"Maybe he had his reasons. Regular reports, usual channels. But check back in with me tonight. If you need support, don't hesitate. We'll do what we can. Within limits, of course. As I said, not everyone is on the same page over this. Nothing I can do about that. Consensus in intelligence circles these days is as elusive as sectarian peace in Iraq."

That's reassuring. The right hand tells me to charge ahead while the left hand uses a knife to slit my throat.

Macklin pressed a button on the armrest of his seat and Knox felt the plane begin a tight bank to the right. Apparently, the flight and discussion were over.

To bolster that deduction Macklin rose without a word and made his way down the aisle to a door at the back of the plane. It clicked shut behind him.

Knox watched the clouds pass by as the plane began its descent through the Virginia sky. A half hour later he was tearing east on Interstate 66 in his Rover.

He would begin with Alex Ford and work his way through the usual suspects. But from what Hayes was both saying and leaving unarticulated, it seemed that all roads might lead right to a man named Oliver Stone.

If Stone had been a Triple Six and was good enough to take out both Simpson and Gray all these years later, Knox wasn't sure he wanted to run into the gent. Yet those sorts of encounters just came with the territory. And Knox was still standing.

But so, apparently, was Oliver Stone.

Dangerous times indeed.

Retirement was looking better and better. If only he could survive that long.

GREYHOUND DIDN'T TRAVEL to the vicinity of Divine, Virginia. Yet a rusting bus on wobbly wheels with the name "Larry's Tours " crudely hand-stenciled on the side did. Stone and Danny sat in the back, next to a man who had a chicken in a crate on which he was resting his bare, swollen feet, and a woman who gave Stone far more attention than he would have liked, which included telling him her life story, all seventy-odd years of it. Fortunately, she got off before they did and was picked up by a man driving an ancient station wagon that was missing two of its doors.

They were finally let out at what Stone could only describe as the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It made the one-horse stop Amtrak had dropped them at resemble a glittery metropolis on full throttle.

"Now what?" said Stone, shouldering his duffel while Danny clutched his small suitcase.

"Now we walk and thumb. Maybe we get lucky, maybe we don't."

Though it was not yet two in the morning they did get lucky and rode into Divine in the back of a pickup truck, with what the driver told them was a prizewinning hog named Luther who kept pushing his pink snout in Stone's crotch.

In the distance Stone saw the silhouette of some massive facility. Narrow towers and three-story buildings rose into the dark sky. In the weak moonlight something glinted along the perimeter of the place.

"What's that?" he said, pointing.

"Some place you never want to end up. Dead Rock. Supermax prison."

"Why do they call it Dead Rock?"

"It's built on the site of an old coal mine where about thirty years ago twenty-eight miners lost their lives in a cave-in. Their bodies are still in there somewhere 'cause they could never get to them. So they just sealed it up. They send the scum of the scum to Dead Rock. Least that's the official story. Hell on earth."

"You know somebody in that place?"

Danny looked away without answering.

Stone continued to stare at the complex until they rounded a curve and it disappeared from his view. He realized that the glint he'd seen must've come from the moonlight bouncing off the slash-your-ass wire that surrounded the place.

After the truck dropped them off their transportation became their own feet. Divine was still mostly dark at this hour, but Stone could see lights here and there as they trudged down the street. A truck passed them going east. And then another followed. And then another. Stone saw eight in all. Through the dirty truck windows Stone spied lean silhouettes of the drivers as they hunched over their steering wheels, cigarettes dangling between fingers, the windows cracked to let the white cancer-causing vapor escape into the frosty air. All around him he could sense the shadows of the nearby mountains, darker even than the night.

He checked his watch. It was barely two a.m. "Folks get an early start here?" Stone asked, nodding at the mini-caravan of dirty Fords and Chevys.

"They're miners."

"Going to work?"

"Nope. Next shift starts at seven. Those boys are heading to the clinic to get their methadone pop for thirteen bucks. Then they go to work."

"Methadone?"

"Some folks have cereal for breakfast, miners have methadone mixed with OJ in a cup. Just the way it is around here. Lot cheaper than snorting oxy up your nose or banging it into your feet. And that way you don't get dinged for dirty urine and lose your miner's license." Danny pointed up ahead to a small storefront set next to a clothing shop on one side and a hardware store on the other. Apparently Home Depot and Wal-Mart had not yet seen an opportunity in the isolated hamlet of Divine.

"That's my mom's place."

Stone eyed the sign. "Rita's Restaurant and Bar. So your mom's name is Rita?"

Danny wagged his head and grinned. "Nope. Rita ran the place before her. My mom never had enough money to switch the sign out. Then when she got some cash she figured why bother changing it. Everybody already knew it was her place. Her name's Abigail, but everybody calls her Abby."

Danny put a key in the front door of the restaurant and motioned Stone to follow him in.

"Does your mother live here?"

"Nope, but there's an apartment above the restaurant. You can crash there for what's left of tonight."

"What about you?"

"I got things to do, people to see. Get myself patched up." He touched his face and his leg.

"A doctor at this hour?"

"Don't need no doctor. Hell, just feels like Friday night after a football game. Can't let it screw up your life. I got the quick fix all right."

"You sure it's okay that I stay here for the night?"

"Oh, yeah. I'll be back about the time Mom opens up for breakfast. Get it all straight with her."

Stone looked around the interior of the place. A long, polished mahogany bar with stools in front that was set at one end, with a deuce of pool tables and a 1950s-era jukebox anchoring the other end. In between were tables with checkered tablecloths and wheel-back chairs. The place didn't smell like a bar; it smelled like lemons and fresh air. From the looks of things Abigail Riker kept her place of business orderly and clean.

"Danny, is there any place around town I can do some work? I'm a little short on cash."

"I'll see what I can do."

Danny led him upstairs and a few minutes later an exhausted Stone was asleep on the small bed there.

A few hours later he woke up when he felt something hard touch his cheek.

It got his full attention.

Twelve-gauge shotgun muzzles usually did.