed on the table. The cell phones were what he wanted. Three more of them joined Dragovic’s.

“You,” he said, pointing to Mr. Sweaty. “Rip out every phone in the room and dump them here on the table.” As Sweaty hopped to it, Jack pointed the ferret—the one Monnet had called Brad—in the direction of the wet bar at the far end of the room. “You bring me four glasses and a pitcher of water.”

When all the phones had been collected, including the conference speaker-microphone in the center of the table, Jack wrapped them in someone’s suit coat and tossed them out into the hall.

“Now,” he said, tugging the Ziploc of Berzerk from his pocket and sliding it across the table to Brad. “Put a handful of that in each of the glasses.”

The look on Brad’s face left no doubt about his familiarity with the powder.

“W-why?”

“Just do it.”

Brad’s hand was shaking like a wino with the DTs, but he managed to get the job done.

“Now fill each glass halfway with water and pass them around.”

A minute later, each of the four men had a glass of blue-tinged fluid before him.