"What's happening is a rather amateurish attempt at distraction," he said. "We are now of the opinion that the attack on your family was not really personal. It was meant merely to appear as such, to make us imagine that Baumer had returned to Germany after escaping his confinement in Guadeloupe. Attacking your family, then drawing you to Berlin, where you could be ambushed, would play out as a rather neatly packaged revenge scenario had Baumer been able to call on sufficiently competent help. Fortunately for you, he wasn't. Partly because we suspect that having rebuilt his networks quite quickly from the refugee cohort, which has arrived here in great numbers these last few years, he committed the best of his people to New York."

Caitlin shook her head and blinked away a moment of dizziness and nausea as they traversed the northern boundary of Tempelhof.

"So what, you think he's gone into piracy now? That doesn't make sense. That's not the guy I went after back in 2003. He's a believer, not a crook."

"Indeed he is," Dalby agreed. "And believers are always much more dangerous than your common garden-variety villains. That's why we've never lost interest in him. It's why, when he reached out to you through Richardson and his men, we were able to authorize this operation at such short notice and to resource it when there are so many calls on our resources because of New York. There are no coincidences, Caitlin."

"You knew? All the time?" she asked quietly.

Any other man who knew her would have immediately sensed the danger. But Dalby showed no sign of feeling threatened. Only tired.

"No, we didn't. We had our suspicions. I certainly had mine. But suspicions are so common as to be a worthless currency in our trade, Caitlin. We can only know what we know, and until then anything is possible. Up until a few hours ago it was possible that you would actually be reassigned to the very, very important job of finding out where the street traders of Neukolln are sourcing their plentiful supplies of cheap toasters and Levi's jeans. It was only after you were ambushed that I was able to convince our lords and masters you had more important work to do."

"In New York?" she asked.

"Yes," he said as he turned off the main road and onto a disused concrete laneway that led to an open gate on the airport's northeastern fringe. A short distance beyond that a Gulfstream V stood ready on the tarmac with its engines spooled up and cabin lights dimmed. Dalby pulled up as a man popped his head out of the hatchway just behind the cockpit and waved to them.

"I'm sorry I couldn't give you all of the information to which I was privy, Caitlin," he said. "But I honestly did not have much, and information is one thing, meaning is another. We now have, I think, a much better understanding of the meaning of what has happened in New York and how it connects to what happened to you."

"What is Baumer doing?" Caitlin asked as she struggled to maintain her temper.

"He has taken his people to the New World," Dalby said. "There to build a new world for them."

Caitlin was quiet for a moment as she took it all in: the deceit, the betrayals, the shifting agendas and interests. As much as the lines and details shifted and blurred, however, one thing remained constant. She had but one interest, finding the man who had used her family. That was worse, much worse, than imagining he had come after them as part of some intensely personal vengeance trip. He hadn't cared at all. Killing them meant nothing. It was a tactic to buy time, and not much time at that.

"This plane is one of ours. It will take you to a small airfield in upstate New York, where you'll transition to a military craft for insertion into New York. You'll be jumping in, I'm afraid, hopefully just before dawn over there. You're rated for HAHO operations, as I understand. You'll find all of the equipment you need at the other end," Dalby said.

"I won't need any equipment," she said. "I am going to kill him with the same hands that held my baby after he tried to take her from me."

Texas Administrative Division McDonald Lake was a small, brown, roughly triangular patch of brackish water hidden away in a thicket of dense forest a mile or two southeast of where Texas 155 crossed the Farm to Market Road 321. The woodlands, closely woven with black hickory, cedar, elm, sugarberry, and bunch grasses, enclosed a large fenced clearing where the cattle could graze safely without any danger that they might be observed by road agents. Miguel was also hopeful that the vegetation might smother some of the noise that always attended a herd, even now, late at night, with the animals content to stand around occasionally tearing mouthfuls of feed from the earth but mostly settling down to sleep.

A hard chill had returned with nightfall, and both he and Sofia were well wrapped up inside thick lamb's wool jackets. Both still wore their riding gloves, however, rather than thicker winter mittens, just in case they should suddenly have need of their weapons. Miguel still carried his Winchester and Lupara despite an offer from the Mormons of an assault rifle from their armory. The cowboy acknowledged the greater firepower and range of the M16s, but he preferred to work with a tool that felt as familiar in his hands as his reins. Sofia still carried her Remington, but now she also carried an M4 carbine she had picked up from one of the agents in Crockett. She had trained with the M16, a similar weapon, when they had first arrived in Texas and had taken to training with the carbine for half an hour at the end of each day.

They crunched across a small patch of gravel, the remnants of an old walking track that wound through the clearing. Miguel could hear the sound of the cattle splashing through the mud and water at the edge of the lake as they took a late-night drink. At the other end of the clearing two dark silhouettes, Adam and Ben Randall, patrolled the far edge of the herd. The cattle dogs, Red and Blue, kept pace with Miguel as he walked.

"Papa," she said quietly as they made their rounds of the herd.

"Yes, Princess," said Miguel in a low voice. Part of him was listening to his daughter, but part of him was constantly alive to the possibility that danger might be nearby.

"The men who killed all those people back in that town…"

"The road agents, in Palestine."

"Yes," said Sofia. "Do you think they are nearby?"

Miguel gave her shoulder a squeeze in the dark. "I hope not," he said. "But I think not, too. I think they would have been on us by now if they were near."

He could tell his daughter was not encouraged by the answer.

"We shall be fine," he added for her benefit. "If we are careful and vigilant, they will not surprise us as they did those settlers. And if they try, we shall give them the same treatment we gave those pirates when they attacked us on Miss Julianne's boat. You do remember that, don't you?"

"Of course, Papa. I was not a baby, you know. I even helped that day with the dressings and the ammunition."

Miguel grunted as he gave her a pat on the back.

"Yes you did, little one," he said. "You were very brave. All of the family was."

They both fell into a mournful silence then. Miguel pressed his lips together and shook his head as if in that gesture of denial he might somehow negate all that had happened. But, of course, there was no magic in the world. They simply trudged around the edge of the forest, occasionally squelching through a cowpat, unseen in the dark. Miguel felt Sofia's fingers reach out for and entwine with his.

"I miss Mama," she said. "And little Manny, and Abuela Ana, and…"

"I know, I know. I miss them all, too, every minute of every day, and while I sleep and when I wake. But I still have you, Sofia, and you I will not have taken from me."