Disclaimer: The Equalizer and all its characters are property of Universal and The Powers That Be. No copyright infringement is intended.

Note: This story first appeared in one of the Invictus series of print zines.

(This story takes place three months after the events described in "Impasse" written by McClure and Smith, printed in "Black Jag on Broadway", edited by Joyce Hindman and published by Rachelle Stein, 1991.)

An early snowfall drifted lazily from a cloud-heavy sky, layering a carpet of white over the slopes. Ice-rimed windows circled the restaurant allowing a magnificent view of stark white mountains against a steel grey skyline. The cold was held at bay by the constantly banked fire in the cast-iron fireplace centered in the room. Scott McCall ordered a carafe of wine in a completely unconvincing display of sophistication solely designed to embarrass his sister.

Yvette refused to be drawn in by the performance and merely batted her eyes at the wine steward who curled his lip with the proper amount of disdain. He did not, however, hesitate to take the order for the expensive vintage.

"Are you sure you don't want to rest a while?" Yvette asked when the steward left the table.

"Why? Are you tired?" Scott volleyed the question back at her, a touch of irritation seeping into his voice.

"No," she answered quickly. "I just thought you might--"

"I'm fine. Geez, Yvette, it's been three months. I'm not an invalid."

"I know that. It's just that you're supposed to be taking it easy, and..."

"'Vette, I'm fine. I even went and saw the shrink like Dad wanted me to--"

"Alex is not a shrink!" Yvette protested, horrified.

Her brother grinned at her. "Alex is too a shrink."

"You're incorrigible. Just like--" She hesitated, at a loss for an example...

...which Scott happily supplied, "Just like usual?"

She stared at him blankly for a moment, then her smile met his. "Yes," she said softly, reaching out and placing her hand over his. "Just like usual."

"Then why can't we forget what happened and enjoy ourselves? I promise not to spazz out and throw myself off a cliff, except by accident. Okay?"

For a second, her smile flickered and she searched his eyes, seeing only amusement and teasing there. "Okay," she finally agreed. "But I must say I'm disappointed that you're not going to have a whole lot of trauma for me to help you through."

"Why?"

"I'm in my Mother Theresa mode, I suppose." She shrugged and took a sip of her drink. "I guess I was looking forward to taking on hopeless causes."

"No problem. You can teach me to ski. Now there's a lost cause!"

She gave an unladylike snort, suddenly comfortable with her brother after months of cautious interaction. "Right, McCall! You know you can ski circles around me."

"I know, Marcel," he agreed, the grin back, "but I still can't ski straight. Just circles."

*****

Robert leaned back in his chair, suppressing the urge to yawn and stretch expansively. Despite the near blizzard conditions outside, it was warm and restful in the restaurant. His stomach was full with a most satisfying meal; his head was beginning to get that light, floating feeling induced by a touch too much of the aged Scotch that sat on the table between him and his companion. His back faintly protested the tentative gesture, and instead he settled back in the chair, and almost closed his eyes.

He was brought back to the intermittent conversation by Control's question. "How is Scott doing?"

Almost reluctantly, Robert stirred out of his contented stupor. He really wasn't in the mood to be dragged back to reality.

"Fine," he said, rather unconvincingly. "He and his sister went skiing in Austria for the week. They should be back... let's see... day after tomorrow."

"And--?" Control let the question ask itself.

"And, I am a bit concerned that he seems to be dealing with it all so well." He smiled indulgently. "You know Scott as well as I do. He seldom 'takes things in stride'. When he does, it sets off all sorts of alarms."

His own sense of contentment barely ruffled, Control met the smile with one of his own. "He'll be fine, Robert," he said. "Give him a little time. After all, there's a lot of it he won't ever remember, which will make it easier for him to deal with it in the long run."

McCall settled further back in the chair, remembering...

His first look at his son in the hands of his kidnappers, tortured and beaten, barely conscious of his surroundings. The compromise McCall had to be willing to make to purchase his safety...

He looked across at his companion of thirty years. "And how are you doing, old friend?"

"Me?" Control looked genuinely shocked. "Well," he said, as if seriously considering the question, "I could use a skiing vacation for a little R & R, myself. Maybe Scott and Yvette would like some company."

"I'm serious," McCall insisted, a bit of pique, spurred by lingering guilt, marking his words.

"Yes, I know you are, Robert." The Agency chief leaned forward in his chair, resting on his elbows, tenting his hands before his face. For a long moment, he simply studied his friend's face. Too much guilt, held for too long, had left its mark on Robert's features. Far from resenting the decision McCall had made in a desperate attempt to save the life of his son, Control wished he could erase the most recent evidence of that self-assumed responsibility for the entire world. It was beyond him, however, and he knew it. That was as much a part of Robert McCall as his sense of duty and his basic decency. To accept Robert, one had to share in some little part of his emotional baggage.

Scott, with the resilience of youth and a much less rigid outlook on life, would recover from the residue of his ordeal long before his father did. Of course, it was doubtful the young man would be taking any shortcuts down dark alleys anytime in the near future. But, Scott's natural trust and innocent nature hadn't been long in making a reappearance. Control had been very watchful over his godson for the last three months, and was much more comfortable with the signs of his recovery than his father appeared to be.

"What's so bloody funny?"

The irritation-tinged question startled Control. He hadn't realized that he was smiling. "I was just thinking that you should be grateful he's doing well, not conjuring up some dire trauma waiting in the background to sweep him off into insanity," he said, letting the smile stay where it was. Robert was taking himself entirely too seriously lately.

McCall finally relented. "That bad, am I?"

"That bad."

"I worry too much."

"Understatement of the year."

"You should resent the hell out of me, you know."

"We've been friends too long for that, Robert." For a second, Control let his tone turn serious. "There's one thing I want you to understand. I was willing to go just as far as you would have for the boy. I'd have died for him, just as you would. My objection was in your choice of methods. We have no quarrel over what you were doing, only how you were doing it."

"We've been through this before."

"A number of times."

"You're saying it's time to let it rest."

"I'm saying it's time to let it rest."

With a sigh, Robert seemed to shrink deeper into the chair. Just when Control had decided he was again brooding, he spoke. "What about your mole? The one you suspected was feeding information to Khoury's people?"

"We're... " Control paused with uncharacteristic hesitation. Even when he was lying outright, he seldom did it with any uncertainty. "We're working on that."

"You don't know who it is?" There was real suspicion waking in McCall's tone now, as interest and misgivings pushed his lethargy aside.

"We have a few ideas," Control said obliquely, then reached across for the bottle. He tipped a measure into McCall's glass and then into his own. "Here's to skiing trips in the Austrian Alps," he said as he clinked his glass against Robert's, making it clear there was to be no discussion about double agents.

*****

"Have you got the tickets?" Yvette Marcel asked her brother for the third time. "We don't want to miss our connection to London. It's been years since I've seen England and I don't want to take any chances."

"Of course I have the tickets," Scott insisted, also for the third time. "One mistake and you never let me live it down," he complained, his tone playfully indignant. In spite of the disclaimer, however, he put the two suitcases down and reached into his parka pocket. His gloved hand came up empty.

Yvette speared him with a glare. "You didn't."

"I've got them," Scott repeated doggedly, jerking his gloves off so he could rifle through the other pockets of the heavy, down filled jacket. His expression had taken on a doubtful cast in spite of the determination in his words.

Brushing her fur lined hood back from her now wayward hair, Yvette had her gloves half off as if ready to plunge into the search when Scott yanked the tickets out of an inside pocket.

"Just kidding."

The swat she aimed at his head fell short and her hand glanced harmlessly off his shoulder.

"If we miss the plane because you lose those tickets, Scott McCall--" The threat never materialized as the young woman caught sight of a slightly built man hurrying across the tiled floor, head down, on a direct course for them. "Isn't that--?" With a guilty start, she cut her own question short and glanced furtively around them. Seeing nothing else out of the ordinary, she looked up at her brother, who merely shrugged.

The man was rapidly approaching them now. His head was still ducked into the upturned collar of his coat. The part of his face that was visible appeared reddened with recent exposure to the snow-driven cold of the night settling in around the small airport. He thrust a wrapped parcel, approximately the size and shape of a book, into the young man's hands, barely stopping long enough to say, "Get this to your uncle Peter. It's a matter of life and death."

The tall blond shoved the package beneath his coat, a moment's hesitation pegging him as an amateur. A quick glance around, then he looked at his sister. "Peter?" he whispered.

"Shhh," she hissed at him, picking up one of the suitcases. "That's one of Control's names. Remember?"

That effectively halted further questions. Without a word, they instinctively huddled together as they watched the man head for the exit without slowing.

*****

Kostmayer almost seemed too easy to track. Either he wasn't aware he had a tail, or he was setting up an ambush. Jack Ryerson was fully prepared for a nasty surprise at any corner. That there hadn't been one yet didn't do a thing to reassure him. When Kostmayer ducked into the small airport terminal, Ryerson wasted no time following him inside despite his suspicions. Maybe the other agent was just losing his touch. Maybe Kostmayer was getting careless. Maybe the Cubs would win the pennant. No matter, Ryerson couldn't afford to lose him.

At least the bitter wind was cut inside the tiny terminal, though it hardly seemed likely that the American agent would be catching a ride on one of the local commuter flights that comprised the only traffic in the village airport. The terminal was nearly half full, the majority of the sleepy people sprawled in uncomfortable, plastic chairs or surrounding overpriced vending machines, trying to translate coins into the local currency. From the clothing and equipment strewn across the littered floor, it was easy to determine that the attraction here was the skiing.

Before Ryerson could waste time on speculation, Kostmayer made a beeline across the waiting room floor to a young couple. Without breaking stride, he jostled against the tall blond kid, mumbled something and kept on going. The young man watched him with a bemused look, then spoke to the slight woman beside him. A hasty whisper, then they gathered up their luggage and headed for a bank of plastic chairs at a nearby loading gate. If Ryerson hadn't been right on Kostmayer's heels, he'd have missed the entire transaction.

