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bedroom?”

    “This way, baby.”

    As they went into the bedroom, Vasco again turned the dials. He saw the bedroom just as she was saying, “I don’t know anything about your business, and I don’t want to know. Business is so boring.” She let the dress fall. She stepped out of it and lay down on the bed, naked now except for high heels. She kicked them off. “I don’t think you need a drink,” she said. “And I know I don’t.”

    Tolman threw himself on her, landing with a kind of thud. She grunted and tried to smile. “Easy, boy.” He was panting, gasping. He reached for her hair, to caress her. “Leave the hair alone,” she said. She twisted away. “Just lie down,” she said, “and let me make you happy.”

    “Aw, hell, ”Vasco said, staring at the tiny screen. “Do you believe that? He ain’t even a minuteman. When a woman looks like that, you’d think—”

    “Never mind,” Dolly said, over the headset. “She’s getting dressed now.”

    “So she is,” he said. “And rather hurriedly, too.”

    “She’s supposed to give him half an hour. And if he paid her, I didn’t see it.”

    “Me neither. But he’s getting dressed, too.”

    “Something’s up,” Dolly said. “She’s walking out the door.”

    Vasco thumbed the tuner, trying to change to a different camera. All he got was static. “I can’t see shit.”

    “She’s leaving. He’s still there. No, wait…he’s leaving, too.”

    “Yeah?”

    “Yeah. And he’s taking the wine bottle with him.”

    “Okay,” Vasco said. “And where’s he going with it?”

    Frozen embryos in liquid nitrogen were transported in a special stainless steel thermos lined with borosilicate glass called a dewar. Dewars were mostly big affairs, shaped like milk jugs, but you could get them as small as a liter. A dewar didn’t have the shape of a wine bottle, because they had a wide-mouth cap, but it would be about the same size. And would fit in a wine sack for sure.

    “He must be carrying it,” Vasco said. “It must be in the sack.”

    “I figure,” Dolly said. “You see ’em yet?”

    “Yeah, I do.”

    Vasco picked up the couple on the ground floor, near the gondola stand. They walked arm in arm, the guy carrying the wine bottle in the crook of his arm, keeping it upright. It was an awkward way to carry it, and they made an odd-looking pair—the beautiful girl and the diffident, slouchy guy. They walked along the canal, hardly glancing at the shops as they passed them.

    “On their way to a meeting,” Vasco said.

    “I see ’em,” Dolly said. Vasco looked down the crowded street and saw Dolly at the far end.
    Dolly was twenty-eight, and completely ordinary-looking. Dolly could be anybody: an accountant, girlfriend, secretary, assistant. She could always pass. Tonight she was dressed Vegas-style, teased blond hair and a sparkly dress with cleavage. She was a little overweight, which made the impression perfect. Vasco had been with her for four years now, and they worked well as a team. In private life, they got along only okay. She hated that he smoked cigars in bed.

    “Heading for the hall,” Dolly said. “No, they’re doubling back.”

    The main hall was a huge oval passageway, high gilded ceiling, soft lights, marble pillars. It dwarfed the crowds that moved through it. Vasco hung back. “Change their mind? Or they made us?”

    “I think they’re being careful.”

    “Well, this is the big moment.” Because even more than catching the fugitive, they had to know whom he was turning the embryos over to. Obviously someone at the conference.

    “Won’t be long now,” Dolly said.

    Rick Diehlwas walking back and forth along the shops by the gondola canal, holding his cell phone in his hand. He ignored the stores, which were filled with expensive stuff of the sort he never wanted. Diehl had grown up as the third son of a Baltimore physician. All the other boys went to medical school and became obstetricians,