"Who knows? Who cares?"

"For real?"

"Oh, it's real, Nicky."

"Why you?"

"Stupid question."

"Five mil. Yeah, you're right."

"Yeah, and you're dead."

Nicky pumped two more bullets into his best friend's mouth, straightened up, then tossed the semicomatose whore out of his room.

He locked the door behind her and moved a large dresser in front of it. He stopped and thought for a moment. Who put the price on his head? Five million was a very big level of enthusiasm. Who hated him that much? Who had the motive? Who had that much money?

After a split second, a name popped into his brain. Golitsin. It made perfect sense; in fact, no other name made any sense. He lifted his cell phone and dialed a number from memory. A voice answered, and Nicky said, "Georgi, it's me."

"Hey, I heard you got a big friggin' problem." Georgi laughed.

"Word's gotten around, I guess."

"It's five million, Nicky. You're the talk of the town."

"Good point. Here's the deal, Georgi. You owe me two million for that dope deal, right?"

"Hey, I got it right here. Deal was you don't get it till tomorrow night."

"Scratch that."

"Seriously?"

"As a heart attack. Put out the word, one and a half million to anybody who whacks Sergei Golitsin. Rest is yours to keep."

"Maybe I'll whack Golitsin and keep all of it."

"Your option, Georgi. But Golitsin better be dead, or you're next." They rang off.

He returned to his bed, sat down, and cradled the pistol on his lap. Five million!

His best friend was right. Nicky was dead. It might take an hour, a day, maybe a week, but he was, without debate or uncertainty, a dead man walking. By eight in the morning, Tromble had assembled the full team in his office. The usual cast of characters: his pair of compliant hey-boys, Agents Hanrahan and Wilson, Colonel Volevodz, and the head Russian prosecutor, and a fresh pool of INS legal jockeys, now backed up by a pair of eager youthful hotshots from Justice. They sat, pens gripped, notepads poised, and awaited guidance from the great man himself.

"Really, it was to be expected," said one of the Justice boys, named Bill. Bill's area of expertise happened to be anything that happened five minutes before.

"Well, I didn't anticipate it," remarked Jason Caldwell, wiping a remnant of his morning shave from behind his left ear. After the harsh dismissal of Kim Parrish, Caldwell had been handpicked personally by the INS director, a hotshot gunslinger flown in from the San Diego office, where he was legendary for booting Mexican ass back across the border. Caldwell was a loudmouthed blowhard pretty boy without an ounce of pity for anybody accused of anything. He did deliver, though. He took the toughest, most ambiguous, most troubling cases and never once thought twice about the truth or consequences.

He made his ambitions well-known among his peers, among whom he was not now, nor had he ever been, overly popular. The INS job was a stepping stone, a temporary government job from which he intended to run for Congress, and he intended to eventually head the immigration panel, and they would all have to line up to kiss his ass. He was, by every stretch of the imagination, perfect for this job.

He had spent one month reviewing the vast hoard of evidence compiled, translated, and organized so strenuously by Kim and Petri. The hard work had been done for him, a perfect slam dunk; all he had to do was show up in court and smile brilliantly for the cameras. The past month he had mainly strutted in front of full-length mirrors, rehearsing and polishing his lines, admiring his courtly prose, and gearing up to kick a little Russian ass.

The motion for habeas corpus and switch to a federal court came like a bolt out of the dark. No warning. No threats, no hints preceded it. But MP's sneak attack bothered him not in the least. He looked forward to it, actually. Glad Alex and his hired gun did it. The chance to escape from the largely ignored immigration courts into the federal big leagues, and with such a high-visibility case, appealed to him immensely. He had no doubts he would do great. He was Jason Caldwell-if Konevitch had any clue he was up against the scourge of Mexico he'd book his own flight to Russia.

Tromble brought the meeting to order briskly. A few comments about the importance of the case. A blistering reminder about the need for victory at all costs. A hard stare around the table as he dwelled on the somber imperative of sending Konevitch home to pay for his many sins.

The Russians listened without comment. Volevodz detested America-he wanted desperately to get back to Russia, where he expected to pin on a general's star in recognition for bringing home the bacon. The head Russian prosecutor hoped Caldwell would blow it. Just choke and fumble and get his ass kicked. He prayed the case would drag on forever. He and his three comrades all had lady friends out in Vegas, a bunch of big-breasted showgirls who partied without stop and weren't overly picky about their men. And after losing nearly a hundred grand in FBI dough at the tables, he and his pals were finally starting to win a little back.

"You. Who's the judge?" Tromble asked, squinting at the two Justice boys whose names he couldn't remember because frankly he didn't care to.

"Elton Willis," replied Bill, only too proud to be here in the office of the FBI director.

Tromble looked like a lemon had been stuffed in his throat. "Oh, not Willis."

"He has a fairly good reputation," Bill argued, obviously not getting it.

During his brief tenure as a judge, Tromble and Willis had attended a few legal conferences together and, on one sour occasion, had even shared a podium for a spirited debate on civil liberties, one of many legal topics about which they held diametrically different views. The audience were other judges and the results were predictable. Willis was intelligent, methodical, measured, with a former Jesuit's grasp and approach to law. To put it mildly, the scholars and justices in the audience didn't seem to grasp the subtlety of Tromble's theories. It wasn't the first or last time he'd been pelted with boos, but it was probably the loudest.

"He's a lefty wimp," Tromble growled, daring anybody to contest this conclusion. He leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles. "You ready for the show?" he asked Caldwell.

"It's a knockdown case. In and out inside one or two days."

Tromble traded glances with Hanrahan. "What's the one thing we've overlooked?"

No clue.

"Publicity. Press. We need to bang Konevitch on every front page," he said, almost predictably.

Caldwell loved this brainchild. "Great idea," he announced quite loudly. "If we don't, the defense will. Better to preempt them."

"Our Russian friends need to see we're serious. All this time, but we haven't forgotten them."

"I could hold a few press conferences," Caldwell agreeably offered.

Tromble cleared his throat. "Well, we'll see if we need you." He paused briefly. "Hanrahan, tell the boys downstairs to kick it in gear. See if Nightline or Good Morning America has an opening for me. And call that blonde lawyer over at Fox News, you know the one. She always has an opening for me."

"Pretty short notice. We've only got two more days, boss."

"Tell them it's the biggest trial of the year."

Hanrahan looked away and pondered the tabletop. "Maybe that will work, maybe not." Truth was the newspaper and TV people were tired of his boss and his unrelenting attempts to steal ink and camera time. He was a preening spotlight hog, a master at shoving himself before every camera in sight. The boys downstairs in the public affairs office were working eighty-hour weeks, but had flat run out of angles, lies, and lures to get him press time.

"All right," Tromble said, thinking up a fresh angle quickly. "Tell them I intend to be a witness at this trial. A historic occasion. First time an FBI director has ever been on the stand."