"Pack of troublemakers," Peabody chanted under his breath.

The rally was in full force. Angry young men and women squeezed together, cheering zealously as one of their number shouted something incomprehensible to Peabody on the ancient steps above the crowd. For a few moments he watched the speaker without emotion. It was, after all, a foreign language everybody was screeching in, and the press of unwashed bodies and writhing, violent movement made Peabody feel even more uncomfortable, if that was possible, than before.

It was bad enough to be in a strange country with no luggage, no friends, and no apparent reason to be there. But to be stuck in the middle of some hostile campus demonstration, surrounded by the kind of freewheeling loonies he'd cross the street to avoid back home in West Mahomset...

He squeezed his eyes shut. The revelation had been blinding. Not the speaker, you dummy! He nearly laughed aloud. Of course. He should have known it would come to him. The false I.D., the trip to Newfoundland, the flight to Rome, the Spanish Steps— it was all perfectly clear now, as clear as the message that had dawned, bright and unspoken, as he watched "Ways of Our Days" in that darkened room.

He was in Rome not to watch the speaker, but the crowd.

For in that crowd, he knew, would be a face. And that face would have a name, Franco Abbrodani. How Orville Peabody knew this face and its attendant name, he could not recall, since neither was familiar to him. But his brain, still operating independently, thrummed with the pleasure of anticipation. His heartbeat quickened. A thin bar of moisture glistened on his upper lip.

Perhaps the man named Abbrodani would be a friend. Perhaps he was part of the unknown mission Peabody had been sent on, Peabody's destiny. With an Italian villa, perhaps, and a table filled with spaghetti and dago red wine and maybe even a telephone so he could call the wife back in West Mahomset...