Gage looked up and spotted Spike striding toward him, followed by two uniformed officers. Spike directed the pair toward the ICU, then said to Gage, “Let’s go outside.”

As they walked from the emergency entrance into the parking lot, Gage found that the rain had stopped. The cloud-filtered light falling on the blacktop seemed vague and directionless; even the shallow puddles rippling in the breeze reflected nothing but gray.

Spike stopped next to his police-issued Mercury Marquis, then looked up at Gage.

“I’ve ordered round-the-clock security.”

“You really think the shooter’s coming after him?”

“I don’t know. It’s something Kishore said.” Spike formed his small hands into a tight circle like a bull’s-eye. “It was like Jack was wearing a target and the shooter scored two tens. Side-by-sides into his breastbone.” Spike widened his hands, as if framing Burch’s heart and lungs. “If he scored two fives, Jack would be dead. That’s damn accurate shooting for a maniac who’s pissed off and on the move.”

Spike opened his car door, withdrew a black leather folder, then flipped it open. “Even though the witnesses are describing road rage, I have to ask, has Jack complained to you about anybody threatening him?”

Gage shook his head.

“You know what he was working on?”

“The usual. He was in Geneva for a few days, then in Moscow.”

Gage had answered mechanically, then felt a wrenching expansion of the world as Russia, which had faded into an icy stillness since his return two weeks earlier, now came monstrously alive: a hydra head of criminal and political threats feeding off the corpse of the former Soviet Union-and willing to destroy those, like Jack Burch, who had interfered with their feast.