Past Mrs. P’s empty station, Benton takes a right at the entryway’s round table with its sumptuous fragrant arrangement of cut lilies and roses. I keep going back to what he said just moments ago about an anticipated terrorist attack on the East Coast, possibly in the Boston area again. Now something has happened here in Cambridge, and he’s on the phone with Washington, D.C., as the terror alert is off the charts. I don’t like what I’m feeling.

I don’t like the way Benton glanced at me as he said over the phone that he wasn’t aware of something, that he hadn’t been informed of whatever it is. As if there’s something happening in the here and now that he should know about, that both of us should. Whatever’s going on isn’t simply a local problem, and as I think this I also know I’m ahead of myself. The two of us getting important if not urgent calls simultaneously doesn’t mean they’re related. It could be a coincidence.

But I can’t shake the ominous signals I’m picking up. I have a feeling I’m going to discover soon enough that Benton and I are about to have the same problem but won’t be able to discuss it much if at all. In our different positions we won’t handle it the same way, and we could even end up at odds with each other. It wouldn’t be the first time and certainly won’t be the last.

“Doc …? Did you get the part about …? Interpol calling …?” Marino says, and I must have misheard him.

“I can hardly understand you,” I reply in a loud whisper. “And I can’t talk. One second please.”

Benton heads into the drawing room, and I wish the drapes had been pulled across the tall expansive windows. It’s completely dark out with only vague smudges of distant lamps pushing back the inkiness, and I’m conscious of the night and what might be in it, possibly close by, possibly watching. Maybe right under our very noses. I detect something sinister has been tampering with us all day and probably for longer than that.

I RETURN TO THE entrance, where I avoid the old corroded mirror on the wall, and I stand with my head bent, facing the front door but not really seeing anything as I listen to Marino over the phone.

It’s difficult to hear everything he’s saying. We have at best a spotty connection, and I’m beginning to get jumpy. I don’t know who’s doing what or spying on whom, and in light of everything else it’s hard not to feel hunted and disoriented.