Catwoman crept to the bedroom door and peeked out. She could hear him pacing as he talked, and she remembered that there had been a cordless phone on the table that Bonnie had moved to the floor.

"Well, let 'em stand there. It'll do 'em good to get a little nervous. I already heard that they've been lightin' up the town and getting everyone nervous. Do the greasy little sheepherders good---"

There was silence; the pacing stopped. Catwoman understood that Eddie was getting reamed out by his boss. The warm feeling bloomed under her heart again, and this time she let it simmer.

"Yeah, right." The voice was subdued, the pacing slower. "208 Broad, off Tenth, in an hour. Yeah, I'll be there." Another pause, not as long as the previous one. "No, I don't know if they took anything. That's not the point. The point is some sick-o, punk bastard got into my place and messed around with my things, you know, boss, my personal things... No, no---not the front door... Shit, I don't know how--- Rose... ? Shit, no. Maybe. I didn't look."

Catwoman hurried down the hall. She wanted his picture with the tiger skins in the background. She held the camera in front of her like a weapon or a shield, her finger poised above the button Bonnie told her to push and hold.

"Gotcha, Eddie Lobb," she snarled from the doorway. He was at least five feet away; Bonnie said the camera needed five feet if Eddie and the background were both going to be in focus. She pushed the button. Strobe-light flashes burst from her hand. Eddie was transfixed. His mouth gaped, the phone fell from his hand.

"A cat. Jesus H. Christ, it's a giant freaking black cat."

But he didn't move. Catwoman had no trouble making her retreat.

"He's one ugly dude," she said, giving the camera back to Bonnie. "He's got scars like the ones I put on the--- Well, you'll see them when you get the pictures developed."

Zippers zipped and buckles buckled, Bonnie announced that she was ready to go home. They could look at the black-and-white pictures in an hour, when she had them developed. The color shots would have to wait until morning.

"Can you get home by yourself, kid? I'll help you get down to the street, but, there's someplace else I've got to go... ." 208 Broad off Tenth in an hour, but there was no need to tell Bonnie that.

Bonnie wilted, but she didn't whine. "Yeah, I think I'll take the bus, though. You'll---you'll tell Selina to get in touch with me, so I can show her the pictures?"

"Yeah, kid. C'mon."

The night was warm, with a hint of summer's humidity in the haze. Batman traveled crosstown the hard way---without using the streets or sidewalks, just especially with a heavy wooden box clamped under his arm.

He was careful with the box, but not as careful as he would have been if he hadn't examined it thoroughly and made a few adjustments. Nothing that was visible on the surface---but then, what he'd changed had been well-hidden in the first place. The icon he'd received from the young man in the Russian bakery had been far too ordinary to be the major payment in a bartered-arms deal. The frame wasn't gold, but thinly gilt wood. There had to be something more, so he'd subjected the icon to close scrutiny in the Batcave, and found the real icon, the seventeenth-century masterpiece, sleeping under a removable veneer.

Bruce Wayne, of the Wayne Foundation, patron of a hundred useful causes, summoned the appropriate curator from Gotham's finest art museum to his office. Saying he'd found the object in an old chest in the mansion's attic---where wonders and trash had been found many times before---Bruce flicked the box open as if it were just another flea-market curio.

The woman dropped to her knees in awe and for a closer examination. She was speechless for several moments. She mentioned a name that meant nothing to Wayne and showed him where the artist had concealed it in the goldwork. She hoped the Wayne Foundation wouldn't consider selling it for less than three million dollars or before her museum had an opportunity to make an offer.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

When Bruce Wayne was alone again he studied the delicate, melancholy saint with her hooded eyes and glistening gold headcloth.

Put it back beneath the veneer? Allow it to flow from hand to hand, until the weapons were moving toward Bessarabia and Harry Mattheson disposed of the priceless artwork? If Harry Mattheson were the Connection...

In the end Bruce Wayne locked the icon in the Foundation vault and reinstalled the flexible veneer over another, equally worthless, plank of lacquered wood. This way, no matter what happened, when it was over, the Foundation would make certain that an object of reverence and beauty could not be perverted again. He thought about injecting a short-range transmitter into the frame, but did not. He'd follow the icon in person, until it reached the Connection's hands.

The rendezvous was set for midnight in the warehouse district not too far from the pier where Batman first spotted Tiger. He arrived twenty minutes early, climbing out of an abandoned steam tunnel into a restaurant's basement storeroom. He expected to have time to check out the immediate area, but the ethnic Russian was in another late-night eatery across the street, so he decided to get rid of the box first. They met in a reeking alley.

"You have got it?" The young man asked the obvious, took the box, and found a patch of relative brightness in which to open it. His relief was palpable when he saw what he wanted to see exactly where he expected to see it. "I will speak well of you to my people." He closed the box and glanced nervously at the street. "You will go now. Three men can keep a secret only after one has killed the other two. Benjamin Franklin; citizen class. The Gagauzi and the scar-faced man, they would not keep our secrets."

Especially not the scar-faced man, Batman agreed silently. The young man started toward the street. Batman called him back.

"This is the only time. No matter what happens, there can be no next time. Not if you want to stay in America. Do you understand me?"

The youth nodded and ran. Batman waited until the street, as seen from the alley, was deserted, then looked for a path to the rooftops. He hoped the young Russian did understand.

It was a little after midnight when the dark streets resounded with unintelligible shouts and snippets of conversation. Five men got in each other's way climbing out of a single taxi. They were in high spirits, laughing and waving at the taxi as it made a U-turn and headed back to more-populated territory. From his rooftop perch, Batman watched them take their bearings from a torn scrap of paper. They came up the sidewalk, toward him, toward the doorway some distance below where the Russian waited with the icon. Batman guessed they were the Gagauzi---the Bessarabians looking to outfit themselves for war, the men Commissioner Gordon wanted to catch before the actm rather than during or after it.

The quintet came up the block like tourists, pointing out the sights to each other, carrying on animated conversation as if the Gotham waterfront were Main Street USA. Batman could not measure their effectiveness as rebels or terrorists back in Bessarabia, but here they were innocents, and he worried about them. He considered alternatives while, below, the uneasy allies exchanged greetings in Russian.

Batman was deep in thought when he heard the faintest sound behind him, near the place where he'd climbed onto the roof. The Gagauzi erupted in laughter; if the sound was repeated, Batman couldn't hear it. He took precautions, receding into the shadows and adjusting the mask so his chin did not reflect the light. Listening to the Gagauzi tell jokes he couldn't understand, Batman kept a close eye on the waist-high walls surmounting the rooftop. Even so, he nearly missed the dark shape rise and disappear into the black asphalt covering the roof.