Carroll had noticed a skinny, frazzle-haired man coming directly his way from the Frente Unido Bar and Data Indonesia. The man was scurrying up Atlantic Avenue, periodically looking back over his shoulder. From a distance he looked like a baggy coat walking on a stick.

Carroll squinted his eyes for a better look at the approaching figure.

He just couldn't believe it!

He stared down the street, his eyes smarting from the bite of the wind. He had to make sure.

Jesus. He was sure.

The fast-walking man had a huge puffy burr of bushy, very wiry, black hair. The greasy hair was combed straight back, and it hung like a limp sack over the collar of his black cloth jacket. The man's clothes were soberly black; if he hadn't known better, Carroll would have taken him for a minister of some obscure religious sect.

Carroll knew the man by two names: one was Hussein Moussa; the other was Lebanese Butcher. A decade before, Moussa had been recruited by the Russians; he'd been efficiently trained at their famed Third World school in Tripoli. During the late seventies he'd worked in the European network under the guidance of the supreme terrorist himself, Juan Carlos.

Since then Moussa had been busily free-lancing terror and sophisticated murder techniques all over the world: in Paris, Rome, Zaire, New York, in Lebanon for Colonel Qaddafi. Recently he'd worked for François Monserrat, who had taken over not only Juan Carlos's European terrorist cell, but South America, and now the United States as well.

Hussein Moussa halted in front of the Sinbad Star restaurant. Like a very careful driver at a tricky intersection, he looked both ways. Twice more he looked up and down Atlantic Avenue. He even noticed the bag man camped out on the other side of the busy street.

Apparently he saw nothing to fear, nothing of real concern or interest, and he disappeared behind the gaudy red door of the Sinbad Star.