SEVEN

"This isn't exactly what we had in mind, you know."

 

Millie armed Sojee with a stack of flyers and the stapler, then dropped her on Columbia, near Christ House.

"I'll make the rounds," Sojee told her. "I'll call you if I hear something."

Millie gave her some change. "Call me around five, even if you don't hear anything, okay?"

Sojee's lips smacked several times and she finally said, "Well, okay. About five."

Millie had the taxi drop her back on the street in front of Interrobang. She walked slowly down the street and around the corner, back toward what she was coming to think of as the "departure zone"—the place where Brian Cox had died and, possibly, the place where Davy might have been seen last.

Hopefully, Davy had "departed" that place in a different manner than Cox.

She'd had breakfast with Sojee, but she went into the restaurant anyway, asking for a table at the window, the very one, she figured.

The windows in the place were bordered with announcements of this and that performance, this and that dance studio offering classes, this or that dojo offering martial arts instruction, this and that person looking for a roommate. Even when they'd been ripped off, the layers of yellowed Scotch tape formed reefs and shoals. Except this window. This window must've been replaced recently. There were a few announcements on it, but none of the ancient evidence of bygone posters. This window had just been replaced.

She ordered coffee but didn't drink it.

Hopefully the management was a little more careful about letting non-employees serve food now, but this wasn't the time to test the issue.

She felt a little odd, today, like a corner had been turned. She'd looked, the day before, for the NSA watchers, but hadn't really seen anybody. She believed they were keeping back, depending on the bug and intermittent checks, hoping to lure Davy's snatchers back into the open. Their absence had been palpable after the seven days she'd spent under surveillance back in Stillwater.

Today, her back itched.

They're out there.

She laughed at herself.

You're imagining things.

The itch was still there and no matter how she squirmed in the chair, she couldn't scratch it.

She left Interrobang and walked east, but the sidewalks were so busy that anybody could have followed her without detection. A cab went by, then another. She flagged the third one, self-consciously thinking about Sherlock Holmes, and told the driver, "The Mall, please, at the Capitol end."

He dropped her at the corner of Fourth and Independence and she walked across the grass to the East Wing of the National Gallery. She headed up the stairs for the Upper Level where the huge red and black Calder mobile hung in space beneath the faceted glass roof, but when she reached the top of the stairs the elevator doors opened and a woman pushing a fussing baby in a stroller got out. Millie couldn't hear anybody on the stairs below but she stepped quickly into the elevator. The doors shut, then it continued up. She stayed in when it opened on the top floor, then she pushed the basement button and took it down and rode the moving sidewalk down the concourse toward the older West building. At the end of the walkway, she crossed to the gift shop, and browsed, standing behind one of the display shelves and watching the pedestrians coming from the East building carefully. Across the way, water sheeted down the glass wall of the Cascade Café.

Several minutes passed and she frowned. There was a cluster of Japanese tourists, a family of five, three elderly ladies practically tottering, one of them using a rolling walker, and a single man carrying an easel and wooden paints case. They'd have to be more organized than I could imagine to come up with that outfit on such short notice.

She was about to relax when she saw him, a man coming from the West Building, walking slowly, casually checking out the patrons seated at the cafe. Over half the five hundred seats were full and he was pausing often to examine a particular grid of tables, then moving to another.

He'd actually walked past Millie already, but hadn't seen her as she'd been blocked by a shop display. She moved around that same display unit and positioned herself to peer over it, between two large coffee-table art books.

He was average height with blond hair cut very short around a large bald spot—like a monk's tonsure—and wearing a dark blue windbreaker and slacks.

He could be looking for his wife. His kids. His grandmother.

She looked at the way he stood and something made her doubt his innocence. She pulled off her blue raincoat and rolled it, white liner out, into a compact bundle. There was a lull at the counter and she stepped up quickly and purchased a scarf, a fabric printed with a reproduction of Mary Cassatt's Children Playing on the Beach. She paid quickly, with cash, and asked for a larger bag than the one the clerk initially offered her. "For my coat," she explained, smiling.

