The premixed VX took approximately forty-nine seconds to flow from the canister, down its tubes, and out through the heater stands beside the dining table, the stands tripling as the source for illumination, nighttime heat, and the thin, odorless, amber mist of the world’s deadliest airborne nerve toxin. It took fewer than thirty seconds for the concentrated dose to paralyze every leader seated at the table.

Four of the men managed to draw their personal firearms upon being struck by the initial physical symptoms of the fog-seized lungs, immediate vomiting, defecation, and seizures-but the guns fell from fingers or froze in clutched hands as full paralysis followed. The remaining complement of guests perished within one minute of the initial emission. Only two men remained conscious for longer than fifteen of these sixty seconds.

Just over an hour later, outfitted in a Gulf War-style chemical warfare suit, Hiram returned to the poolside party. Wheeling in on one of the resort’s golf carts, he removed an industrial-strength, oscillating fan from the vehicle and stood it facing the lagoon behind the dinner table. He stepped behind the bar, shut off the VX canister, and proceeded to crank the fan to its highest setting. He returned after another two hours armed with a hose from the pool house; still wearing the suit, he left the fan running as he hosed down the entire poolside deck, including every body, chair, utensil, and scrap of food that occupied it.

Another two hours after Hiram’s initial cleansing, Gibson, Li, and Lana arrived aboard the pair of limousine-length carts. An emaciated black man rode in the rear of Lana’s cart, and when Lana braked to a stop, he rose as though she’d ordered him to do so, which she had not. He exited the cart and stood before her on the poolside tile wearing no protective gear. At Lana’s command, the former wino from the pawnshop alcove on East Queen Street then loaded the bodies collapsed around the dinner table aboard the pair of limo carts.

When the wino was finished, Gibson pulled a second hose from a cabana and began working its spray across the deck for a follow-up wash-down. Hiram and Lana climbed behind the steering wheels of the two carts; the wino slinked aboard, draping himself across the feet of the last body he’d transferred.

“Any chunks wind up as floaters,” Gibson said, “pull them out and try again.”

Hiram and Lana steered the limo carts up the hill. Gibson knew their destination to be the underwater lagoon in a secondary cavern he referred to as the cargo cave, which Deng preferred to call the Lab. It was in the waters beneath the cargo cave where a local gang of sharks had learned to feast upon Gibson’s disposable labor pool.

When the carts vanished behind the Greathouse, Gibson noticed Admiral Li standing on the main trail some distance back from the pool, looking like a misplaced astronaut in his beige-and-green chemical suit.

Gibson switched hands, flipping the hose to his left, and saluted the admiral with his right. Since Gibson too was wearing one of the haz-mat suits, he figured Li might not have seen the grin Gibson was hiding behind the mask, but Li didn’t respond to his salute, either, so the security director left it at that and continued his work with the hose. Per its manufacturer, the VX would take about two more hours to break down once he had soaked whatever remained of it.

Dottie, the blonde waitress, was taking dinner orders from the yachting contingent at the Conch Bay Bar & Grill with a mildly haggard look of exhaustion and a satisfied kind of glow. Cooper had spent some time with her-they’d shared a drink at the bar two or three times, Cooper feeling he had a pretty good read on her, but he figured he didn’t need to have spent any time with her at all to understand the look on Dottie’s face tonight. He peered around the restaurant over the lip of his Cuba libre, trying to get a sense of who might have landed her. He saw nobody giving her rather ample bosom the fond eye of remembrance, or of regret, Cooper first thinking he’d got it wrong, and then thinking finally of one word:

Ronnie.

Apart from their difference in age and station in life-which hadn’t ever stopped him before-Cooper thought about why he hadn’t pursued Dottie himself. The girl’s hulking schnoz didn’t bother him; there were equally hulking breasts that came along for the ride. She was nice enough, and reasonably intelligent. No, Cooper decided, he’d ignored the occasional open door simply because he still preferred to dine from a menu of the betrothed. Working from a pool of brides got him a little more space in which to operate-whoever she was, whenever he did whatever he did with her, a married woman was more likely to leave him alone afterward. Stay out of his personal real estate-read the KEEP OUT sign he had chipped into his shoulder.

Keep out, he thought, sipping the last of his drink: as good a two-word phrase as has ever been coined.

Dottie slid him his appetizer order of conch fritters and a tall, fresh glass of rum and Coke. He stared across Sir Francis Drake Channel, where, a mile away, the steep, sparsely populated hills of Tortola revealed themselves only by the occasional dot of artificial light beneath a sky of stars. When he was through staring out there thinking of nothing, he opened his PowerBook. Cooper was sort of celebrating tonight: he’d decided this would be it, that he’d review the photographs he’d taken, and-presuming the yield would be the usual dead end-call this case closed. There simply remained no other worthy leads; besides, what was so bad about having some new neighbors in the world of his dreams? He and the ghost of Marcel S. could hang out on the trip down the Río Sulaco, for the torture sessions, for his blood-spattered escape from the chamber of horrors. Hell-he could use the company.

He clicked on the Photoshop icon and opened the folder of pictures he’d downloaded from the Nikon.

He knew he could always nose around for the title deed on the island he’d photographed-referred to as “Mango Cay” on his navigation charts-or maybe order some follow-up SATINT and pin down the mystery boat’s home dock, but this was getting ridiculous. That fucking witch doctor had killed the boy, and Cooper had dealt with him; Albino Jim had bought the resurrected kid for a few bucks and probably sold him at a healthy profit to somebody else, but Cooper had dealt with good ol’ Jim Beam too. And the bastards pumping Marcel’s back full of armor-piercing shells? Sons of bitches would just have to remain anonymous, and so the fuck what. His learning their identities wouldn’t do squat for Marcel anyway.

He activated the software’s slideshow feature, which he played intentionally in reverse order. As suspected, the scenics he’d snapped of the smaller islands east of the resort isle were useless. One or two of the houses he saw looked all right, but he still wouldn’t think anybody but a terrorist on the lam, or maybe a California crook fleeing the ramifications of his third strike, would want to live there. No beach, no running water, the structures rickety, perched high up on steep, rocky slopes, Cooper guessing they’d be floating toothpicks by the end of hurricane season.

Moving over to the resort island, the rest of the shots featured an all-male cast of uncomfortable-looking beach bums. He let the slides play uninterrupted, fading in and out on their three-second-per-picture cycle, Cooper eyeing the multicultural beach bums as they came and went.

Then the slideshow ended and the folder of thumbnails retook the screen.

“Christ,” he said.

He double clicked on five of the pictures in the same order in which they’d appeared in the slide show, carefully studying each. When he opened the fifth, he outlined a section of the photo, blew it up, and leaned in for the closest possible view.