"Anyone hear it?"

She shook her head. "Leo had a suppressor."

Charles leaned back into his seat, involuntarily checking the side mirror. He lowered the volume as a woman tried with limited success to carry a high E-note. Then he cut it off. Angela was being cagey about the central facts of this case-the why of all that money-but that could wait. Right now he wanted to visualize the events. "When did they arrive at the coast?"

"Friday afternoon. The seventh."

"Legends?"

"Frank, no. He was too well known for that. Leo used an old one, Benjamin Schneider, Austrian."

"Next day, Saturday, was the trade. Which part of the docks?”

“I've got it written down."

"Time?"

"Evening. Seven.”

“Frank disappears…?"

"Last seen at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning. He was up until then drinking with Bogdan Krizan, the local SOVA head. They're old friends. Then, around two in the afternoon, the hotel cleaning staff found Leo's body."

"What about the dock? Anyone see what happened at seven?"

Again, she glanced into the rearview. "We were too late. The Slovenes weren't going to ask us why Frank was buying them toys. And we didn't know about Leo's body until after seven. His papers were good enough to confuse the Austrian embassy for over eight hours."

"For three million dollars you couldn't have sent a couple more watchers?"

Angela tightened her jaw. "Maybe, but hindsight doesn't do us any good now."

The incompetence surprised Charles; then again, it didn't. "Whose call was it?"

When she looked in the mirror yet again, her jaw was tighter, her cheeks flushed. So it was her fault, he thought, but she said, "Frank wanted me to stay in Vienna."

"It was Frank Dawdle's idea to go off with three million dollars and only one watcher?"

"I know the man. You don't."

She'd said those words without moving her lips. Charles felt the urge to tell her that he did know her boss. He'd worked with him once, in 1996, to get rid of a retired communist spy from some nondescript Eastern European country. But she wasn't supposed to know about that. He touched her shoulder to show a little sympathy. "I won't talk to Tom until we've got some real answers. Okay?"

She finally looked at him with a weary smile. "Thanks, Milo."

"It's Charles."

The smile turned sardonic. "I wonder if you even have a real name."

Their hour-long drive skirted the Italian border, and as they neared the coast the highway opened up and the foliage thinned. The warm morning sun glinted off the road as they passed Koper and Izola, and Charles watched the low shrubs, the Mediterranean architecture, and the zimmer-frei signs that littered each turnoff. It reminded him just how beautiful this tiny stretch of coast truly was. Less than thirty miles that had been pulled back and forth between Italians, Yugoslavs, and Slovenes over centuries of regional warfare.

To their right, they caught occasional glimpses of the Adriatic, and through the open window he smelled salt. He wondered if his own salvation lay in something like this. Disappear, and spend the rest of his years under a hot sun on the sea. The kind of climate that dries and burns the imbalance out of you. But he pushed that aside, because he already knew the truth: Geography solves nothing.

He said, "We can't do this unless you tell me the rest."

"What rest?" She spoke as if she had no idea.

"The why. Why Frank Dawdle was sent down here with three million dollars."

To the rearview, she said, "War criminal. Bosnian Serb. Big fish."

A small pink hotel passed, and then Portoroz Bay opened up, full of sun and glimmering water. "Which one?"

"Does it really matter?"

He supposed it didn't. Karadzic, Mladic, or any other wanted ic-the story was always the same. They, as well as the Croat zealots on the other side of the battle lines, had all had a hand in the Bosnian genocides that had helped turn a once-adored multiethnic country into an international pariah. Since 1996, these men had been fugitives, hidden by sympathizers and corrupt officials, faced with charges from the UN's International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Crimes against humanity, crimes against life and health, genocide, breaches of the Geneva conventions, murder, plunder, and violations of the laws and customs of war. Charles gazed at the Adriatic, sniffing the wind. "The UN's offering five million for these people."

"Oh, this guy wanted five," Angela said as she slowed behind a line of cars with Slovenian, German, and Italian plates. "But all he had was an address, and he demanded the money up front so he could disappear. The UN didn't trust him, turned him down flat, so some smart young man at Langley decided we should purchase it ourselves for three. A PR coup. We buy ourselves the glory of an arrest and once again point out the UN's incompetence." She shrugged. "Five or three-either way, you're a millionaire."

"What do we know about him?"

"He wouldn't tell us anything, but Langley figured it out. Dusan Maskovic, a Sarajevo Serb who joined the militias in the early days. He's part of the entourage that's been hiding the big ones in the Republika Srpska hills. Two weeks ago, he left their employ and contacted the UN Human Rights office in Sarajevo. Apparently, they get people like him every day. So little Dusan put in a call to our embassy in Vienna and found a sympathetic ear."

"Why not just take care of it there? In Sarajevo?"

The traffic moved steadily forward, and they passed shops with flowers and international newspapers. "He didn't want to collect in Bosnia. Didn't even want it set up through the Sarajevo embassy. And he didn't want anyone stationed in the ex-Yugoslav republics involved."

"He's no fool."

"From what we figure, he got hold of a boat in Croatia and was going to wait in the Adriatic until 7:00 p.m. on Saturday. Then he could slip in, make the trade, and slip out again before he'd have to register with the harbormaster."

"I see," Charles said, because despite his returning stomach cramps he finally had enough information to picture the various players and the ways they connected.

"Want me to take care of the room?"

"Let's check the dock first."

Portoroz's main harbor lay at the midpoint of the bay; behind it sat the sixties architecture of the Hotel Slovenia, its name written in light blue against white concrete, a surf motif. They parked off the main road and wandered around shops selling model sailboats and T-shirts with PORTOROZ and I LOVE SLOVENIA and MY PARENTS WENT TO SLOVENIA AND ALL I GOT… scribbled across them. Sandaled families sucking ice cream cones and cigarettes wandered leisurely past. Behind the shops lay a row of small piers full of vacation boats.

"Which one?" asked Charles.

"Forty-seven."

He led the way, hands in his pockets, as if he and his lady-friend were enjoying the view and the hot sun. The crews and captains on the motor- and sailboats paid them no attention. It was nearly noon, time for siestas and drink. Germans and Slovenes dozed on their hot decks, and the only voices they heard were from children who couldn't fall asleep.

Forty-seven was empty, but at forty-nine a humble yacht with an Italian flag was tied up. On its deck, a heavy woman was trying to peel a sausage.

"Buon giorno!" said Charles.

The woman inclined her head politely.

Charles's Italian was only passable, so he asked Angela to find out when the woman had arrived in Portoroz. Angela launched into a machine-gun Roman-Italian that sounded like a blast of insults, but the sausage woman smiled and waved her hands as she threw the insults back. It ended with Angela waving a "Grazie mille."

Charles waved, too, then leaned close to Angela as they walked away. "Well?"