“Everybody gets bucked off now and then, I guess. You and Billy still hitting the books?”

“Well she makes up these exams, you know, like the College Boards or something. It’s a lot tougher than we figured it’d be.”

“You’ll make it.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“How’s your mom?”

“Kind of bored. You know.”

“I know. It’s hard on her. But it’ll be over very soon. Put your mother on again, will you?”

“Dad——”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. I kind of miss you, that’s all.”

“I miss you too, Ron.”

“Here, hang on a minute.”

Jan came on the line; Mathieson said, “I’m going to put Caruso on. He wants to make sure you’re both all right. Answer any questions he asks but don’t tell him where you are.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“It’s right down to the wire. We’re almost there with this thing. One week—that’s the timetable.”

“I hope so, Fred. I hope so. Good luck.”

There was a click; a woman said, “Your three minutes are up, sir.”

He plugged money into the phone and beckoned to Caruso. Jan said, “When will you call again?”

“Make it Wednesday at six. I may have more to report by then. Here’s Caruso.”

He handed the receiver over. Caruso gave him an apologetic glance and Mathieson walked back around the station wagon and got in. Through the window he watched Caruso but the man’s face told him very little. Caruso was patient and thorough, asking brief questions, listening carefully to the answers: probably listening more to the tone than to the content. It was obvious when Ronny took over the phone; Caruso began to smile broadly and became more animated talking to the boy. Mathieson saw him scoop up some of the coins he’d left on the shelf and put them in the phone. The conversation went on at length; evidently Caruso was talking with Jan again; finally he cradled the phone and got into the car.

Mathieson said, “All right?”

“Yes. Nobody’s holding a gun on them. You understand why we had to do this. We had to make sure.”

“Pastor hasn’t got a lever on me, you know. It’s the other way around.” Mathieson drove back out toward the plane.

“What kind of lever?”

“Take my word for it, you don’t want to know that.”

“If it works I’m in favor, whatever it is.” He drew up at the foot of the stairs and Caruso got out and made a hand signal to Cuernavan. “OK, bring them out.”

5

They had changed as one expected men to change after an interval of more than eight years. Benson’s shoulders had rounded, he’d lost a lot of hair on top, he’d developed a paunch and he squinted through his glasses. Draper had always been cadaverous and he’d put on no weight, but the years had engraved deep brackets around his mouth and had crosshatched his skin as if he’d been using a rabbit-wire screen for a pillow. John Fusco was still the same squat hard fireplug of a man but his kinky hair had gone gray and he had scars on his face that hadn’t been there before.

They’d never had anything in common except their testimony against Frank Pastor. Benson had been a bookkeeper in one of Pastor’s operations and had seen Pastor on the premises two or three times when illegal money had changed hands. Draper had been a gopher in Ezio Martin’s office; he was the one who had gone to the bank that day and withdrawn the cash and delivered it to Pastor—the cash that Pastor had put into a white envelope and handed to the judge in the courthouse men’s room. John Fusco had been an enforcer, George Ramiro’s aide-de-camp; he’d been nailed in a truck hijacking and had testified against Pastor in return for immunity from prosecution on the hijacking charge. None of their evidence had been crucial to the case but it had contributed: Defense attorneys had tried to discredit the three men but the weight of their testimony, coupled with Mathieson’s, had been enough to convince the jury.

Mathieson had no idea what Fusco or Draper had been doing since he’d last seen them in the courtroom. He knew that Benson had been managing a store in Oklahoma. They were four strangers thrown together by a common enemy.

Driving down narrow roads through the Pennsylvania mountains he briefed them to the extent that the situation required:

“We’re putting pressure on him. Part of the pressure consists of informing him that the odds against him are high. The more people we can show him on our side, the more impressive we look and the more convincing our operation becomes. We want him to think there are so many people in this thing that he couldn’t possibly reach all of us before some of us strike back. I can’t fill in too many details today.

“When we’ve had the films developed and edited we’ll prepare copies of all the important materials and have a complete set delivered to each one of you through Glenn Bradleigh’s office. I’d suggest you each make independent arrangements with someone you trust—maybe a lawyer—to put the tapes and films in safekeeping with a letter of instructions to be opened in the event anything happens to you. That part will be up to you, of course. That’s how I’m handling it myself and it’s always the most sensible method of protecting yourself against retaliation from people like Pastor. Now you’d better not ask me what it’s in retaliation for. You’ll be finding that out for yourselves.

“What we’re going to do today is gather our group in front of a movie camera. There’ll be the four of us and three other men who’ve been working with me. Two of the men you’re going to meet will be wearing stocking masks at all times. You’ll never find out who they are. That’s to give us insurance against Pastor trying to put pressure on any of you to identify all the members of the group. Pastor himself will never find out who those two men are. Therefore he’ll never know where the attack comes from, if he tries anything against the rest of us.

“That sums up the highlights. I’ll try to answer questions if you’ve got them.”

6

When he drove the station wagon into the ghost town he saw the glint of the lens in the window of the shack at the top of the slope. He had a glimpse of Anna Pastor’s dark hair framed in the window as well. Roger was up there, working the zoom lens, holding Anna Pastor in the foreground of the picture while in the background he focused on the station wagon as its four occupants emerged. Vasquez and Homer, unrecognizable in stocking masks, emerged from one of the tumbledown structures and joined Mathieson by the car.

“Two of my associates. There’s no need for names. These are Mr. Benson, Mr. Draper and Mr. Fusco.” He turned and lifted an arm in signal to Roger; then he walked up the hill and entered the cabin, leaving the five men on the road below.

Roger picked up the camera on its tripod. “Now I go down and take group shots and two-shots while they mingle, right?”

“Right. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Roger carried the Arriflex out. Mathieson turned his attention to Anna Pastor.

Her arms were tied behind her and her legs were roped to the chair. Mathieson walked past her and pulled the improvised shutter across the window; he didn’t want her to be seen or recognized by the visitors.

“We’re ten miles from the nearest house,” he said. “I’m not going to put a gag in your mouth because nobody would hear you if you screamed. Nobody except my own people. We’re having a little convention, as you may have gathered.”

“To celebrate your funeral, I imagine.”

“There’s only one door and we’ll be watching it from outside. I can give you another shot or leave you tied to the chair. Which do you prefer?”

“I’ve had enough drugs pumped into me to last ten years. If you’re giving me a choice I’ll stay like this.”

“It’ll be an hour or two. Then we head home.”

“Home,” she said. Even in the dimness her eyes burned.

“Take it easy, Mrs. Pastor. If those three men knew you were here you might not get out of this shack alive. After what your husband’s done to them they’d probably be happy to take you apart bone by bone. You’d be well advised to keep absolutely quiet up here until they’ve gone.”