They found a restaurant called Picholjne nearby, where they had dinner and made plans for going to Florida. Vicky was ready to bounce off the walls with excitement, and Jack found himself beginning to look forward to the trip.

What better way to see Disney World than with a child? he thought, drinking in her smile and her bright eyes.

The only time Vicky stopped talking about Mickey and Donald was when the fabulous dessert tray came by. She had two.

7.

7.

Thomas Clayton had emerged from the strip joint after two hours and walked directly back to his apartment.

This, Yoshio had learned, was one of the patterns of Thomas Clayton’s life. Very sad, he thought. He didn’t know much about him, but felt sorry for him. This was a lonely, lonely man.

And with this Yoshio himself felt a rare pang of loneliness, a sudden yearning for home. Not for family, for he had none, and not for Tokyo, for New York had given him his fill of big cities. No, he wished he were booked into a little ryokan on Shikoku, overlooking the misty vistas of the Inland Sea.

He realized that he had wasted the day. All of the principals seemed to be in a holding pattern, as if waiting for something. But for what? Tomorrow, perhaps?

If so, Yoshio would wait with them.

His stomach didn’t feel right. Perhaps the grease from that shish kebab meat—supposedly lamb—he had eaten while waiting for Thomas Clayton this afternoon. He decided to take a break from American food. He stopped at a restaurant in the East Fifties with a superior sushi bar. He spent a number of hours there, sipping Sapporo Draft, nibbling sashimi, and speaking Japanese.

Then he returned to his apartment and watched Kemel Muhallal and his superior hovering around that lamp in the back room of Muhallal’s apartment, looking at their mystery object.

8.

8.

Jack dropped off Gia and Vicky, then hurried over to Alicia’s for a meeting with her and Sean O’Neill, her new lawyer.

As he stepped through the door, Jack handed her an envelope. He liked her wide-eyed look when she opened it and pulled out Mr. Sung’s fifteen one-thousand-dollar bills. He told her it was a donation to the Center. She thought it was from him, but he assured her it wasn’t. He told her the donor was a very caring real estate investor who wished to remain anonymous.

“He wants you to buy some ‘fun things’ for the kids,” Jack told her. “You decide.”