“What do you mean sympathy?” said Dietrich.

“People see the results,” said Gottfried, “they jump to the obvious conclusion, and the donations start pouring in.”

“Maybe she really did come to say thank you,” said Eva. Just then a red light began blinking on the center of one of Gottfried’s computer screens.

Gottfried nodded toward the screen, stood up from his chair, and took a pistol out of a desk drawer. “Then again,” he said, “maybe not.”

IX

IX

Ted Grosswald, Bob Macmillan, and Franklin Rendell had traveled from their homes across the United States to Alta Vista and then from Alta Vista to London where the trail of Patton Harcourt had gone cold. Now, they sat in a pub on a spring afternoon drinking beer and wondering if this was all really worth it.

“I want to look her in the face before I do it,” said Bob, who had always been the one to egg the other two on. Even when they had been in basic training together it had been clear he would be the leader, and when difficult jobs arose, he would step up and do them.

“You know murder is a crime over here, too,” said Ted.

“You getting cold feet?” said Bob.

“Not cold feet exactly,” said Ted. “I just think we ought to be careful. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in some English prison.”

“Nobody’s going to prison,” said Bob. “Look, she’s on the lam, for some reason or other. Maybe she got wind we were on the move, I don’t know, but whatever the reason, it works to our advantage.”

“How do you figure that?” said Franklin. He had sat silently sipping his beer most of the evening, but Ted and Bob knew him well enough to know that behind that silence his mind worked a mile a minute. If Bob could be trusted to dive headfirst into a problem Franklin would carefully weigh all available information to come up with the best solution.

“Nobody knows where she is, right?” said Bob. “So if we find her and take care of business, no one will know where to look for her.”

“But we don’t know where she is,” said Ted.

“True,” said Bob.

“What I don’t understand is this,” said Franklin. “The going theory in Alta Vista was that something in her past caught up to her so she went into hiding. But we’re the thing in her past. So who put those bullet holes in her house? Who is she running from? Figure that out and maybe we’ll know where she’s going.”

“Maybe we’re not the only people who have a score to settle,” said Ted.

“All I know is this,” said Franklin, draining his glass. “If something doesn’t change by this time tomorrow, I’m going home.”