"I found him," Fisher replied in French. He wore a disguise, not a good one, but enough that Vernier would have trouble giving an accurate description: a ball cap that hid Fisher's shaggy hair, dark glasses, and five days' worth of stubble.

"You can do it?" Vernier asked.

"Yes. I won't kill him, though."

"No? Why not? If it is money--"

"It's not money. Neither of us needs the trouble. If you hurt a deserving man, the police will smile in private; if you killa man--even if he's deserving of it--the prosecutors will force them to do their job. Trust me: When I'm done, Doucet won't ever be the same."

Vernier considered this, then nodded. "Do you want part of the money now?"

"No." Again Fisher felt a pang of guilt: If not necessary to his larger mission, he would tell Vernier to keep the money. Handling Doucet was a necessary public service. Even so, Fisher now gave Vernier instructions on where and when to leave the cash. "Once I've done the job, I'll pick it up. How is your daughter getting along?"

Vernier shrugged. "A bit better, we think. She is seeing a therapist. She has started talking to us, taking an interest in things. I want to thank you for--"

"Thank me by forgetting me. Forget me. Forget you hired me to do this. Don't talk about it to anyone. No bragging. For the next twenty-four hours, go out with your family and be seen. Do you understand?"

"An alibi."

"Yes."

Vernier studied Fisher for a few seconds. "Aren't you going to threaten me--tell me not to talk to the police?"

Fisher gave him a hard smile. "You won't tell the police."

"No, I suppose not." Fisher held his gaze until he said it again: "I won't."

"They will come see you, ask you questions. Don't be too quick with your alibi. Let them do the legwork. Tell them you're not sorry about what happened to Doucet, but you and your wife and daughter are just trying to move on with your lives. For a while everyone will assume you're responsible. Stick to your story and it will pass. Understood?"

"I understand."

"Keep your eye on the news Sunday. Leave the key for me later tonight. I'll collect." On Fisher's instructions, Vernier had left a manila envelope containing the money in a locker he'd rented at a local hostel. Once certain Fisher had in fact done the job, Vernier would leave the key under a bird feeder in the backyard.

Fisher stood up and extended his hand to the Frenchman. "Good luck to you."

"And you."

DOUCETand his gang of five had watched too many episodes of The Sopranos, and perhaps the Godfathertrilogy a dozen too many times, going so far as to have their own social club/communal apartment: a 2,500-square-foot Quonset-style warehouse in a largely abandoned industrial park on Reims's western outskirts. Every weekend night, after trolling the city's bars, they returned to the warehouse--sometimes with women they'd picked up but more often alone--where they drank and watched bad kung fu movies until dawn.

FISHERtailed them on foot for an hour, just long enough to be sure they were sticking to their Saturday-night routine of barhopping, then walked back to his car and drove to the industrial park. He found a spot a half mile from the warehouse, then walked the remaining distance, making a complete circuit of the side streets before spiraling inward to the bolt-hole he'd scouted earlier. It was nearly eleven, so the area was dark and quiet. He found the thicket of trees that bordered the warehouse's loading ramp and settled down to wait. He had time to think.

In the space of a year his life had taken a dramatic turn. Not that he hadn't expected it, but the adjustment had been tougher than he'd anticipated. Before . . . now,he thought. Before: a covert soldier, a Splinter Cell for Third Echelon, the NSA's top secret operations branch. Now: a countryless mercenary. A murderer. No, it was worse than that, wasn't it? He was a man who had betrayed and murdered one of his oldest and finest friends: Lambert .None of it seemed real, as though the whole thing were a fuzzily remembered movie he'd seen long ago.

Someday, perhaps, the truth would come out and the situation would be judged differently, but today wasn't that day, and there was no guarantee that day would come at all. For now he would deal with what was in front of him and keep looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. At this thought, Fisher smiled. What was that old saying? "Be careful the light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train."

Overhead spread a rumble of thunder, followed moments later by a flash of lightning to the south. A soft rain began to fall, pattering on the leaves around him. He pulled up his hood and kept watching.

SHORTLYbefore 1:00 A.M., Doucet's rust-on-white, hubcapless Citroen Relay van pulled into the driveway alongside the warehouse and followed it to the circular turnaround behind the loading dock. With a soft squealing of brakes, the Relay pulled to a stop twenty feet from where Fisher crouched. From inside, there came laughter and shouting. No female voices, as far as Fisher could tell. The Relay's side door slid open, and the Doucet gang came tumbling out, each of them barely negotiating the step down to the tarmac. This, Fisher thought, was going to be disappointingly easy. In his weeklong surveillance of the gang, he'd seen no guns but plenty of knives and truncheons. The two acts of violence he'd witnessed--group beatings administered to passersby for some slight, real or imagined--had confirmed what Fisher had already guessed: Doucet and his gang were bullies, but they were also good street fighters. No matter. Tonight good wasn't going to be good enough, and he had no intention of letting it descend into a fight--at least not a fair one. No such thing in this business.

Doucet emerged from the van. Despite the chilling rain, he wore red nylon Nike track pants and a tight white T-shirt that accentuated his muscles.

"Hey, Andre, get the damned door open, huh!" he yelled.

Andre hurried up the loading-dock steps to the door. He looked up, noted the dimmed light fixture Fisher had disabled earlier, and gave it a tap with his finger. The light stayed dark. Another tap. Still dark.

"Andre!" Doucet drunkenly stumbled toward the steps. "Forget that!"

Andre got the door opened, and Doucet stepped through, followed by the rest.

FISHERgave them ten minutes to settle in, grab a fresh round of beers, and start whatever kung fu movie was on the night's playbill; then he shed his rucksack and retrieved the pair of two-by-fours he'd stashed under a pile of leaves earlier that day. He walked down the driveway to the front of the building and braced the first two-by-four under the front door's knob, then returned to the rear and did the same to the loading-dock door. He returned to the trees and retrieved his rucksack.

At the top of the loading ramp, he boosted himself onto the railing, then, with one hand braced on the wall, leaned forward until he could reach the defunct, car-sized air-conditioning unit affixed to the warehouse's back wall. Once he had a good grip on the unit, he stepped off the rail with his left foot and placed it on a flange jutting from the AC unit. He followed with his other hand and foot, then boosted himself atop the unit. From there it was a short climb up the utility ladder to the roof. Walking catfooted, he crossed the corrugated sheet metal until he reached the skylight; this, too, he'd already surveyed. He'd found it unlocked, but the hinges were squeaky, so he'd fixed them with a few squirts of silicone grease from a flip-top travel bottle. He lowered himself flat, pressed his ear to the sheet metal, and listened: laughter and, in the background, melodramatic martial-arts shouting and tinny movie music. Fisher lifted the skylight hatch until it rested against the roof, then slipped his legs through, feeling around until his right foot found a ladder rung. He climbed down a few feet, reached up, and closed the skylight, then climbed down to the floor. He was in a closet adjoining the bathroom. The previous owner had turned the warehouse's raised office area, which occupied the rear third of the space, into an open apartment that now overlooked the Doucet gang's social club--a collection of tattered recliners and couches clustered around a fifty-inch LCD TV.