Milos could hear the same words echoing from across the room where their conversation was playing from a speaker on the communications console.

“Yes,” Milos said, straggling to modulate his tone. “Who is this?”

“I’m the president of the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee, Mr. Dragovic. Did you get our message tonight?”

“Message?” Milos said, playing along. “What message?”

“The tires, dear boy, the tires. Surely you noticed them, although considering the simply dreadful house you’ve built there, I suppose it’s possible you might have missed them. Anyway, I’m calling just in case you’ve missed the point.”

Milos felt his teeth grinding. “Just what was the point?”

“That you’re not wanted out here, Mr. Dragovic. You are cheap and vulgar and we will not tolerate your type amongst us. You are a toxin and we are out to clean you up. You are garbage and your house a waste dump, and that is how we intend to treat it until you decide to pack up your trashy self, your trashy friends, your trashy lifestyle, and go back where you came from.”

Milos clutched the receiver in a death grip and sputtered a reply. “Who are you?”

He heard an exultant “Yes!” from the communications console. He looked over and saw Mihailo giving him the OK sign. He’d traced the call.

“I believe I told you: this is not the militant wing of the LVIS, this is the East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee, and we mean business. Be warned, Mr. Dragovic,” the man on the phone was saying. “We are quite serious. This is not a game.”

“You think not?” Milos said, smiling. “I say it is—one that two can play.” He hung up and turned to Mihailo. “Who is he?”

“Can’t say,” Mihailo said, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses nervously, “but he was calling from the city—a pay phone in the East Eighties.”

Milos cursed silently. He’d been hoping for a name, but he should have known the man would not call from his home.

“I think I’ve got something,” Dositej called from the video monitoring room.

Milos stepped into the cubicle where Dositej was leaning close to a monitor, his nose almost touching its screen. “What is it?”

“I remember now. This car came by yesterday. Pulled right up to the front gate and stopped. I was about to send someone out when it pulled away.”

Milos saw the grainy image of a man staring at the house from the passenger seat of an American-made sedan.

“I know him,” said Ivo. “He’s the one we chased off the beach.”

Milos turned. Vuk and Ivo stood side by side. “You think he could be the one on the phone?”

Vuk shook his head. “Not the same voice. And the man we chased was too afraid of a fight to try anything like tonight.”

“I’m not so sure,” Ivo said, squinting at the screen. “We saw a man who did not want to fight, but I would not say he was afraid.”