Stanz stares, blinking. He has no idea where this is going, the lug. But Jack does, and he can't help smiling a secret smile.

"That's a long time," Gus drawls. "Lotta shit piles up in those years."

Understanding comes at last to Stanz. "Now, wait a minute."

"Five years ago, the Ochoa takedown," Gus continues as if Stanz hasn't said a word. "Along with the thirty kees of coke, twenty-five mil was found with him, but only twenty-three made it into the police evidence room. Eighteen months ago, a Hispanic down. Forensics found a gun in his hand, but we both know that when you shot him he was unarmed, 'cause you bought the gun from me. And, my goodness, I have the paperwork to prove it."

Stanz's face is flushed red. "Hey, you told me-"

"This's a game you don't wanna be playin' with me." Gus's inner rage has boiled up into his eyes.

Stanz turns away for a moment, gathering himself. At length, he says, "I'd never threaten you, Gus. You know that, we go back a long way."

Gus's bulk fills up the space; his rage seems to have sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

Stanz is trying his best not to breathe hard. "We good now?" he asks.

It looks like he can't wait to get the hell out of there.

IS PETE going to be all right?"

"The doctor says he will be," Jack said. "He's been taken to Bethesda Medical. He'll get the best of care."

Jack had volunteered to drive Chris Armitage home. A fine mesh of sleet slanted down from a pewter sky. The car's tires made a hissing noise as they slithered along the road.

Armitage shivered. "Until they torture him again."

"He won't be tortured again."

"Damn straight he won't." Armitage was huddled against the passenger's-side window, as far away from Jack as he could get. "I'm filing a complaint with the Attorney General's office."

"I'd advise against it." Jack got on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, heading toward the District. "If you do, Garner will haul you in again. I also guarantee the Attorney General won't ever see the complaint."

"Then I'll take it public-any one of the news outlets would jump at this story."

"Garner would love that. In the blink of an eye, he and his people will prove you're a crank, and whatever credibility you're trying to build for your movement will be shot to hell."

Armitage regarded him for a moment. "What are you? The good cop?"

"I'm the good guy," Jack said. "The only one you're likely to meet in the next few weeks."

Armitage appeared to chew this over for some time. "If you're such a good guy, tell me what the hell is going on."

Jack maneuvered around a lumbering semi. "I can't do that."

Armitage's voice was intensely bitter. "This is a nightmare."

Every twenty seconds, Jack's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. "Tell me about your organization."

Armitage grunted. "For a start, we're not E-Two. Nothing like it, in fact."

A gray BMW 5 Series had taken up station two cars behind theirs.

"But you know about E-Two." Jack was careful to keep whatever tension he was feeling out of his voice.

"Of course I do." Armitage pointed. "Can we get some more heat? I'm freezing."

Jack turned up the heater. "It's the fear draining out of you."

"Who says it's going? I feel like it'll be a part of me for the rest of my life."

Jack switched to the center lane. The gray BMW waited several minutes, then followed.

"Every movement has its radical element," Armitage was saying, "but to tar us with the same brush-well, it's like saying all Muslims are terrorists."

There was an exit coming up. Jack switched to the left lane. "You'd be surprised at how many Americans believe that."

"Fifty years ago, most Americans believed that Jews had horns," Armitage said. "That's part of what's wrong with this country, what we're fighting against."

Here came the gray BMW, nosing into the left lane.

"I can imagine Garner and his people still believing that," Jack said tartly.

"Why do you say 'Garner and his people'? Aren't you one of them?"

"I was brought in to keep them honest." That was one way to look at it, Jack thought. "Their philosophy isn't mine."

"Anyway, thank you. You probably saved Peter's life."

Jack was aware of Armitage studying his face.

"Unless it was all an act. Was it?"

"No, it wasn't."

"How do I know you're not lying?" Armitage said.

Jack laughed. "You don't."

"I don't see what's funny," Armitage said in a wounded voice.

"I was going to say, you have to take it on faith that I'm telling the truth."

Armitage managed a smile. "Oh, I have faith-faith in mankind, faith in science, faith that reason will win out over the engines of reinforcement built up by religion. Reason doesn't require a priest or a rabbi or an imam to exist."

"You sound very sure of yourself."

"I ought to," Armitage said. "I used to be a priest."

This interested Jack almost as much as the gray BMW did. "You fall out of bed?"

"I know what you're thinking-but, no, it wasn't a girl. It was more simple than that, really, and that made the revelation ever more profound. I woke up one day and realized that the world of religion was totally out of sync with the world I was living in, the world all around me, the world I was administering to. The bishops and archbishops I knew-my spiritual leaders-didn't have a clue about what was happening in the real world, and furthermore, they didn't care."

Armitage put his head back; his eyes turned inward. "One day, I made the mistake of voicing my concerns to them. They dismissed them out of hand, but from that moment on, I could tell that I was a danger to them. I was shut out of policy decisions even within my own parish."

They continued to move south on the parkway. "So you left."

Armitage nodded. "Whatever ties I'd felt with the irrational, faith-based world were severed. I found myself drawn instead to physics, quantum mechanics, organic chemistry-not as a scientist, per se, but as a means of understanding the world. I discovered that all these disciplines are empirical absolutes. They can be defined. Even better, they can be quantified. They're not subject to interpretation.

"Look, organized religions poison everything. They keep people superstitious, ignorant, and intolerant of anyone who's not like them. They also falsely bestow power on people who have no business being in power."

"Speaking of which," Jack said, "hold on."

He had been keeping to just under the speed limit, but with the off-ramp just over a hundred yards away, he floored the gas pedal. The car jumped forward. Jack hauled the wheel over, entering the center lane to an angry blare of horns. He slowed abruptly to allow a truck to get in front of him, then wedged the car into the right lane, onto the off-ramp at a frightening rate of speed.

Behind them, he could hear the shriek of rubber being flayed off the BMW's tires, the scream of horns, squeals of brakes being jammed on.

Armitage twisted around as far as his seat belt would allow. "You didn't lose them," he said.

"When I want to lose them," Jack said, "I will."

He prepared to turn off Dolley Madison Parkway almost immediately, making a left onto Kirby Road, but up ahead he saw one of those wheeled temporary signs with a grid of tiny lights blinking a message. The problem was, he couldn't read it. The array of lights swarmed like a hive of bees. He was coming up on it fast, there was no time to find his set point, to command his dyslexic brain to read what it refused to read, so he made the left off the parkway.

"What the hell are you doing?" Armitage shouted, bracing his hands against the dashboard.

Jack could see what he meant. The access to Kirby Road was blocked off. They sliced through a pair of wooden barricades, hit a potholed roadbed partially stripped to the bone. Workmen scattered, shouting and gesticulating wildly. The car dipped into a pothole, then bounced upward, coming down hard on its shocks.