“Yeah…the house,” Thomas said. “What’s left of it. I mean, we’ve turned the insides upside down—at least as upside down as you can without making it obvious—and we’ve come up empty-handed. We push it much further and we risk getting arrested for trespassing and vandalism.”

“There is something there,” Kemel said. “Perhaps not the plans and diagrams themselves, but if not, then I believe it is reasonable to assume that your father left some clue as to their whereabouts.”

“That’s becoming an expensive assumption.”

“The will all but says so. One cannot ignore your father’s message to that ecology group—what is it called?”

“Greenpeace.”

“Yes. Greenpeace. Such a strange concept. We have no such groups in my land. But your father, he said, ‘This house holds the key that points the way to all you wish to achieve. Sell it and you lose everything you’ve worked for.’ That to me is proof enough that the house is hiding something.”

“Fine. But we’ve got to find it.”

“Have no fear. We will find it. As soon as the house is ours, we will begin a most thorough search, breaking down the walls if necessary. And if we still have not found it, we will dismantle the house brick by brick, beam by beam, until we succeed.”

“And if we don’t?”

“At least we will have prevented others from finding it and using it.”

“Yeah, but then I don’t get my payday.”

“Well, certainly you would not expect us to buy something that you do not have. Would you?”

Thomas shrugged. “What’s our next step?”

“I contact my superiors to approve the purchase price—a mere formality, I assure you—and then we let Mr. Haffner arrange the details.”

“Ten million bucks,” Thomas said, shaking his head as he’d done when this little tete-a-tete started. “Well, I guess I should be thankful my dear sister has no inkling what we’re after. If she did, she’d be asking ten million per brick.”

“Yes,” Kemel said. “And that would still be a bargain.”

He’s got to be exaggerating, Jack thought. But somehow he doubted it.

As he lay there wondering what the hell could be worth so damn much and be small enough to hide in a house, he noticed Thomas and Kemel heading for the door.

Jack felt like singing that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?”

What had he learned here?

Well, he’d seen Kemel. That was something. And he’d learned that whatever was in the Clayton house was damn near priceless to some very rich folks from the Middle East. And he’d learned that Thomas’s people weren’t the only ones interested in it. They were concerned about it falling into “the wrong hands.” Whose hands were the “wrong” hands? He didn’t think they meant Alicia’s. Another Middle East power? Israel? Or someone else?