Less than twenty-four hours earlier, in Caflfe Atene, just a few minutes before the lights went out. The face had been in a long mirror that lined the wall with an old coatrack, above the tables. The face had been seated nearby, behind him, with another man.

It was a familiar face. Maybe he'd even seen it before somewhere in Bologna.

Marco returned to his seat as the bus slowed and approached the station. Think quickly, man, he kept telling himself, but keep your cool. Don't panic. They've followed you out of Bologna; you can't let them follow you out of the country.

As the bus stopped, the driver announced their arrival in Modena. A brief stop; a departure in fifteen minutes. Four passengers waddled down the aisle and got off. The others kept their seats; most were dozing anyway. Marco closed his eyes and allowed his head to drift to his left, against the window, fast asleep now. A minute passed and two peasants climbed aboard, wild-eyed and clutching heavy cloth bags.

When the driver returned and was situating himself behind the wheel, Marco suddenly eased from his seat, slid quickly along the aisle, and hopped off the bus just as the door was closing. He walked quickly into the station, then turned around and watched the bus back away. His pursuer was still on board.

Krater's first move was to sprint off the bus, perhaps arguing with the driver in the process, but then no driver will fight to keep someone on board. He caught himself, though, because Marco obviously knew he was being followed. His last-second exit only confirmed what Krater had suspected. It was Marco all right, running like a wounded animal.

Problem was, he was loose in Modena and Krater was not. The bus turned onto another street, then stopped for a traffic light. Krater rushed to the driver, holding his stomach, begging to get off before he vomited all over the place. The door flew open, Krater jumped off and ran back toward the station.

Marco wasted no time. When the bus was out of sight, he hurried to the front of the station where three taxis were lined up. He jumped into the backseat of the first one and said, "Can you take me to Milano?" His Italian was very good.

"Milano?"

"Si, Milano."

"E molto caro!" It's very expensive.

"Quanto?"

"Duecento euro." Two hundred euros.

"Andiamo."

After an hour of scouring the Modena bus station and the two streets next to it, Krater called Luigi with the news that was not all good, and not all bad. He'd lost his man, but the mad dash for freedom confirmed that it was indeed Marco.

Luigi's reaction was mixed. He was frustrated that Krater had been outfoxed by an amateur. He was impressed that Marco could effectively change his appearance and elude a small army of assassins. And he was angry at Whitaker and the fools in Washington who kept changing the plans and had now created an impending disaster for which he, Luigi, would no doubt get the blame.

He called Whitaker, yelled and cursed some more, then headed for the train station with Zellman and the two others. They'd meet up with Krater in Milano, where Whitaker was promising a full-court press with all the muscle he could pull in.

Leaving Bologna on the direct Eurostar, Luigi had a wonderful idea, one he could never mention. Why not just simply call the Israelis and the Chinese and tell them that Backman was last seen in Modena, headed west to Parma and probably Milano? They wanted him much more than Langley did. And they could certainly do a better job of finding him.

But orders were orders, even though they kept changing.

All roads led to Milano.

The cab stopped a block away from the Milano central train station. Marco paid the driver, thanked him more than once, wished him well back home in Modena, then walked past a dozen more taxis that were waiting for arriving passengers. Inside the mammoth station, he drifted with the crowd, up the escalators, into the controlled frenzy of the platform area where a dozen tracks brought the trains. He found the departure board and studied his options. A train left for Stuttgart four times a day, and its seventh stop was Zurich. He picked up a schedule, bought a cheap city guide with a map, then found a table at a cafe among a row of shops. Time could not be wasted, but he needed to figure out where he was. He had two espressos and a pastry while his eyes watched the crowd. He loved the mob, the throng of people coming and going. There was safety in those numbers.

His first plan was to take a walk, about thirty minutes, to the center of the city. Somewhere along the way he would find an inexpensive clothing store and change everything-jacket, shirt, pants, shoes. They had spotted him in Bologna. He couldn't risk it again.

Surely, somewhere in the center of the city, near the Piazza del Duomo, there was an Internet cafe where he could rent a computer for fifteen minutes. He had little confidence in his ability to sit in front of a strange machine, turn the damn thing on, and not only survive the jungle of the Internet but get a message to Neal. It was 10:15 a.m. in Milan, 4:15 a.m. in Culpeper, Virginia. Neal would be checking in live at 7:50.

Somehow he'd make the e-mail work. He had no choice.

The second plan, the one that was looking better and better as he watched a thousand people casually hop on trains that would have them scattered throughout Europe in a matter of hours, was to run. Buy a ticket right now and get out of Milano and Italy as soon as possible. His new hair color and Giovanni his eyeglasses and old professor his jacket had not fooled them in Bologna. If they were that good, they would surely find him anywhere.

He compromised with a walk around the block. The fresh air always helped, and after four blocks his blood was pumping again. As in Bologna, the streets of Milano fanned out in all directions like a spiderweb. The traffic was heavy and at times hardly moved. He loved the traffic, and he especially loved the crowded sidewalks that gave him cover.

The shop was called Roberto's, a small haberdashery wedged between a jewelry store and a bakery. The two front windows were packed with clothing that would hold up for about a week, which fit Marco's time frame perfectly. A clerk from the Middle East spoke worse Italian than Marco, but he was fluent in pointing and grunting and he was determined to transform his customer. The blue jacket was replaced with a dark brown one. The new shirt was a white pullover with short sleeves. The slacks were low-grade wool, very dark navy. Alterations would take a week, so Marco asked the clerk for a pair of scissors. In the mildewy dressing room, he measured as best he could, then cut the pants off himself. When he walked out in his new ensemble, the clerk looked at the ragged edges where the cuffs should have been and almost cried.

The shoes Marco tried on would have crippled him before he made it back to the train station, so he stayed with his hiking boots for the moment. The best purchase was a tan straw hat that Marco bought because he'd seen one just before entering the store.

What did he care about fashion at this point?

The new getup cost him almost four hundred euros, money he hated to part with, but he had no choice. He tried to swap Giovanni's briefcase, which was certainly worth more than everything he was wearing, but the clerk was too depressed over the butchered slacks. He was barely able to offer a weak thanks and goodbye. Marco left with the blue jacket, faded jeans, and the old shirt folded up in a red shopping bag; again, something different to carry around.

He walked a few minutes and saw a shoe store. He bought a pair of what appeared to be slightly modified bowling shoes, without a doubt the ugliest items in what turned out to be a very nice store. They were black with some manner of burgundy striping, hopefully built for comfort and not attractiveness. He paid 150 euros for them, only because they were already broken in. It took two blocks before he could muster the courage to look down at them.