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morning with a really bad feeling about your whole peace-seeking mission.”
    “Have you had word from the commander?” Normally, Commander Conlee routed intelligence updates to West-ford. But he had used Gabby when he’d deemed regular channels less secure.
    “No, no. Nothing. It’s just a gut feeling.” Gabby paused a beat, and her voice took on a jagged edge. “Take no risks, Sybil. None.”
    Too late.
Sybil looked down at the Band-Aid circling her finger, and an icy chill crept up her spine. She stiffened, determined not to give into fear, gave Gabby her promise, and then wondered. How was she going to keep Westford from telling Gabby about the Band-Aid incident?
    For the first time in her career, Sybil Stone considered offering a man a bribe.

    One should never underestimate the impact of a bribe.
    Alexander Renault had learned that lesson the night he had been dubbed “Patch.” It had been his ninth birthday, and to celebrate, his father had stabbed his mother to death. A patch of Alexander’s hair had turned albino-white—from the trauma, the doctor had said. But what had traumatized Patch most was his father bribing his way out of ever being arrested, tried, or convicted. The official consensus? His mother had
fallen
onto the knife.
    That night Patch had learned to hate: his father, for what he had done; his mother, for dying and leaving him;his government, for being corrupt. That night he had also sworn to do something about it. And he had done plenty.
    Sizing up the rookie agent, Patch surmised that West-ford had already done a fair amount of ass-chewing. Cramer looked pale and shaken. At least he’d remembered the penny and its significance:
You’re among your own.
    Their SDU secure-system communications had been nearly impossible to breach—once. Amazing what a healthy contract could do to a designer’s sense of loyalty. But it made no difference now. Things had gone too far to do anything but play out. Millions would live or die, and their fate rested solely in the hands of Sybil Stone.
    From the moment she cut her finger, she must have known it hadn’t been an accident. But it was hoped that she would conclude it had been an attack rooted in the peace talks and not look beyond that. If she did, and she convinced Westford of it, yet another challenge for Ballast could be shifted to PUSH and avoided, and neither Lady Liberty nor Westford would be on the defensive for what lay ahead.
    Grinding his shoe against the concrete, Patch stomped out his cigarette and then took the evidence bag from Cramer. “You’d better double-time it back to the hotel. Harrison is waiting for you in the bar.”
    Looking resigned, Cramer made a U-turn and headed back. Patch kept him in sight until distance obscured him, and then he pulled an identical Band-Aid filled evidence bag from his raincoat’s inner pocket. He tucked Cramer’s bag in its place against his chest, then tapped at the side door of the van.
    It slid open about six inches. Patch flashed the penny, passed the substituted bag through the crack, and then walked away. He had seen no one inside the van and no one inside had seen him: a strictly professional transfer.
    The van pulled away from the curb and headed down the street, its tires spraying through puddles of water.
    Patch walked toward the hotel until the van hung a left onto a side street and vanished into the night.
    Making a one-eighty, he hustled to his car. Cramer had made two new critical errors. He’d seen Patch’s face during a professional transfer, and he hadn’t so much as flinched at the discrepancy between Harrison saying he was going for a walk and Patch telling him Harrison was waiting in the bar. The rookie would have reason to regret both errors—though not because of Westford.
    Relief at having avoided that personal encounter swam through Patch’s stomach. Inside Ballast, Westford was known as the Widow-maker, and his reputation was nearly as daunting as Gregor Faust’s.