Dragonfly

bullet in his stomach and one in his chest and one in his throat.

The general fell backward, knocking over a floor lamp as he went, landing with a crash.

Chai Po-han, Canning thought.

Dragonfly.

Lin had triggered him.

Where was he now?

Biting his lip hard enough to take his mind off the paint in his shoulder, Canning struggled to his feet and looked around the room.

Chai was standing in a corner by the bookshelves. He had torn open the front of his shirt and was gently pricking his left shoulder with the point of a letter opener that Canning had earlier noticed on Webster's desk. A thin trickle of blood was running down his chest. He stabbed himself again, lightly, gently, then dropped the instrument.

The spansule was broken.

Chai was infected.

For a moment Canning almost buckled under the knowledge of his defeat. Then an energizing thought hit him like a hammer striking a sheet of white-hot steel: the plague virus required a human host, a culture in which it could survive and multiply, living flesh on which it could feed; no virus grew in a dead man; Chai could not infect anyone if he could no longer breathe…

As if he had just awakened from a trance, Chai said, “What is happening here?”

“Too much,” Canning said. He staggered close enough to put his last two bullets dead-center in Chai Po- han's head.

The boy fell into the bookcases and slid to the floor, dead beyond question.

Dropping his pistol, Canning went back to Lee Ann and knelt at her side. She was lying face-down on the floor. She had been shot in the back, low down, just left of the spine, and she had bled quite a lot. He touched her and began to cry and was still crying when James Obin and the others came up from downstairs

EPILOGUE

NEW YORK CITY: OCTOBER 25

A.W. West was scheduled to have drinks at five-thirty at the Plaza Hotel, where his Swiss attorney was staying during a one-week visit to New York. Prior to that engagement, however, he stopped in at Mark Cross to personally select and purchase a fine matched set of hand-tooled leather luggage that was to be a wedding gift for his favorite nephew.

When he and his bodyguard came out of the Mark Cross store, West decided to walk the short distance to the Plaza. The day was seasonably warm. There was a fresh breeze moving down Fifth Avenue, gently rustling women's skirts. West waved away his limousine, which was waiting at the curb, and set off toward Fifty-eighth Street, where he would cross to the far side of the avenue.

West's bodyguard walked a pace or two behind and to the right of him, studying everyone who approached and passed by them. But he was not particularly worried. He knew that hit men worked around a target's routine, picking a hit point they knew he would cross at a certain time. But this walk was unplanned, unpredictable. There was little chance of any trouble growing out of it.

West wasn't worrying about security precautions. He was just enjoying the walk, the breeze, and the lovely women one could always find on this part of Fifth Avenue.

A Cadillac limousine, not quite so elegant as West's own Rolls-Royce, pulled to the curb a hundred feet ahead, and a well-dressed man climbed out of it. He walked back in the direction of Mark Cross, toward West.

There were so many people on the street who bore watching that West's bodyguard paid scant attention to this one. After all, the man didn't appear to be a thug; he was chauffeur-driven, London-suited, respectable.

As the man from the Cadillac approached West, he smiled broadly and held out his hand.

West frowned. This man was a stranger. Nevertheless, West reflexively raised his own hand to let it be shaken.

“What a surprise!” the stranger said. Shaking with his right hand, he raised his left hand and showed West the miniature spray can that he held.

“What—”

It was very fast, very clean, and probably invisible to anyone nearby. He sprayed West in the face. The spray can went pssss. It was a short burst.

Don't breathe.' West thought. But he had gasped in surprise, and the thought was too late to save him. Although the gas was colorless and odorless, West felt suddenly as if he were smothering. Then there was an explosion of pain in his chest, and he fell.

The stranger went down on one knee beside him.

The bodyguard pushed through the ring of people that had formed already. “What the hell?”

“Heart attack,” the gray-eyed man said. “I'm a doctor. I've seen it before. Call an ambulance.” He tore open West's shirt and began to forcefully massage his chest, directly over his heart. He glanced up after a moment, saw the bodyguard, and said, “For God's sake, get an ambulance!”

The bodyguard got up and ran toward the corner of Fifty-eighth and Fifth Avenue in search of a policeman.

After another half-minute the stranger stopped working on West, and said, “He's gone. I'm afraid he's gone.” He stood up, adjusted his tie, shook his head sadly, and melted away into the crowd a full minute before West's bodyguard returned.

NEW YORK CITY: NOVEMBER 5

Prescott Hennings stopped at the water fountain in the lobby of his office building. He took a long, cool drink. When he raised his head he found that a rangy man with eyes the color of sheet metal had moved in extremely close to him. “Excuse me,” Hennings said.

“Mr. Hennings?”

“Yes?”

“Prescott Hennings?”

“Yes.”

The stranger brought a small aerosol can from his jacket pocket and held it up. This can was so small that the stranger's hand concealed it from everyone but Hennings. “Do you know what this is?” he asked pleasantly.

“I don't know you. If you're some sort of salesman or inventor, I don't want to know you,” Hennings said, beginning to get irritated.

“No, no,” the stranger said, smiling. “I didn't invent it. It was invented by some very clever men at Fort Derrick a few years back. If I spray your face the chemical will give you a fatal heart attack that'll pass any autopsy. That's what happened to Mr. West, you know.”

Alarm flushed into Hennings' face.

Canning sprayed him.

Hennings wheezed and staggered back against the fountain. He clutched at his throat, gagged, and fell down.

“Here!” Canning shouted to the other people in the lobby. “Get a doctor! An ambulance! This man's having a heart attack!” He knelt down beside Hennings and examined him. When several other people crowded around, Canning said, “I'm afraid it's too late. Poor fellow.”

By six o'clock that evening he was back at the new house just outside of Washington. When he got there, Lee Ann was practicing walking between the parallel bars that were set up for her in the recreation room. The private nurse who worked with her every day was not there.

“Where's Tillie?” he asked.

“I sent her home. I promised I'd just sit in my wheelchair and read until you got here.”