David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

In the van's front seat, the first man – a stern surveillance expert – compared the blurred, passing faces in the cruiser to a photograph in his hand. 'I think it's him!'

'You think" ? We have to be sure .' In the back, the second man continued to monitor earphones.

'I am sure.'

'But you said you think , and that's not good enough. I wish we'd been able to put a tap on the phones in the Missing Persons office. Wait. I'm getting something.' The second man adjusted his earphones. 'My, my. The police dispatcher's telling all patrol cars to run interference and make sure that cruiser… its numbers match… reaches LaGuardia in time for a one o'clock Trump shuttle to Washington National Airport.'

'Is that good enough for you?'

'Yeah,' the technician said. 'Definitely good enough. Make the call.'

The man in the front seat picked up a cellular phone and pressed numbers. 'The catcher has left the plate. We think he's so upset about his girl friend's health that he needs to see her in the Washington ballpark.' He gave the details of the flight.

On the phone, the chameleon's voice responded. 'But what about the opposition?'

'So far no show. Maybe they don't want to play right now.'

'Not possible. Not when we're in the finals. You can bet their team's in the area. Keep checking for talent scouts. We'll check the Washington ballpark. But don't forget. The opposite team has a habit of showing up when we least expect them.'

Heart pounding, Tess scrambled into the Porsche outside the sporting-goods shop and peered urgently around, afraid that a car would suddenly park beside her, that men would lunge out, shooting. She yanked the handgun from her purse, maintaining sufficient presence of mind to keep the weapon low, out of sight from anyone outside the car. Frantic, she pressed the button that released the pistol's magazine and discovered that there were only two rounds left in the magazine, plus one in the firing chamber.

Jesus. Quickly she jerked the cardboard lid off one of the boxes of ammunition she'd bought and shoved fourteen more rounds into the magazine, filling it. In theory, the weapon held only sixteen rounds, but with the round that was already in the firing chamber ('one up the spout,' her father had liked to call it), the handgun's capacity now was seventeen.

The moment Tess slid the magazine back into the pistol's handle, snapping it into place, she felt as if a tight band around her chest had been relaxed. At least now she'd be able to defend herself. She hoped.

I have to get out of here .

She crammed the handgun into her purse, shoved the boxes of ammunition under the driver's seat, twisted the ignition key, stomped the accelerator, and urged the Porsche into a break in traffic on the busy thoroughfare.

The envelope! While in the sporting-goods store, Tess had printed an address on the envelope, licked the stamp that the clerk had sold her, and stuck the stamp on to the envelope. Now, as she drove, she fumbled with one hand to remove the packet of photographs from her purse, open the flap, and slide the negatives into the envelope.

Ahead, to the right. Tess felt her breathing quicken when she saw a post-office truck at a dropbox outside a mini-mall. She swerved off the road, braked quickly beside the truck, licked and sealed the envelope, then leaned out the Porsche's window, handing the envelope to the mailman as he carried a bulging bag from the dropbox toward the truck.

'Late delivery.' Tess managed a smile. 'I hope you don't mind.'

'Makes no difference to me. Love your car.'

'Thanks.'

'How does it handle?'

'Watch.' Tess rammed the gearshift into first, tromped the gas pedal, and squealed away.

But she wasn't showing off. If anyone was following her, she wanted to get away from the postman as fast as possible. She hoped desperately that no one had seen her hand over the envelope. Too many deaths already. Too much grief. She prayed that she hadn't put the postman's life in danger as well.

Back on the road, veering in and out of traffic, trying to make it difficult for anyone to keep up with her, Tess drove as quickly as she dared without the risk of being stopped by the police for violating the speed limit.

Her destination was Washington, as Craig had advised.

But not the Capitol Building.

No way! Not anymore!

She had a better idea.

Not a safer one.

But it was definitely more important.

More critical.

The statue. That grotesque, repulsive statue. Her life was threatened because she knew about the damned thing. She had to find out what it meant, and there was only one person she could think of who might be able to tell her.

Slumped in the back seat of his limousine, en route from the tennis club to his office, the vice president brooded about the woman that the deputy director for CIA covert operations had warned him about.

Tess Drake?

Why did it have to be her who threatened him?

During his friendship with her late father, Alan Gerrard had frequently met Tess when she was a teenaged, gangly, sensuous tomboy. Her lean, athletic body, combined with her trim, perky breasts and short, blond, saucy hair, had appealed to him.

Not in a sexual way, of course. Not at all. Despite the president's assumption that Gerrard, like many politicians, took advantage of fund raisers to have sex with politically important groupies, the truth was that Gerrard, through stern discipline, had trained himself to repress his sexual urges.

Gerrard was married. Yes. And his wife was beautiful, photogenic, often featured in the top magazines. But his wife upheld his pure, rigid values, and during their twenty-year marriage, in the thousands of nights that they'd shared the same bed – as companions, as helpmates, as soul mates – they'd engaged in sex a total of only three times, and during those three ritualistic occasions, they'd permitted themselves to experience the base pleasures of the flesh strictly for the purpose of producing children.

No, Gerrard's attraction to Tess had not at all been carnal. On the contrary, he'd merely admired her as a fine example of a blossoming, healthy, young woman, a perfect example of the human species, and now it deeply troubled him that she, of all people, given her biological perfection, had become a threat and would have to be killed. His distress did not prevent him, however, from dearly hoping that Tess would be silenced as immediately as could be arranged.

In the back seat, the phone buzzed. Gerrard straightened and hurriedly picked up the phone. Only a few people had this number, and no one called it unless the matter was important.

Perhaps the message related to Tess. Perhaps she'd already been found and silenced.

'One moment, sir,' a woman's voice said. The president is calling.'

Gerrard subdued his disappointment.

With amazing promptness, Clifford Garth's voice growled, 'Pack your bags. You're taking another trip.'

Gerrard made a pretense of sighing as he replied to the man whose funeral he'd attend as the newly appointed president ten days from now. 'What is it this time? A fund raiser in Idaho? Any excuse to get me out of town?'

'No. Overseas. Spain's president just died from a heart attack. I've already sent my condolences. You'll be our official representative at the funeral.'

Funerals, Gerrard thought. Apparently I'll be going to a lot of them. He regretted the deaths, no matter how much they were necessary.

'If that's what you want.'

'Right. You just keep thinking like that,' Garth growled. 'You do everything I want, and we might even get along. I doubt it, though.'