Bahr didn't answer. Who put Carmine up to it didn't seem important any more, nor did the interview with Adams that was now facing him in two hours with no sleep to support him. He drove through the gloomy drizzling rain, trying to remember something about a woman whose face he could not see, and a long corridor, and an elephant.

In the darkened room, Harvey Alexander lay immobile, staring fixedly at the ceiling, and he smelled the smoke long before he felt the heat of the fire. He tried to move his arms; the muscles responded, but slowly, sluggishly, and he fell back against the couch, panting at the effort.

There were many things he did not understand, many pieces that did not fit, but the long hours of waiting in darkness, helpless and immobile, had given him time to think, and slowly the picture had come clear. Now he understood things, and it was a wellspring of satisfaction and a bitter defeat at the same time. He had heard the shots and screams of the pogrom on the floor below, and then the silence, and then the smoke and glowing heat, and he realized that understanding, even knowing, was not good enough now that it came too late.

There was no one down below who could help him now.

Slowly, he tried again to flex his muscles. It was a major effort just to breath, an impossible feat to sit up on the couch, but he managed it. He felt the floor with his bare feet. Then he tried to stand, and felt his knees buckle, and fell heavily onto the floor.

It was useless. The place was a smoke-filled oven; already he could see the yellow brightness of the flames in the crack under the door. He knew die truth now, and it was possible that he knew things that nobody else knew, but he would never be able to tell anyone, to use that information. It was useless to fight any more, but he tried.

Slowly, he hitched himself up on his elbows, began inching his way across the room toward the hall.

He had almost reached the window when he blacked out momentarily, choking on the acrid fumes from the fire down below, and he saw the uselessness of it.

He had been running for too long. Now there was no more chance to run.