Luigi got himself followed out of Bologna. The kid on the scooter saw him leave the apartment next to Backmans, and it was the manner in which he left that caught his attention. He was jogging, and gaining speed with each step. No one runs under the porticoes on Via Fondazza. The scooter hung back until Luigi stopped and quickly crawled into a red Fiat. He drove a few blocks, then slowed long enough for another man to jump into the car. They took off at breakneck speed, but in city traffic the scooter had no trouble keeping up. When they wheeled into the train station and parked illegally, the kid on the scooter saw it all and radioed Efraim again.

Within fifteen minutes, two Mossad agents dressed as traffic policemen entered Luigi's apartment, setting off alarms-some silent, some barely audible. While three agents waited on the street, providing cover, the three inside kicked open the kitchen door and found the astounding collection of electronic surveillance equipment.

When Luigi, Zellman, and a third agent stepped onto the Eurostar to Milano, the kid on the scooter had a ticket too. His name was Paul, the youngest member of the kidon and the most fluent speaker of Italian. Behind the bangs and baby face was a twenty-sbc-year-old veteran of half a dozen killings. When he radioed that he was on the train and it was moving, two more agents entered Luigi's apartment to help dissect the equipment. One alarm, though, could not be silenced. Its steady ring penetrated the walls just enough to attract attention from a few neighbors along the street.

After ten minutes, Efraim called a halt to the break-in. The agents scattered, then regrouped in one of their safe houses. They had not been able to determine who Luigi was or who he worked for, but it was obvious he'd been spying on Backman around the clock.

As the hours passed with no sign of Backman, they began to believe that he had fled. Could Luigi lead them to him?

In central Milano, at the Piazza del Duomo, Marco gawked at the mammoth Gothic cathedral that took only three hundred years to complete. He strolled along the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, the magnificent glass-domed gallery that Milano is famous for. Lined with cafes and bookshops, the gallery is the center of the city's life, its most popular meeting place. With the temperature approaching sixty degrees, Marco had a sandwich and a cola outdoors where the pigeons swarmed every wayward crumb. He watched elderly Milanesi stroll through the gallery, women arm in arm, men stopping to chat as if time was irrelevant. To be so lucky, he thought.

Should he leave immediately, or should he lay low for a day or two? That was the new urgent question. In a crowded city of four million people, he could vanish for as long as he wanted. He'd get a map, learn the streets, spend hours hiding in his room and hours walking the alleys.

But the bloodhounds behind him would have time to regroup.

Shouldn't he leave now, while they were back there scrambling and scratching their heads?

Yes he should, he decided. He paid the waiter and glanced down at his bowling shoes. They were indeed comfortable but he couldn't wait to burn them. On a city bus he saw an ad for an Internet cafe on Via Verri. Ten minutes later he entered the place. A sign on the wall gave the rates-ten euros per hour, minimum of thirty minutes. He ordered an orange juice and paid for half an hour. The clerk nodded in the general direction of a table where a bunch of computers were waiting. Three of the eight were being used by people who obviously knew what they were doing. Marco was already lost.

But he faked it well. He sat down, grabbed a keyboard, stared at the monitor and wanted to pray, but plowed ahead as if he'd been hacking for years. It was surprisingly easy; he went to the KwyteMail site, typed his user name, t'Grinch456," then his pass phrase, "post hoc ergo propter hoc," waited ten seconds, and there was the message from

Neal:

Marco: Mike/ Van Thiessen is still with Rhineland Bank, now the vice president of client services. Anything else? Grinch.

At exactly 7:50 EST, Marco typed a message:

Grinch: Marco here-live and in person. Are you there?

He sipped his juice and stared at the screen. Come on, baby, make this thing work. Another sip. A lady across the table was talking to her monitor. Then the message:

I'm here, loud and clear. What's up?

Marco typed: They stole myAnkyo 850. There's a good chance the bad guys have it and they re picking it to pieces. Any chance they can discover you?

Neal: Only if they have the user name and pass phrase. Do they?

Marco: No, I destroyed them. There's no way they can get around a password?

Neal: Not with KwyteMail. It's totally secure and encrypted. If they have the PC and nothing more, then they're out of luck.

Marco: And we're completely safe now?

Neal: Yes, absolutely. But what are you using now?

Marco: I'm in an Internet cafe', renting a computer, like a real hacker.

Neal: Do you want another Ankyo smartphone?

Marco: No, not now, maybe later. Here's the deal. Go see Carl Pratt. I know you don't like him, but at this point I need him. Pratt was very close to former senator Ira Clay burn from North Carolina. Clay burn ruled the Senate Intelligence Committee for many years. I need Clayburn now. Go through Pratt.

Neal: Wheres Clayburn now?

Marco: / don't know-I just hope he's still alive. He came from the Outer Banks ofNC, some pretty remote place. He retired the year after I went to federal camp. Pratt can find him.

Neal: Sure, I'll do it as soon as I can sneak away. Marco: Please be careful. Watch your back. Neal: Are you okay?

Marco: I'm on the run. I left Bologna early this morning. I'll try to check in the same time tomorrow. Okay?

Neal: Keep your head down. Til be here tomorrow.

Marco signed off with a smug look. Mission accomplished. Nothing to it. Welcome to the age of high-tech wizardry and gadgetry. He made sure his exit was clean from KwyteMail, then finished his orange juice and left the cafe. He headed in the direction of the train station, stopping first at a leather shop where he managed an even swap of Giovanni's fine briefcase for a black one of patently inferior quality; then at a cheap jewelry store where he paid eighteen euros for a large round-faced watch with a bright red plastic band, something else to distract anyone looking for Marco Lazzeri, formerly of Bologna; then at a used-book shop where he spent two euros on a well-worn hardback containing the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, all in Polish of course, anything to confuse the bloodhounds; and, finally, at a secondhand accessory store where he bought a pair of sunglasses and a wooden cane, which he began using immediately on the sidewalk.

The cane reminded him of Francesca. It also slowed him down, changed his gait. With time to spare he shuffled into Milano Centrale and bought a ticket for Stuttgart.

Whitaker got the urgent message from Langley that Luigi's safe house had been broken into, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. All the agents from Bologna were now in Milano, scrambling frantically. Two were at the train station, looking for the needle in the haystack. Two were at Malpensa airport, twenty-seven miles from downtown. Two were at Linate airport, which was much closer and handled primarily European flights. Luigi was at the central bus station, still arguing by cell phone that perhaps Marco wasn't even in Milano. Just because he took the bus from Bologna to Modena, and headed in the general direction of northwest, didn't necessarily mean he was going to Milano. But Luigi's credibility at the mo merit was somewhat diminished, at least in Whitaker's substantial opinion, so he was banished to the bus station where he watched ten thousand people come and go.