Miriam looked sidelong at him as Roland marched over to the door and opened it, then waved her forward. Matthias kept his eyes on her—and one hand close to the gun. She found herself involuntarily giving him a wide berth, as she would a rattlesnake. Not that he looked particularly venomous—a polite, clean-shaven man in a pin-striped suit—but there was something about his manner…she’d seen it before, in a young DEA agent she had dated for a couple of months before learning better. Mike Fleming had been quietly, calmly, crazy, in a way that made her cut and run before she got dragged too far in with him. He’d been quite prepared to give his life for the cause he believed in—or to make any other sacrifice for that matter: He was utterly unable to see the walls of the box he’d locked himself in. The kind of guy who’d arrest a cripple with multiple sclerosis for smoking a joint to deaden the pain. She suppressed a shudder as she entered the inner office.

The inner office was as excessive as the suite they’d given her, the Mafia special with the locked door and the auction house’s ransom in antiques. The floor was tiled in hand-polished hardwood, partially covered by a carpet that was probably worth as much as her house. The walls were paneled in wood blackened with age. There were a couple of discreet oil paintings of big red-faced men in medieval-looking armor or classical robes posed before a castle, and a pair of swords rested on pegs in the wall above the desk. There was a huge walnut desk positioned beside the window bay and two chairs were drawn up before it, positioned so that the owner of the office would be all but invisible from the window.

Roland stopped before the desk, drew himself up to attention, and saluted. “My lord, I have the pleasure of presenting to you…Miriam Beckstein.”

The presence in the chair inclined his head in acknowledgment. “That is not her real name, but her presence is sufficient. You may be at ease.” Miriam squinted, trying to make out his features against the glare. He must have taken her expression for hostility, for he waved a hand: “Please be seated, the both of you. I have no argument with you, ah, Miriam, if that is the name you wish to be known by.”

Roland surprised her by pulling a chair out and offering it to her. She startled herself in turn by sitting down, albeit nervously, knees clenched together and back stiffly erect. “Who are you people?” she whispered.