"Eduardo," DeVane said, his voice carrying softly across the room. "How do you do?"

Eduardo tried to think of something to say, but thought was impossible, swept from his head in the whipping gale of terror generated from the group of men before him and the pressure of Ramon's gun against the base of his skull.

DeVane steepled his hands on his lap. His legs were crossed, his right thigh hanging loosely over his left knee.

"You look frightened," he said. "Are you?"

Eduardo still could not wring any sound from his throat. He felt a choking, breathless nausea.

"Tell me if you are afraid," DeVane said.

Eduardo opened his mouth in another unsuccessful attempt at speech, then closed it and simply nodded. The tiny projection of the Sig's front sight ruffled his neck hairs as his head moved up and down.

DeVane sighed.

"You know, my boy, I am as loath to be here as yourself," he said in his smooth, quiet voice. "I preside over a great many enterprises, and generally a small complication such as you have caused would be the sort of thing I let others handle. I cannot be everywhere at once. A leader must have confidence in those who work for him." His hand left his lap and fluttered toward Vicente. "Solid, honorable men like your uncle."

Eduardo glanced over at Vicente. A rail-thin man in his mid-sixties with a sweep of white hair over a high forehead, Vicente looked back at him for only a second, his wrinkled face grim. Then he dropped his eyes.

Eduardo's legs weakened underneath him. It was the expression on the old man's face. The way he had avoided his gaze.

"This isn't to say your situation hasn't been of interest to me, or that I feel it is inconsequential," DeVane went on. "The problem isn't your arrest. That happens. In any competition there are errors and setbacks. Times when the best of plays are outdone by your opponent. Do you understand me so far?"

Eduardo nodded.

"Good," DeVane said. "And since you've admitted to your own fear, I'll tell you what scares me." He leaned slightly forward in his chair. "I fear the stupid and the weak, because history illustrates that their actions can bring down the most powerful. When someone like you is gullible enough to be duped by a common street-walker, letting her convince you to deal with men you do not know, men you do not bother checking out, there is no telling what information might slip to the other side. It doesn't matter how much or how little you have to offer, because one thing leads to another, and that to another, and so forth.