Nimec knew there was no need for him to answer. What they very obviously had was a covert video-recording system—a surveillance camera and portable duplicating unit for creating automatic backup tapes. The blank round eye of the camera was lined up with the transparent part of the wall mirror and pointed directly into the room. Roma might not keep written records of his various dealings, Nimec thought, but that clearly did not mean he was without any records at all.

He stood there looking into the hollow space. On a shelf below the electronic components were three or four scattered videotapes and a sheet of color-coded adhesive labels. The cassettes themselves were unlabeled.

“Looks like he hasn’t gotten around to cataloging his latest epics yet,” Nori whispered. She came up behind Nimec, her laser-dazzler against her leg. “Wonder what’s on them.”

“I think that’s something we need to find out,” Barnhart said.

Nimec hastily snatched the tapes off the shelf, put them into his duffel, then ejected the tape that was in the camera and dropped it in with them.

“Come on.” He snapped the panel shut and turned toward the others. “We’d better get out of—”

The sound of an approaching vehicle clipped off the end of the sentence. The three of them exchanged quick, anxious looks. They could hear the sound of tires crunching on fresh snowpack. It was close, very close, maybe right outside the building. Then the engine shivered into silence, doors slammed, and there were voices. Coarse male voices out in the street.

Nimec crossed the room, stood to one side of the window, and peered cautiously around the frame. There were two men downstairs near the club’s main entrance, the dark outlines of at least two more in the car’s front seat. One of the men on the sidewalk wore a brown military-surplus bomber jacket with a fleece collar. The other had on a long tweed overcoat. Both were huge. He recognized them instantly, just as he did the vehicle in which they’d arrived. They were Roma’s thugs, the bunch who had been flanking him when he left the building half an hour earlier.

As Nimec stood watching them, the pair that had gotten out of the car turned toward the entrance, then strode under the awning and were blocked from sight.

Nimec snapped his head around to Barnhart and Nori.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said.

“Hey, come here,” the man in the Air Force bomber jacket said.

“What is it, Vasily?”

“Just come over here and take a fucking look, will you?”

The man in the gray overcoat stamped snow off his shoes and then trudged heavily up beside him.