Momentarily torn between pursuing Kostmayer or breaking off and following the package, he hesitated almost too long. He had decided it was a decoy and started after Kostmayer, just as the younger agent was stopped at the exit by two burly security personnel. Ryerson faded back into the seating area as he watched the silent drama carried out before him. Kostmayer was obviously protesting being stopped, to no avail. The uniformed men patted him down right there in the doorway, Kostmayer gesturing and arguing the entire time. Seconds later, he was escorted to an office on the other side of the small airport and through a door marked 'No Admittance' in four languages.

That left the two kids with the package.

Looking back at them, he estimated his chances of pulling anything off here. The kid was too big to handle without an edge, and he could hardly pull a gun in a public terminal. There were too many people around to do anything anyhow. There was only one choice. Eliminate the problem altogether. Without a second thought, he went to the line of wall phones and punched in a well-memorized number.

After the terse phone call, he had to content himself with keeping a loose tail on the young couple. Only once did he lose visual contact with them, but they were in the tiny gift shop at that time and there was only one entrance and exit. Twenty minutes later, they emerged and, with a side trip to the snack bar, they headed back to their carry on baggage to await the shuttle plane.

A half hour after the gift shop visit, he watched them load up with their carry on luggage and, with a self-conscious glance around them, they headed for the loading tunnel. Without another backward look, they disappeared into the darkened passage.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood at the window to watch the small commuter plane pull away from the loading ramp. He watched the plane's lights as it taxied, then lifted into the night-blackened sky.

He was still staring into the star-flecked sky minutes later when the lights were blotted out as the plane crested, then crossed the first mountain range. He was the only one in the terminal that was prepared when an explosion momentarily lit the night sky just beyond that initial ridge. Shielding his eyes from the brief glare, he recognized that while it would do his employer no good now, the package wouldn't do the other side any harm, either. Incomplete missions were never very well tolerated. His one consolation would be that Kostmayer had failed just as spectacularly as he had.

*****

Somehow, the news had come to Control over an unsecured line. The Agency being nothing more than a highly specialized office, the word didn't take long to get around. Speculation ran through the banks of offices like a spreading glue of half facts and wild guesses. That the bureau chief's door was slammed shut and had remained that way for the last two hours only served as fuel to the fire of rumor.

The light on Control's private line remained lit for an unusual length of time. Kostmayer's arrival started the buzz all over again. The agent, rumpled with lack of sleep, his jaw dark and unshaven, a parka slung over one arm, was hustled through the outer offices by Jacob Stock. Both agents were grim-faced and pale. Neither hesitated long enough to answer the barrage of questions that were thrown at them.

Without speaking to anyone, they disappeared into Control's office.

*****

It had been a long and melancholy day. The sky had darkened long before sunset with a layer of charcoal clouds. Cold seeped in despite the cheerful fire that blazed nearly unnoticed in the hearth. For the last hour fat, wet snowflakes had drifted past Robert's window, tiny flickers of light in the overcast afternoon.

McCall had tried to read with a snifter of cognac at his side, but his attention kept wandering away from the pages and out through the frosted glass of the window.

Ordinarily he cherished quiet afternoons with no distractions and a good measure of solitude.

Today it kept awakening memories. The bad ones were simply painful. The good ones carried the weight of loss, for some reason much more poignant than even his worst recollections. He recalled someone once telling him that love was the worst frailty a man could endure. Only when you experienced the fullness of loving someone would you be susceptible to the pain of loss.

There had been too many losses in his life.

And too many unclosed chapters.

The events of the past three months had brought it all home to him. In the thirty years that he had been little more than an assassin for the Agency, he had been able to minimize the emotional attachments that most people took for granted, simply by removing himself from the lives of his family. He was still paying for that choice.

If he had a bond with anyone, it had been Control. They had shared too much to be unmoved by the tides of change that buffeted them, each in their own way. Radically different attitudes had taken little toll on their friendship.

Three months ago, Robert had been ready to sacrifice his best friend's life, as well as his own, in an attempt to save his son. Against all odds, the three of them were alive to try to recover from the ordeal. With a shiver not caused by the falling outside temperatures, Robert reflected that Control might be right after all. Scott seemed to be doing fine. Robert, on the other hand, was not.

It had taken two months before he was comfortable letting the boy out of his sight, a possessiveness that didn't sit well after ten years of absence during Scott's early life. They were still uncomfortable around each other in spite of the real progress they had made in the last couple of years.

That Control insisted he understood and harbored no blame didn't help. Robert had enough guilt to compensate for any lack from the other man.

And there was that final loose end. Fatma Khoury and the men who had helped her torture Robert's son had died in a hail of gunfire. But the man ultimately responsible for Scott's being targeted in the first place... he remained free. Whether Control had a positive identification on him or not, he was still alive, still a danger.

Robert McCall would not rest until that particular situation was remedied.

*****

Jason Masur was literally rubbing his hands together in anticipatory glee. The closed door to Control's office was no impediment to him. He had managed to re-bug his superior's inner sanctum just two days ago when security had suffered a momentary lapse, something Jason was always on the alert for. He fully intended to occupy that office one day soon, and he didn't particularly care if he had to walk across Control's still-twitching body to do so. It was time for a new regime.

Men like Control and McCall had used up their time at the top. In Jason's opinion, they had abused that time. No problem. When Masur took over as the new 'Control' all the blocks to an efficient, well-oiled machine would be eliminated. That included Kostmayer, he grinned, as the man's disembodied voice came over the speaker that spewed barely audible words into Jason's ear. Mickey Kostmayer would be the first to be eliminated after Control. No big loss. He might hold onto Jacob Stock, though. Stock was the kind of man who might be politically ambitious enough to be manipulated. No, maybe not. The man showed too strong a loyalty to both Control and McCall. Better to get all new blood in on his 'fresh sweep'.

"There's no question they're dead. The word is that the bodies can't even be pieced together yet."

Control's voice crackled over the wire, an unusual trace of uncertainty lacing the question. "And the file?"

Silence met the query. Jason rocked back in his chair, almost feeling the tension in the room at the end of the hall. Finally, Kostmayer's voice came, low and dangerous. "You don't seem to be getting the point. To hell with the file. We just got both of Robert McCall's kids killed."

Masur could feel silence entrapping the three people in a hostile web.

"That file is vital to national security." This came from Jacob Stock, his tone conveying a useless attempt to mitigate between the two men Masur could imagine facing off against each other in the locked room.

"Fuck national security!" Kostmayer's voice was followed instantly by the slam of a door, the unexpected crack of sound startling Jason out of his slouch.

He nearly missed Control's softly spoken order. "I want a tail on Kostmayer. See that he does not go to McCall. If he does, I want him stopped."

"How?" A reasonable question.

"Any way necessary."

A moment of silence, then Stock said, "I'll see to it."

Masur could feel Control's kingdom crumbling around him and the best part was that he didn't have to do a thing, just sit back and watch it all unravel. He almost disconnected his earpiece a moment too soon.

On the heels of Kostmayer's noisy exit, came another voice, this one unrecognized.

"I need you to sign for this package, sir."

Control's voice was distracted to say the least. "What is it?" he said more in demand than question.

"Don't know, sir. It was delivered by courier. It's marked for your personal attention. It's already been cleared by security, but they didn't tell me what the contents were."

"All right. Thank you."

The scritch of pen on paper in a hasty signature, then Control's voice, evidently directed at Stock who had remained silent through the exchange, "Thank God."

*****

Robert McCall's face was a florid crimson as he huffed his protest when Jacob Stock ushered him through the outer offices and corridors of the Agency headquarters. Their very vocal sweep through the building reawoke the slumbering rumor mill as various personnel caught bits and pieces of his tirade.

"I no longer work for the Company. Has no one bothered to notice that?" Robert thundered as Stock ineffectually tried to appease him. The young agent's efforts to quiet the raging man only added fuel to the harangue. "I am a private citizen. You do not summon me to Agency offices without explanation!"

"Robert, I'm sure there's a perfectly good--"

"There bloody well will be a good reason!" McCall rode over the weak attempt at placation. "By the time I leave here, you will be quite happy to see me go."

Stock's expression told the silent observers of their forced march that he would, indeed, be happy to see McCall go.

Control, having heard the approach from a considerable distance was standing in his open office doorway. "Come in, Robert," he said quietly.

McCall stalked into the room, but when Control tried to pull the door shut, Robert hit it with an open handed slam that left it ajar.

"Oh, no! I'm no longer involved in clandestine meetings, Control. You may have dragged me up here, but I will not play your silly closed door games. Whatever you have to say to me can be done in public."

"Robert, you don't understand--"

"You're bloody right I do not understand. I assume you are going to remedy that situation immediately."

"If you had come in when I called and requested it, Old Son, we wouldn't have to resort to an armed escort."

"If this ever happens again, I will feed your escort his arms. Do I make myself clear?" McCall finally drew in a deep breath, then with obvious effort, he added more calmly, "I do have other plans with my time, Control, as you well know. I am supposed to be at the airport right now picking up Scott and Yvette."

"That's what I needed to see you about, Robert. Please sit down."

"What is it?" There was a whole new note in McCall's voice, an instantaneous mixture of dread and anger.

"Robert..."

"What is it?" Even through the inner office buzz of machinery and drone of voices, those in the immediate vicinity heard the resignation in the question, as if McCall already knew.

"There's been a terrible accident."

"An accident?" McCall dropped into a chair, his back to the door and the curious stares.

Behind him, a still unshaven and gaunt looking Mickey Kostmayer slipped inside the open door to take up an uncomfortable stance beside the bookcase that flanked the wall by the doorway.

