“Well, the guy said there would be no shortage of shooters in the world,” Andrew went on, regarding her nervously in the rear-view mirror. “He mentioned Jack Ruby for one, and Castro, and this fellow in Haiti—”

“Duvalier,” she said. “Poppa Doc.”

“Yeah, him, and Diem—”

“The Diem brothers are dead.”

“Well, he said Jack Kennedy was different, that’s all. He said he would draw, but only if someone weaker needed him to draw, and only if there was nothing else to do. He said Kennedy was savvy enough to know that sometimes talking don’t do no good. He said Kennedy knew if it’s foaming at the mouth you have to shoot it.”

His eyes continued to regard her apprehensively.

“Besides, it was just some column I read.”

The limo was gliding up Fifth Avenue now, headed toward Central Park West, the Cadillac emblem on the end of the hood cutting the frigid February air.

“Yes,” Odetta said mildly, and Andrew’s eyes relaxed a trifle. “I understand. I don’t agree, but I understand.”

You are a liar, a voice spoke up in her mind. This was a voice she heard quite often. She had even named it. It was the voice of The Goad. You understand perfectly and agree completely. Lie to Andrew if you feel it necessary, but for God’s sake don’t lie to yourself, woman.

Yet part of her protested, horrified. In a world which had become a nuclear powder keg upon which nearly a billion people now sat, it was a mistake—perhaps one of suicidal proportions—to believe there was a difference between good shooters and bad shooters. There were too many shaky hands holding lighters near too many fuses. This was no world for gunslingers. If there had ever been a time for them, it had passed.

Hadn’t it?

She closed her eyes briefly and rubbed at her temples. She could feel one of her headaches coming on. Sometimes they threatened, like an ominous buildup of thunderheads on a hot summer afternoon, and then blew away . . . as those ugly summer brews sometimes simply slipped away in one direction or another, to stomp their thunders and lightnings into the ground of some other place.

She thought, however, that this time the storm was going to happen. It would come complete with thunder, lightning, and hail the size of golf-balls.

The streetlights marching up Fifth Avenue seemed much too bright.

“So how was Oxford, Miz Holmes?” Andrew asked tentatively.