Strangers

tailing him. He saw no one suspicious.
        For a moment he stood rocklike in the river of people that flowed around him. He wanted to get out of the city and the state as quickly as possible, flee to an unlikely destination, where they would not look for him. Whoever they were. Yet he was not entirely sure that flight was necessary. In Ranger training, he had been taught never to act until he understood why he was acting and until he knew what he hoped to achieve by his actions. Besides, fear of his faceless enemy was outweighed by curiosity; he needed to know who he was up against, how they had broken his various covers, and what they wanted from him.
        Outside the Citibank Building, Jack hailed a cab and went to the corner of Wall Street and William Street, in the heart of the financial district, where he had six safe-deposit boxes in six banks. He went to five of them, from each of which he collected twenty-five thousand dollars and a postcard of the Tranquility Motel.
        He decided to stop after the fifth, because his coat pockets were already bulging with $125,000, a sufficiently dangerous sum to be carrying, and because, by now, he knew beyond a doubt that his other six phony identities and clandestine safe-deposit boxes had been found out as well. He had enough money with which to travel, and he was not particularly worried about leaving the remaining $150,000 in the other six boxes. For one thing, Jack had four million in his Swiss accounts; and for another thing, the distributor of the postcards would already have taken the available money if that had been his intention.
        By now, he'd had time to think about that motel out in Nevada, and he had begun to realize something was strange about the time that he had spent at the place. He had remained there for three days, relaxing, enjoying the quiet and the scenery. But now, for the first time, it seemed to him that he would have done no such thing. Not with so much cash in the trunk of his rental car. Not when he had already been away from New York (and Jenny) for two weeks. He would have driven straight home from Reno. Now that he was forced to contemplate it, the three-day stay at the Tranquility Motel did not make much sense.
        Another taxi conveyed him to his Fifth Avenue apartment building, where he arrived shortly before eleven. He promptly telephoned Elite Flights, a company that chartered small jets, with whom he had dealt previously, and he was relieved to discover that, fortuitously, they had an unhooked Lear available for departure at his convenience.
        He took the twenty-five thousand from the secret compartment in the back of his bedroom closet. With the funds he had removed from the safe-deposit boxes, he now had $150,000 in immediate operating capital, enough to deal with virtually any contingency that might arise.
        He hurriedly packed three suitcases, distributing a few clothes in each, but leaving most of the space for other items. He stowed away two handguns: a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnum, chambered for the.357 Magnum cartridge but also capable of firing.38 Special cartridges with considerably less kick; and a.32 Beretta Model 70, its stubby barrel grooved to accept a screw-on, pipe-type silencer, of which Jack included two. He also took an Uzi submachine gun, which he'd illegally modified for full automatic fire, plus plenty of ammunition.
        Jack's newly acquired guilt had substantially transformed him during the past forty-eight hours, but it had not overwhelmed him to such an extent that he was incapable of dealing violently with those who might deal violently with him. His determination to be an honest and upstanding citizen did not interfere with his instinct for self-preservation. And considering his background, no one was better prepared to preserve himself than Jack Twist.
        Besides, after eight years of alienation and loneliness, he had begun to rejoin society, had begun to hope for a normal life. He would not let anyone destroy what might be his last chance for happiness.
        He also packed the portable SLICKS computer, which he had used to get through the armored transport's sophisticated electronic lock the night before last in Connecticut. In addition, he decided he might need a Police Lock Release Gun, a tool that could instantly open any type of pin-tumbler lock - mushroom, spool, or regular - without damaging the mechanism, and which was sold only to