"The shuttle flight to London..." Control's voice choked on the words and he had to start again. "The shuttle flight to London never arrived. It crashed on takeoff. Everyone on board is presumed dead."

"Dead?"

"They have located the wreckage, but because of the weather and fog, they haven't been able to get anyone in there yet to recover bodies."

"Recover bodies?" McCall's voice was slow and muffled as if he couldn't get the words past his lips.

"Scott and Yvette were on board, Robert. I'm sorry, but there's no chance anyone survived the crash. The plane went directly into the side of the mountain."

"Then there could be survivors."

"No, Robert."

"You don't know that! There could be survivors! Planes go down in mountain ranges all the time. People do survive such crashes."

Control sighed, the sound deep and wrenching as if he couldn't get air into his lungs. He leaned back against the desk, the hint of tears in his eyes. "There was an explosion, Robert. Our sources say there was a bomb planted on the plane."

"A bomb! That's absurd! This was a commuter plane from a skiing chalet. No one bombs shuttle planes with only civilians aboard."

"There were... certain circumstances."

"Circumstances?"

Kostmayer cleared his throat, drawing McCall's attention as he stepped further into the room.

"I passed them a file, Robert."

"You what?"

"I was being tailed. I handed a file off to Scott. I thought it went undetected, but before I could do anything about my tail, I was picked up by the Austrian police. You know I'd never do anything to hurt Scott or Yvette, Robert. It was just bad timing."

"Bad timing?!" McCall bolted to his feet. For an instant it looked as if he would launch himself at Kostmayer, but he stood rooted to the spot. "You passed a file to them? A file that could get them killed?"

"Robert..." Control attempted to intercede.

"What was this file that was worth the lives of my children?" The question dropped like ice between them.

"I can't tell you that," Control finally said.

"So your precious file was blown up with the plane? Is that it?"

"No," Control returned, as if offering some kind of appeasement. "They went to the gift shop and bought a box of chocolates. They put the file in the box and had it shipped directly to me."

"How very clever of them. I suppose that is meant to make it easier to accept."

Kostmayer stepped forward, one hand stretched out to McCall. "Robert, I would never have put them in danger. You know that. The lives of dozens of operatives depended on that file getting here. If it had fallen into the wrong hands..."

The steel in McCall's eyes stopped the words and Mickey dropped his hand back to his side. Misery was etched in the weary lines in his face. Robert was unmoved by it.

His words came through clenched teeth as he seemed to loom over the smaller man. "You risked their lives over a file? In some bizarre, distorted game of espionage? Is that a fair price for your games? The lives of two innocent people? My children!"

The last seemed to finally cut through to the core of McCall's being. It was written in his face as he realized with stunning awareness that they were, indeed, his children. And these men were telling him they were dead, slaughtered on some sacrificial altar of conspiracy. Children whom he barely knew, whom he was just now beginning to realize the depth of his love for.

He exploded into a burst of fury, and before anyone had the insight to move to prevent it, he caught Kostmayer with a roundhouse swing directly to the jaw. Mickey flailed back into the window frame with a thudding jolt. He raised a hand reflexively to his already darkening jaw, but made no move to retaliate or even defend himself from the attack.

Control caught McCall by the arm even as the enraged man drew back for another blow.

"Robert! He was only acting on orders! Mickey's not to blame. It was an accident. A tragic accident. If you want to lay blame, then put it where it belongs. On me. I told Kostmayer that Scott and Yvette would be at the airport."

"You what?" The words were barely a whisper, lost in an agonized search for air.

"When he called to say he had a tail, I told him the kids would be at the airport. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. Don't you think I would do anything to have prevented this? I love those children. I am... I was... godfather to them both, Robert."

McCall backed off a single step. "I'll try to remember that, Control. I'll try very hard to work up some sympathy for your loss."

"Robert--"

But McCall was already backing to the still open door, the movement sending eavesdroppers scurrying back to desks and offices. In a voice dangerously quiet, Robert said, "You have just taken everything that mattered away from me, Control. You and the bloody Agency. Someday... someday, you will pay for the blood of my children. That I promise you."

Stock reached out as McCall spun around on one heel, but Control stopped the gesture with a nearly silent, "No, let him go."

*****

Jason Masur slipped back into the recessed doorway and watched, intrigued, as McCall stalked out of the building, his overcoat billowing behind him like a cloak. The more things fell in a heap around Control's ears, the better the prognosis looked for Jason. He barely managed to hide his smile as he stepped back into his reception area. He nearly stopped at Janice's desk and set her to making some arrangements, but he had second thoughts about it and continued into his office. He had better make his own preparations.

Janice glanced up at him, patting a stray lock of auburn hair back into place, green eyes pinpointing him just above the rims of her glasses. Things had been chilly for about three weeks now. Jason had recruited her over a year ago; they had shared a fling together, and then Jason had found more interesting prey to pursue.

It should have been 'just one of those things' as he had attempted to point out, but Janice had embodied all the bad points of green-eyed redheads, and she wasn't satisfied to let things cool off and settle back to normal. He really was going to have to do something about getting her transferred pretty soon. That was one pair of eyes he didn't want on his back.

*****

Two days later, a silent and quietly drunk Robert McCall was slouched in his customary seat in O'Phelan's. In the last couple of days he had been in and out of the restaurant, refusing to talk to anyone, simply sitting at the table in the early and closing hours, staring into his glass. The level of his private stock of liquor disappeared at an alarming rate.

Eventually, no one bothered to approach him. They merely went about their business as if he weren't there. Occasionally, Pete would come sit at the table and pour herself a glass of scotch from the diminishing bottle, drink it silently across from Robert, then go back to her work. Not once did he speak to her.

The rest of his time was spent alone in his apartment, the answering machine fielding his calls, none of which were answered. He notified no one of the presumed deaths of his children as if that would only confirm it in his mind. Not even Kay, who was fortunately on a cruise and nearly inaccessible. The reports of efforts to recover the bodies or examine the wreckage went without response of any kind. The weather was still too bad to get to the plane. By this time, however, it was assumed that even if anyone survived the explosion, they were by now certainly dead. Not that anyone seemed to entertain the idea that anyone had survived the initial explosion.

Two visits, one on each day, by Control were met with a locked apartment door. Finally, the Agency head ventured into O'Phelan's, but McCall merely stared into his glass, and Control turned and walked back out into the early fall of snow.

Jason, on the other hand, had his own ideas. This situation was too good to be true. He saw to it personally, bypassing Janice and without higher clearance than his own office, that McCall's home phone was bugged. His contention that Robert was too immersed in his own grief and anger was proven true when the bug apparently went undetected.

On the third day, he hit paydirt.

The voice was not one he recognized as he ran a mental checklist of his suspects. It was obviously muffled by some sort of material held over the mouthpiece, and it was impossible to determine even the sex of the caller. The words were whispered and whiskey-hoarse. McCall didn't answer the ring. The message was cryptic but intriguing...

"McCall, your children don't need to have died uselessly. The people responsible must pay. I will call again at seven p.m. If you are interested, be there."

McCall wasn't going to be the only one there at seven p.m.

*****

Pete hustled into the restaurant, dusting the light coating of snow off her coat. A fair sized crowd populated the dining room, better than most weekday nights. Jeremy was alone at the bar, trying to keep up with drink orders.

"Where's Nicole?" Pete asked as she donned an apron and began to fill orders beside him.

"She called in sick. Rotten night for it, too," Jeremy groused, not breaking stride in mixing his current batch of drinks.

"Great."

"At least we don't have McCall at the back table," Jeremy added, nodding to the empty spot Robert had been inhabiting lately. "I almost miss his brooding presence."

"Jeremy!" There was very real censure in Pete's voice and her hands stopped their motion as if to underline the protest.

"I can't help it, Pete. He sits there like some drunken specter of death. It's spooky."

"How can you talk like that?" she hissed, anger lacing the words even as she tried to keep them from being overheard. "You can't even begin to imagine--"

"Look, Pete, I've got a couple of kids of my own." Jeremy held up one hand in a gesture of surrender. "I know he's suffering. But he won't even make arrangements for them. It's like he's written them off without even doing anything to settle the matter."

"What do you suggest he do? They haven't even found the bodies yet."

"You really think there are any bodies to find?"

"What do you mean?"

"From what I heard, the entire plane went up in a ball of fire, and then smack into the face of a mountain. If they ever make it up to the wreckage, all they're going to find is pieces. Don't look at me like that, Pete. You know it's true. McCall might not be able to face it. I know I couldn't if I were in his shoes. But you might as well admit it. There's not enough of Scott and Yvette left to bury."

"That must be the hardest part. That tiny thread of doubt." She popped olives into two of the glasses with an absentminded toss. "He must still be holding onto that hope. That it's all a mistake."

"It's not a mistake."

"I know, but I imagine Robert is still considering it."

"That's why I'm glad he's not here tonight. It's like watching a man die slowly and in great pain and not being able to do anything about it."

Pete stared into the clear liquid in the glass in her hand, the olive settling to the bottom and reflecting dizzily off the sides. Without conscious thought, she raised the customer's drink to her mouth and drank it in one long swallow. It burned all the way down. She looked up into Jeremy's surprised eyes and said, "Shut the hell up, Jeremy."

He didn't protest when she slipped the apron off and walked back to the cubby hole office, abandoning him to the bartending chores.

*****

McCall caught the phone on the first ring. It was exactly seven p.m.

"Robert McCall?" The voice was unfamiliar and muffled. There was no inflection or tone to aid him in placing a face to the voice. The words were whispered in a husk of air.

"Yes. Who is this?"

"That's not important. At least not yet. Just listen. I don't want to stay on an unsecured line for very long."

"I assure you this is a secure line."

"Things change, McCall, when we're least expecting it."

"I have neither the time nor the inclination to play words games. You said you--"

"I said nothing. Not yet."

"Very well. What do you want with me?"

