Her head dipped and the strands of hair came free again, fiery in the lamplight, curled against the ripe duskiness of her cheek. She took his hand to transmit to him, he assumed, her utter stillness. But instead he felt a vibration of intensity so extreme it quickened his blood; he became aware of her intent, as if, like the young woman in the portrait in her house, she was an arrow in a tautly drawn bow, about to be released.

"There is much to do and I doubt that we have much time." As if to underscore her words, there came a hollow sound, ugly and thoroughly unmusical, as a small, matte-black canister hit the stone floor and began rolling toward them. Then the door to the mausoleum slammed shut.

Bravo ran to the door, but it was shut tight; they were trapped. A soft hiss made him turn, and he saw the tear gas foaming out of the canister, a venomous wave that surged toward them.

Donatella and Rossi, their faces made bestial by black and silver snouts, burst through the bronze mausoleum door. They had waited for precisely three minutes before they had donned the gas masks. Then they had heaved open the heavy door. Weapons at the ready, they rushed inside, taking up first positions, Rossi just inside the door, Donatella into the western corner.

The atmosphere was that of a building after a fire. The gas, having dispersed, now hung in gauzy tiers like industrial smog, obscuring the ceiling. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that they were the only two living people occupying the mausoleum. They glanced at each other. Even through the lenses of the eye pieces, they could read the consternation and anger in each other's eyes.

"They're here," Rossi said, his voice slightly muffled.

Donatella walked along the western wall, eyeing the plaster with its constellations of faux striations. "The Order is fond of secret escape routes." Her head swung around. "You know what to do now."

Rossi, near the doorway, stood in the last of the afternoon's ruddy light. "Now that the time has come, I find I don't want to leave you."

She lifted the gun into his line of vision, deliberately tapped the butt against the rear wall. "You're wasting time."

He grunted and disappeared through the open doorway.

"Now," Donatella said softly, as she returned to the problem at hand, "where are you, my little cockroaches?"

When the canister hit the floor, Jenny and Bravo had at once held their breath. Nevertheless, their eyes had begun to sting and tear, and the delicate flesh of their nostrils swelled painfully. Jenny had turned to the lower of the two crypt doors and with arms spread wide, depressed a pair of hidden studs, all but invisible in the complex pattern of faux veining.

The bronze door had opened, revealing not the mahogany side of a coffin but a swath of mysterious darkness. Already an ache had begun deep in his lungs as his body called out for oxygen. He did not think that they could hold their breath much longer. Apparently, Jenny had come to the same conclusion because she gestured toward the opening. He climbed in, making sure not to hit his head. He was reaching his hand up to feel the surface of the low ceiling-and fighting claustrophobia-when he felt her climb in beside him, and he inched himself further into the recess. In a brief aureole of light, he saw her fingers work something, then the heavy crypt door swung shut. This was accompanied by a peculiar sound, as of air hissing from a damaged tire, and with a renewed surge of claustrophobia, he realized that an air-tight seal had been activated, the better to preserve the mortal remains of the entombed loved ones. Then, as panic was about to set in, he saw Jenny's face as she switched on her pencil flashlight. A sly smile crossed her oval face. And then he understood-the air seal was what would save them from the tear gas. No matter how saturated the inside of the mausoleum got, the gas could not affect them in here.

They started as the sharp report came to them from the other side of the casket door. Bravo felt sweat break out on his skin, but his mouth was abnormally dry. He remembered his father telling him of the terror-filled moments just before the desperate retreat from the Nairobi embassy. "I was sweating all over, but curiously, my mouth was dry. Fear does that to you, Bravo. And I was relieved, which you might find even more curious, but the truth is, those who aren't afraid wind up dead."

At close range Donatella examined the two casket doors, tapping here and there, softly, softly in a rhythmic pattern, her head cocked all the while, her ear close enough to evaluate the sounds returning from her gentle probing.

All at once her eyes widened and she drew out of her pocket a length of a puttylike material. Without haste, she worked the pliable material into the hinges of the lower casket door. She flipped open a lighter and held the flame against one end of the material until with a bright flash it began to burn with a devastating heat. She smiled and, with grim satisfaction, said, "Yes, indeed, I have you now."

Another noise came to them, an evil sound as of the hollow rattle of a poisonous serpent, and then a blast of heat like the livid flame of a blowtorch was transmitted by the metal.

He heard her voice, soft but filled with urgency, "They're melting the hinges off the door. Quickly, now! Go!"

In the brief flare of the penlight he saw her point across his chest to his right, and in an awkward sort of wriggle he began to move, but to where? he wondered.

As if divining his question, she used the narrow beam of her penlight in lieu of words. Turning his head, he saw a passageway that sloped steeply downward, presumably below the mausoleum's foundation. As he wriggled his way toward it he marveled at the ingenuity, for the escape route must have been devised at the time of the mausoleum's construction.

Bravo crawled through the darkness, hemmed in on every side, with the unseen but very much heard enemy howling at his heels. The mineral scent of wet limestone mingled with the odors of decomposition that conjured up images of freshly turned earth, leaf mold, corkscrewed worms and ash. With Jenny close against his spine, he experienced a sense of the space ahead narrowing even further until it was no larger than his own body, and he discovered a fear inside himself, irrational and therefore overwhelming, that he was going to become stuck in this tunnel, unable either to move forward or back.

"What is it?" Jenny whispered in his ear. "Why have you stopped?"

Bravo said nothing. At the same time, he felt incapable of moving.

The heat seemed to follow them, growing in intensity. And with it he thought he could discern the first crack of light as the hinges on the casket door gave out.

Sensing his paralysis, Jenny said, "Lie flat on your back." She slithered atop him. "Press your shoulder blades against the floor." She stared down at him, her breasts flattened against his chest, her breath quick on his cheek. Her heat began to seep into him. There was nowhere left for him to move. Terror crept through him, primitive and compelling, and he fought to keep it at bay lest it lock him in its vise.

"Bravo!"

Light now, definitely, a sliver like the blade of a knife. And then, startlingly, a female voice-undoubtedly Donatella's-sang in a lilting alto, "Come out, come out wherever you are…"

Jenny was gripping his jaw, her eyes boring into him, willing him to comply. As if in a dream he did as she asked, exhaling deeply, and after a moment of slow and torturous maneuvering, he felt her sliding, hips first, then midriff and shoulders, onto the far side.

She took his hand in hers, squeezed it briefly. "It gets wider from here."

Belatedly, he understood. She was ahead of him, in a position to lead them on and, hopefully, out.