The clerk shrugged and gave her a paper bag with plastic handles. "Thank you so much."

The "monk" had stopped at the edge of the café, where the walkways terminated, his eyes directed toward the East Wing.

Millie ducked into the restroom, right by the Gift Shop, and hurriedly tied the scarf around her head, gypsy style. Wrapped and tied, it transformed the kids on the beach to just another abstract pattern in tans and blues with the cheeks of the girl a pink highlight above the knot. She exited slowly and walked across to the Espresso and Gelato Bar.

He was still standing at the end of the walkway but now he was talking on a cell phone.

Is he NSA? They said they'd keep clear.

She was trembling and, she realized, afraid, but it didn't make her want to run. It made her want to break things. She focused on the man's bald spot. Or heads. Fight or flight. She was surprised which side of the divide she came down on.

If I could only hear what he was saying. Unconsciously, she was leaning forward, even though he was over sixty feet away, at the other end of the restaurant, straining to hear with her entire being.

"—sign of her. We picked her up at the hotel. She dropped the black woman on Columbia then came to the National Gallery." The accent was vaguely British, but not—perhaps Australian. "Hyacinth followed her into the East Building and her team is staking out the ground floor exits while I'm covering that underground walkway to the other building."

Millie nearly screamed, but managed to contain it. Her knees wobbled and she sagged heavily to the right, clutching at the waist-high barrier that separated the Cascade Café from the walkway.

She was standing right behind the Monk. She turned her back on him, breathing deeply.

I jumped?

I jumped.

I jumped!

Immediately on the other side of the barrier one of the diners, a woman, was staring at her with her mouth open, a glass of water lifted halfway off the table, but frozen. Her companion, a man facing away from Millie, was saying, "What's the matter, Paula. You look like you'd seen a ghost."

Millie tried to reassure her with a smile but she was still shaky and the expression on her face felt strange. Apparently it looked strange, too, for the woman flinched and dropped her glass on the floor. It wasn't a loud noise among the din of the diners but the Monk turned his head just as Millie turned back to check on him.

His eyes widened slightly and he turned back away from her, casually. "Would you give my best to Portia and the gang and tell her I can't wait to see her?" He listened for a second. "That's right." He was walking away as he talked, moving across the concourse toward the gift shop.

Millie fought back an urge to plant her toe firmly up his ass and turned, walking as quickly as she could toward the West Building. If she understood the Monk's conversation, there wasn't anybody covering this end of the concourse. Well, not yet. There might be someone running across, at the Mall level, right now.

She paused at the end of the shop, just before she turned right toward the stairs. The Monk had turned and was walking briskly after her, still back by the restaurant, but closing. He was talking on the phone again.

She ran up the stairs but shied away from the door at the top. It was straight across to the East Building and she could see a figure sprinting toward this door but still quite a ways away. She ducked into the gallery at the top of the stairs and stopped, unable to move, before Whistler's The White Girl.

"Oh my God." She said it out loud. The girl, clad in a long white gown and standing on a wolf skin, was life size, the painting itself almost seven feet tall. White drapes behind, shining with light, an oriental carpet below the wolf skin. The woman's eyes, her dark brows, her dark brown hair, and red lips stood out against a sea of varying hues of white conveying a surprising amount of detail, but the thing that stopped Millie in her tracks, that captured all of her attention, was her stillness. Not an artificial stillness, but a calm stance.

Serenity. She's serene.

She wasn't running away from strangers. Whatever she was doing, she was facing it calmly, with poise.

I can do this. She reached into her blouse and pulled out the tracking bug. Since talking to Sojee she'd disabled the microphone pickup but now she slid the back off and pushed the slide switch to its full-function position.

There was a museum guard standing at the entrance to the next gallery, but she was watching a group of children instead of Millie. Millie turned and said conversationally, "I'm being tailed, guys, and, unless it's you, you better get your ass over here. I'm going to stay in the National Gallery, West Building, main floor, but going from gallery to gallery."