"That depends."

Robert waited through a moment's silence.

"Depends on what," he prompted.

"Depends on how far you're willing to go. I know a few things about you. And about your children. You didn't have long to get to know them, did you?"

"What's that--?"

"It's got a lot to do with it, McCall. The Agency stole away your chance with both of them. I know things, like I said. I know you just found out about your daughter a year ago. I know you didn't see your son for years just to keep him safe. All those years you sacrificed to keep him from being harmed were for nothing if you don't see that the people responsible pay for what happened."

"You've said that much. Tell me how."

"Later."

"No! Now!" The demand was met by the frustrating buzz of a disconnected line. Robert listened in disbelief, then finally slammed the receiver into its cradle with a whispered obscenity.

*****

Control stopped at Miriam Pritchard's desk and said, "Order a tap placed on Robert McCall's line, and let me know when it's activated."

He started past her desk, but her voice caught at him.

"Sir, we've already done that."

He turned and stared down at her. Miriam paled at the glower from the dark face glaring down at her.

"We've what?"

A tiny, nervous hand picked bird-like at greying hair, and Miriam repeated, "We've already done that. I put the order through three days ago. I assumed you knew."

On her best day, Miriam couldn't withstand the fury she read in her boss' face. She paled even further, and stammered, "It came through with proper authorization. I even verified it with Mr. Masur."

"Jason ordered it?"

"Yes, sir." Her voice had disappeared into her throat; the words were mere gasps of air.

"And where is Mr. Masur now?"

"I believe he's out, sir."

"Yes, I just bet he is."

To Miriam's vast relief, Control continued toward his own office, the door slamming shut behind him.

*****

It hadn't been difficult to arrange a three-day vacation. Jason simply pulled a few strings, called in a few markers and he was out of the office before Control was informed of the bug on McCall's apartment. Masur hadn't planned on Control finding out so soon, but it wasn't a problem as all the information was routed to Jason and would never cross Control's desk.

The Agency head had underestimated Jason for the last time. Just let him try to access any of the tapped information and he'd find that his power base was shrinking right out from under him. The tap from McCall's phone ran directly to Masur's surveillance equipment in his car. It wasn't even funneled through the Agency equipment. Six weeks ago, Masur wouldn't have had the pull to arrange that. Six weeks from now, he intended to be able to run the show. Control could either step down of his own volition or he could be toppled off the pedestal he'd inhabited for far too many years.

It was time to sweep out the old and put new blood in at the top. Jason planned to be the new blood. If McCall was implicated in a revenge plot that Control was doing nothing about, it would quite effectively erode any authority the Agency head now enjoyed. Leave it to Jason to uncover the plot; let the powers that be somehow become aware that Control not only didn't take precautions against it, but stood in the way of those who were alert enough to see what was going on...

Control and McCall could sit at the corner table and drink their old age away. Or kill each other. Either way would be fine with Jason.

He had never forgotten -- or forgiven -- McCall's implied threat the last time Masur had made a tentative bid for Control's seat in the hierarchy. The threat had been subtle and deadly. Any danger to Control's position would be met with action from McCall. There hadn't been any doubt in Masur's mind that Robert McCall meant it and would follow through.

Not now, though.

Now, the retired agent and the Agency head were on opposite sides. Only one thing could drive a wedge between Control and McCall after over thirty years of friendship and loyalty. It had been handed to Masur on a silver platter the instant that airplane had erupted like a Fourth of July celebration over some obscure mountain in the Austrian Alps. He hadn't known McCall's son and daughter. It would hardly have mattered if he had. Their deaths were a small price to pay to put his personal vision into play.

Shit happens, he thought with a grim smile. Just make sure it's someone else's shit when it does happen.

After all, in the long run, two lives lost in the interests of National Security was a small price to pay. Especially when someone else paid it.

He settled back in the plush leather seat of his car, earphones on his head, and proceeded to screen McCall's phone calls for him while he read the paper.

*****

"The file, McCall."

"What about it?"

The voices were tinny over the wire, but Jason didn't miss a word.

"What do you think would happen if it looked like Control sold it with Kostmayer's help?"

"No one would believe that."

"Think about it. Is there anything Control cares about except his job? Is there anything Kostmayer fears as much as going back to prison? All you'd have to do is pull it off. They murdered your kids, McCall, just as if they had done it with their own hands. Think about it. I'll get back to you."

"Wait--! Don't--!"

The line went dead.

*****

The once immaculate BMW was strewn with fast food litter and discarded newspapers. Masur had even resorted to tabloids to pass the time. It had been a long time since he'd endured a stakeout, and the last two days had quickly gone from interesting to drudgery.

He only had one more day of vacation left. If nothing came through today, he was considering giving up. McCall hadn't left the apartment. The phone calls he'd eavesdropped on were an endless stream from Equalizer cases to telemarketing calls which spewed into the belly of the answering machine to be ignored and taped over with the next onslaught of unanswered calls.

At least McCall was able to move around in the virtually silent apartment. Jason couldn't even satisfactorily stretch his legs. Cramps worked their way up through his calves and an aching stiffness had settled in his back and neck. He didn't dare risk getting out of the car and abandoning the wiretap. An almost superstitious certainty assured him that the instant he did so, the long awaited call would come through.

His only satisfaction lay in knowing that McCall's patience was even more strained than his own.

Jason had never been burdened with caring about another person the way McCall did. Robert's torment at the loss of his children came through in every word Masur heard in the short phone calls the mysterious contact made. Robert McCall would probably only live long enough to exact his revenge against the people he blamed for the deaths of his children, and then he would either drink himself to death or put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Either way, it was no loss to Jason. In fact, he rather looked forward to receiving the news with all the appropriate shock and dismay, of course.

Now if the damned phone call would just come through so he could finally escape his metal coffin.

*****

Robert paced the increasingly limited confines of his apartment with restless anger.

Waiting had never been his long suit, and he barely tolerated it now. The tea on the table beside his chair had long since grown cold and unappealing. The fire sputtered in the grate, threatening to die, then sparking back to temporary life. The room was warm enough without the amenity of the fire, so he didn't bother to rekindle it.

He had discovered the tap on his line the first night it was there. Rather than dismantle it, he left it in place with the intention of feeding it just enough false information to cover himself long enough to do what had to be done. It might take some skillful verbal juggling since his unidentified contact wasn't in on the information, but McCall excelled at word games.

The shrill of the phone at eight-thirty that evening jarred him out of his lethargy. He waited out the pre-recorded spiel, then snatched the phone up the instant the now-familiar voice said, "McCall."

"I've had enough of this!" Robert barked into the receiver. "If you have something for me, then tell me. I will not be played like a fish on a line."

"Patience, McCall, patience. I had to be sure you weren't reporting back to anybody. It's kind of a stretch that after so many years, you could go rogue. I have to be careful, you know."

"Well, you've been bloody careful by now, haven't you?"

"All right. I'm ready to talk. You ready to listen?"

Stifling his irritation, Robert took a long breath, then said, "Talk."

"The file is still in Control's safe in his office."

"How do you know that?" McCall interrupted.

"I told you, I've checked everything out. It's there. You could get it and I'd make sure it went where it would do the most good."

"What about Control and Kostmayer?"

"I'll get to that. Can you get the file?"

McCall took a moment as if to consider it. The pause was calculated, however; he'd already made the decision.

"I can get it. How does the blame go to Control?"

"You've got access to computer people, don't you? Non-Agency people?"

"I might."

"Make some large deposits in new accounts out of the country. Make them traceable. You've got the assets to play with, McCall. What use do you have for them now? It's not like you'll be leaving any inheritance to your kids, is it."

Anger rose in his throat like bile. He choked it down. It made sense. He certainly had the assets to make electronic transfers wherever he wanted to make them -- and the contacts to facilitate them.

A twinge of reluctance forced him to ask, "What's in this file?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

The single word answer was non-negotiable and the caller could obviously tell that.

"It's not anything worth the lives of two innocent people, Robert." The first name intimacy wasn't lost on McCall. "It's industrial. Money runs the world. You know that. Money is power and all that shit. There's enough information there to give a certain private investor quite an edge. Nothing that would interest you. But I assure you that the Agency will be very interested in the loss of it. Not to mention economically embarrassed. Do you care that much?"

"No." Again the single word, the uncompromising tone. "How will I know this file?"

"It's data on a phony organization called 'Alpha Enterprises'. It's clearly marked and looks just like it's the real thing. All you have to do is set up the money trail to Control and Kostmayer, then get the papers to me. I'll handle it from there. They'll fall within three days. You have my word."

McCall snorted a bitter laugh into the receiver. "What use is your word to me?"

"It's all you got, McCall. It's that, or you can regret doing nothing while you bury what's left of your kids in a body bag. Your choice."

"You bloody bastard!"

"Yeah, but I'm the one gotta live with that. You gotta live with your own ghosts. What do you say? Is it a deal?"

McCall let the silence drag on, then he took a steadying breath. "My own time frame."

"No problem, as long as it's soon."

"How do I get it to you?"

"I'll let you know. You get the file and then you live in your car until I contact you. It won't be long, because I promise you I'll know the minute you get away with the file."

"How will you know that?"

"Come on, McCall, you know how to play the game. Don't ask questions you know aren't going to be answered."

"What if I don't succeed?"

"Then I go elsewhere."

McCall could almost see the shrug of a shoulder as he was dismissed so easily.

"And if I'm caught?"

"You're expendable. Just like your kid was expendable three months ago. Remember?"

A vise-like grip tightened in McCall's chest. "What do you mean?"

"I mean your son had to be set up from the inside. Think about it. Think about it and remember what was done to him. I doubt he was even over that before he and the girl were blown to bits, was he? Did he have nightmares, McCall? Did you have nightmares? You can set it all straight. All you got to do is play along. They'll fall like dominoes. Do what you have to do, and I'll be in touch."

