"I have never been searched like this before! Never!" she said, her voice shaking with anger.

"You never came here before." He snatched the hat off her head, and her black, lustrous hair fell to her shoulders. He found nothing inside her hat.

"Sit down there," he told her, pointing to a chair across the room. The search over, he took a moment to look at her, enjoying the fine-boned features of her face, the white flow of her throat. He remembered the warmth of her body against his hands and smiled.

She sat in the chair and stared back contemptuously. He sat on the couch several steps away. Setting the safety on his Colt, he placed the gun on the coffee table in front of him. Then he picked up the micro-cassette recorder. He watched the reels turning for a moment. Grinning to her, he popped out the cassette and put it in his pocket.

"Now you're a thief!" she cried.

Powell laughed. He flipped open her passport. He verified her name and nationality, then read the entry and exit stamps. In the year since the passport had been issued, she had traveled first to El Salvador, then Guatemala, Mexico, the United States, then to Nicaragua several times, then to France, West Germany, East Germany, Italy, Syria, and finally to Lebanon. He sailed the passport and papers back to her.

"You do get around."

"It is my work."

"For what newspaper?"

"I am a free-lance journalist. I came to talk about Rouhani and the murder of the CIA agent."

"How'd you get that photo?"

"We will exchange information?"

"Depends."

"On what does it depend?"

"What you want to know and what I want to tell you." He opened up her note pad and leafed through it. She wrote in French, a precise typewriterlike printing of words and symbols and abbreviated names. He skimmed her notes, recognizing many of the names and places. As he read her quotes and observations, he talked to gain time. "Got your own personal shorthand. What's it say?"

"Don't you speak or read French? It is the most important language here! The first language of the educated people."

"I'm just a Texas kid." He read that Sayed Ahamed had told her he knew nothing of American operations in Beirut or Lebanon, that he knew nothing of the ambush of the American agent, but that he hoped all foreign imperialists suffered the same fate. Powell continued jiving the Canadian journalist. "Only French I ever heard was Louisiana Creole. And sometimes that crazy Creole you Cuebek-cuystalk."

"Quebecois!" she pronounced. "Mr. Powell, I didn't come here to do a biographical sketch of the quintessential American intelligence agent. I want to talk to you about the assassination two nights ago of George Clayton, your superior officer."

He looked up from reading her notes. "Who's this? When?"

She ignored his questions. "My sources told me the late Mr. Clayton intended to follow First Secretary Baesho to a meeting with Rouhani and to photograph the other representatives of the peoples' revolutionary forces who attended the meeting. What does the Agency believe went wrong?"

"Look, honey, if I were with the CIA, I couldn't answer those questions, but I'm not, so I don't even know what you're talking about. But that Iranian you talked about, I'm interested in him. Did he have something to do with murdering that American?"

"If you're not with the Agency, why do you care?"

" 'Cause I hate those raghead motherfuckers! I'm AWOL, but I'm still a Marine, and I got one heavy payback to deliver."

"It's a personal crusade, this payback? My sources said you were a Marine. That is, before you joined the Central Intelligence Agency."

"I'm no agent. I tell you, I wouldn't work for those jackoffs, they're just too much stupid."

"You say you're absent without leave from the United States Marine Corps. What are you doing in Beirut?"

"Can't go home, you know. Unless I want to go to prison."

"You're wearing the uniform of the Amal militia. Are you now serving with the Shia forces?"

"Gotta work. No welfare here, not for American Marines on the run. But I don't want to talk about me. I want to know about that there Iranian. Where'd you take that picture? And who's the other dude?"

"There's more photos in my notebook. In the back. They are difficult to find."

Powell flipped open the notebook and folded back the cover. In his hurry to read her notes, he had missed a slit in the vinyl of the notebook. The woman had concealed several photos between the vinyl and the cardboard of the cover.

"There. Look through all the photos. I believe you'll speak with me now. I want the story of the killing. And you want the killers."

Taken from the roof of a building, looking down at the street, the first grainy photo showed a limousine followed by a panel truck. The next photo showed the panel truck and a Fiat in the center of the block. The third photo caught the flashes of rifles and the long flame of a rocket. The next photos showed the explosions and flaming hulks. Powell finally looked up to the young woman.

"Who took these pictures?" he asked.

"I did."

"You were waiting for it to happen?"

"I wasn't told what would happen. I was told to wait and watch. I was told it would be a diplomatic meeting."

"Who told you?"

"You want to meet him?"

"Who is he?"

"He wants to speak with you. He is also an American. He did not know what would happen that night until it occurred. He realizes that the killing of Clayton now jeopardizes his life."

"I asked, who is he?"

"You want to meet him? I'll take you to him."

Powell holstered his Colt. "Let's go," he said.

In the front seat of the parked taxi, Carl Lyons sipped sweet French coffee flavored with nutmeg and vanilla. He watched the street and the apartment house while he savored the warm spicy drink. His eyes were always searching, flicking from the apartment entry to the balconies and rooftops overlooking the street, then scanning the sidewalks and doorways before returning to the street door. Sometimes he glanced at the rearview mirror.

The neighborhood appeared deserted. No cars moved on the street. Debris from rocket strikes — glass, concrete, pieces of furniture — littered the asphalt. Wads of bloody bandages on the sidewalk marked the site of the tragedies and suffering during the night.

Lyons glanced at his watch. Six-thirty in the morning. The start of the morning traffic rush. Fifteen minutes had passed since the young woman arrived in a taxi and then entered the agent's apartment house. Five minutes since Lyons poured his third cup of spiced coffee.

Three hours before, Able Team had flown from Cyprus via private plane. Now, with cameras and tape recorders as props for their roles as American journalists, they waited outside the apartment of the renegade CIA agent, Lyons and Blancanales watching from the taxi, Gadgets maintaining electronic surveillance from the rooftop.

The taxi driver — Pierre, a Phalangist agent provided by the Agency — slept over the steering wheel, snoring. He shifted in the seat, then opened his eyes and glanced around. He returned to sleep. Blancanales slept in the back seat. He would take the next surveillance shift.

An electronic buzz started the driver awake. Lyons set down his coffee. Gadgets's voice came to them through the encoding circuits of the hand radios Lyons and Blancanales carried.

"He's coming down. That girl's with him."

"You got a mike on them yet?"

"On his car. I'm up on the roof now. I'll go into his apartment while you're following them."

"See you later."

Able Team did not fear the interception of their radio transmissions. Designed and manufactured to the specifications of the National Security Agency, their hand radios employed encoding circuits to scramble every transmission, to decode every message received. Without one of the three radios Able Team carried, a technician scanning the bands would intercept only bursts of electronic noise.