Donald Burdick's salary was close to five million dollars a year. (And augmented – often doubled – by a complicated network of other "investments," to use his preferred euphemism.)

"My Lord," he muttered again, pushing the sheet toward William Winston Stanley. Sixty-five years old, Stanley was stout, ruddy, grim. You could easily picture him in Pilgrim garb, cheeks puffing out steam on a frigid New England morning as he read an indictment to a witch.

Burdick was Dartmouth and Harvard Law, Stanley had gone to Fordham Law School at night while working in the Hubbard, White mailroom. By a crafty mix of charm, bluntness and natural brilliance for business he'd fought his way up through a firm of men with addresses (Locust Valley and Westport) as foreign to him as his (Canarsie in Brooklyn) was to them. His saving grace among the society-minded partners was membership in an Episcopalian church.

Burdick asked, "How can this be accurate?"

Stanley gazed at the list. He shrugged.

"How on earth did Clayton do it?" Burdick muttered. "How did he get this many in his camp without our hearing?"

Stanley laughed in a thick rasp. "We just have heard."

The names contained on the list had been compiled by one of Burdick's spies – a young partner who was not particularly talented at practicing law but was a whiz kid at getting supposedly secret information out of people at the firm. The list showed how many partners were planning on voting in favor of a proposed merger between Hubbard, White & Willis and a Midtown law firm, a merger that would end the life of Hubbard, White as it then existed, as well as Burdick's control of the firm – and very likely his practice of law on Wall Street altogether.

Until now Burdick and Stanley were convinced that the pro-merger faction, led by a partner named Wendall Clayton, would not have enough votes to ram the deal through. But, if this tally was accurate, it was clear that the rebels probably would succeed.

And the memo contained other information that was just as troubling. At the partnership meeting scheduled for later this morning the pro-merger side was going to try to accelerate the final merger vote to a week from today. Originally it had been planned for next January. Burdick and Stanley had been counting on the month of December to win, or bully, straying partners back into their camp. Moving the vote forward would be disastrous.

Burdick actually felt a sudden urge to break something. His narrow, dry hand snatched up the paper. For a moment it seemed he would crumple it into a tight ball but instead he folded the paper slowly and slipped it into the inside pocket of his trim-fitting suit.

"Well, he's not going to do it," Burdick announced.

"What do we do to stop him?" Stanley barked.

Burdick began to speak then shook his head, rose and, stately as ever, buttoned his suit jacket. He nodded toward the complicated telephone sitting near them on the conference table, which unlike the phones in his office was not regularly swept for microphones. "Lets not talk here. Maybe a stroll in Battery Park. I don't think it's that cold out."

His eyes were the first thing about him she noticed.

They were alarmingly red, testifying to a lack of sleep, but they were also troubled.

"Come on into the lion's den." Mitchell Reece nodded Taylor Lockwood into his office then swung the door shut. He sat slowly in his black leather chair, the mechanism giving a soft ring.

Lion's den…

"I should tell you right up front," Taylor began, "I've never worked in litigation. I -"

He held up a hand to stop her. "Your experience doesn't really matter. Not for what I have in mind. Your discretion's what's important."

"I've worked on a lot of sensitive deals. I appreciate client confidentiality."

"Good. But this situation requires more than confidentiality. If we were the government I guess we'd call it top secret."

When Taylor was a little girl her favorite books were about exploration and adventure. The two at the top of her list were the Alice stories – Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass She liked them because the adventures didn't take the heroine to foreign lands or back through history, they were metaphoric journeys through the bizarre side of life around us.

Taylor was now intrigued. Lion's den Top secret.

She said, "Go ahead."

"Coffee?"

"Sure. Just milk, no sugar."

Reece stood up stiffly, as if he'd been sitting in one position for hours. His office was a mess. A hundred files – bulging manila folders and Redwelds stuffed with documents – filled the floor, the credenza, his desk. Stacks of legal magazines, waiting to be read, filled the spaces between the files. She smelled food and saw the remains of a take-out Chinese dinner sitting in a greasy bag beside the door.

He stepped into the canteen across the hall and she glanced out, watched him pour two cups.

Taylor studied him the expensive but wrinkled slacks and shirt (there was a pile of new Brooks Brothers' shirts on the credenza behind him, maybe he wore one of these to court if he didn't have time to pick up his laundry). The tousled dark hair. The lean physique. She knew that the trial lawyer, with dark straight hair a touch long to go unnoticed by the more conservative partners, was in his mid-thirties. He specialized in litigation and had a reputation of his own. The firm's clients loved him because he won cases, the firm loved him because he ran up huge tabs doing so. (Taylor had heard that he'd once billed twenty-six hours in a single day, working on a flight to L A, he'd taken advantage of the time zones.)

Young associates idolized Reece though they burned out working for him. Partners were uncomfortable supervising him, the briefs and motion papers he wrote under their names were often way beyond the older lawyers' skills at legal drafting.

Reece also was the driving force behind the firm's probono program, volunteering much of his time to represent indigent clients in criminal cases.

On the personal side, Reece was the trophy of the firm, according to many women paralegals. He was single and probably straight (the proof wasn't conclusive – a divorce – but the ladies were willing to accept that circumstantial evidence as entirely credible). He'd had affairs with at least two women at the firm, or so the rumor went. On the other hand, they lamented, he was your standard Type A workaholic and thus a land mine in the relationship department. Which, nonetheless, didn't stop most of them from dreaming, if not flirting.

Reece returned to his office and closed the door with his foot, handed her the coffee. He sat down.

"Okay, here it is – our client's been robbed," he said.

She asked, "As in what they do to you on the subway or what they do at the IRS?"

"Burglary."

"Really?" Taylor again swallowed the yawn that had been trying to escape and rubbed her own stinging eyes.

"What do you know about banking law?" he asked.

"The fee for bounced checks is fifteen dollars."

"That's all?"

"I'm afraid so. But I'm a fast learner."

Reece said seriously, "I hope so. Here's your first lesson. One of the firm's clients is New Amsterdam Bank & Trust. You ever work for them?"

"No." She knew about the place, though, it was the firm's largest banking client and had been with Hubbard, White for nearly a hundred years. Taylor took a steno pad out of her purse and uncapped a pen.

"Don't write."

"I like to get the facts straight," she said.

"No, don't write," he said bluntly.

"Well, okay." The pad vanished.

Reece continued. "Last year the bank loaned two hundred fifty million dollars to a company in Midtown. Hanover & Stiver, Inc."