He absorbed the cheery British voices of neighbors coming and going. He didn't even mind the smoke. He was alone and unknown and he quietly reveled in his privacy.

His anonymity was not complete, however. From behind him a small man wearing a battered sailor's cap appeared and fell into the booth across the table, startling Critz.

"Mind if I join you, Mr. Critz?" the sailor said with a smile that revealed large yellow teeth. Critz would remember the dingy teeth.

"Have a seat," Critz said warily. "You got a name?"

"Ben." He wasn't British, and English was not his native tongue. Ben was about thirty, with dark hair, dark brown eyes, and a long pointed nose that made him rather Greek-looking.

"No last name, huh?" Critz took a sip from his glass and said, "How, exactly, do you know my name?"

"I know everything about you."

"Didn't realize I was that famous."

"I wouldn't call it fame, Mr. Critz. I'll be brief. I work for some people who desperately want to find Joel Backman. They'll pay serious money, cash. Cash in a box, or cash in a Swiss bank, doesn't matter. It can be done quickly, within hours. You tell us where he is, you get a million bucks, no one will ever know." ilHow did you find me?"

"It was simple, Mr. Critz. Were, let's say, professionals."

"Spies?"

"It's not important. We are who we are, and we're going to find Mr. Backman. The question is, do you want the million bucks?"

"I don't know where he is."

"But you can find out."

"Maybe."

"Do you want to do business?"

"Not for a million bucks."

"Then how much?"

"I'll have to think about it."

"Then think quickly."

"And if I can't get the information?"

"Then we'll never see you again. This meeting never took place. It's very simple."

Critz took a long pull on his pint and contemplated things. "Okay, let's say I'm able to get this information-I'm not too optimistic-but what if I get lucky? Then what?"

"Take a Lufthansa flight from Dulles to Amsterdam, first class. Check into the Amstel Hotel on Biddenham Street. We'll find you, just like we found you here."

Critz paused and committed the details to memory. "When?" he asked.

"As soon as possible, Mr. Critz. There are others looking for him."

Ben vanished as quickly as he had materialized, leaving Critz to peer through the smoke and wonder if he'd just witnessed a dream. He left the pub an hour later, with his face hidden under an umbrella, certain that he was being watched.

Would they watch him in Washington too? He had the unsettling feeling that they would.

The siesta didn't work. The wine at lunch and the two after noon beers didn't help. There was simply too much to think about.

Besides, he was too rested; there was too much sleep in his system. Six years in solitary confinement reduces the human body to such a passive state that sleep becomes a principal activity. After the first few months at Rudley, Joel was getting eight hours a night and a hard nap after lunch, which was understandable since he'd slept so little during the previous twenty years when he was holding the republic together during the day and chasing skirts till dawn. After a year he could count on nine, sometimes ten hours of sleep. There was little else to do but read and watch television. Out of boredom, he once conducted a survey, one of his many clandestine polls, by passing a sheet of paper from cell to cell while the guards were themselves napping, and of the thirty-seven respondents on his block the average was eleven hours of sleep a day. Mo, the Mafia snitch, claimed sixteen hours and could often be heard snoring at noon. Mad Cow Miller registered the lowest at just three hours, but the poor guy had lost his mind years earlier and so Joel was forced to discount his responses to the survey.

There were bouts of insomnia, long periods of staring into the darkness and thinking about the mistakes and the children and grandchildren, about the humiliation of the past and the fear of the future. And there were weeks when sleeping pills were delivered to his cell, one at a time, but they never worked. Joel always suspected they were nothing more than placebos.

But in six years there had been too much sleep. Now his body was well rested. His mind was working overtime.

He slowly got up from the bed where he'd been lying for an hour, unable to close his eyes, and walked to the small table where he picked up the cell phone Luigi had given him. He took it to the window, punched the numbers taped to its back, and after four rings he heard a familiar voice.

"Ciao, Marco. Come stai?"

"Just checking to see if this thing works," Joel said.

"You think I'd give you a defective phone?" Luigi asked. »lNo, of course not."

"How was your nap?"

"Uh, nice, very nice. I'll see you at dinner."

"Ciao."

Where was Luigi? Lurking nearby with a phone in his pocket, just waiting for Joel to call? Watching the hotel? If Stennett and the driver were still in Treviso, along with Luigi and Ermanno, that would add up to four "friends" of some variety assigned to keep tabs on Joel Backman.

He gripped the phone and wondered who else out there knew about the call. Who else was listening? He glanced at the street below and wondered who was down there. Only Luigi?

He dismissed those thoughts and sat at the table. He wanted some coffee, maybe a double espresso to get the nerves buzzing, certainly not a cappuccino because of the late hour, but he wasn't ready to pick up the phone and place an order. He could handle the "Hello" and the "Coffee," but there would be a flood of other words he did not yet know.

How can a man survive without strong coffee? His favorite secretary had once brought forth his first cup of some jolting Turkish brew at exactly six-thirty every morning, six days a week. He'd almost married her. By ten each morning, the broker was so wired he was throwing things and yelling at subordinates and juggling three calls at once while senators were on hold.

The flashback did not please him. They seldom did. There were plenty of them, and for six years in solitary he'd waged a ferocious mental war to purge his past.

Back to the coffee, which he was afraid to order because he was afraid of the language. Joel Backman had never feared a damn thing, and if he could keep track of three hundred pieces of legislation moving through the maze of Congress, and if he could make one hundred phone calls a day while rarely looking at a Rolodex or a director}', then he could certainly learn enough Italian to order coffee. He arranged Ermanno's study materials neatly on the table and looked at the synopsis. He checked the batteries in the small tape player and fiddled with the tapes. The first page of lesson one was a rather crude color drawing of a family living room with Mom and Pop and the kids watching television. The objects were labeled in both English and Italian-door and porta, sofa and sofa, window and finestra, painting and quadro, and so on. The boy was ragazzo, the mother was madre, the old man teetering on a cane in the corner was the grandfather, or il nonno.

A few pages later was the kitchen, then the bedroom, then the bath. After an hour, still without coffee, Joel was walking softly around his room pointing and whispering the name of everything he saw: bed, letto; lamp, lampada; clock, orologio; soap, sapone. There were a few verbs thrown in for caution: to speak, parlare; to eat, mangiare; to drink, here; to think, pensare. He stood before the small mirror (specchio) in his bathroom (bagno) and tried to convince himself that he was really Marco. Marco Lazzeri. "Sono Marco, sono Marco," he repeated. I am Marco. I am Marco. Silly at first, but that must be put aside. The stakes were too high to cling to an old name that could get him killed. If being Marco would save his neck, then Marco he was.