“What regime?”

“Shh.” She held up her hand, listening. She suddenly stiffened. “Oh, my God.”

“Eve?”

She shook her head. Dear God, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Stop shaking. Do your job. Make sure it’s being recorded. She glanced at the panel. Yes, it was okay.

Joe frowned. “You’re white as a sheet. What the devil are—” He fell silent, watching her.

It was a full ten minutes before she took the earpiece out of her ear. “It’s the Three Gorges Dam in China. Do you remember that PBS special we watched last year on the dam being built on the Yangtze River?”

“Yeah. The biggest project since the building of the Great Wall. It’s supposed to generate eighteen thousand megawatts of electricity and control flooding.” She nodded. “Three hundred thousand people have died in the last century from the flooding of the Yangtze. It’s a killer river.” She drew a deep breath. “The dam is the target. They’ve decided they have to move fast before the first stage is finished.

The construction is still in semi-chaos and will be easy to sabotage right now. But the Chinese government is pulling in the reins, and the security is going to be tightened.”

“Sabotage?”

She nodded. “It has to be done before November third, when the increased security is going into effect. That’s why they had to make sure to have the meeting no later than the twenty-ninth. As it is, they have only a few days to implement. If they don’t get a majority and move fast, then they’ll have to wait until the dam is completed and it will be much more difficult.” She moistened her lips. “Can you imagine the devastation… ?”

“Too well. Why are they doing it?”

“The power generated by the dam will be a tremendous boost to the Chinese economy. The economy is moving too fast under the present regime, and the Cabal is having problems controlling it.” Her lips twisted bitterly. “Control is clearly the name of the game with the Cabal.”

“And, if the dam fails, the regime could fall with it.”

“That’s the plan. And the new regime would have a few high-placed Cabal members. Control.”

“Nasty.”

“Tragic.” She closed her eyes. “God knows how many people will die as a result of the sabotage…” Her lids flew open; she straightened in the chair and put the piece back in her ear. “Let’s see if they have any more dirty tricks in the works. We can’t stop them if we don’t know what—”

“Dirty tricks?” Nathan asked from behind them. He shut the door and came into the van. “What’s happening?”

“Sabotage of the Three Gorges Dam in China,” Joe said.

Nathan gave a low whistle. “So that’s the agenda.”

“That seems to be the subject of everyone’s conversation.” Eve turned another knob. “I’m trying to find out if there’s anything else crucial going on.”

“I’d bet it’s gonna get more interesting,” Nathan said. “Melton should be the next to get here. I followed him as far as the perimeter road and then cut around here. Did you get a count?”

“Fifty-two,” Eve said. “And Joe got a shot of every one of them.”

“Be sure you get Melton.” Nathan lifted binoculars to his eyes. “Here he comes…”

“Bingo,” Joe said as Melton disappeared into the building. “The good senator recorded for posterity.”

“Your bright light is shining clear and true,” Eve told Nathan.

“Truth is a beautiful word, isn’t it?” Nathan’s gaze fastened on the concrete building. “So clean and simple.”

“Looks like that’s it.” Joe stood and headed for the door. “I’m going to scout around and make sure those guards are sticking inside the fence. We don’t want to be surprised.”

“Good idea.” Eve adjusted another dial. “Because the meeting’s come to order.

Melton is giving a welcome address.”

“They must all be here.” Nathan moved toward the door. “I’ll go and give the FBI a call and then see if I can help Quinn.”

“Wait, Nathan.”

“We have to move fast now, or the whole show is—” He stopped as he saw the gun in her hand. “Eve? What the hell are you doing?”

“Franklin Copeland was a very good man. Didn’t you feel even a twinge of conscience when he died?”

He gazed at her in bewilderment. “Why should I? I didn’t kill him.”

“You didn’t kill him. You just let him die.”

He went still. “I beg your pardon? I went to the Secret Service. They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Joe called the Secret Service again this afternoon and did some more in-depth questioning. You went to them four hours after I called you. Four hours, Nathan.”

“It took me a while to get in to see them. Red tape. It wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway.”

“It might have made a difference if you hadn’t deliberately made the Secret Service agents think you were unbalanced. Agent Wilson said you were raving when you came to the house. No wonder they didn’t believe you.”

“I was frantic, dammit. I couldn’t get them to listen. Not that they would have found anything suspicious, anyway. Hebert was too smart for us.”

“Actually, they did find something—once Joe persuaded them to go to the house with him for a search earlier tonight. It was the filter on the vent in Copeland’s bedroom. It was coated with a substance that reacted in his lungs like mold. Every breath Copeland took weakened his lungs and helped to bring on his asthma attacks.”

“Diabolical.”

“Hebert said it was planned down to the last gasp. I’m sure the doctors in the Cabal measured out the irritant to cause a final seizure no later than the twenty-seventh. That way the funeral could be scheduled for two days later, and it would

«be perfectly natural for all the members to be flying into the area before the twenty-ninth.” She paused. “Copeland was a fine man. You shouldn’t have let him die.”

“I told you that—” His gaze narrowed on her face. “That’s the second time you said that. Ridiculous. Why would I have let him die?”

“Because you didn’t want the Cabal meeting to be canceled. You wanted them all here. You’ve been planning this from the moment Etienne told you that the Cabal was meeting in Boca Raton.”

“But he didn’t tell me.”

“Yes, he did. Why wouldn’t he tell you? He liked you and trusted you. You’d been working on him for two years to make sure he’d feel that way.”

“Two years?”

“Since he came to work for you at the research center.”

“What?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, no more pretense. It’s over. You’re not Bill Nathan.” His brows lifted. “I’m not?” He tilted his head. “Then who am I? Now, let me see.

A good reporter should be able to make a decent guess at where you’re going with all this. You believe I’m Thomas Simmons?”

She shook her head. “Another red herring. How long did you think you could keep me from knowing that you were Harold Bently?” A flicker of expression crossed his face. “What? Are you crazy?”

“Joe got a call from his precinct about the explosion that killed Jennings. The car wasn’t rigged. The bomb was in the skull itself, and triggered by a remote device.” She paused. “And the skull wasn’t the one I worked on. It wasn’t a human skull at all. It was a very good imitation, made of plastic and coated with clay. Now, it was obviously switched. I had to ask myself who had the opportunity to substitute the plastic skull for Victor, and why. Then Galen called us and told me Hughes had caught a glimpse of some kind of metal glinting beneath the porch at the lake cottage.

He found a very small, very sophisticated long-range listening device. The rains had washed away the pile of leaves it was hidden under. Someone wanted to know exactly what was going on in our cottage, and there was no way Hebert could have gotten that close. But you were out there on the porch most of the evening, and you were on the steps when I came out of the cottage when Jennings’s car blew up. You could have monitored Jennings’s conversation with Rusk and then blown the car. It all began to come together. I asked Galen to find some pictures of Simmons and scan them into the computer. Lo and behold: Victor wasn’t Harold Bently at all, but Thomas Simmons.”