'What about Danny-?'

'We're moving!' Elena's cry was sudden and frightened.

Harry felt the water become abruptly colder, the skiff start to move away from him. Somehow they'd entered an underground stream and were being swept along with it.

He went after the skiff in the dark, half swimming, half pushing off the rock walls. In a moment he caught up, grabbing hold as the boat picked up speed, the water taking them ever faster. Trapped, brutally pounded between the skiff and the passage's granite sides, he fought the rush of water past him, worked his way along the gunwales, hand over hand, toward the stern.

'Elena!' Harry shouted over the roar of the water and the banging of the skiff against the rocks.

No reply.

'Elena! – Where are you? – Elena!'

Thomas Kind's fingers tugged at his throat. Salvatore was much stronger than he looked. The scarf taken from his wife's hair was twisted in his hands. Looped in a garrote around the blond man's neck. Pulling harder, the Italian pushed his knee into the small of Thomas Kind's back.

'Bastardo,' he hissed. 'Bastardo.'

This was something Kind hadn't counted on, hadn't even considered from a man as insubstantial and spiritless as Salvatore Belsito. But he would not die because of it. Abruptly he let his body go limp and slumped forward, taking the Italian by surprise. Both men hit the deck at the same time. In a single motion, Thomas Kind pulled free, rolled to the side, and came up behind him. The razor flashed in his hand, and he grabbed the Italian by the hair, dragging his head back, fully exposing the length of his throat.

'That place – that cave where they were-' Thomas Kind took a breath and felt his pulse slow, come back to normal. 'Where does it go?'

Deliberately the Italian's eyes crept up to fix on the blond man standing over him. Oddly, he was not afraid. 'Nowhere…'

Abruptly the razor slid across the base of Salvatore's nose. He cried out at the sudden gush of red that poured down over his lip and into his mouth.

'Where does it go?'

The Italian choked, tried to spit out his own blood.

'Like others in… here… To an underground stream… and… then… back… to the lake.'

'Where? - North of here? South? Where?'

Slowly a smile crossed Salvatore Belsito's face, a great, grand smile that was, in truth, his soul.

'I will not… tell you…'

Harry held Elena between himself and the skiff as it drove stern first against them, pushing them down through a thundering wash of narrow sluice that was dropping at an ever-increasing angle. The pitch black. The force of the water. His hands were raw and bleeding from trying to slow their speed against the unseen granite walls. He could feel Elena pressing against him, fighting to keep her head above water. As he was. If Danny was still inside the skiff – his gurney shoved against the stern – there was no way to tell.

Then suddenly there was nothing under them. Just air. He heard Elena scream. And he felt the skiff crush against him. Then they hit. Deep water. Blacker than before. The force sent him down. Twisting, spiraling, in a mass of turbulence. Then he felt himself touch bottom and push up, trying to swim to the surface.

And then he was up and through it. Choking, gasping, sucking in air. He saw light from somewhere cutting a ribbon through the dark.

'Elena!' he heard himself yell. 'Elena!!'

'I'm here.'

Her voice came from behind him. Startling him, making him swing around. In the light he saw her swimming toward him.

Abruptly he felt his feet touch ground, and he staggered forward to sprawl on a rocky shelf, gasping, exhausted.

Outside he could see thick undergrowth and sunlight shimmering off the lake beyond it. Then he remembered Elena, and he saw her move up on the rock shelf beside him, but she was looking off, past him, toward the water where they had just been. Real time came back, and he followed her gaze. Then he saw what she was looking at, and he could feel the chill cut through him.

Danny was like a ghost. Pale, almost transparent. Gaunt as death. Bearded and nearly naked. Bandages all but washed away. Lying only feet away, staring at him.

'Harry,' he said. 'Jesus H. Christ.'

The sound of Danny's voice hung frozen in the close air of the water cave as the brothers stared at one another, half in sheer joy and half in disbelief that they were not only alive but together and face-to-face after so many years.

Finally Harry stood and quickly slid back down the rock to where Danny was. Bracing himself, he reached out.

'Take my hand,' he said.

Slowly Danny reached up, their hands met, and Harry started to pull him up onto the ledge, sliding partway back into the water at the last moment to take special care of Danny's broken legs that miraculously still had the blue casts attached.

'You okay?' Harry asked as he crawled up beside him.

'Yes…' Danny nodded weakly and tried to smile, and Harry could see the exhaustion beginning to overtake him. Then suddenly, and from behind them, came a loud unrestrained sob. Instantly both men looked up.

Elena sat on the rock ledge where Harry had left her. Her eyes were closed and her arms were pulled tight around her, while her entire body shuddered with sobs of enormous relief. Sobs she tried to hold back but could not.

Getting up quickly, his feet slipping on the damp rocks, Harry climbed up to where she was.

'It's all right,' he said kneeling. Then, gently putting his arms around her, he pulled her close and held her against him.

'I'm – sorry-' she managed, letting her head fall against his shoulder.

'It's all right,' he said again. 'We're all right, all of us.'

Looking back toward the water, Harry could see Danny huddled on the rock ledge watching him. Yes, they were all right. But for how long? And what to do next?

Rome. Ambasciata della Repubblica Popolare Cinese In Italia – Embassy, People's Republic of China. Still Tuesday, July 14. 2:30 p.m.

The dark Cadillac limousine turned onto Via Bruxelles and drove past the nineteenth-century stone wall surrounding the grounds of the old Parco di Villa Grazioli, now a subdivision of apartment buildings and large private residences. The limousine slowed as it approached an armored carabinieri car backed across the sidewalk. Farther down was another. In between was number 56. Turning in, the Cadillac stopped in front of a high green gate. A moment passed and then the gate slid back and the limousine entered, the gate closing again behind it.

Moments later United States ambassador to Italy Leighton Merriweather Fox walked up the front steps to the four-story, beige brick-and-marble structure that was the Embassy for the People's Republic of China. With him were Nicholas Reid, deputy chief of Mission; Harmon Alley, counselor for Political Affairs; and Alley's first secretary, James Eaton.

Inside, the mood was somber. Eaton saw Fox bow and shake the hand of Jiang Youmei, Chinese ambassador to Italy. Nicholas Reid did the same with Foreign Minister Zhou Yi, while Harmon Alley waited in turn to meet deputy Foreign Minister Dai Rui.

The topic among them, the discussion in every corner of the large light-green-and-gold reception room, was the same, the disaster in the Chinese city of Hefei, where the death toll from polluted drinking water had risen to a horrific sixty-two thousand and was still increasing.

Health officials had no estimate of where or when it would end. Seventy thousand. Eighty. No one knew. The filtration plants had been shut down. Fresh water was being flown, railroaded, and trucked in. But the devastation had already been done. The Chinese Army was on scene but was overwhelmed by the immensity of the task, by the most rudimentary logistics of dealing with so much sickness and death. And despite attempts at media control by Beijing, the whole world knew what was happening.