The Face

was Dunny Whistler, dead but risen.
        Ethan marveled that he could stand here, entertaining such bizarre thoughts, and still be sane. At least he believed himself to be sane. He might be wrong about that.
        Although the bells were gone, the items from the black boxes remained on display. He sat at the desk and studied the six parts of the riddle, hoping for enlightenment.
        Ladybugs, snails, a jar containing ten foreskins, the cookie jar full of Scrabble tiles-OWE, WOE-a book about guide dogs, the eye in the apple…
        On better days, in a better mood, he’d been unable to make sense of these messages. He hoped that in his current state of wound-tight tension and mental exhaustion, his intellectual fences might fall away, allowing him suddenly to see everything from a new perspective and to understand what before had seemed indecipherable.
        No luck.
        He phoned the guards in the security office at the back of the estate, in the groundskeeper’s building. On duty from four until [468] midnight, they were already aware that he had set the house-perimeter alarm earlier than usual, because that action had registered on their displays.
        Without giving them a reason, he asked that they be especially alert this evening. “And pass that request along to the guys on the graveyard shift when they get here.”
        He phoned Carl Shorter, the chief road warrior who managed the squad of bodyguards protecting the Face in Florida. Shorter had nothing disturbing to report.
        “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Ethan said. “We’ll need to go over new arrangements I’m going to make for your L.A. arrival on Thursday. More security at the airport and all the way here to home base, new procedures, a new route, just in case anyone has tumbled to our usual routine.”
        “Is your fan still clean?” Shorter asked.
        “No shit’s hit it yet,” Ethan assured him.
        “Then what’s up?”
        “I told you about the weird gifts in the black boxes. We’ve got an issue related to those, that’s all. It’s containable.”
        After signing off with Carl Shorter, Ethan went to the bathroom to shave and freshen up for dinner. He pulled off his sweater, put on a clean shirt.
        A few minutes later, standing at the desk in the study, he took one more look at the enigmatic six items.
        An indicator light on the phone caught his attention: Line 24, first fluttering and then burning steadily.

CHAPTER 72
        
        OWNED BY KURTZ IVORY INTERNATIONAL, serving as the principal vehicle for Robin Goodfellow, the Land Rover must never be seen at Corky’s home. It might too easily link him to criminal activities committed by his fascistic alter ego.
        He parked around the corner and walked home in the rain, singing bits of Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner, admittedly not well but with feeling.
        In the garage, he stripped naked and left his sodden clothes on the concrete floor. He took the wallet, National Security Agency ID fold, and the Glock into the house with him, because he was not yet done being Robin Goodfellow for the day.
        He toweled dry in the master bedroom. He slipped into a pair of thermal underwear.
        From the walk-in closet, he retrieved a black Hard Corps Gore-Tex/Thermolite storm suit made for skiers. Waterproof, warm, allowing a full range of easy movement, this would be the perfect costume for the assault on Palazzo Rospo.

        [470] Hazard could have phoned Vladimir Laputa or whoever had recently entered the professor’s house through the garage, but after brooding for a minute about the wisest approach, he decided to appear at the doorstep unannounced. Something might be gained by the surprise-or lack of it-with which the swaggering man would react to the sight of Hazard and his badge.
        He switched off the engine, got out of the car, and came face to face with Dunny Whistler.
        As pale as a sun-bleached skull, features drawn from his days in deathlike coma, Dunny stood in the rain yet remained untouched by it, drier than bone, than moon sand, than salt. “Don’t go in there.”
        Hazard startled and embarrassed himself by doing the next best thing to a feets-don’t-fail-me-now routine. He tried to back up but had nowhere to go because the car was immediately behind him, yet he couldn’t stop his shoes from slipping against the wet pavement, as his feet tried to propel him backward