Portman glances up at the TV cameras, then stands, shoots his cuffs again, and leaves the witness box. As he passes me on the way to the aisle, I say: “Call retired Special Agent Dwight Stone.”

The hitch in Portman’s walk is momentary, but for me it occurs in slow motion. His eyes flit instinctively to the main door, searching for his old enemy. Then they return to me, the fear in them tamped down, varnished over with the go-to-hell defiance of a man who has survived every threat to his monumental egotism.

“Call Dwight Stone,” Judge Franklin orders.

The bailiff opens the back door. A tall, wiry man wearing a Denver Broncos windbreaker and leaning on the shoulder of a much younger woman limps through it with a cane in his left hand. Even from my table I can see the steely resolve in Stone’s eyes. But he is not looking at me. As his daughter squeezes in beside Caitlin, he limps up the aisle using the cane, his eyes never leaving the face of John Portman, the man who threatened his daughter’s life, and who tried to kill us two nights ago. I have a feeling that a lot of dead Koreans and Chinese saw the look that is on Stone’s face right now. I would not want to be John Portman at this moment. But when I turn back to Portman, what I see unsettles me.

He looks surprised but unafraid.

CHAPTER 40

When Stone finishes his slow journey to the witness box, he pauses for a few deep breaths, then turns to Judge Franklin. “May I stand during my testimony, Your Honor?”

“Do you have a physical malady that prevents you from sitting?”

“I was shot two nights ago. In the left buttock.”

Predictably, some spectators snicker in spite of Stone’s obvious pain.

“You may stand,” says Franklin, glaring at the crowd.

I move slowly toward the podium, running through memories of everything Stone told me two nights ago in Colorado. He lied to me then—by omission—leaving Ike Ransom completely out of his story. I need the truth today, the whole truth. Stone must be made aware that Ike the Spike no longer needs his protection. Instead of stopping at the podium, I adopt Livy’s tactic and continue right up to the witness box. In a voice barely above a whisper, I say:

“Ike Ransom was shot to death last night.”

As Judge Franklin orders me to speak at an audible level, Stone winks, and my heartbeat rushes ahead.

“Mr. Stone, were you ever an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“I was a field agent for sixteen years.”

“Did your duties ever bring you to Natchez, Mississippi?”

“Yes.”

“In what capacity?”

“In May of 1968, I was assigned to investigate the death of Delano Payton. I arrived here the day after he was murdered.”

“Who gave you that assignment?”

“J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Personally?”

“Yes.”