Back out on Atlantic Avenue, Arch Carroll shivered unhappily in the probing, icy-cold fingers of the rising night wind.

At times like these Carroll wondered why it was that a reasonably intelligent thirty-five-year-old man, someone with decent enough prospects, someone with a law degree, could regularly be working sixty- to seventy-hour weeks, invariably eating stone-cold pizza and drinking Pepsi-Cola for dinner. Why was he sitting outside a Middle Eastern restaurant on a Friday night stakeout?

Was it perhaps because his father and two uncles had been pavement-pounding city cops?

Was it because his Mickey Finn grandfather had been a rough-and-tumble example of New York 's finest?

Or did it have to do with incomprehensible things he'd seen a decade and a half ago in Vietnam?

Maybe he just wasn't a reasonable, intelligent man, as he'd somehow always presumed. Maybe, if you got right down to it, there was some kind of obvious short circuit in the wires of the old brain, some form of synaptic fuck-up. After all, would a really bright guy with all of his marbles be standing here freezing his dick off like this?

As Arch Carroll pondered the tangible mistakes of his life, his full attention began to wander. For several minutes at a clip he'd stare at his sadly wiggling toes, at the equally fascinating burning ember of his cigarette, at almost anything mildly distracting.

Five-week-long stakeouts weren't exactly recommended for their entertainment value. That was exactly how long he'd been watching Anton and Wadih Rashid, ever since the State Department had let them come into New York for their sabbatical.

Suddenly, Carroll's attention snapped back.

“What the…” he mumbled as he stared down the congested street. Is that who it looks like? he asked himself. Can't be… I think it is… but it can't be.