He had known and respected Max Simon formany years. They had grown up together, joined OSS together, been friends alltheir lives. A Jewish kid who lost his father to the Reds and had made it toAmerica on a tough winter crossing like Massey and his father.

Massey looked down as he rolled up hissleeve.

There was a small tattoo on his wrist, ofa white dove. Two urchin kids up in Coney Island for a day's fun and chasinggirls, and Max had wanted the tattoos to cement their friendship. He had been agentle soul, Max, who only wanted to do his best for his adopted country, andthe little girl had been the only family he had. Massey shook his head and feltthe anger rise inside him again, then toweled his face dry and went into hisstudy.

He made the phone calls he needed to makeand then he poured himself a large Scotch and took a pad and pen and went overthe plan again, looking for flaws.

The Assistant Director was right aboutone thing; the plan was something Massey could work with. But there wereinnumerable dangers. For starters, Stalin's Moscow was an alien place and fewWesterners were allowed to enter the city.

He thought of Anna Khorev as he sat theresipping the Scotch and making notes. The details of the plan would be up . tohim, and even though her background was ideal for the mission he dislikedhaving to use her. According to Branigan, the latest report by her case officerhad been favorable and she had settled into her new life and was making goodprogress. But Massey really wondered if she would be up to such a missionmentally and physically after barely three months since her escape. He alsoknew he was sending her to certain death if it failed.

And something worried him about sendingher in with Stanski.

He had the file Branigan had given himand although Massey knew Alex Stanski's background it still made interestingreading.

He was a naturalized American citizen,but Russian-born, aged thirty-five. They had worked together during the warwhen Stanski was one of a small group of highly trained assassins OSS ran intooccupied France and Yugoslavia to help the resistance groups operating againstthe Germans. Stanski had worked under the code name Wolf. If a German commanderor Nazi official in the occupied countries became particularly unpleasant tothe resistance, OSS sometimes sent in an assassin to kill him. But it had toappear like an accident so the Germans wouldn't suspect partisan involvementand exact reprisals against the civilian population. Stanski was one of theirtop agents and expert at making the deaths look a mishap.

Concerning his past, Massey knew therewould be very little in the file, except to indicate a determined but lonecharacter.

As a boy, Alex Stanski had escaped from astate orphanage in Moscow, He had managed to get aboard a train for Riga andeventually stowed away on a Norwegian frigate bound for Boston.

When the American authorities were landedwith him they didn't quite know what to do with an obviously disturbedtwelve-year-old. They guessed something distressing had happened to the childbecause of his psychological state-he was withdrawn and rebellious and behavedlike a wildcat-and he told them virtually nothing about his past, despite thebest efforts of the psychologists.

Eventually, someone had the idea to sendhim to stay with a Russian-speaking imigrant living in New Hampshire, a trapperand hunter, who agreed to take the boy for a time. The forests up near theCanadian border had once teemed with Russian immigrants. It was remote, wildterritory where the long cold winters and the snow made their exile seem lessalien.

Somehow the boy settled in and everyonegladly washed their hands of the matter. There he remained until he joined OSSin 1941.

No one ever learned what happened to hisfamily and parents but everyone who worked with Stanski in OSS guessed it wassomething pretty bad. One look at those cold blue eyes of his told you thatsomething disturbing had once happened to him.

Long ago Massey thought he had guessedthe truth. There was a sick joke Stalin had devised. If anyone opposed him, heas often as not had them killed. If the victim was a man with a family, hiswife and any children above the age of twelve were also put to death. But ifthe children were younger than twelve they were sent to a state orphanage andbrought up like good communists, turned into the one thing their parentsprobably despised.

He guessed that had been Alex Stanski'sfate.

Another thing-the KGB had the pick of theorphanage crop. They ran every state orphanage in Russia, and many of theirrecruits came from those same institutions. Massey always reckoned theyprobably lost the best killer they ever could have had in Stanski.

He spoke fluent German and Russian andcould kill ruthlessly and in cold blood. The most recent assassination had beenof a senior KGB officer visiting East Berlin, which Stanski had carried out forthe CIA at the request of the immigrant group, NTS.

Massey removed an envelope from the fileand slid out a photograph of the colonel named Grenady Kraskin. It showed ahard-faced man with thin lips and small, evil eyes.

Assassinated was too nice a word. Kraskinhad his penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth. It wasn't a calling cardStanski inflicted on his prey, but according to the file Kraskin had liked toperform that particular kind of brutal mutilation on his male victims. Stanskiliked to make the punishment fit the crime, ignoring orders to desist from suchbehavior. But Branigan and Wallace had been right; there was no one moresuitable Massey could think of to carry out the mission.

He slid the photograph back into theenvelope. He had a 7 A.M, start and it was a long drive to Kingdom Lake in NewHampshire.

The grim sight of the bodies of Max andNina lying in the morgue kept coming into his mind, and Massey knew that nomatter what Branigan had said, he personally couldn't let the matter restthere. Whoever was responsible for what had happened to Max Simon was going topay the price, even if it meant stepping outside the bounds, something Masseyrarely if ever did.

But this was personal.

It was almost an hour later when helooked up and heard distant bells chime in the church of the Holy Trinity. Hestood and went down to the basement and selected the key from the ring in hispocket and unlocked the door.

The two loose firebricks were above thecellar door, a safe hiding place he used whenever he was working at home,rather than leave any notes or files lying around or in locked drawers or asafe that could be broken into. He placed the yellow pad with his notes and themanila folder inside the recess and replaced the bricks. Stanski's file hewould return to Branigan.

It was just after 5 P.m. on the afternoonof Thursday, 22 January, two days after the inauguration of Dwight D.Eisenhower as President of the United States.

New Hampshire. January 23rd The NewEngland towns and villages with their brightly painted clapboard houses lookedpretty in the light dusting of snow.

Jake Massey crossed the Massachusettsstate line into New Hampshire in the late afternoon and took the road northwestto Concord. There was hardly any traffic on the road and half an hour later hedrove the Buick down through a thickly forested track that led to Kingdom Lake.He saw the snow-capped mountains in the distance and a signboard at the trackentrance proclaimed, "Trespassers Keep Out!"

Massey switched off the engine andclimbed out of the Buick. There was a narrow wooden veranda at the front of thecabin and he went up the steps. The front door was unlocked and the room hestepped into was empty.

Massey called out "Anybodyhome?" but there was no reply.

The room looked neat and tidy but hethought the place could have done with a woman's touch. It was barely furnishedwith a scratched pinewood table and two chairs set in the center, and severalpairs of deer antlers hung on the Walls. There was a tiny kitchen in the back,the utensils and plates neatly stored on the spotless wooden shelves. Masseynoticed a rifle storage rack in a corner. Two of the weapons were missing.