She tucked the bug back into her bra and took the scarf off her head, then knotted it loosely around her neck like a tie. She took one more look at The White Girl and summoned resolve. Share some of that serenity, please.

There were steps in the east foyer, at the head of the stairs, and she left, moving to the next gallery. Her head twitched as she passed five Winslow Homer paintings. This is that sort of place. Get over it. She summoned mental blinkers and moved on.

Many of the galleries had multiple doors leading from them, making the place a maze. She worked her way toward the middle of the building, settling in Gallery 56 before a six-foot-high portrait of Napoleon in his study. There were four entrances to the room and two museum guards.

She thought it was time to settle, to let her chasers find her, but Napoleon was staring at her a bit too directly. She moved around the bench in the middle of the room and studied instead Portrait of a Lady by Vigée-Lebrun: a woman portrayed by a woman. While this subject wasn't as serene as The White Girl, she seemed to know what she was about. When she looked out of the frame at Millie it was as if they were sharing something. Millie didn't feel studied and judged as she did by Napoleon. The scale helped, too. Portrait of a Lady was only three-and-a-half feet high. She didn't loom over Millie like the Emperor did.

She stood and moved close enough to read the note card. "—was under threat of the guillotine after the revolution. She was forced to flee Paris in disguise in 1789."

Maybe that's what you have to share with me—you are another woman pursued. Millie licked her lips. And you survived.

Next to Portrait of a Lady was another work by the same artist, two woman sitting next to each other while two children hung on one of the women. The Marquise de Pezé and the Marquise de Rouget with Her Two Children read the card. They watched Millie kindly, even the very young boy with his head in his mother's lap.

My allies are everywhere. Millie laughed quietly, causing the female guard to look her way. Millie smiled at her, then looked up, at the security cameras. And not just in the paintings.

She thought about her jump on the concourse level. Was she under the eye of a security camera then? Would anyone check it if she was? She shook her head. What mattered for now was that her followers were walking past countless video cameras as they searched for Millie in the museum. If the NSA couldn't get access to the recordings, then she would be very much surprised.

She nodded at the two women in the painting and moved on, out the west door, to consort with several more allies, several portraits by Goya, particularly Señora Sabasa Garcia.

Here, finally, they seemed to catch up with her. The Monk passed by the door to the East Sculpture Hall, and moved on without pausing, but shortly thereafter, a brunette, her hair pulled tightly back in a bun, wearing heavy makeup, a tailored jacket, jeans, and knee-high boots came in and began studying the Still Life with Figs and Bread on the wall behind Millie.

Millie smiled at Señora Garcia and left by the north door, moving west through the main hall and into the rotunda where a bronze Mercury dominated the center. She eyed the main entrance to the south but wanted to stay under the eyes of the security cameras, near the museum guards, in the public eye.

She moved into the West Sculpture Hall and took the second left, chosen because it was empty for the moment, except, of course, for the ever-present guard.

She stopped, blinking. Why is no one here? It had to be an abnormal ebb in the tide of patrons—the room was filled with Rembrandts. She turned slowly in the middle of the room, then froze opposite another ally—Saskia van Uylenburgh, the Wife of the Artist. Millie felt the connection again, the sense of shared problems, of shared strengths.

A couple came in through the east door and started moving around the gallery, studying a gorgeous rendition of a European man in turban and robe. Millie eyed them. They weren't very convincing. The woman hung on the man's arm but her posture was wrong, not relaxed. If they'd walked into her office like that she would've thought, impending divorce, they're going through the motions.

Now she gave it another interpretation. They don't have an existing relationship that calls for touching each other. That's camouflage, for me.

Millie took the west door and turned sharply, to put her out of sight of the couple. She counted to three, then stuck her head back around the door. The couple was moving toward her, walking apart, no longer touching. The instant they saw Millie they each swerved toward the other, then paused to study another Rembrandt.