The tone of a dead line buzzed through Robert's head for a long time before he replaced the receiver. Images sparked through his mind with painful jolts. His son's torture, his own agony at his total helplessness, his intended and nearly fatal betrayal of his best friend... Only one person would be able to torment him with those particular memories, the person who had sold the information to Fatma Khoury in the first place.

Control had assured him that they hadn't made any progress on locating the leak in the Agency who had fed Fatma Khoury and her small band of terrorists the information that put Scott into their hands. It wouldn't be the first time Control had placed Agency priorities ahead of McCall's. In nearly every instance, Robert had understood his friend's loyalties, but not in this. Scott's life was worth more to Robert than any concoction of the Agency's.

With a rush of agony, he realized that it didn't matter. Priorities, loyalties... they no longer mattered. He had once bought into the fallacy that he was making the world safe for his children. That was the greatest lie of all.

He got his coat from the closet and left the apartment. There was no sense in conducting this phase of his business with listening ears. It was time to start censoring information.

*****

It was getting cold outside. Snow fluttered against the dirty window glass like moths to a light. Victor Holt cranked the heat up another notch and added a sweater over his sweatshirt. Victor was perpetually cold. He was also pale and anemic looking from spending his life under indoor lighting. His food was delivered along with the newspapers and anything else he needed. The mail man provided his contact with the world outside his door, and runners met his requirements for his various 'enterprises'. Most of his computer work was legitimate, but his most lucrative business was not. It hardly mattered to Victor; he was the most honestly amoral person Robert McCall had ever met. It was nearly impossible to hold him liable for his actions when he was incapable of feeling the remotest bit of guilt.

Not to mention that he often came in very handy.

Robert rapped sharply on the door, heard the peephole shutter slide back and slam closed. Chains clanked, bolts scraped and seconds later, a sweater clad arm snaked out through the barely open door and dragged McCall inside.

"Don't let the friggin' cold inside, Robert. Gets in the bones. You know that. It's the middle of the fuckin' winter. Shut the damn door."

McCall pulled the door closed and waited while Victor, hunched against an imaginary chill shot the bolts closed and latched the double chains. The electric heat blasted him the instant he stepped into the room and he slipped his overcoat off. Sweat had already begun to dot his forehead.

Victor bustled across the room and dropped his thin frame into a swivel chair parked in front of a bank of computer equipment. He nodded a jerky invitation to McCall to take a chair across from him. Robert moved a stack of manuals out of the proffered chair and sat.

"What do you need, McCall? I got a lot of work to do. Can't waste a whole lot of time. If you weren't such a good friend, I'd have had to turn you down. What is it you need?"

'Good friend'. Perish the thought, McCall let the thought flit through his mind. His normal avenues were blocked in this instance, however, so he leaned forward as if inviting Victor into a conspiracy.

"I need some money electronically transferred into some private accounts," he offered. "I have partial access, but I'm afraid it's somewhat limited."

"Where are these accounts?"

"Where are all secret bank accounts?"

Victor grinned, displaying a mouth full of oversized, yellowed teeth. "Give me what you have, how much you want transferred, and where you want it to look like it came from, and I'll get started on it."

McCall pulled a handwritten paper from his pocket and handed it over. Victor glanced over it with darting, nearly black eyes, and nodded, mumbling to himself while he estimated the level of difficulty.

"On a scale of one to ten, I give it a five, McCall. Not too much of a problem. How soon do you need it done?"

"Right away. That's why I came to you."

"Consider it done."

"Regular fee?"

"Regular fee."

"I'll see to it, then."

He rose, feeling the prickle of a trail of sweat sliding down his spine, his collar molding itself to his neck. Just what I need, he thought sourly, to step out into the snow and catch my bloody death of pneumonia. At least the plan was in motion now.

*****

Every office, whether on a local level or a national one, falls victim to staff meetings, where little is settled, nothing of importance ever seems to be brought up, and time is wasted no matter how valuable it is. At the Agency, they are not called staff meetings; they are called briefings. Even Control was subject to them unless he had an unshakable alibi. Tuesday, he could not come up with an acceptable excuse, so he filed in with the other staff and endured two hours of rhetoric.

Robert McCall was well acquainted with Agency meetings, even though it had been years since he had submitted to one at a personal level. He was also very aware that at ten a.m. on most Tuesdays, only a skeleton staff would be in place in the main offices, including Control's.

Miriam made a half-hearted attempt to block him from entering Control's office ostensibly to wait for the Agency head's return. Between genuine sympathy for the man's loss and the instant intimidation McCall sparked in her, she sat at her desk and let him enter the inner office with only the slightest protest. She sank back in her chair as the door closed silently behind him and, not for the first time, thought about sending her resume out to the private sector. Miriam had two children of her own, though they were both away at college, and she couldn't imagine anything happening to them.

Of course, being a secretary to someone in the Agency was hardly in the same league as being a field operative, but too often the danger spiralled out to include innocents as well. McCall, in fact, was a case in point. When she had been younger, it had seemed exciting to work with the Company, to somehow be included in the fringes of the wide world of espionage. It hadn't taken long to realize that a secretary was a secretary was a secretary. Filing and data input in the offices of a building full of spies was the same as in a building full of attorneys.

She sighed and returned to her typing. The stack of correspondence wasn't going to get smaller while she thought out her life goals.

With the door to the inner office shut, she couldn't hear anything that went on. The room was thoroughly sound proofed, as were all the offices. The only exception was when one or another of the big shots got the bright idea that there was some conspiracy afoot and bugged another big shot's office. That sort of thing came and went. Usually nothing came of it. In fact, Miriam was just as glad the door was shut. She still trembled at the scene she and half the office staff had been privy to when McCall had flown into a righteous fury at Control and Kostmayer over the deaths of his son and daughter.

If she were Control or Mickey Kostmayer, she would very seriously consider watching her back for a while.

You're not either one of them, she reminded herself in irritation at her own flights of fancy. You're a secretary, so type.

*****

It didn't take McCall long to find the hidden key. That had been his only worry, but there were just so many places to hide things, and he eventually pulled it out of its cubby hole. The combination to the safe was the same as it had been for years. With a real twitch of conscience he spun the dial to Scott's birthdate and drew the heavy door open quietly.

The file was there amid a pot pourri of papers and bundled financial packets. Whoever his contact was, there had been no mistake about its location. That nearly eliminated any doubt about it being an inside job, but he had known that all along. The amount of knowledge necessary to set this up -- not to mention the sell-out three months ago -- had to come from inside, from someone close enough to access classified information. Someone close enough to actually witness what went on in these offices on a day-to-day basis. It was simply a matter of flushing that person out.

Quietly, he closed the safe, spun the dial, and got to his feet. His knees creaked with the effort of standing. In the right hand drawer he found a large manila envelope and he stuffed the file into it, spreading the little metal tabs to close it. He had just turned to face the door when it was pushed open slowly, with exaggerated care.

*****

Oh shit, Miriam thought with an uncharacteristic lapse into crudity. She'd been having second thoughts for the last five minutes about allowing McCall to go into Control's office. She was literally on the edge of her chair, having decided to follow him and try to get him to leave or at least wait in the outer office.

Snatches of conversation alerted her seconds before her boss rounded the corner of the long hallway. She couldn't make out what they were saying, but he was conferring with Jacob Stock and Mickey Kostmayer, their heads bent to each other as they moved slowly toward her.

Awkwardly, she lurched to her feet as they came by her desk, and her expression effectively stopped the conversation.

"What is it, Miriam?" Control asked with a lift of one eyebrow.

"I shouldn't have..." She stuttered to a halt, not sure if she should just explain or apologize. For all she knew, McCall was in the process of dismantling Control's office piece by piece. If his mood the last time he had been in that room was any indication, he might even be rigging up explosives.

"Shouldn't have...?" Control prompted.

"Mr. McCall." She fumbled for the explanation. "He asked to wait in your office. I thought it was all right. I mean, he's so often done it before. I didn't think there would be any problem." Her words faded out and came to a thin halt.

Control glanced at the two agents with him, something passing between them wordlessly, then he nodded to Miriam. "I'm sure it's all right, Miriam. Hold my calls until I tell you otherwise. Mickey, why don't you come in with me. Maybe Robert's ready to discuss this calmly now."

Stock looked a bit surprised at being excluded, but he shrugged at the still standing Miriam, then crossed to the main reception desk, where he took up his interrupted objective of earlier this morning.

Gail Billings was new at her post. She looked every bit the upscale receptionist, with thick waves of dark brown hair and inch long lashes over sea-blue eyes. Jacob had almost succeeded in getting a date with her when the briefing had interrupted his efforts. She smiled brightly at him as he wandered over with feigned nonchalance.

Success was within his grasp when he heard the office door open and he glanced away from Gail's perfect eyes long enough to see Robert McCall pass Miriam's desk with a manila envelope under his arm. McCall swept by him without a word and Control's door closed with the click of a lock.

"Tomorrow night?" Gail drew his attention back as she tapped a pen against startlingly white teeth. "Tomorrow night's okay for me. Where do you want to go?"

It was fifteen minutes later before Jacob realized that the door to Control's office had remained shut. He confirmed a time and destination and with a satisfied grin turned away from the reception desk and walked back to Miriam.

"Nobody came out yet?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

"Not a sound," Miriam returned.

Stock stepped over to the door and knocked lightly on it. When that got no response, he rapped harder. Still nothing. He turned the handle. It wouldn't budge. He glanced back at Miriam, who was once again halfway to her feet.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

Stock looked beyond her and saw that they had become the center of attention. That did nothing for his nerves. He turned back to the silent door and banged on it. Futilely, he twisted at the knob again.

"Give me the key," he barked at Miriam.

"I don't have--"

"Give me the key!"

