• 8:45 P.M.

The Café Tripoli was down a narrow stone-step alley, its doorway lighted by a large brass lamp. Marten stopped at the top of the steps, watching as the café's door opened and three people came out and started up toward him. Behind him was a darkened doorway, and he stepped into it and waited. A moment later the three walked past and turned onto the street without ever having seen him. This was what he wanted and why he was early. The doorway was a place to observe Foxx as he passed by on his way to the restaurant. Marten wanted to see him first, if nothing more than a glimpse. See his features and the white hair, to know beforehand what he looked like. It would be an edge up, nothing more.

• 8:55 P.M.

For a long time it had been quiet, and Marten wondered if Foxx had been early himself and was already inside. He was beginning to wonder if he should abandon his plan and just go down to the restaurant when a cab pulled up at the end of the alley, the doors opened, and a man and then a woman got out. Marten pressed farther back into the doorway as the taxi drove off and the two started down the stone steps toward the café. The woman passed first. She was quite young, dark-haired, and very attractive. The man was right behind. Medium height, medium build, his shoulders back, he wore a gray knit fisherman's sweater over dark trousers. His face was taut and deeply lined. His hair, the massive shock of it, was white as fresh snow and so theatrical as almost to be a trademark. Merriman Foxx was almost exactly as Peter Fadden had described him. "He looks like Einstein."

Marten waited until they entered, then opened his briefcase, took out the tape recorder, and slid it in his inside jacket pocket. He waited another moment, then stepped out of the shadows and walked down to the entrance of the Café Tripoli.

"Good evening, sir!"

Marten was barely inside the door when he was met by a cheerful, balding maître d' in black slacks and starched white shirt. Behind him was a smoky pub-like lounge with the sound of a jazz piano floating out of it.

"I'm to meet Dr. Foxx. My name is Marten."

"Yes, sir, of course. Follow me please."

The maître d' led him down a flight of stairs to the supper club in the basement. A number of people crowded a small bar near the foot of the stairs. Beyond it was a dining area with maybe two dozen tables; all were taken and Marten looked around for Dr. Foxx and his companion but saw neither.

"This way, sir."

The maître d' led him toward an enclosed area near the back that was separated from the rest of the club by a wood-and-opaque glass partition. The maître d' stepped around it and ushered him into what was essentially a private room.

"Mr. Marten," he announced.

Four of them were at the table. Foxx and his lady friend, as he had expected. The other two were a total surprise. He had last seen them in Washington little more than a day earlier-congressional chaplain Reverend Rufus Beck and the French writer-photojournalist Demi Picard.

"Good evening, Mr. Marten." Merriman Foxx stood to take his hand. "Let me introduce my other guests. Cristina Vallone," he nodded to the young woman who had come in with him, "the Reverend Rufus Beck and," he smiled warmly, "Mademoiselle Picard."

"How do you do?" Marten's eyes met Demi's for the briefest moment, but she revealed nothing. He looked back to Foxx. "It's very kind of you to meet with me like this and on such short notice."

"It is always a pleasure to assist the United States Congress any way I can. Unfortunately my time is short, Mr. Marten; if our guests will excuse us perhaps we can go to a corner of the bar and take care of what needs to be done."

"Of course."

Merriman Foxx ushered Marten out of the enclosed area and toward the bar near the stairs. As Marten went, his eyes again met Demi's. She was watching him without trying to show it. Clearly she was as surprised to see him as he was to see her. Further, and just as clearly, she wasn't happy about it.

Reverend Beck was a surprise too, and like Demi, he had shown no recognition. Yet Marten was certain he remembered him from Caroline's hospital room. Not only had they introduced themselves when Beck came in, but, as Demi had told him, Beck was curious enough about him to have asked one of the nurses who he was.

"Just what ambiguities did Congresswoman Baker want clarified?" Foxx said as they reached the bar. It had cleared out a little now and they stood alone at the end of it.

Marten set the briefcase on the bar, opened it, and took out a folder, then reached into his jacket pocket for a pen. As he did, he clicked on the tape-recorder. At the same time, and without being asked, the bartender set a snifter of single malt whiskey at each man's sleeve.

"There are several, doctor," Marten said, deliberately reminding himself of the reason he was here, to ascertain as best he could whether Foxx was or was not the doctor/white-haired man. His great disadvantage here, and one he hoped was not fatal, was that he had no transcript of the congressional hearings and therefore no idea of what had been asked or answered. All he had to work with was what he knew about Foxx's history and that of the Tenth Medical Brigade, the bits and pieces he'd learned through a brief search of the Internet when he'd returned to his hotel; what Caroline had told him, and what Dr. Stephenson had said just before she shot and killed herself.

He opened the folder and glanced at the page of handwritten notes he'd prepared in his hotel room as if he had taken them down during a phone conversation with Congresswoman Baker.

"Your biological weapons project in the Tenth Medical Brigade was called Program D, not B. Is that correct?"

"Yes." Foxx picked up the snifter and took a pull at his whiskey.

Marten made a notation on the page next to his notes and went on to the next. "You stated that the toxins you developed, including forty-five different strains of anthrax, and the bacteria that cause brucellosis, cholera, and plague and systems to deliver them, as well as a number of new and unaccounted-for experimental viruses-all had been accounted for and subsequently destroyed. That is correct as well?"

"Yes."

Foxx took another drink of whiskey. For the first time Marten noticed how extraordinarily long his fingers were in proportion to the size of his hands. At the same time also he took stock of the doctor's build. When he'd first seen him in the alley he'd seemed average, neither stocky nor slim, but in the bulky fisherman's sweater, if he was indeed in shape and muscular as Marten had previously thought, it was hard to tell. Either way it was something he couldn't dwell on without drawing attention to what he was doing, so he went back to his questioning.

"To your knowledge has any further experimentation been done on human beings since 1993 when the president of South Africa declared that all of your biological weapons had been destroyed?"

Foxx suddenly put his glass down. "I answered that quite clearly before the committee," he said irritably. "No, no further testing was done. The toxins were destroyed, along with the information about how to create them."

"Thank you." Marten leaned over his file, taking his time to scribble a few more notes. Initially Foxx had greeted him cordially. It meant he had taken Marten's introduction of himself at face value and in all likelihood had not verified that he was with Congresswoman Baker's office. Yet now he was clearly becoming short-tempered, either by the questions themselves or more likely because of his ego. These were things he'd already been over in a closed congressional hearing and here he was standing in public going over the same material with some third-string messenger, one he was showing increasing contempt for. What he wanted was to have it over and done with once and for all.