“Do you kill these people?” he repeated.

“Sometimes. If we can.”

“You’d kill my brother?”

“If that was necessary.”

“And what about me? Would you kill me?”

“All this is just speculation, Gabriel. We don’t need to talk about it.”

“Don’t lie to me. I can see your answer.”

Maya gripped the steering wheel, not daring to look at him. One hundred yards ahead of them, a black shape darted across the road and disappeared into the weeds.

“I have this power, but I can’t control it,” Gabriel whispered. “I can speed up my perceptions for a moment and see everything clearly.”

“You can see whatever you want, but I’m not going to lie to you. If you became a Cold Traveler, I’d kill you. It would have to be that way.”

The cautious solidarity between them, their pleasure at seeing each other, had disappeared. In silence, they traveled down the empty road.

Lawrence Takawa placed his right hand on the kitchen table and stared at the little bump that showed where the Protective Link device had been inserted beneath his skin. He picked up a razor blade with his left hand and contemplated its sharp edge. Do it, he told himself. Your father wasn’t afraid. Holding his breath, he made a short, deep cut. Blood oozed out of the wound and dripped onto the table.

NATHAN BOONE HAD studied the surveillance photos taken at the front desk of the New York-New York Hotel in Las Vegas. It was clear that Maya was the blond young woman who checked into the room using Michael Corrigan’s credit card. A mercenary had been sent to the hotel immediately, but the Harlequin escaped. Twenty-four hours later, one of Boone’s security teams found Gabriel’s motorcycle in the hotel parking lot. Was Gabriel traveling with her? Or was all this just a decoy operation?

Boone decided to fly to Nevada and question everyone who had encountered the Harlequin. He was driving to the Westchester County Airport when he got a phone call from Simon Leutner, the head administrator of the Brethren’s underground computer center in London.

“Good morning, sir. Leutner here.”

“What’s going on? Did you find Maya?”

“No, sir. This concerns another issue. A week ago, you asked us to run a security check on all Evergreen Foundation employees. Along with the standard phone and credit card examination, we tried to see if anyone had used their access code to enter our system.”

“That would be a logical target.”

“The computer does an access code sweep every twenty-four hours. We just learned that a level-three employee named Lawrence Takawa entered an unauthorized data sector.”

“I work with Mr. Takawa. Are you sure this wasn’t a mistake?”

“Not at all. He was using General Nash’s access code, but the information went directly to Takawa’s personal computer. I guess he didn’t realize we had added a destination-specific capability last week.”

“And what was Mr. Takawa’s objective?”

“He was looking for any special shipments from Japan to our administrative center in New York.”

“Where is the employee at this moment? Did you check his Protective Link location?”

“He’s still inside his residence in Westchester County. The time log says he reported a viral illness and will not be working today.”

“Let me know if he leaves his house.”

Boone called the pilot waiting at the airport and postponed his flight. If Lawrence Takawa was aiding the Harlequins, then the Brethren’s security had been severely compromised. A traitor was like a tumor hidden within the body. They would need a surgeon-someone like Boone-who wasn’t afraid to cut out the malignant tissue.

THE EVERGREEN FOUNDATION owned an entire office building at Fifty-fourth Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Two-thirds of the building was used by the foundation’s public employees who supervised research grant applications and managed the endowment. These employees-nicknamed the Lambs-were completely unaware of the Brethren and their activities.

The Brethren used the top eight floors of the building, which were accessed by a separate elevator bank. On the building directory, this was listed as the headquarters of a nonprofit organization called Nations Stand Together, which supposedly helped Third World countries upgrade their antiterrorist defenses. Two years ago at a Brethren meeting in London, Lawrence Takawa met the young woman from Switzerland who answered the phone calls and e-mails sent to Nations Stand Together. She was an expert at deflecting all inquiries in a courteous and bland manner. Apparently the United Nations ambassador from Togo was convinced that Nations Stand Together wanted to give his country a large grant to buy airport X-ray machines.

Lawrence knew that the building had one vulnerability: the security guards on the ground floor were Lambs who were ignorant of the Brethren’s larger agenda. After parking his car in a lot on Forty-eighth Street, he walked up Madison to the building and entered the lobby. Although it was cold outside, he had left his overcoat and suit coat in his car. No briefcase-just a takeout cup of coffee and a manila folder. That was part of the plan.

Lawrence showed his ID card to the older guard at the desk and smiled. “I’m going to the Nations Stand Together office on the twenty-third floor.”

“Stand on the yellow square, Mr. Takawa.”

Lawrence stood facing an iris scanner, a large gray box mounted on the security desk. The guard pressed a button and a lens photographed Lawrence’s eyes, then compared the imperfections in his irises to the data in the security file. A green light flashed. The older guard nodded to a young Latino man standing by the desk. “Enrique, please process Mr. Takawa to twenty-three.”

The young guard escorted Lawrence to the elevator bank, swiped a card at the security sensor, and then Lawrence was alone. As the elevator glided upward, he opened the manila envelope and pulled out a clipboard holding some official-looking papers.

If he had been wearing an overcoat or carrying a briefcase, the other people in the hallway might have stopped to ask where he was going. But a neatly dressed and confident-looking young man with a clipboard had to be a fellow employee. Perhaps he was a new hire in computer services who had just come back from his coffee break. Thieves didn’t carry cups of fresh latte.

Lawrence quickly found the mail room and swiped his ID card to get inside. Boxes were stacked against the walls, and surface mail had already been placed in different mail slots. The mail-room employee was probably pushing a cart down the hallway and would return in a few minutes. Lawrence had to find the package and get out of the building as quickly as possible.

When Kennard Nash mentioned the idea of obtaining a talisman sword, Lawrence nodded obediently and promised to come up with a solution. He called the general a few days later and kept his information as vague as possible. The data system said a Harlequin named Sparrow was killed during a confrontation at the Osaka Hotel. There was a chance that the Japanese Brethren had acquired the dead man’s sword.

Kennard Nash said he would contact his friends in Tokyo. Most of them were powerful businessmen who felt that Travelers undermined the stability of Japanese society. Four days later, Lawrence used Nash’s access code to enter the general’s message file. We have received your request. Glad to be helpful. The item requested has been sent to the administrative center in New York.

Stepping around a half wall, Lawrence saw a plastic shipping box in the corner. Japanese characters were on the shipping sticker along with a customs declaration that described the contents as samurai film props for movie premiere. No need to tell the government that they were shipping a thirteenth-century sword, a national treasure created by one of the Jittetsu.