Gotcha.

Millie turned and walked. She was scared but she was also smiling. Come on, guys, it's time for the NSA to put in an appearance. She moved through the gallery, a roomful of Dutch painters who were not Rembrandt, and into a roomful of Flemish work, notably, Rubens. She paused before a giant painting over ten feet wide and seven feet tall.

Ouch—that's a little too close to home.

It was Daniel in the Lions' Den and, while Daniel's eyes were on heaven, several of the life-sized lions looked out at Millie with startling intensity.

She only had one other exit from this room, besides the direction she came in. She took it and found herself in a smaller room with more Rubens. She cut through it into a larger gallery and paused before yet another Rubens, The Assumption of the Virgin.

She paused again. "That's the ticket," she muttered. Angels and cherubs carried the Madonna toward heaven while onlookers either stared up in awe or touched the discarded shroud. Where are you, Angels?

She took deep breaths and turned from The Assumption to Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, the only other Rubens in the room. The woman wore an enormous Elizabethan collar but she looked out at Millie with impish merriment.

Right, another ally. If she can look amused in that collar, perhaps I can relax under these circumstances. She decided to settle for a moment, to let them present themselves again, to give her someone to point at, when the NSA finally showed up. Fifteen minutes went by while the Marchesa and she communed, during which the only people to enter the room were a woman shepherding seven pre-teen girls.

Her phone rang and Millie jumped. The guard glared at her and she scrambled to silence the ringer.

"Hello?" It was the first time the phone had rung and she seriously expected it to be from someone who'd read the flyer.

"Millie, do you recognize my voice?"

It was Anders, the NSA agent.

"Yes. Thought you were still in the Sooner State?"

"We can gossip later, girlfriend. Right now we'd like you to leave the building on the Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue side. By the north door—the one that faces away from the Mall? There'll be a white cab waiting. The driver is wearing a red baseball cap. He's one of ours. Get in."

"What about my, uh, companions?"

"We'll be watching and recording. Trust us. This is what we do."

"All right." She stared at the impish face of the Marchesa. "Now?"

"Now."

"On my way." She hung up the phone and put it in her purse. The fastest route was through the Main Gallery to the Rotunda, then down the stairs. She walked quickly, looking straight ahead, fighting not to stare into every doorway she passed. She continued to hold her allies in her mind, the images of women throughout the Gallery.

Serenity. That's the ticket.

It was raining again, with a nasty wind that ripped at her clothes. Her raincoat was still in the bag, but she didn't want to take the time to put it on, so she held the bag over her head and sprinted for the street.

The cab was there, as promised, but she felt a stab of dismay as she saw someone sitting in the back. Did someone grab it first? In this rain, cabs would be eagerly sought. But the person in the seat handed the driver something, then opened the door and got out as she approached, leaving the door open for her.

"Thanks," she said as she ducked into the cab, but the man was walking briskly away, toward the museum. The car left the curb before she'd finished shutting the door and turned hard across two lanes of traffic to make the Sixth Street turn. She twisted in the seat to watch the museum door, but parked cars already blocked it, and then buildings as the driver whipped right onto Pennsylvania.

"Where are we going?" She dabbed at her glasses with her handkerchief.

The driver grunted. "We're meeting up with my boss but first we're feeling for ticks." He continued on down past the reflecting pool and entered the traffic circle near the Capitol building. He stayed in the circle three times around, then spun off south on First, spun around the next traffic circle twice, then took Maryland Avenue toward the south side of the Mall.

The traffic circles made Millie carsick and she leaned back and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. When she opened them again, they were running down the far side of the Mall, behind the Air and Space Museum on Independence Avenue, south of the National Gallery but out of sight.

"Looks like we're clear," the driver said.

Millie looked at him for the first time. He was bearded and looked somewhat middle-eastern, though his accent was pure Boston. He was wearing dark glasses despite the gray rain.

