Twelve years later, Gerard had shot Jared Sloan in Saigon.

Now, fourteen years later, he had turned up in San Francisco and Boston.

Why?

Was there a connection among 1959, 1963 and 1975?

Yes: him. One Jean-Paul Gerard.

And the Blackburn family. Thomas Blackburn had attended the funeral of one of Gerard’s robbery victims. He had arranged the trip into the Mekong Delta. His son-another Blackburn -had been killed. And, in 1975, Rebecca Blackburn had saved Mai Sloan and gotten her, Jared and herself out of Saigon.

Along with the Jupiter Stones. She mustn’t forget those. Were they another connection?

“I was your father’s friend, and I believe-I know he would have been proud of you.”

But how could a man like Jean-Paul Gerard and Stephen Blackburn have been friends?

Giving up on her sandwich, Rebecca wrapped up the leftovers, stuck both sandwiches in a small refrigerator and went after her grandfather.

The woman at the front desk said he’d just left. “You can probably catch him.”

“He didn’t say where he was headed?”

“No. A friend of his had just come in, and they went off together.”

Sloan. “Tall, dark hair, good-looking?”

“Oh, no. This one had very white hair and quite a scar-”

Rebecca ran.

The sun, breaking through the clouds, glistened on the rain-soaked lawn in front of the Massachusetts State House. Thomas held his umbrella in his left hand, using it as a sort of cane as he studied Jean-Paul Gerard. War and time-and his own stubbornness-had left him ravaged and old and mean, a shadow of the carefree, daredevil young race-car driver he’d been thirty years ago. Thomas didn’t find it easy to look at a man who’d suffered as much, and as needlessly, as had this relentless Frenchman. Yet he still could see Gisela in the soft brown of the younger man’s eyes, in the shape and sensitivity of his mouth, and he wondered if he was being too harsh or if, at least, there was hope.

“I want him to be happy, Thomas,” Gisela had said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She had been so proud of her only child. Nevertheless-and Thomas had never understood why-she had persisted in her refusal to acknowledge him as her son. She maintained that Jean-Paul preferred to shroud himself in mystery, pretending that he’d come from nowhere and letting people-women, especially-fantasize about his origins. It was a part of his mystique. That he was the illegitimate son of a popular woman who claimed she was a displaced Hungarian aristocrat certainly would have had its romantic side. Only after they were both gone, Gisela to her grave and Jean-Paul to Sidi Bel Abbès and the Légion étrangère as a fugitive, did Thomas consider that it was perhaps Jean-Paul who was protecting his mother, not the other way around. For the popular young Frenchman had to have known that telling the world he was Gisela’s son would have stimulated a scrutiny to which her life couldn’t have stood up.

“You’re an old man now, Thomas,” Jean-Paul said with unmistakable satisfaction. “Are you starting to smell the dirt in your grave?”

“I don’t believe I’m as old as you yourself are, Jean-Paul. You’ve had a hard life. I’m sorry.” He added softly, “Gisela never wanted that.”

“Don’t give me your pity, old man.”

“Consider it commentary, not pity.” Thomas felt himself tiring already and put more weight on his old, sturdy umbrella. “She won’t give you the stones, will she?”

Jean-Paul’s eyes-so suspicious now when once they’d been eager, trusting, filled with an unshakable zest for life-narrowed as he considered Thomas’s words. “I haven’t even seen her.”

“I don’t believe you, Jean-Paul,” Thomas said quietly, giving him a small, sympathetic smile. “You’ve never been an adept liar. Perhaps if you’d recognized this many years ago you’d have saved yourself-and others-a good deal of anguish.”

“And you? Think of all the anguish you’d have saved if you’d thrown yourself into the Mediterranean thirty years ago instead of Gisela.”

Thomas looked at him. “I have.”

Jean-Paul clenched his fists at his side. “I want the Jupiter Stones, old man. Nothing more. They belonged to Gisela, and I intend to get them back. Don’t try and stop me.”

“You can’t beat her. You of all people should know that.”

“I’m not trying to beat her.”

“You’re playing with fire,” Thomas said, his tone deceptively mild. Seldom had he been so serious. “You played with fire thirty years ago and got burned, and now you’re doing it again. It’s time to forget those stones and move on.”

The Frenchman inhaled slowly, his eyes never leaving the older man, then he tried a new tactic. “Annette says she doesn’t have them.”

Thomas shrugged. “Perhaps she’s telling the truth.”

“She’s not,” Jean-Paul said softly. “She doesn’t know what the truth is. But I didn’t come for your approval of my actions. I know Jared Sloan is in Boston, and so is your granddaughter. Tell them to stay out of my way. And you, too. Let me do what I have to do.”

“Jean-Paul-” Thomas sighed, breaking off. He put out a hand to the younger man, but Gerard stepped backward, as if afraid of any perceptibly amiable gesture. “I’ve made terrible mistakes. I’ve been arrogant and unthinking, but like you, I never thought my decisions would have negative consequences. Jean-Paul, be better than I was.”

“Go back to your books, old man. I’ve said all I intend to say.”

“I’ll stop you if I must,” Thomas said in a low voice.

The Frenchman laughed, a sandpapery sound in which his years of suffering resonated more plainly than any threat. “You go ahead and try.”

Leaving Thomas on the sidewalk in front of the State House, Jean-Paul trotted back across Beacon Street and onto Boston Common, disappearing in the shadows as the clouds once again closed over the sun. Drops of rain landed on Thomas’s nose and cheeks. He started to put up his umbrella, but discovered his knees were trembling and he needed its support for walking. With the rain increasing, he debated a moment, then headed inside the State House and down a quiet hall to the portrait of Eliza Blackburn. She looked rather like Rebecca. Thomas felt his eyes burning with fatigue and raw emotion as first he studied Eliza’s face, then the cameo brooch George Washington had given the plucky Revolutionary War heroine; the brooch itself was now on display at a museum in Concord.

“Well, Eliza,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’ve made a fine mess of the Blackburn name, haven’t I?”

He thought he could see her smile, hear her whisper back to him, “All for a good cause, my son.” But of course he knew that was impossible. They were only the words he wished he could hear, from someone, but never would.

Jean-Paul was out of breath by the time he reached the Park Street subway station on the Tremont Street side of the Common. He slowed down, wheezing and totally disgusted with himself. In his two years with the Légion étrangère, he’d been able to run ten miles without getting winded, carry a seventy-pound load on his back for days, drink all day and screw all night, and the next morning spot a spider on a roof a half-mile off. His acute vision had been the envy of his fellow soldiers and had contributed to his skill as a marksman. Even after his five years as a prisoner of war, when he’d suffered malnutrition, isolation and severe brutality, he could see better than most, if not as well as he once could.

“Hello. It’s Jean-Paul Gerard, isn’t it?”

He whirled around and saw Rebecca Blackburn standing too close behind him, her face drained of color.

“I followed you,” she said. “I saw you and my grandfather talking.”

Jean-Paul found himself wanting to touch her, not in any romantic, sexual way, but as the child she’d been in picture after picture Stephen Blackburn had shown him on hot, lonely nights in Saigon. He couldn’t bring himself to speak.