He pulled sunglasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on. This has to be done, and it has to be done now.

As he walked down the paved drive to his car, the red-haired man held tight to the notion that the founding fathers had committed what many considered to be treasonous acts when they forged this nation. He also thought of Jefferson Davis and the Southern leaders who formed the Confederacy to protest what they considered repression. What he and his people were doing now was neither unprecedented nor immoral.

But it was dangerous, not just for themselves but for the nation. And that, more than anything, would continue to scare the hell out of him until the country was firmly under their control. fiaAu. Azerbaijan Sunday, 11:33 p.m.

David Battat looked impatiently at his watch. They were over three minutes late. Which is nothing to be concerned about, the short, agile American told himself.

A thousand things could have held them up, but they would be here. They would come by launch or motorboat, possibly from another boat, possibly from the wharf four hundred yards to his right. But they would arrive.

They had better, he thought. He couldn't afford to screw up twice. Not that the first mistake had been his fault.

The forty-three-year-old Battat was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency's small New York field office, which was located across the street from the United Nations building. Battat and his small team were responsible for electronic SOS activities: spying on spies.

Keeping track of foreign "diplomats" who used their consulates as bases for surveillance and intelligence gathering activities. Battat also had been responsible for overseeing the activities of junior agent Annabelle Hampton.

Ten days before, Battat had come to the American embassy in Moscow. The CIA was running tests in the communications center on an uplink with a new highgain acoustic satellite. If the satellite worked on the Kremlin, the CIA planned on using it in New York to eavesdrop more efficiently on foreign consulates. While Battat was in Moscow, however, Annabelle helped a group of terrorists infiltrate the United Nations.

What made it especially painful was that the young woman did it for pay, not principle. Battat could respect a misguided idealist. He could not respect a common hustler.

Though Battat had not been blamed officially for what Annabelle did, he was the one who had run the background check on her. He was the one who had hired her.

And her "seconding action," as it was officially classified, had happened during his watch. Psychologically and also politically, Battat needed to atone for that mistake. Otherwise, chances were good that he would get back to the United States and discover that the field agent who had been brought in from Washington to operate the office in his absence was now the permanent New York field director.

Battat might find himself reassigned to Moscow, and he didn't want that.