with a film of dust that made it evident they had not been consulted in some time. The books in the bookcases appeared the same, all covering appropriate subjects in the professor's field of expertise, and all coated with dust. Or almost all. When I got to a section of shelves that were almost directly across the room from the desk, at a height that would be just about at Fournier's eye level, there were a number of books that looked as if they had recently been referenced, at least to the extent that they had not had time to collect a film of dust since their last outing. I selected one, a thick tome on Zoroastrianism, stretched up, and pulled it out. When I held it upside down by the edges of its binding and shook it, three photographs fell out and floated down to the floor.
Well, now.
I sat down on a pile of French professional journals and shined my penlight over the photos. All three were eight-by-tens, black-and-white, and appeared to have been taken with a telephoto lens. The shots were obviously of three different groups of pro-life activists demonstrating outside abortion clinics. The faces of the shouting men and women were appropriately twisted with emotion, their gestures eloquent, the messages on the placards they carried evocative. The clinics were not identified, but seemed to be in different parts of the country; there was the trunk of a palm tree visible behind a demonstrator in one photo, and another photo showed a group standing atop a snow bank. But the pictures had something else in common besides the fact that all three were of activists demonstrating outside abortion clinics. The same two men-young, white, the expressions on what otherwise would have been fresh, midwestern faces twisted with hate-appeared in all three of the photographs. Although it was unclear whether or not they knew each other, in all three shots the heads of the two men had been circled in red. I looked on the backs of the photos, but there was nothing there, nor on the front, to identify them. I stared at the faces for some time, trying to etch them into memory, then replaced them at random in the book- hoping Fournier wouldn't notice they weren't where they had been- and put the volume back on the shelf.
The next book I took down seemed out of place in Fournier's large-if rarely used-professional library. It was a compendium of recent Supreme Court decisions with the complete texts of opinions rendered. As I leafed through the volume I could see that a number of sections had been marked with yellow highlighter; all of the marked sections were from the bitterly dissenting opinions of two justices, Mabel Roscowicz and Richard Weiner, both now deceased. Taped onto the back cover was another photograph, a formal group portrait of the Supreme Court justices in their robes. The heads of Richard Weiner and Mabel Roscowicz had been circled in red ink.
The thrill of discovery was thoroughly dampened by a sudden chill and the wave of nausea that rippled through my stomach. I was staring at the text and photograph, wondering whether I should risk searching around through other offices for a copying machine, when the lights suddenly came on.
I dropped the book and spun around, clawing for the Beretta in my shoulder holster, then froze when I saw Guy Fournier-unshaven, dressed in rumpled khakis, loafers with no socks, and a thin leather jacket over a pajama top-standing in the doorway, a Glock with some kind of custom-made silencer held steady with both hands and aimed directly at my chest. The thick, white hair crowning his triangular head was uncombed, but there was nothing sleepy about his piercing eyes. I'd completely missed his security apparatus; it wasn't some bell or siren rigged to the door or window, but must have been an alarm in his quarters that went off when his computer was turned on. A big tut-tut on me; but I needed those computer files, and by lingering I did find the marked photos of the pro-life activists and the two dead justices. In any case, that decision was now obviously moot.
'What kind of voodoo shit is this?' I asked in a mild tone, nodding toward the gun in his hand. 'Isn't that cheating?'
'This is nine-millimeter voodoo shit,' Fournier replied evenly in his resonant bass. 'It's used for dealing with people who walk around as well armed as you do these days. Toss your gun away.'
'Where?'
'Anywhere you like, as long as it's well beyond your reach. Use your thumb and index finger to remove it from the holster.'
I did as I was told, lifting the Beretta from my holster and tossing it to my right, in the general direction of his desk. The gun skipped across the tops of two stacks of magazines, then clattered to the floor.
He continued, 'Now the other one.'
'What other one?'
'The Seecamp you carry in an ankle holster on your right leg. Again, use only your thumb and index finger to remove it.'
'Jesus,' I said, bending over and pulling up my right pant leg, 'you've been reading my mail. The company must have quite a dossier on me.'
'You and your brother. Do it, Frederickson. Then step away from the stacks to where I can see your whole body. Don't try to bandy words with me or attempt any other kind of distraction. I'm an excellent marksman, and if I even sense that you're going to try to move on me, I'll put a bullet through your heart.'
'Wouldn't that mess up your tidy little office here?'
'I'll just throw out your corpse along with the bloody books and magazines. The office needs cleaning anyway.'
'Yeah, but how much fun would that be? I thought you specialized in heart removal.'
'You're trying to bandy words, Frederickson. I have warned you.'
I regarded the black bore of his Glock, which was steady and remained aimed directly at my chest. I took out the Seecamp, tossed it after the Beretta.
'Now sit on the stack of magazines to your right. Both feet flat on the floor, hands on your knees.'
I sat.
'How did you find out about me?'
'Didn't you read in my dossier that I'm arguably the world's premier private investigator?'
'I thought we had solved the problem of people being willing to talk to you and your brother.'
'Now there's a startling admission if ever I've heard one.'
'It doesn't make any difference. You'll eventually tell me who steered you toward me, and that person will pay with agony and death.'
'Wooaa. Tough talk for a company lackey. You can certainly kill me, but what you can't do is impress me. It doesn't take any balls to inform on your people, torture, and kill when you do what you do. Now, if you really
Shadows moved in his ebony eyes. He leaned against the door-jamb, blinked slowly as he regarded me. I stared back. Finally he said, 'Informer? Hardly. It appears you don't know as much about me as I thought you did. I fear you don't appreciate my. . work.'
'So you're a full-fledged field operative, maybe a case officer. Big deal.'
He grunted. 'We don't have titles in my department. My department doesn't have a name. We don't keep organizational charts.'
'You work for Ops.'
He raised his white eyebrows slightly. 'Do I?'
He most certainly did. But the idea of a kind of Shadow Ops within Ops, working off the chart, in a manner of speaking, and perhaps unbeknownst to even the director of Operations and the roster of case officers was not totally out of the question. They grew some pretty strange weeds at Langley. If my situation had not been so dour, I might have found the notion intriguing, as opposed to irrelevant to my present circumstances. I said, 'Being a high-profile Catholic priest in Haiti must have cramped your style.'
'Not at all. My non-Church duties were purely administrative.'
'What did you administrate?'
'Haiti. You could consider me the chairman of the board of the controlling entity. People like Papa and Baby Doc and the generals were essentially my CEOs, and the Ton-tons and Fraph their administrative assistants. The business really ran very smoothly for decades. Then, of course, things got out of hand. But we'll be back there, the same as we'll be back in Cuba after Castro dies.'
'With the Mafia providing your CEOs and administrative assistants.'
'Exactly. Now you're beginning to understand.'
'What do you call this department of yours among yourselves?'
'We don't call it anything. You're a fool, Frederickson, just like this president. What the hell good do you think