"I'm going to stop in a second. There'll be a Verizon phone van. Hop out and into it, quick as you can."

He turned sharply on Seventh, north again. The phone company van was parked illegally on the corner, orange cones set out, front and back. One of the van's back doors swung open as the cab braked and she was out the door and inside. She heard the cab's tires squeal on the rain-slicked pavement as it accelerated away and then the van door was slammed behind her.

The inside of the van smelled of ozone and mildew. It was like the surveillance van they'd used in Stillwater, cabinets of electronics and monitors and a pivoting workstation seat. Anders was the one who'd opened the door for her and he moved back, now, threading his way between the operator in the workstation chair and the sliding door. He sat in the backwards-facing bench seat behind the driver's seat and gestured her forward.

The console operator, a woman with short gray-streaked hair, moved, too, and patted the console seat. "Here, dear. We'd like you to look at some pictures."

Millie set the bag with her coat in it on the floor and edged onto the chair. It was warm in the van but she'd gotten wet in her run for the cab. She unknotted her scarf and pulled it across her shoulders, like a shawl.

"This is Becca Martingale," said Anders, indicating the operator. "She's our liaison with the Bureau."

"FBI?"

Becca nodded. "Yes, Counter-intelligence."

Millie groped for something polite to say, but settled for a tired nod. She looked at Anders and bit her lip. "Is she fully briefed?"

Anders said carefully, "She knows that Davy was one of ours and was kidnapped. She doesn't know what Davy did for us."

Becca was watching this interchange with interest. When it didn't go any further, she leaned across and pulled the mouse to her end of the narrow counter running under the monitors. "Here. We've got a short clip of your exit from the Gallery." She clicked a control and video-in-a-window began running on the right-most monitor.

Millie watched herself exit the building and run up the sidewalk, the bag held over her head, splashing through puddles she didn't remember. The camera must've been in a car on the street for she angled past it, but the view stayed on the Gallery stairs. The first person exiting the Gallery after her was the heavily made-up brunette in the knee-high boots who'd sat with her in the room with the Goyas. She started down the stairs at a good clip, then stopped suddenly and took out a phone. The camera zoomed on her. The woman said something on the phone, then retreated back into the shelter of the overhang, still holding the phone to her head. A man entered the frame, coming from the street, but paused there, in the shelter, clutching his tweed jacket together at the neck.

"He's the one who held the cab for me."

"Yes," said Becca. "What about the woman?"

"She was in the Goya gallery with me, but that's the only time I saw her. However, it was after the Monk found me, so I think he passed me to her."

"The Monk?" asked Anders.

"Blond man, blue windbreaker, large bald spot." She used her finger to draw its size and placement on her own head. "Like a tonsured monk. I lost him once and doubled back close enough to overhear a phone conversation." She closed her eyes for a moment. "He said, 'We picked her up at her hotel. She dropped the black woman on Columbia then came to the National Gallery. Hyacinth followed her into the East Building and her team is staking out the ground floor exits while I'm covering that underground walkway to the other building.' " Millie opened her eyes and shrugged. "Then he saw me and cut the call."

Becca blinked and turned to Anders. "You didn't say she was in the game."

Anders looked mad. "She's not. Why'd you do that? Sneak up on him, I mean."

Millie cheeks warmed. "I had to know if they were really following me."

Anders kept staring at her as if he wanted more.

She bit her lip. "This has been stressful enough. I wanted—I needed—to rule out paranoid delusions."

Becca opened her mouth—a silent "ah." "You are a mental health professional, aren't you. And the black woman?"

"She's pretty much a mental health professional, too, in her own way." Millie smiled to herself. "She's a homeless mental patient who knows Davy. He's helped her several times in the past few months. She's asking the street people she knows if they saw anything the night of the abduction." She gestured at the screen. "Did your man hear anything?"

"No, she finished as he came up. But Becca recognized her," Anders said.

"You're kidding."