This time, she didn't bother to deny it. She pulled out her center drawer and reached up inside it, her fingers seeking and finding both the key and a loose splinter that lodged beneath her nail. In the rising sense of panic she could feel emanating from the young agent standing over her with his hand extended in a demand, she barely felt the bite of the tiny sliver of wood in the sensitive skin beneath her fingernail. She tore the key loose from its taped position and handed it to him. Her hand shook uncontrollably. She kept seeing the rage and fury Robert McCall had loosed in that silent office just days before.

By now, the commotion had attracted quite an audience and a mutter of questions went unanswered as Jacob tried the key, getting it upside down in his urgency. He flipped it over and stabbed it at the lock. The door knob turned in his hand and he pushed it open, ignoring the press of onlookers and the unanswered questions that buzzed at him from all sides.

As the door swung inward, the questions died an unnatural death into an almost palpable silence. Blood splayed out in a crimson arc against the desk front behind Control's head. He lay propped against the heavy oak desk in a halo of his own blood, half-seated as if he had slumped there in exhaustion. A thin trickle of red repeated itself from the center of his forehead. Mickey Kostmayer lay curled into himself to his right. His .45 was in his hand. It hadn't done him much good. A blossom of red covered his chest. His eyes were open and staring into nothingness.

Whoever had constructed the inner offices had done a wonderful job with the sound proofing. The double murder hadn't made a sound outside these walls.

Jacob Stock, his face pale and gray, yanked the door shut on the gory scene.

A trembling voice from behind him said, "Call the cops."

"No!"

Stock spun around, his hand still clenched around the door knob. "This will be handled from inside. No one call anyone. Go back to your business. Nothing has happened here today. Is that clear?"

His voice carried much more authority than it ever had before. No one questioned the order or his right to make it. There would be no way to halt the whispered, panicked conversations, but at least everyone did as told.

"Miriam."

Stock had to repeat her name, more forcefully, before she turned widened, shock-dazed eyes toward him.

When he was sure he had her wavering attention, he jotted four names on a piece of paper. "Get these people for me. Right now. Tell them nothing. Just get them here."

"Yes, sir," she whispered as she sank back into her chair, immensely grateful for the distraction of having something to do.

Jacob wasn't used to being obeyed unconditionally. The thought flickered through his mind that it wasn't a bad feeling. A quick glance out through the glass wall showed him Gail's huge eyes following his every move. At the moment, he wasn't in a position to capitalize on that, though. He pried his hand loose from the door knob and took a second to compose himself, his head resting against the door. When he looked back up, Miriam was already assembling his hand-picked team, and he drew in a long, steadying breath.

*****

The call came exactly on time.

Robert snatched the receiver up on the first ring.

The voice was even more muffled on the cellular phone. "Do you have it?"

McCall forced his stiff body out of the slouch he'd settled into behind the wheel of the Jag. Rather than risk missing the call in case the contact decided to change the rules in midstream, he had been in place in the car for the last two hours. He would, of course, not have returned to the apartment for any reason after his break-in to Control's safe, so he had been stuck with time on his hands and nowhere to go. The mid-town parking garage was not one he was accustomed to using, so there was little chance of his drawing an Agency tail unless he chose to do so.

"I have it. Tell me where to meet you."

"Go to the Bronx. There's a burned out tenement in the middle of East 179th off Webster. Go to the basement. I'll find you."

*****

Miriam tried to pull her eyes away from the closed door, but morbid fascination drew her inexorably to the dark wood panel. It looked just the same as it did any other day, closed most of the time, shuttering out the rest of the world, or, more important, concealing what lay within. There was literally nothing about the door that looked the slightest bit different.

Maybe that was what spooked her so much.

She had considered calling in sick this morning. No one would have begrudged her the option. After all, she had worked for Control for over ten years now. She'd be allowed her moment of grieving. But the thought of sitting in her tiny apartment, reliving that split second of the most horrible sight she had ever experienced was too overwhelming to even imagine. It was well past eight p.m. now and she was still welded into her seat behind her desk. The activity around her hadn't noticeably slackened, either, with the lateness of the hour.

The man she had worked for so long to please... Not that he ever noticed her. But, then, she hadn't expected that, not from him. He was considerate and fair, and protected her from the office politics, but there was never anything personal. He was wedded to the Agency, in every facet that the old adage encompassed. No one knew that better than Miriam. It was one of the things she most admired about him. In an era of selfishness and treachery, he embodied all the ideals she valued. She'd caught snippets of the gossip that labeled him cold and manipulative, and she'd never challenged the description. There was some satisfaction in being one of the few who saw the unguarded moments, the vulnerability that he hid so well.

Yes, she thought absently, still staring at the unyielding door, that was the word -- vulnerable. The idea actually curled a tiny twist of a smile at her lips. She could just picture the reaction around here if she made that observation aloud. She, like Control, was a member of the old rank. The

young girls that passed through these offices on their way up the corporate ladder dismissed her as just another old maid living vicariously within the imaginary cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of the Agency. She didn't particularly resent them. Miriam could do her own share of dismissing the carbon copy young things with the intentionally fly-away hair and the layered makeup. She'd been with Control for ten years, but she'd been in field offices for fifteen years before that. One time in Angola...

The thought died with the wry smile. There wasn't a single person here who would believe that story. Not of Miriam.

With the fading thought, she dragged her eyes away from the door, and made a half-hearted attempt to arrange some of the work on her desk, as if it mattered whether or not it got done. Vulnerable... Miriam had seen Control's face the day Robert McCall had accused him of complicity in a female agent's death. What had been her name? Oh, well, it didn't matter. What mattered was that there had been pure and honest pain in Control's hooded eyes that day as he stood by her desk, completely unmindful of her nearness, and watched the ramrod-straight back of Robert McCall as he stalked out of his office and down the long hall. The misery hadn't faded until the receding form turned the corner at the bank of elevators and disappeared. Control, seeming to realize Miriam's presence only then, had offered her a wasted smile and had gone silently back into the lonely office.

Miriam had been the one to see the glow of love and genuine affection that touched the blue eyes when his goddaughter came on her infrequent visits. She heard the mellowing of his voice when he talked to the slight blonde girl, often with the door open, as if inviting Miriam to share his pleasure in his company.

She had been the one to watch him brood and fret as he anticipated taking news of McCall's death -- fortunately, the communique was wrong, but that was only learned much later -- to his ex-wife and young son. He had been gone days that time, and when he returned, he was pale and gaunt looking. There were people Control loved. There had been Susan. Another chapter closed on tragedy. There were McCall's children -- the girl brought him unadulterated joy and delight, the boy, exasperation and pride. There was Robert McCall, the man who had ended his life yesterday.

That was the ultimate irony. His closest friend. His only confidante. The instrument of his death.

She would never be able to erase that final image from her mind. It had registered on her eyes only a second before the door was mercifully closed on the carnage that had once been his office. Never would she be free of the sight of him slumped against the desk as if dropped there from severed puppet strings, his blood a terrible bouquet of crimson behind him. Bile rose in her throat as for an instant she entertained an image of the exit wound in the back of his head that must have sent that spray of gore onto the desk.

The buzz of her intercom was the only thing that reinforced her enough to not have to bolt from her desk.

Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she swallowed once, then picked up the handset.

"Yes?"

"Where is Stock?"

"He's in the next room."

"Get him."

"I am authorized to relay messages to him, young man," she said in her best schoolmistress voice, then waited out the moment of indecision.

Evidently the informant didn't think it was worth a confrontation.

"Tell him that we've spotted McCall. He's headed toward the Bronx, and we're on his tail. Tell him that it doesn't look like McCall's spotted us or he's not trying too hard to shake us. We're following orders and merely observing."

"We'll get back to you," Miriam said quietly into the receiver, feeling the faint, almost forgotten stirring of excitement she hadn't noticed in many years. The chase. The intrigue. It really did exist, and she had once been a small part of it. Let the young girls and the yuppie agents get their thrills out of the stock market and foreign currency; Miriam remembered when it had all been real.

"Mr. Stock!"

At the sound of her voice, Jacob jerked upright from the map he was studying spread over a conference table. He raised a restraining hand to the four men seated around the table and walked quickly to her desk. The hours were beginning to tell on him. His usually impeccable suit was wrinkled and had the distinct appearance of having been slept in, which was exactly the case. What little sleep he had gotten had been spent slumped comatose over a desk during the long night and longer day since the bureau chief's murder.

Miriam watched him walk toward her, exhaustion and strain making his stride ungainly. For just a moment he reminded her of Mickey Kostmayer, but the resemblance was only fleeting. Mickey had been a bridge between the old rank agents like Control and McCall and the newer breed like Jacob Stock and, God help us, Jason Masur. He had all the courage and loyalty of the original agents, some of the idealism, though not all by any means. He also possessed his share of the ruthlessness and single-mindedness of the newer crop of operatives.

She had liked Mickey, though she had never felt close to him. He exuded a sense of danger that she knew was all too real. How ironic that it had been McCall who had killed him. The only higher demand on Kostmayer's loyalty and allegiance than the Agency's had been Robert McCall's. Now, McCall's children were dead, indirectly -- or perhaps even directly -- because of Mickey's actions, and Mickey was dead at McCall's hand. Things seemed to have come full circle. She would miss that choir boy face that hid the lethal operative behind such an endearing facade. She liked Stock, but couldn't resist the comparison to Kostmayer; and Jacob never seemed to possess the substance that Mickey showed. He would probably go further, and live longer (now, that was a given!), but he would never quite match up, at least not in Miriam's eyes.

"What is it?"

The question broke the momentary whimsy, and she repeated the message verbatim.

"All right, let's go."

Jacob didn't even acknowledge the message, merely turned and signalled the four men he had assembled as his elite squad hours ago. They scooped up surveillance equipment, weapons, jackets, and the radio that was their umbilical link to the team that was following McCall and started toward the elevators.

