“No!” He sounded shocked. “Where are you?” She gave him the address. “Right, I’ll tell someone to get a team of cleaners around immediately. Listen, we’re wrestling alligators over here tonight. It looks like the Department of Homeland Security has been running some traffic analysis on frequent fliers looking for terrorists and uncovered one of our—”

“I get the message,” she interrupted. “Look, my headache is that I planted a hair across the top step when I came through last night, and it was broken when I went back over this morning. I’m fairly sure someone from the Clan came here, killed the watchman, headed up to the mezannine that’s on the other side of my suite—breaking the hair—and crossed over. There was another attempt to kill me in my suite last night, Roland. They want me dead, and there’s something going down in the palace.”

“Wait there. I’ll be around in person as soon as I can get unstuck from this mess.”

Miriam stared at the phone that had gone dead in her hand, paranoid fantasies playing through her head. “Angbard set me up,” she muttered to herself. “What if Roland’s in on it?” It was bizarre. The only way to be sure would be to go to the rendezvous, surprise the assassin. Who had come over from this side. Yes, but if they could get into her apartment, why bother with the silly lure?

“What if there are two groups sending assassins?” she asked the night watchman. He grinned at her twice over. “The obvious one who is clearly a Clan member, and, and the subtle one—”

She racked her brains for the precise number of paces from the stairs up to her room to the back door opening into the grounds of the palace. Then she remembered the crates laid out below. The entrance will be next door, she realized. She jumped out of the trailer with its reek of icy death and dashed across to the far wall of the warehouse—the one corresponding to the main entrance vestibule of the palace. It was solid brick, with no doors. “Damn!” She slipped around to the front door and out into the alley, then paced out the fifty feet it would take. Then she carefully examined the next frontage.