All of which allowed him to echo publicly the words of Bonnot, the leader of a murderous gang operating in Paris in 1912, and later used by Carlos himself – 'I am a celebrated man.' And he was. Over the years his face had graced not only the front pages of the world's major newspapers, but also the covers of Time, Newsweek, even Vanity Fair. 60 Minutes had profiled him twice. All of which put him in a different class entirely from the long succession of other freelancers who had eagerly worked for him.

The trouble was he was increasingly certain he was mentally ill. At first he thought he had simply lost track. He had started out to become a revolutionary in the truest sense, traveling from Ecuador to Chile as an idealistic teenager in 1976 and taking up a rifle in the streets of Valera to avenge the slaughter of Marxist students by the soldiers of fascist General Augusto Pinochet. Then came an ideological life in London with his mother's family, attending exclusive British schools before studying politics and history at Oxford. Immediately afterward there had been a clandestine meeting with a KGB operative in London, followed by an offer to train him as a Soviet agent in Moscow. On the way there, he had stopped in France. And with it had come the business with the Paris police. And then, and all at once, fame.

But in the last months, he had begun to sense that he was not driven by ideology or revolution at all, but rather by the exploit of terror itself or, more explicitly, by the act of killing. It was more than something that gave him pleasure, it was sexually arousing. To the extent that it had replaced the sex act altogether. And each time – though he wanted to deny it – the feeling magnified in intensity and became ever more gratifying. A lover to be found, stalked, and then butchered in the most ingenious way that came to him at the time.

It was awful. He hated it. The idea terrified him. Yet, at the same time, he craved it. That he might be ill was a thought he desperately tried to refute. He wanted to think he was only tired, or, more realistically, having the thoughts of a person approaching middle age. But he knew it wasn't true and something was wrong, because progressively he felt off balance, as if some part of him was weighted more heavily than the rest. It was a situation made all the worse because there was absolutely no one he could talk to about it without fear of being caught or turned in or compromised in some other way.

The abrupt chirp of the phone at his elbow jolted him back to the present. Instantly he picked up.

'Oui.' Yes, he said, speaking in French, nodding several times in response. It was news he had been waiting for, and it came in two parts: the first was confirmation that a potential problem in the U.S. had been tidied up – If Harry Addison had purposely or inadvertently passed on troublesome information to Byron Willis, it no longer made a difference. The subject had been eliminated.

The second was more difficult because it had involved extensive telephone research. Still, the results had taken far longer to get than he thought they should.

'Yes,' he said finally. 'Pescara. I'm leaving now.'

7:50 a.m.

'Warm tea,' Hercules said. 'Can you swallow?'

'Yes…' Harry nodded.

'Put your hands around it.'

Hercules guided the cup to him and helped Harry grasp it, the bandage on his left hand, like an oversized mitten, making what should have been a simple process awkward.

Harry drank and gagged.

'Terrible, isn't it? Gypsy tea. Strong and bitter. Drink it anyway. It will help you heal and bring back your sight.'

Harry hesitated, then took the tea down in a series of long gulps, trying not to taste it. Hercules watched him carefully as he drank, moving from side to side and then back again as an artist might while studying a subject. When he was finished, Hercules snatched the cup away.

'You are not you.'

'What?'

'You are not Father Daniel but his brother.'

Harry put an elbow under himself and raised up. 'How do you know that?'

'First, from the picture on the passport. Second, because the police are looking for you.'

Harry started. 'The police?'

'It was on the radio. You are wanted for murder – not the one your brother is wanted for. The cardinal vicar, that's a big one. But yours is big enough.'

'What are you talking about?'

'The policeman, Mr Harry Addison. The police detective named Pio.'

'Pio is dead?'

'You did a good job.'

'I did a -?'

In an instant it came back. Pio glancing in the mirror of the Alfa Romeo. Then sliding his gun onto the seat. At the same time Harry saw the truck directly in front of them. Heard his own voice scream for Pio to look out!

And now another part of it returned too. Something he hadn't remembered until this moment. It was a sound. Terribly loud. A thunderous boom that repeated quickly. A gun being fired.

And then he remembered the face. There and then gone, like a flashbulb illuminating something for a millisecond. It had been pale and cruel. With a half smile. And then, for some reason, although he didn't know why, he remembered the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen.

'No…' Harry said, his voice barely audible. Stunned, his eyes found Hercules.

'I didn't do it.'

'It makes no difference, Mr Harry, if you did or you didn't… All that matters is the authorities think you did. Italy has no capital punishment, but the police will find a way to kill you anyhow.'

Suddenly Hercules pulled himself up. Leaning on his crutch, he looked down at Harry. 'They say you are a lawyer. From California. You make money from movie stars and are very rich.'

Harry lay back. So that was it. Hercules wanted money and was going to extort it from him, threatening him with the police. And why not? Hercules was a common criminal living in filth under the Metro, and Harry had fallen into his lap. And whatever reason he had had for saving his life, with the new turn of events, he suddenly found he had saved a golden goose.

'I have some money, yes. But I can't get it without the police knowing where I am. So, even if I wanted to give it to you, I couldn't.'

'It does not matter.' Hercules leaned closer and grinned. 'You have a price on you.'

'Price?'

'The police have offered a reward. One hundred million lire. About sixty thousand dollars, U.S. A lot of money, Mr Harry – especially to those who have none.'

Finding his other crutch, Hercules abruptly turned his back and pushed off as he had earlier, swinging away into the darkness.

'I didn't kill him!' Harry shouted.

'The police will kill you anyway!' Hercules' voice echoed until it was lost in the distant rumbling of a Metro train passing at the end of his private tunnel. Afterward came the sound of the great door as it opened and thudded closed.

And then there was silence.