Putting his back to it, Harry dug in with everything he had. The skin was raw on his hands, and the sweat ran down his forehead, stinging his eyes. He wished he could stop even for a moment to tear off the clerical collar. Throw it away so he could breathe.

'Sister Elena!!!!!!!'

Salvatore's cry came again in a rolling echo that followed them down the channel like a pursuing wave.

Suddenly a blinding light illuminated the entire waterway where they had just been like day. Harry could see the shadow of wall they had just come around and guessed they had ten seconds at most before the motorboat came around it too and entered the channel where they were.

Looking around wildly, he saw a canal in front of them running straight for almost twenty yards before cutting smartly to the left. There was little or no chance they would make it before the motorboat was around the corner and on top of them. Nor, despite some rugged outcropping of rock that fed into the channel, was there a place to hide.

'Mr Addison! Look there!' Elena whispered. She was suddenly leaning forward, pointing off.

Ahead, to their left and a dozen yards away, Harry saw what she was pointing at. A dark shadow that might be the entrance to a cave or inlet. Three or four feet high at best, and not much wider. Just big enough – maybe – for the skiff to get through.

Behind them, the growl of the outboards suddenly rose. Harry looked back. The light was getting brighter. Whoever was at the controls was picking up the speed. Throwing his full body weight behind the oars, Harry drove toward the cave.

'We're going in!' Harry said over his shoulder at Elena. 'Climb past me. Make sure his head doesn't hit.'

Harry stopped rowing for the briefest second, feeling the brush of Elena's habit as she scrambled over him. Then he dug in again. As he did, the right oar twisted in his hands and came out of the water. The skiff swung sharply left. There was a metallic scrape as it hit the wall, then glanced off and back into the channel. Recovering, he pulled back toward the cave opening.

At the same time, he saw Elena look up as the sleek prow of the motorboat slid past the outcrop of rock, turning into the channel where they were. Instantly, the powerful beam of the searchlight came around, sweeping mercilessly toward them as the boat turned fully into the waterway.

Harry glanced over his shoulder. They were right at the cave.

'Get down!' he said.

Crouching over, Harry jerked the oars inboard and the skiff slid into the opening, ceiling to sides clearing by only inches. Then he saw Elena duck, her hand on Danny's head. The stern slid through and they were inside.

Instantly, Harry was on his back. Grabbing the rock ceiling above them, pulling the skiff hand over hand. Deeper into the cave. A heartbeat later the harsh beam of the searchlight swept past.

Abruptly the outboards throttled down, and he held his breath. A half second later he saw the motorboat glide by. A blond man with a stark profile stood in silhouette to the far wall, one hand on the wheel, the other up tight under the throat of Salvatore Belsito. Then they were gone, the light trailing off with them, the boat's wake washing into the cave.

Immediately Harry put his hands out to the walls on either side to keep the skiff from banging off them. His heart pounding, he raised himself up and listened. One second. Then two. And he heard the outboards stop. A moment later the wash subsided and everything was silent.

Thomas Kind let the boat swing in a slow arc, bringing it around, letting it come to a stop facing the way they had come, his eyes searching the cavern in front of him – the glistening walls with their jagged outcroppings, the deep green-black water reflecting the illumination from the searchlight in a thousand different directions.

'Sit down…' Slowly Kind eased the razor from Salvatore's throat and nodded toward the bench along the gunwale behind him. The look in his captor's eyes was all the warning the Italian needed, and he did what he was told. Then he crossed his arms and tilted his head toward the irregular ceiling of the cave, letting his gaze fix there, fix anywhere but at the body of his wife at his feet, the body he had put there after Kind had made him carry it from where he had killed her, at the entrance to the elevator.

Thomas Kind glanced back at Salvatore, then reached into his jacket. From it he took a slender, black nylon pouch. Opening it, he took out a small radio headset. Putting it on, adjusting the tiny earpieces, he clipped a small microphone to his jacket collar and plugged the lead wire into a packet at his waist. There was the faintest click, and a tiny red glow rose from the monitor light beneath his fingers. His thumb ran over the volume control and he heard the sound come up immediately. Everything was amplified. The echo of the tunnel, the lap of water, crisp against its walls. Listening intently, he swung the microphone slowly and deliberately across the canal. Wall left to wall right.

He heard nothing.

He panned back. Wall right to wall left.

Still nothing.

Leaning forward, he turned off the searchlight, and the cavern went dark. Then he waited. Twenty seconds. Thirty. A minute.

Again, he swung the microphone. Left to right. And then back. And then back again.

'… wait…'

He froze at the sound of Harry Addison's voice, a whisper. He waited for more.

Nothing.

Ever so slowly, he swung back.

'… without an IV…' nursing sister Elena Voso said, her voice low and hushed like the American's.

They were there. Somewhere in the dark ahead of him.

Villa Lorenzi. Same time.

Roscani squinted in the bright sunlight of Edward Mooi's bedroom. The tech crew was still working the bathroom. Traces of blood had been found in the sink, the vague outline of a bare foot on the floor.

No one had seen the poet since he had returned to his apartment following Roscani's early-morning search. None of the staff, none of the dozen carabinieri on posted guard. No one. Mooi, like Eros Barbu's motorboat, had simply vanished.

Through the window, Roscani could see two of the police boats on the lake. Castelletti was still in one, coordinating the ongoing search on the water. Scala, a former army commando, had gone ashore with ten mountain-trained carabinieri, and they were walking the shoreline, south from the villa. It was assumed Mooi had not gone north, because that would have led him directly into Bellagio, where he was well known and where there were large numbers of uniformed police. So Scala had chosen the southern course, where coves and dense overgrowth provided cover where a boat could be hidden from view from both the lake and the air.

Turning from the window, Roscani left the room and went out into the hallway just as an aide arrived. Saluting, he handed Roscani a thick envelope, then turned and left. Opening it, Roscani quickly scanned its contents. The cover sheet bore the heading INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL POLICE ORGANIZATION, with the familiar INTERPOL crest directly beneath, while the word URGENTISSIMO had been hand stamped on every page.

The pages were the INTERPOL reply to his request for information on the suspected whereabouts of known terrorists and, separately, the personality profiles of killers still at large and thought to be in Europe.

Pages still in hand, Roscani looked back into the room. Seeing Edward Mooi's bathrobe where it had been tossed on the bed, seeing the tech people still at work through the open door to the bathroom, he suddenly had the sense they were already too late. His ice picker had already been there.