They came to a row of palatial houses, two- and three-storied, with pillars and porches, gazebos and landing decks. Most carried polite signs warning boats against mooring. Reeve saw rectangular black arc lights dotted on lawns-movement-sensitive, he guessed. He saw an elderly man pushing a lawn mower across grass which looked like green baize. Duhart shook his head to let him know it wasn’t Allerdyce, as if he needed telling.

On one of the wood-slatted sundecks, a man lazed with his feet up on a stool, a drink on the arm of his chair. Behind him on the clipped lawn, a large dog chased a punctured red ball tossed by another man. The dog’s jaws snapped on the ball and shook it from side to side-your basic neck-break procedure. Reeve waved jauntily towards the man on the deck. The man waved back with three fingers, keeping one finger and a thumb around his glass, a very superior gesture. I’m up here, he was saying, and that’s a place you’ll never be.

But Reeve wasn’t so sure about that.

He was still watching the two men and the dog when Duhart puked.

It came up pink and half-digested, a half-sub special and a can of cherry Coke. The $3.49 brunch floated on the surface of the water while Duhart rested his forehead against the side of the boat. Reeve cut the engine and shuffled forward towards him.

“You okay?” he said, louder than was necessary.

“I’ll be fine-feel better already.”

Reeve was crouching close by him, his head angled as though staring at his friend’s face. But through the thick black lenses he was studying the layout of the garden where the man and the dog still played. He saw another dog pad around the side of the house, sniffing with its nose to the grass. When it saw there was a game in progress, it bounded onto the lawn. The first dog didn’t look too thrilled, and they snapped at each other’s faces until the man with the ball barked a command.

“Be still!”

And they both lay down in front of him.

The man on the deck was still watching the boat. He’d made no comment, hadn’t even wrinkled his face at the sudden jetsam. Reeve patted Duhart’s back and returned to the back of the boat, restarting the outboard. He decided he had an excuse to turn back, so brought the boat around, bringing him closer to where the dogs were now playing together.

“Hey,” the man with the dogs called to his friend, “your turn to check if Blood’s crapped on the front lawn!”

It was the sort of confirmation Reeve needed. The two men weren’t owners-they weren’t even guests-they were guards, hired hands. None of the other houses seemed to boast the same level of protection. He’d been told that Allerdyce was a very private man, an obsessive-just the kind of person to have security men and guard dogs, and maybe even more than that. Reeve scanned the lawn but couldn’t see any obvious security-no trips or cameras. Which didn’t mean they weren’t there. He couldn’t explain it, but he got the feeling he’d located Allerdyce’s house.

He counted the other homes, the ones between Allerdyce’s and the end of the building land. There were five of them. Driving out from Alexandria, he would pass five large gates. The sixth gate would belong to the head of Alliance Investigative.

Reeve was looking forward to meeting him.

They set off back to the boat club, then drove back out towards Allerdyce’s home. Duhart hadn’t said much; he still looked a bit gray. Reeve counted houses, then told him to pull over. To the side of the gate was an intercom with a camera above it. Behind the gate, an attack dog loped past. The stone walls on either side of the gates were high, but not impossible. There was nothing on the top of them, no wire or glass or spikes, all of which told Reeve a lot.

“You wouldn’t go in for all the security we’ve seen, then leave the walls around your house unprotected,” he said.

“So?”

“So there must be some sensing devices.”

“There are the dogs.”

Reeve nodded. “There are the dogs,” he agreed. But when the dogs weren’t around, there would be other measures, less visible, harder to deal with. “I just hope they’re a permanent feature,” he said.

The inflatable dinghy was big enough for one fully grown man, and a cheap buy.

That night, Duhart drove Reeve out to Piscataway Park, on the other side of the Potomac from Mount Vernon.

“Half of me wants to come with you,” Duhart whispered at water’s edge.

“I like the other half of you better,” Reeve said. He was blacked up-clothes, balaclava, and face paint bought at Wayne’s-not because he thought he’d need it, more for the effect he thought it might have on Allerdyce. And on anyone else for that matter. All he had to do was paddle across the river and upstream a mile or so-in silence, under cover of darkness, without anything giving him away. He hoped there were no garden parties in progress, no late-night drinks on the sundeck. He hoped there wasn’t too much traffic on the Potomac this time of night.

He felt the way he had done at the start of so many missions: not scared at all, but excited, energized, ready for it. He remembered now why he’d loved Special Forces: he’d lived for risk and adrenaline, life and death. Everything had a startling clarity at moments like this: a sliver of moon in bristling reflection on the edge of the water; the moist whites of Duhart’s eyes and the creases in his cheek when he winked; the tactile feel of the plastic oar, its grip grooved out for his four fingers. He splashed ankle deep into the water and eased into the dinghy. Duhart waved him off. The PI had his instructions. He was to go somewhere they knew him-a bar, anyplace. It had to be some way away. He was to stay there and get himself noticed. Those were his instructions. If anything went wrong, Reeve didn’t want any of the shit hitting Duhart.

Which didn’t mean he didn’t want Duhart back here-or, more accurately, parked outside Allerdyce’s gates-in three hours’ time…

He paddled upriver, keeping to the bank opposite the houses. In darkness it was hard to differentiate one house from the other; they all seemed to have the same huge expanse of garden, the same jetty, even the same gazebo. He paddled until the dwellings ended, then counted back to the house he was betting belonged to Allerdyce. The homes on either side looked to be in darkness. Reeve checked for river traffic. A boat was chugging upriver. He hugged the bank, trusting to darkness. There were a couple of people on the boat deck, but they couldn’t see him.

Finally, when all was quiet again, he paddled across the width of the river until he reached the house on Allerdyce’s right. He got out of the dinghy and deflated it, letting it float away, pushing the paddle after it. He was next to the wall which separated the two estates. It was a high stone wall covered with creepers and moss. Reeve hauled himself up and peered into the gloom. There were lights burning in Allerdyce’s house. He heard a distant cough, and saw wisps of smoke rising from the gazebo. He waited, and saw a pinpoint of red as the guard sucked on a cigarette.

Reeve lowered himself back into the neighbors’ garden and produced a package from inside his jacket, unwrapping the two slabs of choice meat that he’d drugged using a mixture of articles freely available in any pharmacy. He tossed both slices over the wall and waited again. He was prepared to wait awhile.

In fact, it took about five minutes for the dogs’ keen noses to locate the tidbits. He could hear them slobbering and slavering. There were no human sounds; the other guard wasn’t with them. They were free to wander the estate. This was good news: it meant the movement-sensitive lights and other devices had almost certainly been kept switched off. They’d be for use only when the dogs weren’t around. Reeve heard the eating sounds stop, the noise of sniffing-greedy things were looking for more-then silence. He gave it another five minutes, then hauled himself over the top of the wall and into Jeffrey Allerdyce’s garden. There was no sign of the dogs. The sleeping draft would have taken its time to act. They’d be elsewhere. He hoped they were sleeping somewhere they couldn’t be seen.