Macher shook his head in disgust. “What about Rawls?”

“No sign of him,” Drake said, “but he’s there.”

“And what evidence do you have of that?”

“He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. And besides, I can feel him there.”

“You can feel him there?” Macher demanded. “Are you psychic or something?”

“Sort of,” Drake replied.

“Define that.”

“I look at the available evidence, and my mind forms a conclusion from that.”

“And how much available evidence did you have?”

“Rawls owns the house, his only other home burned down. It’s familiar territory for him, he would be drawn to it. Rawls is also known to be cheap, and it wouldn’t cost him anything to go back to his own house.”

“And that’s enough evidence to conclude he’s there?”

“Yes, sir. I’m not trying to convict him of anything, just establish his whereabouts. What I’ve got is enough for that, and there is no contradictory evidence to put him anywhere else. Ergo, the house is our best shot.”

Macher looked at the young man with new respect. “You’re right,” he said. “What do you propose we do from here? And no breaking in—we don’t need more trouble.”

“We can either surveil the house by a live satellite feed, or we can go back down there and sit on it until he shows his face. The satellite is too expensive.”

“Has Rawls seen you two?”

“We were in the house with the real estate agent. He might have watched us from some hiding place.”

“And being an old spy, he might just have such a place in the house,” Macher said.

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, you two go home and get cleaned up, get a good night’s sleep, have some breakfast, if you haven’t already. I’ll put somebody else on the place.”

The two thanked him and shuffled out.

“Ilsa, please get me a longitude and latitude of the Denton house, will you?”

Ilsa walked into his office and placed a slip of paper on his desk. “There you go.”

Macher turned to his computer, opened a program that gave him access to satellites, and entered the coordinates. The program looked for a satellite, found it, and Macher watched the screen as the eye in the sky zoomed in on the Denton house. He clicked a couple of times on the zoom-out tab, and lo, the Rawls place appeared on the other side of the road. Then he zoomed in on that. There was a car parked between the garage and the house, hard up against a hedge. It wouldn’t have been visible from the Denton place.

“Ilsa, bring me Solberg’s report on their visit to the Rawls place.”