Flashback

Noukhaev. No smile. “He has already done worse than that.”

Nick wondered what could possibly be worse than being ordered to disembowel oneself. Much later, he realized that if he’d asked that question of Noukhaev then, the entire mystery would have been solved. Instead, he said, “And Sato’s really an assassin?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Why would Nakamura assign one of the world’s top assassins to spend so much time with me? To risk such a valuable man’s life by sending him down here through enemy-held territory, with me, so that I could see you, Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? Sato was almost killed when we were attacked, you know.”

Again, Nick was sure that there would be no answer to this ill-shaped, amorphous question, so he was deeply surprised when the don replied so earnestly.

“When you solve this murder, Nick Bottom—if you solve this murder—for the short period of time they will allow you to remain alive, perhaps just hours, more probably mere minutes, you will be the most dangerous man on earth.”

Nick set down his water glass. “Dangerous to whom, Don Noukhaev? To just the murderer and his keiretsu? Or zaibatsu or whatever the hell it’s called today?”

“Much more dangerous than that,” Noukhaev said softly. “And to many more people. To millions of people. Which is why they cannot allow you to live once you solve this crime.”

Me, dangerous to millions of people? That made no sense, no matter which way Nick turned it. He was totally at sea. Nothing explained anything to him and everything he heard made his head hurt more and his insides feel more queasy.

“Then I’d better not solve the fucking crime,” Nick said at last. His voice came out slightly slurred, as if he’d been drinking vodka rather than water.

“But you must solve this crime, Nick Bottom.” The don didn’t seem to be bantering or waxing sarcastic. His voice was as low and as serious as Nick had heard it.

“Why must I solve this crime?” Nick had gone for a sarcastic tone, but it had come out merely tired-slurred.

“Because she would have wanted you to,” said Noukhaev.

Nick sat up straight in his uncomfortable metal chair. She would have wanted him to?

“Who’s ‘she,’ Noukhaev?”

“Your wife, Nick Bottom,” said the don, flicking ashes with a relaxed move of his hairy wrist. “The lovely lady named Dara.”

Nick was on his feet, his hands balled into his fists. On his feet but swaying slightly. “How do you know my wife’s name?” Stupid thing to say, Nick realized at once. Noukhaev must have multiple dossiers on him, compiled as soon as Nakamura had hired him. He shook his head and tried again.

“What’s my wife got to do with anything? Why bring her into this?” Nick put a fist onto the desktop to help steady himself. The don had remained seated.

“Your wife, Dara Fox Bottom, was a beautiful woman,” Noukhaev said in low tones. “She sat right there… in the same chair that you just vacated…”

Nick swiveled awkwardly to look down at his empty chair. When he turned back to Noukhaev, he had to set both fists, knuckles first, onto the don’s desk to keep from falling.

“Dara here? Why? When?”

“The day after Keigo Nakamura interviewed me,” said Noukhaev. “Four days before the young Mr. Nakamura was murdered in Denver. He and his retinue had already flown home by the time your wife met with me.”

“Met with you… why?” managed Nick.

The room was spinning now. The water, thought Nick. No, not the water. Noukhaev had drunk the water. Something in the glass that interacted with the water. Something slower-acting than the fucking taser, but just as sure.

“The man she came to Santa Fe with and stayed with at the Inn of the Anasazi while they were here,” Noukhaev was saying from a thousand miles away, his voice rattling and echoing down the quickly closing tunnel. “That assistant district attorney Harvey Cohen. He was a man of little or no imagination. But your lovely wife, Nick Bottom… your lovely wife, Dara, she was…”

Whatever his lovely wife Dara was, had been, Nick never heard it from Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev.

Nick had already begun the long slide down the dark tunnel into blackness.

1.14 Denver and Las Vegas, Nevada: Friday, Sept. 17—Sunday, Sept. 19

Denver was still standing when Nick got back on Friday evening. Most of Denver, at least. Some group had blown up the Denver branch of the U.S. Mint on West Colfax, near Civic Center Park.

Why the U.S. still had a mint, Nick had no idea. No one used coins any longer. So the destruction of that particular ancient landmark had been of interest only to the terrorists who built the bombs and to the five bored guards who’d been blown apart in the middle-of-the-night blasts. It was the sort of information that Nick and a million other Denverites had learned to file under Ignore and Forget.

What did get Nick’s attention immediately upon stepping naked out of the shower was a ten-minute-old text message from Detective First Grade, Lieutenant K. T. Lincoln: “Nick—Everything checked out okay. No worries. No need to see each other. Mami.”

The “Mami” was their old cop-partner code for “Must Arrange Meeting Immediately!” and also signified that all preceding sentences in the message meant the opposite of what they said. It was an I’m-under-some-duress code.

Something was very wrong.

Nick phoned her cell and got her message voice telling callers that she was on duty, so leave a message and she’d get back to them.

“Just back in town and checking in,” Nick said, working on the closest he could get to a bored tone of voice. “Glad everything’s okay. Call me when you get a chance. Oh, I broke my old phone and have a new number.” He gave her the number of the onetime phone he’d dug out of a duffel hidden behind the wallboards. After her return call, he’d pitch the thing.

Fifteen minutes later, K.T. phoned. “I’m supervising a stakeout and ESU thing over here on East Colfax. But it’s gotta be over before eleven-thirty because the ESU guys have to get their van back. I’ll meet you at midnight at that place where that guy did that thing that time.” She broke the connection. Nick was sure that she’d used a onetime as well.

Getting dressed, Nick checked the clock on his cubie’s TV. Just after 9 p.m. He had almost three hours to kill. He’d use some of that time speculating about just what the hell K.T. could have turned up that would call for such an urgent get-together.

Nick had been conscious by the time Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s people had dropped him off in front of the cathedral. Legs shaky, his insides quaking with anger, Nick had walked the short block to the Japanese consulate.

He’d assumed that Sato and the other Japs at the consulate would be so eager to hear what the don had said to him that the interrogation would go on all that afternoon and night, moving to sodium pentothal and other so- called truth drugs if Nick didn’t give them everything they wanted. But there was no interrogation.

Sato, his right arm looking slick-wet in the active sling, had come to Nick’s room, knocked, walked in, and said, “Did you learn anything important from Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? Anything that could help our