"Remember literature, Charlie? It involved getting drunk and getting laid."

"Come to the Chesterfield at seven. You'll have some time to look at the poems you're going to read. Then we'll go off together. And when it's over, a late dinner, just the two of us. I want to talk about your book."

Bill felt better about the reading now that he knew someone was paying his hotel bill. He put a menu card on the coffee table and got his medication tin from his jacket pocket. He emptied the contents onto the card, a total of four uncut tablets. The rest of his supply sat in prescription vials of lovely amber plastic in a bureau drawer in his bedroom at home. Depressants, anti-depressants, sleep-inducers, speed-makers, diuretics, antibiotics, heart-starters, muscle relaxants. In front of him now were three kinds of sedatives and a single pink cortical steroid for intractable skin itches. Pathetic. But of course he hadn't known he'd be doing Boston and London. And the meager sampling would not diminish the surgical pleasure of slicing and dividing, the happy sacrament of color mixing. He bent over the low table, wrapped in the calm that fell upon him when he was cutting up his pills. He liked the sense of soldierly preparation, the diligence and rigor that helped him pretend he knew what he was doing. It was the sweetest play of hand and eye, slicing the pills, choosing elements to take in combination. It was right there on the card, nicely and brightly pebbled, a way to manage the confusion, to search out a state of being, actually shop among the colors for some altering force that might get him past a momentary panic or some mischance of the body or take him safely through the long evening tides, the western end of the day, a wash of desperation coming over him.

He regretted not having his illustrated guides with their cautions and warnings and side effects and interactions and lovely color charts. But he hadn't known he'd be doing an ocean.

He concentrated deeply, sectioning the tablets with his old scarred stag-handle folding knife, undetected by security at three airports.

The taxi swung onto Southwark Bridge. Bill had the poems in his lap and occasionally raised a page to his face, muttering lines. A soft warm rain made shaded patterns on the river, bands of wind-brushed shimmer.

Charlie said, "About this fellow."

"Who?"

"The fellow in Athens who initiated the whole business. I'd like to get your sense of the man."

"Is he Lebanese?"

"Yes. A political scientist. He says he's only an intermediary, with imperfect knowledge of the group in Beirut. Claims they're eager to release the hostage."

"Are they a new fundamentalist element?"

"They're a new communist element."

"Are we surprised?" Bill said.

"There's a Lebanese Communist Party. There are leftist elements, I understand, aligned with Syria. The PLO has always had a Marxist component and they're active again in Lebanon."

"So we're not surprised."

"We're not unduly surprised."

"I depend on you to tell me when we're surprised."

Two detectives met them in a deserted street not far from Saint Saviours Dock. There was renovation in progress in the area but the buildings here were still intact, mainly red brick structures with hoists and loading bays. They approached an old grain-warehouse leased to a plumbing-supply firm that had just gone out of business. The police had arranged entry and there was still a working telephone.

The four men went inside. They checked the open space being used for the conference. A rostrum, folding chairs, auxiliary lighting. Then they went into the main office and Charlie telephoned his colleagues and told them to load the bus and come ahead. Bill looked around for a toilet. Seconds after Charlie hung up, the phone rang. One of the detectives answered and all of them could hear the voice at the other end shouting, "Bomb, bomb, bomb," and the man's accent made it sound like boom boom boom. This seemed pretty funny to Bill, who had to take a leak and saw no reason to do it in the street.

The call annoyed the detectives. One of them anyway. The other just gazed across the office at a bookshelf filled with specification manuals. Bill found a toilet and was the last one out. One detective took up a position near the front door and the second man moved their car about fifty yards up the street and then called headquarters.

Charlie said, "I wish I understood the point."

He and Bill went across the street and waited for the bomb unit to arrive and search the building.

"The point is control," Bill said. "They want to believe they have the power to move us out of a building and into the street. In their minds they see a hundred people trooping down the fire stairs. I told you, Charlie. Some people make bombs, some people make phone calls."

Soon they were talking about something else. The rain stopped. Charlie crossed the street, said something to the detective and came back shrugging. They talked about a book Charlie was doing. They talked about the day Charlie's divorce became final, six years earlier. He recalled the weather, the high clear sky, distanceless, flags whipping on Fifth Avenue and a movie actress getting out of a taxi. Bill reached for his handkerchief. The blast made him jerk half around but he didn't leave his feet or go back against the wall. He felt the sound in his chest and arms. He jerked and ducked, shielding his head with his forearm, windows blowing out. Charlie said goddamn or go down. He turned his back to the blast wave, bracing himself against the wall with his elbows, hands clasped behind his head, and Bill knew he would have to remember to be impressed. He also knew it was over, nothing worse coming, and he straightened up slowly, looking toward the building but reaching out to touch Charlie's arm, make sure he was still there, standing and able to move. The detective across the street was in a deep crouch, fumbling with the radio on his belt. The street was filled with glass, snowblinking. The second detective remained in the car a moment, calling in, and then walked toward his partner. They looked over at Charlie and Bill. Dust hung at the second-storey level of the warehouse. The four men met in the middle of the street, glass crunching under their shoes. Charlie brushed off his lapels.

The bomb experts arrived and then the press bus and some publishing people, more detectives, and Bill sat in the back of the unmarked police car while Charlie huddled with different groups making new plans.

About an hour later the two men sat under the vaulted skylight in a dining room at the Chesterfield, eating the sole.

"It means a day's delay. Two at the most," Charlie said. "You definitely ought to change hotels so we can move quickly once we're set."

"You showed presence of mind, taking that protective stance."

"Actually that's the recommended air-crash position. Except you don't do it standing up. I knew I was supposed to lower my head and lock my hands behind my neck but I couldn't place the maneuver in context. I thought I was on a plane going down."

"Your people will find another site."

"We have to. We can't stop now. Even if we go to the bare minimum. Fifteen people in five rowboats on a secluded lake somewhere."

"Anybody have a theory?"

"I talk to an antiterrorist expert tomorrow. Want to come along?"

"Nope."

"Where are you staying?"

"I'll be in touch, Charlie."

"Rowboats are not the answer, come to think of it. Isn't that where they got Mountbatten?"

"Fishing boat."

"Close enough."

Bill knew someone was looking at him, a man sitting alone at a table across the room. It was interesting how the man's curiosity carried so much information, that he knew who Bill was, that they'd never met, that he was making up his mind whether or not to approach. Bill even knew who the man was, although he could not have said how he knew. It was as if the man had fitted himself to a predetermined space, to an idea of something that was waiting to happen. Bill never looked at the man directly. Everything was a shape, a fate, information flowing.