"I've been in Counter-intelligence my entire career." Becca was fiddling with the mouse again. She enlarged another video window. It was the same scene, with the woman still waiting, but the window title said Live Feed A. "She was a freelancer—a deniable asset. I worked with her once, fifteen years ago. Her name—her full name—is Hyacinth Pope. Couldn't forget a name like that. She had just started doing some contract work for the CIA then, but the wall came down, and most of her career since has been in the private sector."

"What does that mean?"

"Corporate security and espionage."

"And kidnapping?"

Becca shrugged. "Or worse, but she's never been indicted, much less picked up. But this affair may be compartmentalized."

"You guys don't like English very much, do you?"

Anders said, "Means that her group could be involved but that a different cell did the snatch."

On the screen Hyacinth Pope left the shelter of the overhang again. The camera tracked her to the street where she got into a late model Dodge Caravan. The camera zoomed on the driver.

"That's the Monk," Millie said.

Anders leaned forward. "Ah. Padgett. Well, that tells us something."

"And that is?"

"Padgett was with Executive Outcomes, but now he works for the BAd boys."

Becca whistled. "Bochstettler and Associates." To Millie, she added, "They're a 'consulting' firm."

"What do they do?"

Becca said, "Well, ostensibly they're international commerce specialists, helping to develop and maintain markets in foreign countries."

"And is that what they do?"

"It's exactly what they do," said Anders, with a grim face.

Millie must've looked puzzled, because Becca added, "They aren't too picky about how. Like Executive Outcomes, before the South African government shut them down, we suspect the BAd boys of toppling whole governments to arrange a more favorable business 'climate.' That's rare. There's also a couple of questionable deaths. Usually, though, they tend to work through bribery and blackmail."

"Who do they work for?"

Becca shrugged. "That's harder to figure out. There's usually multiple benefactors to their various operations. Whenever a big business project goes through, no matter who it hurts, it usually benefits multiple parties—is it the primary company? One of the junior partners? The local vendors? The international vendors? Specific local politicians?

"Their overt client is the World Trade Study Group here in D.C., a PAC funded by several multinationals. WTSG promotes 'streamlining' international business practices, but the overt work the BAd boys do for them is legit—simple PR stuff, pushing the benefits of international trade to foreign governments."

Millie nodded slowly. "WTSG I've heard of. Streamlining means removing as many regulations and laws as possible, right?"

Anders nodded. "Right."

"Why aren't they in prison? BA, I mean."

Anders looked uncomfortable. Becca laughed, but there was no humor in it.

Anders said, "Primarily, evidence. There's circumstantial links but nothing incontrovertible."

Becca added, "However, there's also no pressure to go get harder evidence. 'It's about the economy, stupid.' Big international deals benefit our economy. That's been the bottom line for the past several administrations. In fact, past attempts have been actively discouraged and in the post nine-eleven economy, it's even more so."

Again, Anders looked uncomfortable, but he didn't gainsay this.

Millie frowned. "And now they may have kidnapped my husband—wait... let me put it another way. They've stolen a U.S. Intelligence Asset. Isn't that worth getting concerned about? Seems like they've gone from illegal actions against foreign governments to illegal actions against their own, doesn't it?"

Anders held his hand out palm down and wiggled it. "We still don't know if the BAd boys did the snatch. As Becca said, it might be compartmentalized. But there's some sort of connection, all right."

Millie pushed. "And you're going to follow up on it?"

Becca and Anders both nodded.

"Oh, yeah," said Becca.

 

The rain had stopped by the time the white cab dropped her at Martha's Table, the famous soup kitchen on Fourteenth Street Northwest. She walked past the yellow building face, past the long line of people waiting to be fed, and found Sojee right where she'd said she'd be, near the corner at the end of the block, sheltered in the doorway of a boarded-up store. She seemed relieved to see Millie. "What took you so long?"

"Sorry." Becca and Anders hadn't wanted her to go at all, but they'd really insisted that she wait until they'd put "support in the environment." Millie was trying hard not to examine every face she passed. At least she hadn't seen the Monk yet.

