“Quit? Now hang on a minute!” Long reached out and grabbed the handlebar.

That was when it happened. A sharp pain in the back of his legs, as if a club had swept in just below his knees. Before he knew what was happening, Long was on his ass in the gravel and staring up at Deadmarsh.

Earl Long was a big man, and not unaccustomed to physical challenges. On and off the job he’d seen his share of confrontation, and usually with favorable results. At six-five, two-sixty, he had three inches and at least forty pounds on the man hovering over him. Even so, Long didn’t move. There was something in the stare that kept him planted right where he was. He’d seen men full of hate and whiskey. Even craziness. This was none of those things. He was looking at eyes that were hard and impenetrable, like a steel-gray sky on the coldest winter day.

Long sat still.

The big bike jumped and a fountain of stone spewed behind, peppering his face. Long heard the engine wind up to the redline, then shift. It happened again, and again, until the motorcycle and its rider became a collective blur. Earl Long just sat on the ground and watched, and from that vantage point he predicted—quite correctly, as it turned out—that he would never see Edmund Deadmarsh again.

Chapter 3

THREE

Stockholm, Sweden

Christine Palmer sat looking at her watch. The auditorium was less than half full, so she suspected the other physicians attending the conference had known what was coming. Dr. Adolphus Breen, professor emeritus of internal medicine at the University of Oslo, had been prattling for an hour on the issue of bacterial prostatitis. To make it even more excruciating, the afternoon outside was glorious.

She had been at the conference for three days, attending seminars in a dutiful way that would have made her sponsoring organization, The Physician’s Group of Eastern Virginia, smile with pride. Even so, when the esteemed Dr. Breen shifted to his well-trod treatise, “The Role of Bacterial Overgrowth in Chronic Diarrhea,” Christine could take no more. She made her move, breaking discreetly from her chair at the end of a row.

Outside, the sun struck like a wave of warm liquid, fresh and exhilarating on her face. Having recently completed her residency, this was her first medical conference, and she now saw why her colleagues had recommended this particular seminar. In a display of right-mindedness, it had been based at the Strand Hotel, a magnificent venue overlooking Stockholm’s harbor and the Strandvägen. The timing was equally superlative. In a few months, the sidewalk she was strolling would be carpeted with snow and ice.