Jenny looked from the sequence to Bravo's face, trying to read his expression. "Well?"

Leaning forward, he took the GPS out of its cradle and punched in the numbers.

Jenny was dumbfounded. "It's a location?"

"The three sets of six numbers are longitude and latitude, down to the minute."

"But what about the last four-digit set?"

"I don't know." He showed her the glowing GPS screen.

"St. Malo," she said. "France, right?"

He nodded. "Brittany, to be exact."

"That's where we're going now?"

"Right." Bravo reached for his cell phone. "But not on our own."

It was already midmorning in Paris and Jordan Muhlmann was in his office at Lusignan et Cie. He was a tall slender man with dark hair, dark, deep-set eyes and a long jaw. His was a powerful face but somehow haunted. He was speaking with a woman in her late forties, her beauty undimmed by time. She was dressed in a chic black Lagerfeld suit, under which she wore a buttery silk blouse. A single strand of matched pearls glowed at her neck, and a gold band with the head of a woman incised into it circled one finger. She sat, wrists crossed over her knee, with a Zenlike serenity.

Outside could be seen rising the sterile white stonework of the Grande Arche de la Defense, which was not an arch at all but a cube with the center carved out of it. Fitting, in a way, Jordan thought, for Paris's modern-day monument to business. Farther away was the solid, magnificently carved Arc de Triomphe, monument to the triumphs of France's last great military hero, Napoleon Bonaparte.

The day was bright and clear with only a hint of clouds low on the northern horizon. The new sidewalks were filled with suits. Though they were from all over the world, you could not tell them apart. They spoke a common language, prayed to a common god, wished upon a common star, and that was commerce. After the cultureless euro, faceless electronic transfers, corporate takeovers that involved two, three or four countries, did any variations remain of the beauty that had flowered here for centuries?

Like everything else in this self-consciously postmodern sector of Paris, the facade of the building Lusignan et Cie owned was in keeping with its surroundings: contemporary, sleek, stark, entirely without character. The office complex was, however, the opposite, filled with Old World garnishments and charm, especially Jordan's office suite, which stretched away in Art Nouveau majesty. There were virtually no hard edges: everything, curved and sculpted in high relief, had an organic shape to it. On the shelves were artifacts from an earlier age-French and German sculpture from the 1920s, pottery from the nineteenth century, fragments of ancient religious scrolls, the guard of a sword purported to be from the Crusades-remnants of civilizations long past. This fascination with history, culture and religion was one of the things that had drawn Jordan and Bravo so closely together.

The intercom buzzed. Muhlmann's secretary said, "It's Monsieur Shaw. He says it's urgent."

Jordan hit the speakerphone switch and picked up the receiver. "Bravo, I have been trying to reach you-as usual." The anxiety in his voice was palpable. "Is everything all right?"

"It is now," Bravo said.

"Ah, bon, that's a relief!"

"But I'm coming to Paris immediately. I'll be arriving early tomorrow morning with a friend of mine, Jenny Logan, and I'll need transportation."

"Of course. You shall have it. Alors, you must tell me more of this Jenny Logan. This is good news, indeed. In the midst of your grief you have found a companion-what is the American word?-a girlfriend."

Bravo laughed. "Girlfriend? Not exactly." He cleared his throat. "Listen, Jordan, I think I ought to tell you that things have taken a very nasty turn here."

"Mon ami, what do you mean?"

"Not over the phone," Bravo said. "But whoever you send must be absolutely trustworthy, do you understand me?"

At that moment, the woman stood up, walked over to Jordan's desk. Her movements were flawless. She held in her magnificent, fierce face the full knowledge of who she was and what powers she possessed. She exuded an innate authority that made it clear it would be foolish either to deceive her or to oppose her.

"Bravo, un moment, s'il te plait." Jordan jabbed the hold button, looked up at her expectantly.

The woman parted her lips and said very softly, "Let me do it, my love."

Jordan shook his head. "It's too dangerous. After what happened with Dexter-"

"Don't fret, I'll be careful," she whispered. Then she smiled.

"Jordan, do you understand me?" Bravo repeated.

He hit the hold button again and said into the phone, "Mow ami, I hear the urgency in your voice and my concern for you grows deeper."

"Then you do understand."

"But of course," he said. "I will come myself."

"Isn't the quarterly companywide directors' meeting this week?"

"Tomorrow, in fact. Not to mention the Dutch, who have come in to finalize the deal you and I have been working on for almost a year."

"What about the Wassersturms?"

"That deal is dead, Bravo, you made certain of that."

"They've proved to be remarkably insistent."

"I'll take care of the Wassersturms, mon ami."

"Then there's no question, Jordan. As you have just confirmed, you have a company to run."

"But you're my friend-more than a friend."

"I know that and I appreciate it," Bravo said. "But send someone else. Please."

Jordan pondered his response to this request for a moment, then he nodded to the woman. "Bon, not to worry," he said into the phone, "I will send someone you know and trust."

"Thank you, Jordan," Bravo said with relief. "I won't forget this."

It was dark on the plane. Late at night, in the jumbo jet thirty-three thousand feet over the black, restless Atlantic, most of the passengers in business class were either asleep or watching the tiny glowing screens of the portable DVD players provided by the airline. But exhausted as Bravo and Jenny were, they could not find it within themselves to surrender to sleep.

Instead, theatrically spotlighted by the lights above their seats, they talked in low tones. There was an unconscious need in them both to get to know each other better. They had survived pitched battles, saved one another from almost certain death. Soldiers fighting side by side in the strange invisible war that defined the Voire Dei, they had forged a link more intimate than sex, and yet they were still strangers to one another.

"The only ones who had faith in me were my father and yours-and of course Paolo Zorzi, my instructor," Jenny was saying. "The others opposed my being allowed into the Order, let alone my becoming a Guardian." The full duskiness of her skin had returned, and in the vertical shaft of illumination it was possible to overlook the bruises and small cuts to which her skin had been lately subject. "But your father was very powerful; many in the Haute Cour were afraid of opposing him to his face."

A flight attendant came by with water, coffee, tea and juice, but they declined. Several individual lights were turned out, and it was even darker now inside the plane. By his calculation they were closer to Paris than they were to Washington.

"Was your initiation like mine?" he asked.

An ironic smile escaped her generous lips. "I'm a woman. It was nothing like yours."

"But you said my father and yours and this Paolo Zorzi believed in you."

Jenny nodded. "Yes, but there are some traditions that even they found impossible to ignore. I was given a simple black robe to dress in, then I was led to a small darkened windowless chamber. Save for four long candles in heavy brass sticks the room was bare, more like a prison cell or an executioner's chamber. It was very cold. The floor was made of ancient stone blocks. I was instructed to lie on my stomach and told to kiss the stone. A black shroud was draped over me. It was gauzy enough so that I could see the candles being placed at my head and feet. While I swore to give myself heart, mind and spirit to the Order, your father and Paolo Zorzi intoned an ancient prayer in a language I couldn't recognize."