"Wait a minute!"

Jason Masur was suddenly in the hallway, his cock-like posture exaggerated in the urgency of his pace as he came up to Stock. "Where are you going? Why wasn't my section notified?"

"This isn't the jurisdiction of your section, Masur." Stock gave the short answer and started to walk past him, but Jason caught his arm. Blue eyes met brown in a clash of wills. Masur was the first to look away.

"I am section chief. I should have been notified of a move of this magnitude. I want to go with you."

Stock smiled at the words, his expression making it clear how much importance he gave them, but the smile vanished quickly. He considered Masur with a more thoughtful look. "Okay. You have five minutes to outfit yourself with a weapon and join us in the parking garage."

Jason actually backed off at the suggestion that bordered too closely on an order. Their positions were too nearly equal for Masur to issue a direct challenge, though Stock's future plans didn't seem half as promising now that his mentor had been hauled out of here in a body bag. That thought alone cooled Masur's temper and allowed him to respond with some calm.

"I don't need a weapon. That's why we have field agents, to do the scut work."

With the comment, he turned and gave every appearance of leading the other men to the waiting vehicles.

*****

"I sure figured McCall would be better than this," Jason Masur snorted as they fanned out before entering the nearly destroyed tenement. He brushed accidentally against the sagging railing and swatted impatiently at the layer of dust that transferred from the rusted metal to his overcoat.

It was too dark to see if there would be a rust stain, but enough light flanked them for Jacob to register the disgust on Masur's face. He got a moment's perverse satisfaction from knowing that even Masur was forced to get dirt on his hands sometimes.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jacob tossed over his shoulder as he scouted for the easiest and quietest access to the interior of the building.

"It means we didn't have any trouble at all tracking him, or finding him in the first place. I knew the stories were embellished."

"The stories?" Jake looked back at him in genuine curiosity.

"Him and Control. The 'Old Guard'. That crock of shit. How great they were supposed to be. If they ever had it, they sure as hell lost it in their old age."

"Maybe McCall wanted us to follow him," Jacob suggested.

"Sure. He's inviting us to blow him away." It was more a snort than a response.

"He just killed his two closest friends. His children are dead. Maybe he just doesn't care. I mean, it's not like we don't have an ID on the killer. Everyone in the Agency saw him walk out of that locked office."

"You go ahead and keep giving him excuses, Stock. Maybe you swallow all the old tales of derring-do. I don't. He's just an old man making fatal mistakes. Nothing more. His time passed a long time ago. His and Control's. They're dinosaurs, and I, for one, don't intend to let this opportunity pass me up. If you're smart, you won't either. Now's the time to rise in the ranks and only those who are smart enough to jump on the chance are going to make it."

"Well," Stock said thoughtfully, "if I were you, I'd shut up. Even if McCall is making stupid mistakes, I wouldn't want to announce my presence to him in the dark."

*****

It was after nine before McCall parked the Jag and walked the two blocks to the abandoned tenement. The twinge of concern about leaving a luxury car parked in this neighborhood was only a passing thought. Cars could be replaced. In his present position, transportation might be the last thing he would need anyhow. Things were hinged a bit delicately this time. He had no illusions that he had shaken the Agency tail for long. They'd pick up his scent again; with luck it wouldn't be too soon.

Habit drew his hand inside his coat for a last minute reassurance. The cold steel that met his probing fingertips was at once comforting and disquieting. Much too long ago, he had invited violence into his life. His one concession to his conscience had been the attempt to keep that violence from touching his son, and later, his daughter. But in the end, he hadn't prevented that from happening. Too many times his past had reached out with claws of danger to clutch at the two innocent young people. At least this time, he could rectify that. The one thing he had come to find out -- everything else was secondary -- would be revealed to him in the next few minutes, and the outcome was up to luck and skill. But, he had to have that one answer.

A wickedly cold snap of air swirled his long coat out in a billow behind him and he ignored the sights and sounds that prodded for his attention. The drunks curled into filthy balls of discarded clothing and papers in darkened, reeking doorways didn't even register on his mind. Only intermittent light guided him across the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk. Most of the street lamps were broken out or simply not working. He heard and dismissed the various creaks of wind through broken doorways and windows. Even in the dark, obstacle-ridden walk, he never missed a step, his stride unbreakable, his mind focused on a single purpose.

The front door of the once occupied apartment building hung askew on broken hinges. A single figure was curled into the darkness of the recessed doorway, huddled around itself in fumes of wine and vomit. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female, much less dead or alive. McCall glanced up at the once glittering brass numbers beside the splintered door frame. A six hung crazily from a single nail. Only the vague outline of the other numbers remained to show that this had once been an address, had once had a use beyond being a receptacle for graffiti, mostly Spanish, mostly misspelled, or a partial shelter for the homeless who skulked inside its fire-blackened hulk.

Beyond the main entrance, he saw the sunken steps that led into a pitch-black hole. He didn't hesitate to take the steps to the below ground level. The door was ajar. He slipped through into the rank smelling interior. Clutching the file protectively beneath his arm, he let his eyes accustom themselves to the new layer of darkness before he attempted to move deeper into the room. From the slivers of light that cut through the gloom, he estimated that the basement must have run the length of the large building. There were massive support posts, but no evidence of anything being partitioned off. Crates and piles of trash made an obstacle course of the huge area, and he knew without even thinking about it that an army could have been secreted in here unseen and unsuspected. He'd known going in, however, that he was to a large extent at the mercy of his mysterious contact. If the informant chose to ambush him, there were far too many places to hide. Robert could only hope that the other man wanted what he had as badly as McCall wanted his answer.

He made his way across the floor, not stopping until he was nearly in the exact center of the huge room. Slowly, he turned a full 360 degrees.

"I'm here," he said aloud, his voice booming in the empty echo of the basement, unnaturally loud and harsh.

"So am I."

He turned back to the right to watch the figure advance from the far corner. For some reason, he had never considered that it might be a woman. Perhaps he really did still hang onto a bit of chauvinism in that he tended to expect cruelty and greed to be a masculine arena.

The darkness and the concealing folds of a cape kept his mind searching for only a second. One question was answered as he recognized Janice St. Romain. She had been recruited and hired by Jason Masur, and Robert remembered speaking to her on one or two occasions. Nothing more than that. A polite nod and a greeting, courtesy in passing. Clerical staff were often the most easily overlooked; they almost always appeared totally innocuous, even while all of the Agency's business passed through their hands in one form or another. Overlooked and with virtually unlimited access.

He would have had no reason to even remember her, much less suspect her.

"Where is it?" she demanded in the husky, cigarette roughened voice that had lent itself so easily to camouflage over the phone.

Robert pulled the file out from under his coat slowly, trying to make out her features in the dim lighting. He wanted the advantage of reading her eyes when he asked his next questions. Some mental filing system absently reminded him that her eyes were green, the perfect compliment to her auburn hair, though she wasn't quite as attractive on second glance. He remembered that, too.

She was close enough to reach for the file, but her gloved fingers captured only air as he used an almost sleight-of-hand maneuver to flip the file away from her.

"I have upheld my share of this bargain. How do I know that you intend to follow through with yours?"

"You'll have to trust me for two weeks. Then, Alpha will make a major financial coup, and it'll all be set in motion. I'll drop the necessary hints within the Agency about Control and Kostmayer and secret bank accounts, and it's all downhill from there."

"Answer me one question."

He saw the suspicion even through the dark, felt her weigh his request. He was nearly holding his breath on her answer when she shrugged one shoulder and said, "I don't guess there's any harm in it. What question?"

"Are you the one -- you, personally -- the one who sold my son out to Fatma Khoury?"

"He's dead now. Does it matter?"

"Oh, yes, indeed, it matters very much."

Again, there was that moment of evaluation, until she repeated the shrug. "Jason doesn't have the patience for trivial things like correspondence or any of the other paper trails that occur every day. He's much too important to deal with anything that can be shunted off onto someone else. I could access anything I wanted almost from the first day. You robbed me of a lot of money when you killed her. I never got a dime. All my plans..."

In a collapsing vortex of emotion, it spiralled in on Robert. The fear and pain that Scott had endured, the agony he, himself, had gone through in his enforced helplessness, the considered sacrifice of his friend of thirty years... it had all been a business deal, based on greed and opportunism. His pain, his son's torture, Control's agony of indecision had only been side events, not even important to the one person who had set it all into motion.

For the first time in his life, he thought he could kill without regret. He could kill her with his bare hands...

"McCall! Don't move. You're surrounded!"

The voice broke the instant of silence between them. They both froze in place, the folder secure in McCall's hand, darkness separating them by less than three feet. Their eyes met, a spark of communication arcing between them, then her eyes dropped to the file.

"Robert! It's over! Don't let it cost any more lives!" Jacob Stock's voice reached out to them from one of the inky corners. "There are five guns on you, Robert. Please, just come in with us," he continued when there was no answer, no movement in response to his order.

"Come in?" McCall repeated in a normal tone, his voice easily carrying to the four agents placed in various hiding positions around the cluttered room. "Come in to what? Give me a reason, Jacob, if you can." His left hand was still beneath his coat, his fingers curling around the butt of the Walther.

"Robert, these men are only doing their jobs. Haven't enough innocent people been killed?"

"Oh, yes, Jake, more than enough," McCall agreed in a much too hearty tone. As he turned slowly to face the direction of the voice, his left hand emerged from beneath the concealment of the coat, his right thrust the file into Janice's hands and he shielded her body with his own as he brought the weapon into sight. He fired a shot in the general direction of Stock's voice, his right hand following through on the pass-off of the file with a hard shove against Janice's body, pushing her into the sheltering darkness of moving crates and debris.

