The bastard, he kept saying to himself. His anger was balanced by apprehension. The situation was out of control.

Toweling himself roughly, he risked a glance at the bathroom mirror and was startled by how ravaged his mouth and cheek were. Initially, trauma had numbed the injuries, but now pain overtook them. Even so, he couldn’t risk swallowing the pills the doctor had given him. He had no idea what they were or how strong. Bellasar might have told the doctor to drug him. I’ve got to think clearly.

After putting on boxer shorts and a T-shirt, Malone picked up a small sketch pad he always kept on his bedside table. He sat against the headboard, closed his eyes to focus his memory, then opened them and started drawing the face of the Russian he had seen the morning he’d arrived and again tonight. Oval face, deep eyes, high forehead. Concentrating to remember whether the man’s jaw was pronounced or shallow, whether his eyebrows were arched or straight, Malone drew hurriedly. As the likeness took shape, he refined it, recalling more details, making it more vivid. Finally satisfied after twenty minutes and three attempts, he set the drawing aside and began to sketch the other Russian, the tall, stocky man with thick eyebrows and blocky features. This one took longer. It wasn’t until a half hour later that Malone was satisfied.

Immediately he turned it and the first sketch upside down so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at them. Beginning the process anew, searching his memory, using shortcuts that the process of doing the first sketch had taught him, he was able to produce another likeness of the first Russian much quicker, in less than ten minutes. He did the same with a new sketch of the second Russian. He compared these sketches with the previous ones and assured himself that they were more or less identical, that his memory wasn’t straying. He went through the process again. And again. Each version took less time, and each was the same as the others.

When he was confident that his memory had been so reinforced that he’d be able to produce a sketch of either man at will, he folded each eight-by-ten-inch piece of paper into one-inch strips so the sheets resembled accordions. He opened each accordion enough so it could stand upright in the bathroom sink. He struck a match and lit the top of each accordion, watching the flame burn down to the bottom. The accordion shape caused the page to burn evenly and completely. Equally important, it resulted in almost no smoke. The trick was something he had learned in an otherwise-long-forgotten high school physics class. Who says education’s wasted on the young? he thought as he washed the ashes down the sink. He would have torn the pages into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet, but he couldn’t be sure that some of the pieces wouldn’t drift back up later, as toilet paper sometimes did, and be discovered when the maid came in to clean the room. She might have instructions to tell Bellasar about anything unusual that she found, and if Bellasar ever learned that Malone had sketched the Russians, that would be all the evidence Bellasar would need.

His lips and cheekbone throbbed as he opened the window to make sure every slight trace of smoke dispersed. Satisfying himself that everything was in order, he shut off the light and crawled into bed. The time was almost 5:00 A.M.

But he didn’t sleep.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“I missed you at breakfast,” Malone said.

At the entrance to the sunroom, Sienna looked down at her feet. “I wasn’t hungry.”

Although her movements weren’t as listless as the night before, she still didn’t seem alert. Her face was puffy. Her skin was pale. Her eyes had slight hollows beneath them. Perhaps because she knew she didn’t appear at her best, she kept her gaze slightly away from him. Or perhaps she wanted to avoid seeing what had been done to him.

“How bad does it hurt?” She still didn’t look at his face.

“I’d give you a stiff-upper-lip attitude, but my upper lip is too mashed.” It was a weak attempt at humor, but at the moment, weary from a sleepless night and afraid of how she was going to react to what he planned to tell her, he couldn’t think of anything else. Worse, how was he going to appeal to her if she wouldn’t even look at him? The gash on his cheek had swollen. His mouth was scabbed. It was a wonder she didn’t run from him in horror.

“And you?” he asked softly. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better.”

“How was Istanbul?”

“Humid. Crowded.”

“What I meant was -”

“I know what you meant. I think we should talk about something else.” She wore sandals and a loose ankle-length skirt of beige linen. The pullover top was ecru. Her hands fidgeted with its hem, then suddenly let go as footsteps outside made her spin. She didn’t relax when she saw that it was only a servant going past. “We have to get started.”

Something in her eyes reminded him of an animal that had been disciplined so much its spirit was broken. “Derek changed his mind,” she said. “He wants me to pose only partially nude.”

Bellasar’s sudden change in plans puzzled Malone, but he was too preoccupied to consider the implications. It was as if he and Sienna hadn’t spent weeks together, as if there were a million miles between them.

“Where do you want me?” she asked.

This wasn’t how he had imagined their reunion. He had assumed that she would be communicative, that she would leave him an opening. Instead, he had the nervous feeling that they were opposed. “Over there. Against the wall. With the sunlight on you.”

She did what she was told.

But something about the way she moved made him straighten. “Wait a second. Are you limping?”

“What?” She sounded as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

“You’re limping.”

“No.”

“Sure you are. You look like you’re in pain.”

“It’s nothing. My legs got cramped from sitting too long on the plane yesterday.”

“I don’t believe you. Come back this way. Walk toward me.”

“I’m telling you, it’s just a -”

“Walk toward me.”

She didn’t move.

Malone approached her, studying her. “What’s happened?”

She looked away.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Malone felt a terrible urgency. He had always been careful about what he said in the sunroom, assuming that Bellasar had microphones hidden there. A couple of times, he had pushed the boundary, hence Bellasar’s sudden appearances to assert his authority. But now as events spiraled out of control, Malone knew that no matter how guarded Sienna was being with him, he had to take the risk.

“Okay,” he said.

She looked puzzled, as if she had braced herself to keep resisting and hadn’t expected him to back off.

“If you’re not hurt, we can get to work. Your husband won’t like it if we waste time. In fact, I’ve already decided on the pose I want. We can skip doing further sketches. I’m going to start painting right away.”

As he spoke, he took her arm and guided her toward the back of the sunroom.

“What are you -”

But he cut her off. “I need to get some supplies from the storage room. Wait out here. I’ll just be a minute.”

In contradiction to what he said, however, he took Sienna with him.

Through a door in back – into the storage room.