Doesn't mean he isn't here, though.

"This way," Sojee said, heading south. "I found someone who saw my angel the night he disappeared."

Millie's skin itched. She felt like hostile eyes surrounded her. "Are they sure it was Davy?"

"Matthew, chapter seven, verse twenty: By their works shall you know them."

"What works?"

"Well, they said, 'Un ángel nos dio el dinero.' "

Millie forgot about the eyes for a moment and tried to switch mental gears. Finally she managed, "An angel gave them the money?"

Sojee's smile was twisted, overlaid by something dark. "Yeah. Looks like seeing angels is contagious."

"How much money?"

"She didn't say. My friend, Porfiro, says her and her two kids went from living in a refrigerator carton in an alley off Nineteenth to subletting a room from a family in his building. They've agreed to meet us at The Burro. The one down on Pennsylvania." She looked sideways at Millie. "You're buying."

Millie smiled briefly. "Of course. My Spanish isn't very good, though. Are you up to translating?"

Sojee shook her head. "No. Porfiro is coming, though. He'll do the job. Smartest crazy person I know."

"Uh, and Porfiro is...?" She looked away. The gyrations of Sojee's face were making it hard for Millie to concentrate.

"Porfiro was in St. Elizabeth's with me. Bipolar—but lithium's got him smoothed down. He's the super in the building this family moved into."

"And what's their name?"

"Ruiz."

Sojee swung west on T Street and Millie, caught by surprise, scrambled to catch up. Her phone rang.

"Yes?" She kept walking.

It was Anders's voice. "They're up to something. They're moving in force, but so are we. We'll be right there if... if they do anything."

Millie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She struggled hard to keep her voice calm, neutral. "You want them to, don't you?"

Anders hesitated for the briefest interval. "Do you want to find Davy?"

"Ah... all right." Millie licked her lips. "Bring it on." She disconnected.

She started to look around, then stopped herself. What about Sojee? Was it fair to involve her in this? "Sojee, there's something I should tell—"

The Dodge van from the Museum made a hard right into the mouth of the alley some twenty feet in front of them and stopped abruptly, blocking the sidewalk. The driver reached back and slid the side door open. It was the Monk.

At the same time, Millie heard footsteps on the pavement and turned her head. Two men rushed from the open door of a bodega and there was a screech of brakes on the street. Two more men were crossing the street at a run. A cabby, who'd had to brake for them, was shaking his fist and cursing in Farsi.

The two men from the store reached them first, walking fast, their arms coming out from their sides, palms forward. Like someone herding sheep.

Millie started to move forward, to put herself between the men and Sojee, when Sojee pulled Millie back and stepped forward, instead. Sojee held her fist out, thumb up, and waved it back and forth at the two men, who swore and recoiled from a sudden cloud of red mist.

Pepper spray, Millie realized. The two men's faces were streaked with an orangish red. Dyed pepper spray.

Sojee pivoted, moving toward the two men who were threading their way through a narrow gap between two parked cars. The one in the lead had seen what happened, and he was hesitating, but his partner bumped him from behind, forcing him forward. He ducked below Sojee's spray and charged forward, going for her legs. The cloud caught the second man full in the face.

Sojee went over backwards onto the wet sidewalk as the first man grabbed her legs.

She's trying to protect me. Millie took a step forward. The man was scooting quickly up Sojee's body in a horrid parody of sexual assault, trying to get up to her arms, to get the pepper spray away from her, Millie's fear, predominate, gave way to sudden rage. She took another step and kicked him full in the face with the toe of her Merrell hiking boots.

He fell to the side, his nose a sudden red fountain, and Sojee, cursing loudly, emptied the last of her pepper spray into his face. The man rolled over, clutching his eyes and wheezing.

