"Tobe!" Lukas ran toward him, Parker beside her.

The young agent must have jumped through the flames and out the window. He'd been in the Digger's line of fire out here in the alley but maybe the killer hadn't seen him. Or hadn't bothered to shoot a man who was obviously badly wounded.

A medic sprinted up to him and asked, "Where you hurt? You hit anywhere?"

But all Geller would offer was his crazed shout. "Put it out, put out the fire!"

"You bet they will, son. The trucks are here. They'll have it out in no time." The medic crouched down. "But we've got to get-"

"No, goddamnit!" Geller pushed the medic aside with surprising strength and looked directly at Parker. "The pad of paper! Put the fire out!" He was gesturing toward a small fire near his leg. That's what the young agent had been shouting about, not the building.

Parker glanced at it. He saw one of the unsub's elaborate mazes go up in flames.

It was the yellow pad. In a split-second decision Tobe Geller had forgone his computer disks and grabbed the unsub's notes.

But it was now on fire, the page with the notes on it was curling into black ash. Parker tore his jacket off and carefully laid it over the pad to extinguish the flames.

"Look out!" somebody called. Parker looked up just as a huge piece of burning siding crashed to the ground three feet from him. A cloud of orange sparks swarmed. Parker ignored them and carefully lifted his jacket off the pad, surveying the damage.

Flames began spurting through the wall behind them. The whole building seemed to sink and shift.

The medic said, "We gotta get out of here." He waved to his partner, who ran up with a gurney. They eased Geller onto the stretcher and hurried off with him, dodging falling debris.

"We gotta pull back!" a man in a black fireman's coat shouted. "We're going to lose the wall! It's gonna come down on top of you!"

"In a minute," Parker answered. He glanced at Lukas. "Get out of here!"

"You can't stay here, Parker."

"The ash is too fragile! I can't move it." Lifting the pad would crumble the ash into powder and they'd lose any chance to reconstruct the sheets. He thought of the attaché case inside the apartment, now destroyed, and the bottle of parylene in it, which he could've used to harden the damaged paper and protect it. But all he could do now was cover the ash carefully and hope to reassemble it in the lab. A gutter fell from the roof and stabbed the ground, end first, inches away from him.

"Now, mister!" the fireman shouted.

"Parker!" Lukas called again. "Come on!" She retreated a few yards but paused, staring at him.

Parker had an idea. He ran to the duplex next door, pulled off the storm window and broke the glass with a kick. He picked up four large pieces. He returned to the pad, which lay like a wounded soldier on the ground, and dropped to his knees. He carefully sandwiched the two sheets of scorched paper-the only ones with writing on them-between pieces of glass. This was how document examiners in the Bureau used to protect the samples sent to them for analysis before the invention of thin plastic sheets.

Chunks of burning wood fell around him. He felt a stream of water as the firemen trained a hose on the flames above him.

"Stop it!" he shouted to them, waving his arm. Worried that the water would further damage the precious find.

Nobody paid him any attention.

"Parker," Lukas shouted. "Now! The walls about to come down!"

More two-by-fours crashed to the ground. But still he remained on his knees, carefully tucking bits of ash into the sandwich of glass.

Then, as timbers and bricks and fiery siding fell around him, Parker slowly rose and, holding the glass sheets in front of him, he walked away from the flames, perfectly upright and taking gentle steps, like a servant carrying a tray of wine at an elegant cocktail party.

Another picture.

Snap.

Henry Czisman stood in an alleyway across the street from the burning building. Sparks were flying leisurely into the sky like fireworks seen from miles away.

How important this was. Recording the event.

Tragedy is so quick, so fleeting. But sorrow isn't. Sorrow is forever.

Snap.

He took another picture with his digital camera.

A policeman lying on the ground. Maybe dead, maybe wounded.

Maybe playing dead-when the Digger comes to town people do whatever they must to stay alive. They tuck their courage away and huddle until long after its safe to get up. Henry Czisman had seen this all before.

Picture: the wall of the duplex falling in a fiery explosion of beautiful embers.

Picture: a trooper with three fingers of blood cascading down the left side of her face.

Picture: the illumination from the flames reflected in the chrome of the fire trucks.

Snap, snap, snap… He couldn't take enough shots. He was driven to record every detail of the sorrow.

He glanced up the street and saw several agents talking to passersby.

Why bother? he thought. The Diggers come and the Diggers gone.

He knew he too should go. He definitely couldn't be seen here. So he started to slip his camera into the pocket of his jacket. But then he glanced back at the burning building and saw something.

Yes, yes. I want that. I need that.

He lifted the camera, pointed it and pushed the button.

Picture: the man who called himself Jefferson, though that was not his name, the man who was now so intertwined in this case, was resting something on the hood of a car, bending forward to read it. A book? A magazine? No, it glistened like a sheet of glass. All you could really see in the picture was the rigid attention of the man as he wrapped his leather jacket around the glass the way a father might bundle up his infant for a trip outside in the cold night air.

Snap.

So. Protect the mayor.

And don't trash the feds.

Anchorman Slade Phillips was in a coffee shop on Dupont Circle. There were still several dozen emergency vehicles parked nearby, lights flashing through the gray evening. Yellow police tape was everywhere.

Phillips had shown his press pass and gotten through the line. He'd been terribly shaken by what he'd seen at the foot of the escalator. The sludge of blood still drying. Bits of bone and hair. He-

"Excuse me?" a woman's voice asked. "You're Slade Phillips. WPLT."

Anchorpeople are forever doomed to be known by both names. Nobody ever says Mister. He looked up from his coffee at the flirty young blonde. She wanted an autograph. He gave her one.

"You're so, like, good," she said.

"Thank you."

Go away.

"I want to be in TV someday too."

"Good for you."

Go away.

She stood for a moment and when he didn't ask her to join him she walked away on high heels, in a gait that reminded Phillips of an antelope's.

Sipping decaf. All the carnage in the Metro-he couldn't get it out of his mind. Jesus… Blood everywhere. The chips in the tile and dents in the metal… Bits of flesh and bits of bone.

And shoes.

A half-dozen shoes had lain bloody at the base of the escalator. For some reason they were the most horrifying sight of all.

This was the kind of story most reporters dream about in their ambitious hearts.

You're a reporter, go report.

Yet Phillips found he had no desire to cover the crime. The violence repulsed him. The sick mind of the killer scared him. And he thought: Wait. I'm not a reporter. He wished he'd said this to that slick prick, Wendy Jefferies. I'm an entertainer. I'm a soap opera star. I'm a personality.

But he was too deep in Jefferies's pocket for that kind of candor.

And so he was doing what he was told.

He wondered if Mayor Jerry Kennedy knew about his arrangement with Jefferies. Probably not. Kennedy was a stand-up son of a bitch. Better than all the previous mayors of the District rolled into one. Because if Slade Phillips wasn't a Peter Arnett or Tom Brokaw at least he knew people. And he knew that Kennedy did want a chance to fix as much of the city as he could before the electorate threw his ass out. Which would undoubtedly be in the next election.