He pressed the mask over Remo's still pale face, then waited, staring at his watch. After a minute, he pressed his ear to Remo's chest. Slowly, a smile formed on his lips.

He straightened up, removed the mask, replaced it in its bracket, made sure the oxygen was off, then tapped on the window behind the driver's head.

The ambulance's motors coughed and the big Buick was on its way.

About fifteen miles from the prison, the ambulance stopped at a side road. One of the attendants, who had exchanged his white garb for a civilian suit, got out of the front seat and went over to a parked car against whose fender a man with a hook for a left hand leaned, casually smoking a cigarette.

The hooked man flipped the keys to the attendant, dropped his cigarette, then trotted to the rear of the ambulance. He rapped on the door and in an even tone, said: "MacCleary."

The doors flung open and he stepped into the vehicle in one smooth motion, almost like a large cat darting into a cave.

The dark-haired man shut the doors. MacCleary shuffled rapidly to a seat beside the body, still motionless on the black leather of the stretcher. MacCleary turned to the other man and said, "Well?"

"We got a winner, Conn," the dark-haired man said. "I think we got a winner."

"Nobody wins in this outfit," the man with the hook said. "Nobody wins."

The air in the ambulance tasted shot through with oral laxatives as the ambulance rolled along. "Probably the high oxygen content," MacCleary thought to himself.

He concentrated on the man on the raised stretcher in the middle of the ambulance and rejoiced at every up-and-down motion of the large chest covered by the sheet. This was the man. He might be the answer.