One of the men who'd come from the store had dropped to his knees, his breath coming in wheezes, but his partner was rushing back at Millie, his red-streaked face contorted with rage, blinking water from his eyes. He came at a rush, to propel her toward the open door of the van, but suddenly dropped to the pavement.

Sojee had hooked his ankle and held it now with both hands. He hit the pavement hard, only partially breaking his fall with his arms. Sojee, screaming and cursing, pulled her way up the back of his legs. He tried to get back up, but she grabbed his belt at the small of his back and heaved him down again. He balanced on one hand and raised the other, to swing a hammer fist back at Sojee, so Millie slammed her boot down on the outspread fingers of his supporting hand.

He screamed and Millie felt bones crunch under her boot.

Millie heard racing engines and screeching tires followed by the sound of pounding feet.

Not more of them?

In the van, the Monk looked wildly around, then accelerated the vehicle into the alley, disappearing between the buildings.

The running figures wore FBI baseball caps and windbreakers. They focused on their attackers, instead of the two women.

Not more of them.

Sojee was pounding her opponent with the empty pepper spray container, punctuating each blow with, "You! Got! My! Coat! Dirty!"

Millie caught her hand. "That'll do, girlfriend. That'll do."

Sojee stared up at Millie, her eyes wide. Then her face twisted and her tongue stuck out of her mouth to the side and she had a blepharospasm, a prolonged blink. "Oh. Right." She pushed off the back of her opponent and stood awkwardly. Millie pulled her to the side, out of the way of the large and healthy-looking men with the shotguns.

There was the sound of distant screeching tires from the alleyway followed immediately by a loud crash. Millie, seeing that the four men in her immediate vicinity were under control, poked her head cautiously around the corner.

The florist van was twisted at the far end of the alley, the windshield starred with bullet holes. A large cloud of steam was billowing from its front end. There seemed to be another car across the far alley.

"Don't do that."

It was Anders, standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the alleyway. Becca was right behind him.

Millie pulled her head back. "Why?"

Three rapid gunshots suddenly boomed down the alleyway and Millie jumped back. "Oh."

Anders, not taking his own advice, was looking down the alley. "Hmmm. Okay." He stepped across the alleyway, moving briskly. He looked at the four men who were now handcuffed and being frisked. "This isn't exactly what we had in mind, you know. We thought we'd actually let them start the snatch before we moved in."

"I wasn't going to resist. I didn't have time to warn Ms. Johnson."

Anders tried to frown, but he couldn't. He covered his mouth, then laughed outright. "I can tell I'm going to need a personal copy of this videotape."

Millie stared at him. "You videotaped it?" She looked around, wondering where the camera was. "Of course you taped it."

Becca was looking around the corner, then squeezed her coat lapel and said, "Roger that." Millie noticed the earplug. Then the FBI agent jerked, her eyes going wide. "Agent down!" she said loudly, and tore down the alley, drawing her gun as she went. Three agents followed her.

Anders, his eyes narrowed, gestured for them to cross the alleyway. He drew them further down the sidewalk.

"You and Ms. Johnson will find Curtis at the end of the block in the same White Cab. He'll take you to The Burro for your appointment."

"We don't have to make statements?"

"Later. The video will do for now."

Sojee was staring around her, her lips smacking, her cheek twitching. At the mention of her name, she stared at Anders specifically, then asked Millie, "Are these friends of yours?"

Millie hesitated for the briefest interval before saying, "Allies." She brushed some beaded water off of Sojee's coat. "Are you all right?"

"I'm gonna need some more pepper spray."

Millie nodded. "I may get some myself." She linked arms with Sojee and started walking, wondering what had happened at the end of the alley. When they'd gone several yards, she said, "Thanks, Sojee, for protecting me back there."

Sojee snorted. "Looks like you didn't need no protectin'. Those assholes who jumped us sure did, though. They better stay away from me, I'll whup their asses again." Then she smiled. "You nailed that man in the nose. You pretty hot with that can of whup ass, yourself."

"You hold 'em, I'll kick 'em."