She was already halfway to her planned exit when she heard the staccato blast of gunfire. Unable to resist the temptation, she turned at the last second and saw Robert McCall slammed back against a stack of cardboard boxes, his hand clutched to his chest, light through a grimy, jagged window glinting off his silver hair as he staggered, then fell to the filthy floor. She was outside in the relative safety of the night before the echo completed its hollow ricochet off the underground walls.

*****

"Secure the area." Stock barked the order at two of the men who had accompanied them to the tenement even before approaching the sprawled, motionless body.

"To hell with the area! Get her! She's got the file!" Jason Masur blurted out the words, nearly stumbling over his own tongue in his consternation at recognizing Janice. What really had him on the verge of hysteria was the certainty that all five of the men with him must also have recognized her as easily as he did. Not only had he hired her, bedded her and worked with her daily, but he would be held liable for her actions and there was no way around it. Add the fact that there were five witnesses present that heard her not only admit to being responsible for the theft of the file and four deaths, but also to the fiasco of three months ago that was only now dying down. And he had recruited her and turned her loose with access to all his correspondence and files. Ten minutes ago, he had envisioned possession of Control's office; now, he would be lucky if he escaped execution.

"Stay where you are," Stock said, and it took Jason a moment to realize it was directed at him.

"But the file," he protested, impotent in his fury and frustration. "He passed her the file. You've got to--"

"She's gone." Frank Jennings made the announcement as he stepped back into the room, carefully dodging trash and crates.

"What--?"

The word wasn't out of Jason's mouth when McCall rolled to his side and grumbled, "Well, help me up, Jacob, it's positively filthy down here. We'll have a new outbreak of TB at this rate."

If the dead had truly arisen, Masur couldn't have been more shocked. He stared in apoplectic confusion as Stock hauled Robert to his feet.

"Are you sure she's clear?" McCall asked Jennings, and Frank was halfway into his nod when a second figure trailed in after him.

"Free and clear," said Mickey Kostmayer. "At least, so she thinks." He glanced behind him and waited for another man to step into the vague circle of light.

Masur stared open mouthed at the men around him. It was obvious that he was the only one who hadn't expected Control to follow Kostmayer into the room.

"I saw you dead." He couldn't suppress the statement. "I saw you both dead."

"Oh, come on, Masur," Control snorted. "You work for the most organized and technologically advanced espionage group in the world. Surely you know we can fake anything we want to fake."

"Maybe not," Mickey put in. "He's been so busy consorting with the clerical staff and planning his political future that he seems out of touch."

"What political future?" Stock grinned.

"Rather a moot point, don't you think?" McCall said, brushing dirt and suspicious stains off his coat. "Any visions of advancement Mr. Masur had within the Company have just done a vanishing act, I should think."

"This was a trick? All a trick?" Masur nearly whispered the question.

"Very good, Jason," Control retorted. "Too bad you picked too late to learn."

"The plane-- McCall's kids--"

"They never got on it," Robert explained, feeling incredibly expansive at the moment, now that the pretense was over. "They were diverted within the boarding tunnel, the pilot bailed out on target, leaving the plane on autopilot with a pre-set time and altitude. Boom. All nice and neat."

Seeing the circle of grinning faces around him, Jason knew he should shut up, but he couldn't stop the stuttered questions. "The file? What was in it? Nothing?"

"Really, Jason, you disappoint me," Control said. "There was everything in it that Miss St. Romain wanted to be there. She will take it to her employer, they will act on it, and their financial empire will tumble down around their ears. Miss St. Romain will receive her just rewards. We will achieve what we set out to do, with the added bonus of having enormous blackmail potential against Alpha." He glanced at Robert, and his smile dimmed and disappeared. "And we will be minus one Agency mole that no one was able to flush out before now."

"In the meantime, I think I heard something about a vacation," Mickey said around an expansive yawn. "At Company expense," he added with a trace of anticipatory suspicion.

"Two weeks," Control agreed. "That should be plenty of time for everything to unravel. You, however--" He speared Masur with a glare that could have conceivably cut ice. "You will be reassigned. I think Beirut is nice this time of year."

"Reassigned?"

"Yes, at least until we decide whether or not you should be brought up on charges."

"Charges?"

Jennings said, "After you," with a smile, then he prodded Masur with his hand gun when he didn't take the hint that it was time to leave. With only a bemused glance at him, Jason started back through the debris to the door they'd entered only a few minutes earlier -- a few minutes, and a lifetime earlier.

His voice drifted plaintively back to them. "Charges?"

*****

Marble Mountain sprawled in its white capped majesty, perfectly framed in the huge window, the cold, crisp air held safely at bay by the glass that separated the two men seated at the restaurant table.

Control leaned back in his chair, stretching luxuriously in the roomy booth. The waitress, on her swing back to the bar, glanced a question at his glass, and he shook his head. "Robert?"

"No, no thanks, not right now," McCall said as if rousing himself from near-sleep.

The waitress smiled and was gone in a flurry of mock-Alpine skirts and petticoats.

"You know, Control, I am finding it rather difficult to believe that you haven't at least smuggled in a fax machine or a briefcase full of files to work on while we're here."

"Now, Robert, when I say it's a vacation, that's exactly what I mean."

"Since when?"

"Since now. Don't you think we've earned it?"

McCall smiled into his glass, tipped the film of cognac around it, then took a long swallow of the amber liqueur. "We most certainly have earned it, and more." A shadow of thought crossed his face and he stared off at the skier-lined slopes beyond their vantage point. "It's finally over. As best it can be over."

"Robert, I know how difficult it was for you to let her walk out of there."

"Do you?" McCall forced his gaze back from the idyllic scene beyond the window. "Yes I imagine you do," he acknowledged, seeing the same memories that plagued him surface in the other man's eyes. "I suppose the hardest thing to understand is that she caused so much pain, and was untouched by any of it. Some days I can hardly look at Scott without seeing..." The words were lost in a breath of air.

In a gesture that was so rare as to seem almost forbidden, Control reached across the table and touched his hand to Robert's, the warmth of his palm resting momentarily against the back of McCall's hand. "Robert, the only pain she will cause now is to herself and the people who paid her for her treachery. It will resolve itself."

"I would have torn her apart with my bare hands if I had been given the opportunity," McCall said with quiet passion.

"I know. I would have helped you."

Understanding passed between them without words. So often, they didn't need words. McCall had only a moment to savor the shared emotion, then the hand was withdrawn and Control aimed a smile beyond Robert's shoulder.

McCall turned in his seat to monitor the approaching argument.

"I mean it. That damn tree wasn't there on the first run. Somebody put it there."

"Face it, Kostmayer, you've got two left feet." Scott gave Mickey a playful shove as they wended their way through tables that were much too close together to permit much rough-housing.

"If I remember it right," Mickey shot back, poking gingerly at the white strip of adhesive across his forehead, "you spent as much time on your backside as you did on your feet, McCall."

"Neither one of you has a shot at the Olympics." Yvette threw in her opinion as she pushed past the both of them and gave Robert and Control each a quick peck on the cheek before sliding in beside her godfather. "I'm starved," she added, opening one of the menus.

Scott dropped to the seat beside his father as Mickey drew a chair up to the end of the table. "Yeah," he agreed, "nothing like skiing to give you an appetite."

"You've always got an appetite," Kostmayer groused. "I heard they were gonna have to send for emergency supplies just to get through the week."

"At least I ski around trees."

With an expressive roll of her eyes, Yvette said, "You two don't know what you're missing." She included both Robert and Control in her statement. "You really should try these slopes. They're wonderful."

"Yes," Robert said thoughtfully, taking a closer look at the bandage adorning Kostmayer's head, "so I can see. If you don't mind, we'll enjoy the sport from here."

"Yeah, that reminds me," Kostmayer said. "You didn't have to hit me so damn hard back in the office, Robert."

Before McCall could respond, Scott blurted, "Dad hit you? Wow!"

"Wow?!" Mickey retorted. "What the hell does that mean -- Wow?"

Undaunted by the glare Kostmayer shot at him, Scott shrugged and said, "I don't know. I just never picture Dad as... you know, doing physical stuff like that."

That, of course, pushed McCall's buttons. "Young man, I'll have you know--"

Control halted the threatened diatribe with a raised hand, "Robert, I don't know about you, but right now I'm perfectly happy to leave the 'physical stuff' to the younger generation. Why don't we retire to the sun porch and enjoy the scenery?"

McCall readily agreed to the suggestion and a shuffling of places allowed them to exit the booth.

Scott watched them weave their way through the tables toward the observation deck, then glanced back in time to see Yvette poke at the dressing on Mickey's forehead. Kostmayer grunted in protest and twitched away from her hand.

"Hey! That hurts!"

"I really think you should lie down and rest, Mickey, at least for a little while until the swelling goes down. The lodge nurse said--"

"Thank God!" Scott interrupted with a heartfelt sigh of obvious relief. The twin questioning glances he got prompted the explanation, "For two weeks she's been babying me. Now, it can be your turn for a while."

"Scott McCall, that isn't fair!"

"Hey!" Scott spread his hands in mock surprise. "Nobody promised you fair!" Before she could swat at him with the menu, he slid out of the booth and said, "I think I'll take in the view with Dad and Control for a while."

Yvette watched him go with a thoughtful frown. "He's better, isn't he?" she asked Mickey with sudden and unexpected intimacy.

Caught off guard for a moment at the comment, Mickey glanced after Scott, then back at her. He didn't miss the sincere concern in her face, nor the residual worry that touched her eyes. "I'd say he's doing fine," he agreed gently.

"Robert, too." There was the barest hint of a question in the words.

"Robert, too." Mickey reached over and touched her hand in an unintentional repeat of Control's earlier gesture toward her father.

She smiled, then laughed outright, the sound light and tinkling in the clear air. "You know, Mickey, sometimes this family is just a little hard to keep up with."

Kostmayer met the laugh with a grin. "Tell me about it," he agreed. "It's hard on me, and I'm not even a part of it!"