When his body was found the next morning, it was taken quietly to a nearby government hospital, where a five-man team of federal pathologists performed an eight-hour autopsy. Another team went over McCarthy's effects with microscopic thoroughness, removing the lining from his jacket, unstitching all his clothes, dissecting his shoes, and, eventually, finding the negatives.

The autopsy report and the negatives were sent away for further analysis, to a mental institution on Long Island Sound. There the negatives were duly processed into prints, examined for their film type and source of develop, then sent to another department for reproduction and programming, then to another department which sent them to another department which hand-delivered them finally to an office where a bitter-faced man sat with an abacus. The processing had taken two hours.

"Let's see them," the lemon-faced man growled. "Haven't seen stuff like this since college. Of course, in college, we never paid $1,900 a print either."

When he was through with the last of the twelve prints, each the size of a large magazine page, he nodded that the bearer could leave. "Have them processed small for carry and destruction. Water soluble will do."

"The negatives, too?"

"No, just the prints. Get out."

Then the bitter-faced man drummed on the polished abacus beads and spun his high dark chair to face out toward Long Island Sound.

He watched the night on the sound, dark and trailing far away to the Atlantic he had crossed as a young man in the O.S.S. To the Atlantic on whose shores he was given a last assignment he did not like and had at first refused and still wondered about at moments like this.

Peter McCarthy was dead. Murdered, according to the autopsy. And the negatives. They confirmed those vague hints of trouble at Brewster Forum and as far as the United States was concerned, Brewster Forum was heavy. Very heavy.